After the Kiss

by Michele Hauf

  Standing upon the gravel road I knew curved around behind the main cabin and into the forest to a hunting shed put up my hackles.

  “Severo?” Bella waited for me to follow Olivia inside. “What is it?”

  It was, in fact, the ghosts of my murdered brethren who prodded at my skin with an icy elbow. At once I wanted to rush to the Jeep and flee. And then I wanted to howl in outrage at the travesties that had bloodied the grounds and strangled the futures of my breed.

  “Give him time,” I heard Olivia say. “We’ll be inside, Severo. Walk the grounds if you wish.”

  I walked forward, disregarding the fact I was leaving my wife alone with an unfamiliar werewolf. Bella could handle herself. I could not resist the call to enter the forest. It clasped about my shoulders and pulled me into the depths.

  Spring softened the ground with moisture. All things smelled new and fresh. Yet beneath the green sprouts and budding leaves festered rot and mildew, dead things fruiting as they returned to the earth.

  The souls of my parents had treaded this ground. I could not know if they had gone to heaven or if we—as a race—were destined to hell. I believed in the former with all my heart.

  So why did I willingly tread hell now?

  My strides raced me across the forest floor by the time I reached the hunting shed. I stopped abruptly. Sight of the rotting wood-slat shed pushed the breath from my lungs.

  Wicked visions surfaced. I had been young, perhaps twenty-two. My parents had disappeared from our land twenty miles to the east. They’d been captured by the vampires who had been trapping in the area.

  In the 1950s humans had put a bounty on natural wolf pelts. (Mortals had no clue about werewolves.) The vampires had taken it upon themselves to hunt werewolves. Just for sport.

  It’s not as though we werewolves haven’t committed heinous crimes against the vampires. Don’t ask me about the blood sport. Kidnapping vampires, starving them and inflicting them with UV sickness—and forcing them to fight one another to the death. It is abominable and I have never participated.

  As I stalked to the cabin porch, a low whine scratched my throat. Much like the whine I remember emitting that night I’d loped out from the woods and spied my parents’ bodies strung up by their heels and hooked along the side of this very cabin.

  When a werewolf dies in its wolf or man-beast form, it will eventually shift back to its were, or man shape. It can happen immediately or take a few hours. My parents were in wolf shape when murdered. They remained so until I came upon them. I watched them shift. Dead. They hung by their heels as their fur shed and became flesh. Naked. Bloodied. Taken from me for vicious sport.

  I’d howled and shifted into wolf shape. Too late. My howls of agony had brought the hunters out and I was chained at neck and all four legs. A quick death was not to be mine. I lived in a cage for months, in full view of this horrid cabin.

  Images of that daily view—my kin strung up dead by their heels—pierced my conscious with wicked stabs.

  Now I charged the cabin and punched a fist into the rotting wood wall. It groaned and the wood exploded. Termites made it an easy target. Over and over I beat out my rage. I howled. I growled. I stomped and kicked in the porch boards.

  Finally I could do what I had been incapable of so many decades earlier. There were no vampires to destroy, but this annihilation of memory worked me to an exhausted sweat. I continued punching and beating at the wrongness of it, the utter vicious entitlement the longtooths flaunted as if it was their birthright.

  And when I could no longer see clearly for the sawdust in my eyes, I collapsed on the grass before the dread house of torture.

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  Chapter Six

  I heard his mournful howl. Over and over. Olivia squeezed my arm and gave me a knowing nod. “He’s suffered.”

  “I know he has. What the vampires did to the werewolves was unspeakable.” I skimmed a palm up my arm to chase off the shiver. “I’m not like them, you know.”

  “Of course you’re not, dear.”

  I believed she trusted me. We’d chatted for an hour, and I now admired Olivia for her determination to reclaim the land that had once been the site of the near elimination of her breed. She’s a renegade with a heart.

  “I should go to him.”

  She nodded. A woman of few words.

  Twilight sparkled with stars I never saw when in the city. But I didn’t linger over the magical sight.

