by Lauren Esker
"Some ... thing?"
"Yeah." He pulled on his sweater and then his coat, never taking his eyes off the inky shadows under the trees. The puppies, who had seemed cheerful when they'd first arrived at Nicole's bench, were picking up on his anxiety now, and they clustered in an unhappy little knot around his feet. "I thought it was another wolf at first, but now I don't think so. I couldn't get a good look, and the smell isn't right—here, pick up the kids, let's move."
Nicole tucked two puppies under her jacket. They were damp and muddy and tired out, as well as scared; rather than struggling to get away, they pressed against her until she could feel the tiny fast patter of their heartbeats.
"Avery, you're scaring the kids."
"Hell, I'm scaring me. I'm probably overreacting, but I don't like this." He started walking quickly, using the cane with two of the puppies tucked into his buttoned-up coat as before. "It was shadowing us in the trees," he explained when Nicole caught up with him. "I don't know how long it was there. I didn't notice it myself at first—I was on the lookout for human onlookers, human enemies. I didn't expect to encounter other shifters here."
"Are you sure it was a shifter?" She wished they were out of the park already. The bike path stretched impossibly long in front of them, winding through the dew-silvered grass. Her human eyes couldn't penetrate the shadows surrounding them. Anything at all could be lurking there.
"Yes," he said simply. "I'm sure. I knew, the way you do. But I don't know what it was. Almost wolf, but not wolf. I've never smelled anything like it. Of course, I haven't smelled every kind of animal in the world, either. It might be a species I haven't personally encountered before."
He sounded uncertain.
"That's the only option, isn't it?" Nicole asked. "If it isn't something you know, then it must be some kind of animal from abroad ... right?"
"I ... don't know. What bothers me is that I kept thinking it was a wolf—it tugged at me like werewolves do. But there was something wrong with it. Do you know what the Uncanny Valley is?"
"I'm not quite sure. I've heard of it."
"It refers to the way that something which is almost human, but not quite, freaks us out a lot more than something which is very definitely not human. That's why horror-movie monsters are so often things like zombies and killer dolls. Something instinctive inside us reacts badly to them, because they have just enough human qualities to make us realize how human they aren't."
They were finally, finally out of the park. She kept looking over her shoulder as they walked swiftly toward Avery's apartment building. Her imagination conjured movement in every shadow, even as she told herself it was just her jumpy nerves.
"So this is the werewolf equivalent of that?"
"I don't know. The kids didn't seem bothered by it. Actually, the only one who seemed to notice it was the little blond one, and she wanted to go to it. For all I know, it was a stray dog and I was letting my protective instincts go into overdrive. But ..." He tried to free up a hand to open the door into the apartment building's downstairs hallway. Nicole held his cane for him. "It just didn't feel right," he finished, frustrated.
Nicole breathed more easily once they were inside Avery's apartment, with the lights on and the door locked behind them. Avery, however, seemed more agitated than before. "Gimme a minute," he said, putting down the puppies and then shedding his coat and sweater.
"Are you all right?"
"I will be. Go ahead and make them some—I was going to say cocoa, but warm formula will probably serve the same purpose without poisoning them. No chocolate for shifter pups. The formula is in the cabinet beside the fridge."
With that, he shifted, dropping to all fours. He prowled purposefully into the bedroom.
Nicole stared after him. She had no earthly clue what he was up to. From here she could see him wandering around the bedroom, stopping to sniff things. He didn't seem to be doing anything other than that.
Did he think there was an intruder? But the door had been locked. And if he truly thought so, he wouldn't have left her alone in the kitchen.
She went ahead and did as he'd asked, microwaving some water in a jar and mixing the formula into it. She poured it into the same bowls he'd used to feed the puppies earlier. Although clearly tired, they tottered over and began lapping.
Hot cocoa sounded nice. She opened the cabinets to see if she could find any. Meanwhile Avery continued to prowl around the perimeter of the room, into the bathroom and out of it, around the edge of the living room.
