by Sky Winters
He had never met someone who caused him to respond in such a physical, raw way. No other women had ever invoked the wolf in him so casually, and handled it in such a sexy manner.
Maybe he could try to make it up to her somehow. He picked up his phone.
“Get me Jonas Neil,” he said to his secretary.
“Right away, sir,” she replied. Within minutes he was speaking to Jonas, one of the most successful talent agents in the music industry. He told him about Melanie and her band, and they agreed to meet that evening at her latest gig. He was still following her band’s website, and felt a small thrill at the idea of helping her with the one thing she loved to do the most.
Chapter 10
The set ended and Mel was cashing in on her free drink from the bar. Tammy and George had already left, and she was feeling a little bit lonely. Suddenly, Weston was there. And beside him was a blonde man with a bright smile. He reminded her of a car salesman.
“What do you want?” she asked Weston.
“This is Jonas Neil,” Weston said. “He can represent your band.”
“I don’t need your help!” she cried. “If I get successful, I want it to be because of my own hard work. Not as some pathetic attempt to get back on my good side.”
“Ouch,” Jonas laughed. “He didn’t tell me to like you, he just told me I should listen.”
“Whatever. Thanks anyway, Mr. Neil,” Mel said, storming out of the bar.
Weston and Jonas exchanged looks and Weston sighed.
“I’m sorry about this,” he said, walking away from Jonas. “Better luck next time.”
Jonas smiled and shrugged as Weston followed Melanie, who had disappeared out into the night.
***
“Hey pretty girl,” a gaunt, pockmarked man said, stepping in front of Melanie. She had wandered out into the alley and somehow got herself right in the middle of the raunchy crowd who had been leering at her throughout the whole gig. She pretended not to notice, but the men had been extremely creepy. One of them was the man that Weston had punched during one of her other gigs.
“Where are you heading?” another man asked, grinning cruelly at her.
“That was quite a show you put on,” a third man said as they closed in on her. “Mind giving us a private one?”
“Get away from me,” Melanie cried, turning away and trying to run. She ran right into two other men, who grabbed her by the arms.
“She’s ours now,” the man to her left sneered.
“Let go!” she cried.
Suddenly, a shriek pierced the air. But it wasn’t Melanie’s voice. It was the man who had her right arm. She was suddenly released and fell back onto the pavement as a black streak leapt past her. She squinted her eyes and gasped as she saw a giant black wolf, his fur glimmering silver in the moonlight. She recognized him immediately as Weston.
The wolf lunged at the men, knocking them off balance and tearing viciously at them. Three of the men ran away, but two thought they could outsmart him. Weston lunged at them, tearing their throats out. He stood panting over their bodies before slowly walking away. Melanie stared after him as he walked down the narrow alley, disappearing into the shadows as he began shifting back into his human form.
Suddenly, she remembered what Sandy had said. Shifters had a different way of perceiving the world. He had always been able to tell how she really felt, so maybe he could tell how others truly felt as well. Their true intentions might be more clear to him than they were to her.
She scrambled to her feet and chased after Weston.
“Weston,” she panted, finally catching up to him. He turned to her, fixing his glowing golden eyes onto hers.
“Are you all right?” he asked her.
She stared at him her heart hammering in her chest. She nodded and looked him up and down. After his shapeshifting, he was completely naked, his perfect, muscular body rippling and illuminated by the soft silver moonlight.
Suddenly, the fire that he had ignited within her was kindled again, and his eyes shimmered knowingly as she looked up at him, biting her bottom lip.
“You can tell…about good people and bad ones…” she said, slowly approaching him, her heart thudding heavily in her ears. She had been so afraid she might never get a chance to set things right with him, and now that he was there…
“Yes,” he said. “I just want to protect you. I follow my instincts. That’s just how it is.”
“Thank you,” she whispered. “I’ve missed you so much.”
She expected him to answer, but instead, he leapt toward her, running his hands up and down her curves. Her body was ablaze with longing. She had somehow been able to stay away from him for this long, but now she could resist him no longer.
He slipped her panties from beneath her dress and ran his hands down her curvy body. He held her ass firmly in place and she felt his cock stiffen against her thigh. She moaned softly and felt the rush of hot fluid ready her for him to enter.
He didn’t wait. The second he smelled her ready herself for him, he lost all control and shoved himself inside of her. Melanie groaned deeply as he pushed the full length of himself inside of her, pinning her against the brick wall of the alley and taking her urgently. They had both been dreaming of another experience like this, and she closed her eyes as her body was stuffed again and again by his enormous, pulsing member. She could feel his every vein sliding against her sensitive walls and shuddered, just on the brink of climax.
“Already?” he teased with a whisper.
She grinned up at him and he shoved himself hard inside. It pushed her to the brink of her orgasm and she cried out loud, her body quaking and contracting around his swollen cock. He growled, finally letting himself shudder and spasm with a powerful orgasm. She closed her eyes as she was filled with his hot seed, and quaked around him as he pounded into her until he was completely done unleashing his load inside of her.