  If I had drunk Severo’s blood I’d be able to track him anywhere merely by tuning into the synch of our heartbeats. He could track me. He was like a bloodhound, and my scent drew him like a dog to a bone.

  Bad analogy; suffice to say that the hubby could find me anywhere, anytime. And you know? I loved that he could do so.

  I followed the overgrown trail to a tattered shed wedged between tall, white paper birch trees and canopied by a broken pine bow. Severo sat on the ground before the structure, his head bowed. He didn’t look up when I approached, only held out his hand, entreating.

  I hastened to his side and kissed his palm, tucking myself beside him. A sheen of sweat slickened his arms and neck. He smelled as he did immediately after a shift from wolf shape, feral and still clinging to the wild.

  And if his rapid breaths didn’t tell me he was upset, the hard clasp on my hand did.

  “This was the place,” I said. He had told me about witnessing his parents’ deaths. No person, mortal, immortal or otherwise, should ever have to experience something so terrible. “It’s quiet here.” He pressed my lips to his knuckles. “Can you…sense their souls?”

  “No. They’re long gone.” He swiped the hair from his eyes and exhaled heavily. Coming down from a rage. My presence tended to ground him. “Yet it’s all so vivid to me again. The cruelty. My own imprisonment.”

  Evie, the vampiress who had seen to my change, had been young and infatuated with the imprisoned werewolf back in the fifties when she had requested Severo as a sort of pet. She’d saved him from being strung up like his parents. Forcing himself to play the role of seducer, Severo had managed escape before she’d been able to bite him.

  “Thank you for suggesting we come here,” he said, nuzzling into my hair. His breathing grew slower, his clasp on my hand more gentle. “It’s helped.”

  “It has?”

  “I believe so.” He spread his hands before him as if to test the weight of the air. “There are no ghosts. No angry spirits. What happened happened. I cannot change the past.”

  “You don’t have to accept it, either.”

  “Exactly. But carrying it with me does nothing to improve my future. I have to move on, Bella. I cannot believe I have lived so long with this weight about my neck. I want to be free.”

  “You are, Severo. You remember your parents here.” I pressed my hand over his heart. He sucked in a breath and clasped his palm over my fingers. “Keep them with you always.”

  “Why are you so good to me? You understand me in ways even I can’t fathom.”

  “It’s easy. You are good to me. You touch my need for attention, for appreciation, for desire and even for challenge. You are wise and smart. Heck, your werewolf is pretty sexy, too. How could I not love you?”

  His chuckle stilled my worry; he’d returned to me. “I am ever surprised you admire me in werewolf shape.”

  “Yeah, well, the back hair is a bit much.”

  We laughed together, and he kissed my hand and hugged me.

  “Is Olivia upset I didn’t come in right away?”

  “Not at all. She understands. I like her. I invited her to visit when she comes to the city to stock up on supplies.”

  “You realize you have more werewolf friends than vampire?” he said.

  “I don’t think about it much. They are friends, and that’s all that matters.”

  He chuckled again. “You have this incredible ability to see beyond race and breed. I love that about you, Bella.”

  I wanted to climb
onto his lap and dive into his kiss. There I would drown in his soul. But I held back. It didn’t feel right sitting here on the porch where he had lost his family.

  He drew me onto his lap and I snuggled my head beside his neck. We spent a lot of time snuggling on the big easy chair in the living room. This was a favorite position. Quiet, listening to one another’s heart beat. Breathing in the subtle scents of shampoo, perfume and flesh and blood. Knowing.

  “Tell me what it’s like,” he asked, “drinking blood.”

  I met his eyes. Shadowed yet yearning. Eager for information. He’d never asked about my transformation, only tolerated it.

  “It’s very natural. It doesn’t taste bad. It keeps me alive.” The stroke of his finger across my lower lip aroused me. I clasped my fingers about his to stop the growing desire. I had to say what was on my mind. “It’s intimate, though. It’s the oddest thing that I have to get so close to strangers, mostly men, and bite into their flesh. It disturbs me sometimes. The only one I wish to be so intimate with is my husband.”