He is checking a perimeter, she thought.
There didn't seem to be any cocoa, so she got out two beers for the grown-ups. The puppies were falling asleep on the kitchen floor, one of them with his head in his empty bowl. Nicole smiled to herself. She carried them into the living room and piled them on the couch. Then she went into the bedroom for a blanket—Avery was currently investigating the kitchen, poking his snout into corners. While she was there, she glanced at the closet door, noting that while it had been securely shut when they'd left, it was now half open again.
"Avery, did you open the closet door?" she called.
A moment's silence, then his voice from the living room: "Yes. I needed to check inside. Sorry."
"Don't be. I just wanted to make sure it was you."
She came back into the living room with an armful of soft fleece blanket and found Avery human-shaped again, getting dressed.
"Sorry about all of this." He smiled sheepishly at her. "For one thing, I guess this is more nudity than you were expecting on a first date."
"Shifter, remember? It goes with the territory." She covered up the puppies, although they were sleeping comfortably and didn't seem to be cold. "I'm curious what you were doing just now, but you don't have to tell me unless you want to."
Avery hesitated while he finished dressing. "I'm not sure myself," he said at last. "It's a ritual, I guess. All I know is, I've been doing it most of my life, and I don't feel safe unless I do. I don't usually feel the need to do it when I'm at someone else's. Just at home. Pretty OCD, right?"
Or maybe a perfectly normal werewolf thing. She wasn't sure. The way he said it implied he didn't think so—but then, he seemed to think denning in the closet was something to hide, too, and she'd known plenty of shifters who did something like that.
"I can't speak for most people," she said, "but I feel safer myself knowing that you checked the whole apartment. Especially with something strange running around in the park."
"Which might be my overactive imagination."
"You don't seem like the kind of person who gets worked up over nothing."
He smiled crookedly, not the warm smile she'd come to covet, but something twisted and unhappy. "You just watched me spend ten minutes doing a perimeter sweep of an apartment I left half an hour ago."
"Which you explained to me as something that's normal for you. Is it normal to think you're being followed in the park?"
Avery shook his head. "No," he said quietly. "I often go there at night, when I need to stretch my legs as a wolf. That's never happened before."
"Well, then."
Avery checked the locks on the door and limped into the bedroom. Nicole hesitated before picking up the beers and following him. The lights were off, but he'd opened the blinds on a window that looked down into the building's small courtyard.
Someone walked briskly through the courtyard with their arms full of grocery bags: a resident, most likely. Someone else crossed it with a laundry basket. Afterwards, it was still and deserted.
Avery opened the window and leaned out.
"What are you doing?" Nicole asked quietly.
"Smelling." He shook his head. "No good. I can't smell things well enough in this body."
"You could shift again."
Another crooked smile. "I'm getting really sick of getting dressed and undressed."
Wordlessly she handed him a beer, to stop herself from saying what she wanted to say: that she really didn't min
d if he didn't get dressed again at all.
Avery accepted it and shut the window. Leaving the blinds open and the lights off, he sat on the bed. Nicole sat beside him, close enough her arm brushed his.
"I had a nice time tonight, you know," she said. "Even in the park."
"Until I came running out of the woods babbling about mutant werewolves?"
Nicole laughed softly. "Even then, I can certainly say it made the date memorable."
"Running for your life from deserted parks isn't a usual feature of your dates, then."
"Even in Australia," she said. "Our wildlife's fearsome reputation notwithstanding."
Avery looked down at his lap, the untouched beer in his hands, and she realized that he was trembling slightly against her. He was, if not truly afraid, then very agitated.
"Why does it bother you so much?" she asked quietly. "Tell me about it."
"I told you, back at the park. It's the Uncanny Valley thing. And ..." He hesitated, twisting the bottle between his palms. "And also, I suppose, I keep second-guessing myself. What if the other wolf wouldn't come near me because there's something wrong with me? Maybe the wrongness I sensed isn't in him; it's in me."