They panted together against the brick wall, and he took her hand, leading her down the alley and into his limousine. He ducked inside quickly before anybody saw that he was naked and he pulled her inside.
“We’re going back to the manor to try that properly now,” he whispered into her ear. She shuddered against him and leaned her head on his broad shoulder. He had proven himself, protected her, and done his best to make her life better. She couldn’t imagine her life with another man, and they rode in silence, both of them grateful that they finally had each other.
NYC Shifters Bonus
CHAPTER 1
November 8th, 1874
A thick fog descended upon the island of Manhattan, the lights of the streetlamps the only beacons within the nearly-opaque morass. The Central Park Zoo wasn’t exempt with its winding pathways and steel-barred animal enclosures barely visible in the midnight air. And being such a late hour, the zoo was hardly staffed; only a handful of men were there, all the grimy, grizzled sorts of men who preferred to work late at night.
“’Ey, Paul, hand me that little thing of you-know-what,” said Ricky, one of these men, a tall type with wiry, long limbs, a ruddy, pock-marked face, and the stink of bottom-tier whiskey on his breath.
“You can just call it ‘booze,’ ya know,” said Paul, another worker, this one with a stubby, round body and a face with beady, brown eyes and a coarse, dirty beard.
“Ya never know who’s listening,” Ricky said, swiping the small bottle of dingy, copper-colored liquid from Paul’s hand and bringing it up to his lip with an unsteady motion.
“I don’t know how you got to be so paranoid,” said Paul, taking the bottle back with a swipe of his own. “The whole point of a job like this is that no one gives a good goddamn what we get up to, so long as the work’s done.”
Ricky considered these words as he felt the whiskey rush to his head. He leaned back against a stack of wooden crates full of animal feed as he looked into the fog with bleary eyes.
“Can’t see a damn thing in this shit,” he said, spitting into the grave
l at his feet. “Yeah, not looking forward to feedin’ the tigers in this mess.”
“Yeah, one wrong step and you’ll be feedin’ em, alright,” said Paul, letting out a rough laugh that echoed in the still air.
“All right, all right,” said Ricky, fumbling in his overall pockets for a cigarette and lighter, “you know I hate jokes like that.”
“No shit,” said Paul, “why ya think I make ‘em all the time?”
Ricky placed the cigarette on his lips and with an unsteady hand, brought the flame up to the end. He took a puff as he lit it and brought in a lungful of smoke deep into him.
“What’d ya say we get these tigers fed? I’m about ready to take a little cat nap myself.”
“You get the tigers, I’ll get the wolves. We’ll do it faster that way,” Paul said.
“Fine, fine. I just hate going to these cages myself.”
“Don’t be a goddamn girl,” said Paul, his words heavy with disdain. “These beasts’ve been stuck in cages for years; they’re as domesticated as housecats by now.”
“Still don’t like it,” said Ricky, his cigarette dangling from his mouth.
“No one said ya did,” said Paul, scooping the empty feeding bucket off the ground with a lazy swipe and starting off down the path, the gravel crunching under the weight of his boots.
Soon Ricky was left alone, no sound but that of his breath and the restless shifting of the animals in their cages around him. He hated being alone in the zoo. Part of the reason he liked to drink on the job was that it allowed him to keep his fear at bay when it was finally time to split up and feed the animals.
Finishing his cigarette and grinding it into the gravel with the front tip of his boot, he started off down the path towards the tiger cages. The fog seemed to have gotten worse and Ricky could barely see ten feet in front of his face, let alone precisely where he was. But he’d walked these paths hundreds of times before, and just as surely as he could find his way to the bathroom of his tiny Hell’s Kitchen apartment in the middle of the night, he found his way to the tiger cages.
He could see nothing beyond the steel bars; the fog had seeped into the cages and obscured his view completely. Not even the outlines of the several graceful, stalking tigers could be seen.
“Where’re these fuckin’ things?” he muttered under his breath.
But before he could ponder the question for too much time, a low, mournful howl cut through the still air of the night. Ricky stood up spear-straight as the eerie noise sounded. It was unnatural, almost blood-curdling, like something not of this world. Ricky wanted to drop the food pail and run back to Paul, but just before his body compelled him to start off, his rational mind took hold and he realized what the sound was.
It was a tiger in pain.
The howl sounded again and this time Ricky could distinctly hear the pain in the animal’s voice.
He knew the odds of the tiger being in any serious trouble were slim-- the animals were checked on a nearly daily basis. The animal likely stepped on a branch that pierced its skin, which meant he’d have to venture into the cage, check the animal, and, if necessary, bring it inside and prepare the animal for a vet checkup in the morning.
“More goddamn work for me,” he said low, moving around the cage and keeping one hand on the bars as he walked.