  I closed my eyes as his strokes journeyed over my cheek and along the arch of my brow. The pad of his finger moved gently across my lashes. If any had seen him as the werewolf, they might never imagine he could be so gentle. That secret was mine, and I cherished it.

  “I wish the same,” he said. “I’m jealous of all those men you’ve bitten.”

  “I know that.” He couldn’t hide his jealousy in the posturing and snarls. It was a gift to feel so wanted.

  “Do you think it strange I get a little turned on when I watch?”

  “Not at all. I love when you watch. And afterward, when you take me roughly.”

  He nodded and smirked. “Could you survive on my blood alone?”

  What he suggested was beyond my comprehension. Because that would mean he’d allow me to bite him, not because I wasn’t sure if I could survive. In fact, having a constant and same source of blood would only make me stronger, as Revin had explained.

  I hugged him and listened to his heart pulse against the side of my face. “I could, but I won’t ask you to sacrifice that much. I’m happy, Severo.”

  “You make me something beyond happy.”

  “Take me home.”

  At the cabin Olivia refused my offer to pay for damages.

  She scoffed and waved a hand. “Nonsense, Severo, that’s why I kept the thing standing. You know how many wolves have taken out their anger on the place before you?”

  I smiled. Many, surely. And that this woman kept it, knowing it held so much pain—and yet it could prove so cathartic—meant the world to me.

  “Bella said you’d stop in and visit next time you’re to town?”

  “Won’t be able to keep me away. Your wife says you’ve a swimming pool. I’ll bring my suit.”

  “You’re welcome anytime, Olivia.” She clasped my hand and I pulled her in for a hug. “I love Bella.”

  “You’re a lucky one,” she said. “Not many wolves find a mate. Females are still so scarce. You shouldn’t worry she’s not our breed. Bella is a fine woman. She’ll do you proud.”

  Then Olivia stroked my neck, right over the vein. It pulsed under the odd touch. “Don’t be afraid of her.” She winked and stepped back.

  Taking that as my sendoff, I nodded and returned to the Jeep.

  I’m not afraid of Bella. Nor do I feel the intense pain of my past since leaving behind the hunting shed. I think this trip helped. I know it did.

  Chapter Seven

  We didn’t arrive home until well after midnight. We made love sweetly, slowly, barely speaking, save for knowing touches and wanting moans.

  Today I ran through seven hours of meetings with clients. My pet project, so to speak, is a rescue shelter for natural wolves—not werewolves—in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. The packs are few and thin at best. Over the decades I’ve been buying land and building preservation shelters and educational buildings.

  It’s a small step, but one that fulfills both my need to give back and my need for family. Natural wolves can never be family, but we understand one another and I like that just fine.

  I heard the flamenco music before I opened the garage door into the house. When Bella practiced she did so in the vast marble foyer. It gave the nails pounded into her dance shoes the loudest volume. I had yet to catch her dancing, had only heard the strains while I’d been tucked in the office chained to the phone.

  I opened the door quietly.

  A swish of red spun above the white marble floor. Body arced backward and arms held high, her wrists twisting gracefully, Bella embodied sensuality.

  You might think a dance focused on rapid footwork that literally pounded the crap out of the floor couldn’t be so graceful or sexy.

  Bella spied me and turned. Hips rocking and shoes clicking the floor, she moved in a slow, sexy stride toward me. The dress was what she’d called a bata de cola, the long ruffled train dusting the floor and revealing her feet in front. There were no sleeves, yet at her wrists, long red ribbons flowed, moving in half curves and waves as she decorated the dance with her body.

  Her long brown hair was queued into a ponytail down the back of the low-dipping dress. Her back muscles flexed and the sinuous, tanned flesh tempted me to reach out.

  She noted my movement, smirked and spun away. One arm twisted, sneaking the come-to-me gesture with her forefinger. She danced about, moving behind me to press a shoulder against my back. Cloves. Her scent owned me.

  A spin put her in front of me, palms pressed to my chest.

  Looking down her body, I followed the wave of red at her wrists. Snatching the ribbons, I wrangled her with a twist of my fist. I pulled her wrists high to kiss her palms.