"That can't be right." She put her hand over his, stilling his restless fidgeting. "Avery, there is absolutely nothing wrong with you. Trust me on this."
He gave a short, harsh bark of a laugh. "Yeah, tell that to the other werewolves of the world. I didn't grow up in a pack, you know. My pack ... broke up. So I never learned how to be a wolf. When I went looking for others of my kind as an adult, they wouldn't accept me. I wasn't quite right. But I knew I didn't fit in the human world, either. Not quite a wolf and not quite a human. Or, maybe, a wolf who didn't know how to wolf. You know how children have critical periods for learning how to do things like talk and socialize properly? I think I passed one without even knowing about it, and other werewolves can sense it when they're around me."
"Then they're wrong," she said firmly. "They're being stupid snobs. I haven't known you very long, Avery, but I can tell already that you're brave and gentle and kind. If those other werewolves didn't want to know you, then it's their loss."
He looked up at her, his eyes glittering in the dim light streaming in from the living room. "Because of knowing me for twenty-four hours?" he asked, his voice forced to lightness with a note of strain quivering underneath.
"Because I have a job that forces me to spend most of my time making decisions about people, about who they are and what they're capable of, and I've gotten pretty damn good at it." She set her beer down beside her foot, freeing both hands to close them over his cold ones. "Because even though I don't know much about you yet, everything I learn makes me want to know more."
She wasn't sure if he moved first, or she did; or if, perhaps, they both moved together. But somehow in the dark stillness of the room, her mouth found its way to his.
He tasted like the night, clean and fresh. She was cautious at first; they both were, unsure of the shape of the other's mouth and how they fit together. They were gentle explorers, sucking on lips, tongues softly feeling out the intimate spaces that were known, until now, only to themselves and their past lovers.
And yet it caught some spark between them, breathed onto it and set it on fire. Her breath came faster; her hands came up to touch him, palm pressed against his chest and fingers tangling into his hair, wanting to be closer, wanting more. He reached out blindly and set the beer on the bedside table with a loud clunk, not breaking their kiss, all his being focused on her. His hand cupped her breast, then stopped; she dropped her own away from his sweater to curl over his fingers and press into the soft flesh of her chest, through the silky blouse she'd donned for their date: Yes, yes, I want this. Yes, touch me there.
They broke apart finally, but only so he could rest his forehead against hers, their breath mingling. Their joined hands were still resting on her chest, fingers curled together.
"We could stop here," he whispered.
"We could."
"Do you want to?"
"No," she said, and kissed him again with wild abandon.
When they came up for air this time, her blouse was half unbuttoned, and their hair was tousled and wild from each other's hands. She'd lost her dragonfly hairclip, borrowed from Erin, and didn't even care.
Avery cupped her face and kissed her cheek, her nose, her lips, down her neck to the curve of her collarbone. Then he turned his face into her neck and sighed, resting his lips against her skin.
"Avery?" she said cautiously after a moment. "Is everything okay?"
"It is," he said quietly, muffled. "It is." He sat up, hair mussed, eyes bright. "Don't take this wrong, but I haven't been with a woman in a while."
"Heck, I don't even remember my last date. Don't worry about it." She had to smile. "I feel like I should reassure you that I'm normally the kind of girl who doesn't put out on a first date. But, actually, I had a few one-night stands in uni. I was a lot wilder then. And ... I'm not sure why I'm telling you this."
He rested his hand gently against her cheek. "I don't think this is going to be a one-night stand for me. Just so you know."
"Me neither," she whispered. "At least, I hope not."
He kissed her again, slow and long; trailed kisses over her cheek and the side of her neck. His fingers, dexterous and gentle, undid the rest of the buttons on her silk blouse and pulled it down over her shoulders, leaving her skin bare to the city light coming in through the window.