  She in ribbons bound, and I able to control my wife as I desired. We had teased at trying bondage at times.

  “You’re mine,” I said. “These ribbons? I’ve always thought you’d look pretty tied up.”

  Silent in her wicked seduction, she tugged at the hold I had on the ribbons. I didn’t relent, because she didn’t want me to. Releasing but one ribbon allowed her to turn and swing out. I captured the other ribbon, her back to me now, and drew my hands up her forearms to the elbows.

  Kissing the back of her neck summoned a delicious moan from her. “Yes, moan for me, my vampire wife.” I wrapped one ribbon around both her wrists. “May I?”

  “Please.”

  Such power a man feels when he senses his woman’s trust and is in love. To know I can do as I wish with this beautiful soul, and she will relent. I would never push her beyond her comfort zone. That would be cruel. But this play with the ribbons suited both my need to control and my libido.

  The heavy ribbons slithered as I wound each alternately up her forearms until I’d bound her to the elbows. Spine straight and shoulders back, the position forced her breasts high and her posture erect. I tied a bow at her elbows and went around to kiss her.

  Drinking Bella’s sigh intoxicated me. I went in for the kiss, but forced myself to stop before our lips touched. Sharing breath, we teased one another with the promise of contact.

  Her green eyes dazzled as she sought safety in mine. I sensed her discomfort, but not enough to raise her pulse or produce a fear scent. “Do you trust me?”

  “Always,” she breathed.

  Her surrender stilled my heart. The moment was too precious to not regard. Something had changed as we’d sat on the ramshackle porch in the woods. Bella had seen my horror, had accepted my faults as she had not been able to previously. I knew she understood completely now.

  I trusted her. I had always believed I trusted Bella, but now, I knew it innately.

  Drawing my hands over her shoulders, I verified she could not struggle free from the loosely bound ribbons. I unzipped the dress and let the shoulders fall to her elbows. Moving around to stand before her, I nudged the soft fabric over the tips of her hard nipples.

  “So exposed to me. Bella, you quicken me.” My fingers lingered
near her breasts, but I didn’t touch. Couldn’t. I wanted to savor the exquisite tension that was not so much threatening as teasing. “Tell me what you want, sweet.”

  She moaned, wanting, desperate. “Lick me. Please.”

  I moved in, her nipple brushing my mouth, then relented. “How?”

  “Oh…slowly. Then faster, like you do. Then slow again…ahhh.”

  She knew my tricks, and I knew she liked them. Tasting her completely and drawing my mark about her breast, I then flicked my tongue about the hard flesh, which drew deliriously aching moans from my wife.

  A man could come listening to Bella’s pleasure. She never held back, and I’ve come to understand her moans, whimpers and sighs as a sort of Morse code for sexual direction. Shallow rapid breaths meant she would climax soon.

  “I want to touch you,” she cried in melting anguish.

  Our little play at domination had ended. I hadn’t wanted it to become a struggle of wills. Pressing my body against hers, I ground my erection against her undulating hips. She was so close to releasing to me.

  I reached around and fumbled with the ribbons, kissing her open mouth as I did so. Her nipples tormented the need to rip off my own clothing.

  When the ribbons spilled like blood across the floor, I lifted Bella into my arms and raced to the bedroom.

  Chapter Eight

  Since we’d returned from Olivia’s home, I had developed a new appreciation for Severo’s aversion to vampires. While the bite would satisfy some deep inner longing in myself, there was no way I’d insist upon it now.

  I loved the man. Love does not require sacrifice so great. He’d already given me his heart.

  Why did I need more?

  It was raining tonight. I did not want to go out, but I wrapped myself in a plastic raincoat, anyway. I was hungry. Had to fulfill the call for blood before lying next to my husband in bed.

  I collected the red ribbons strewn on the floor as I scurried through the living room. Touching one to my lips, I recalled Severo’s soft insistence to possess but never control. Tears came to my eyes at my fortune in finding such a man. I intended to keep him.