She wanted to stop him, to warn him—about what, she wasn't sure: that she wasn't model-thin, perhaps, but he could certainly see that, even when they'd first met, when she was still wrapped in the armor of her usual neutral-colored pantsuits. Next to her sister, whose innate sense of style didn't seem to have been dented by two kids, she'd always felt dowdy and plain, acutely self-conscious about the rolls over her hips and the weight of the DD breasts she was carrying on a too-heavy frame. Or maybe she just needed to tell him that he didn't want to get involved with a social worker pushing middle age who'd never had a serious relationship in her life and needed daily meds to keep herself on an emotional even keel—
But that was the darkness talking again, the little black leeches sucking away at her self-esteem.
Stomp. Squish.
She warmed herself, instead, at the fire of his obvious regard for her, the wonder and delight in his eyes as he cupped her ample breasts in his hands and caressed them through her bra.
With a final gentle sweep of his thumbs across her bra-clad nipples, he sat back and stripped off his sweater. Until then, she had forgotten he was wearing the collar. It was a slash of midnight blue across the pale stretch of his throat, the silver tags (If lost, return to ...) nestling between the hollows of his collarbone.
Avery reached behind his neck to undo it. She leaned forward and stopped him with a touch.
"Leave it," she whispered.
He smiled slightly, mischief dancing in his eyes. "You like it?"
She wasn't quite sure if he'd accept the real answer: It suits you, somehow. Not because she thought he should be tamed, not because she wanted to collar him. But the collar seemed to her a bridge between the wildness of his wolf side and the calm domesticity of his human aspect. It was a reminder that the fierce protective fangs of the wolf lay beneath his human skin, and the gentler human was always under the wolf's shaggy fur, a reminder that she need never fear him.
Instead, she said, "It brings out the blue in your eyes."
"Who am I to disappoint a lady," he murmured, and leaned forward, bearing her down gently, beneath his kisses, to the bed.
She'd already seen him naked, but found herself unprepared for the thrill of skin to skin contact. Propped on one elbow, he was not too heavy, but he was so warm and alive, rubbing on her gently as he fought, one-handed, to unsnap her bra. She smiled into his mouth and reached around to help him. The bra came free, and she shook it off her arm, leaving them both naked above the waist
, and clothed below.
There was something intensely erotic about it—not chaste, not at all, but a reminder, perhaps, that they had all the time in the world.
Even if she was already aching to feel him in her, a quivering tingle between her legs.
He moved down from her mouth, leaving her breathless, and kissed his way across her collarbone. The hard edge of the dog tags on the collar swept small sparks from her skin. He lapped at her nipples and made her body rise, her back arching off the bed.
He sucked and nibbled at her nipples until she was breathing hard, then left a trail of kisses down the soft curve of her rounded belly. All self-consciousness had deserted her; she couldn't hang onto it in the face of his obvious delight in her body.
Lightly, he mouthed at her through the light fabric of the borrowed skirt. One of his hands quested up her thigh, fingers caressing the soft skin but not coming far enough up to ease the growing pressure between her legs. His teeth pressed lightly against her through the fabric, twin arcs of tantalizing pressure.
"Tease," she gasped, propping herself up on her elbows to watch him.
Avery grinned up at her from between her legs. He pushed up her skirt enough to clasp a hand over each of her thighs—or so she inferred from touch; the rumpled mounds of the skirt's fabric obscured her view of what, exactly, his hands were doing. "I thought women liked foreplay."
"We do, but—" One of his hands brushed against her through the damp crotch of her panties. His knuckles swept over her mound and sent a sharp, aching shiver through her. "If there isn't something inside me in ten seconds, I might have to climb you like a tree."
"What a terrible fate," he mused playfully. His fingers hooked under the elastic of her panties, working lightly against her folds without pulling them all the way down.
"Don't make me come down there, Avery."
"I don't think there's room in here for two." His fingertip dipped briefly into her wetness. The flush of sensation made her gasp, and her reaction made him smile. An instant later he slid his finger into her up to the second knuckle.