Eventually, he made it around back, towards the rear entrance to the pen. He ducked inside the small wooden hutch that contained the tiger feed. With a steel scoop, he shoveled pound after pound of raw, pink meat into the bucket, the red muscle glistening in the soft glow of the fog.
Taking the bucket by the handle, Ricky moved towards the rear entrance of the pen with short steps, his body weighed down by the heavy bucket of meat he carried.
Then, the pained howl sounded once again.
“I’m comin’, I’m comin’,” he said out loud, hoping to calm himself by hearing a spoken voice, even if it was his own.
Plopping the bucket down at his feet, he reached into his pocket, pulling out the ring that held keys to all of the enclosures in the zoo. Shuffling through them, he found the right key.
Another howl.
He undid the lock, put the key ring back, and opened the door, grabbing the bucket and stepping inside quickly as he did so.
Though he was now inside the pen, he still couldn’t make out where the tigers were.
“Here, kitty kitty,” he said, stepping further into the pen. “I’ve got a nice bucket of meat for ya. Some food’ll get you feelin’ right as rain.”
He hiccupped and the sound cut through the still air.
Searching around himself with eager eyes, Ricky still couldn’t make out where the tigers were. It was almost as if they were hiding from him.
But just as he began to wonder if the animals were even in the cage, the slender, graceful silhouettes appeared, one to Ricky’s left, another perched on a tall pile of rocks.
“There y’are,” he said, bucket of meat in hand.
Moving from their positions, the tigers now slinked towards Ricky with slow, feline grace. But as they stepped closer, he noticed something: None of the handful of animals seemed to be injured in any way.
And they weren’t looking at the raw, ripped meat piled high in the bucket... they were looking at him.
They grew closer, their forms stepping out of the fog, revealing their magnificent striped bodies and their brilliant yellow eyes that stared impassively at Ricky.
Then, feet away from Ricky, they stopped. Fear began to quake in his belly- this wasn’t right. The animals should’ve known to keep their distance during feeding.
The last thing that Ricky noticed before the tiger on his left raised its body and swiped his massive paw across Ricky’s throat was the animal’s eyes. There was an intelligence about them, something human.
Ricky lived for only a few moments before the veins that sliced like paper under the tiger’s claw pumped out enough blood to slip him into unconsciousness, then death. The swipe was aimed not simply to kill him, but to make sure his death would be silent, without screams.
The tigers looked over the body for a moment, confirming that the drunk zookeeper was dead.
Then, they shifted.
First, the bodies of the tigers grew slim, their forelegs retracting, changing from the thick, orange legs to limbs that were long, and rich with sinew. The rear legs lengthened, taking on a toned, muscular form, developing over seconds the strength and shape of the legs of an animal meant to walk on them, and them alone. The fur of the tigers vanished, seemingly melting and revealing a skin that was dark and lustrous, like chocolate or umber. The torsos of the animals shifted from the sideways trunk shape of the tiger to an upright form, the skin hairless and toned. Then the faces turned, changing from the imperious feline visage of the tiger to angled faces of high, jutting cheekbones, thick, sensual lips, and intelligent, dark eyes.
There they stood, the men and women amidst the silence and fog that swirled around them, the men’s bodies hard and muscular in the moonlight, the women’s curvaceous, with heaving breasts and long, dark hair that sprouted from their beautiful faces.
Then one of the men spoke, a taller and leaner one, with a shaved head and wide jaw.
“What do you want to do about the body?” he asked, his voice tight, as though adjusting to speaking with human vocal cords after a long period of not using them. He looked down at the dead man.
“Leave it,” said the other man, the more muscular of the two, “the more we attempt to alter the scene, the more it will look to be the work of humans.”
“And what will they think now? That tigers tricked a zookeeper into letting them out?” asked one of the women.
The muscular man considered this question for a moment.
“It does not matter; they can come to whatever conclusions they wish. The only important thing is that they not suspect the truth.”
Then, simultaneously, the shifters looked down at their dark, nude bodies.
; “We are going to need some clothing,” said the taller man.
“Of course. But let us not be distracted- we have others to free.”
The taller man shook his head.
“I say we leave them. For what reason do we need to associate with the Europeans?”
“We help each other leave, then we go our separate ways. That was the agreement. And we will abide by it.”
“Fine. Then let us go.”
Swiping the keys off of the body of Ricky, the dark-skinned men and women opened the steel bars of their pen, shifted back into their tiger forms, and rushed off. They tore down the curving pathways of the zoo, making their way towards the pen of the gray wolves. Once they arrived, the wolves looked down upon them through the fog with glowing, skeptical eyes. Then they shifted, their bodies shedding the shaggy fur of wolves and turning into toned, olive-skinned bodies of men and women. The gnarled body of Paul lay stretched out on the floor of the pen, a look of horror on his clawed face.
“What took you so long?” asked one of the men, his accent a smooth, melodic Italian.
Their cages were opened, and the pack of beasts ran out, the wind rushing through their fur as they tore through the evening fog, their paws landing heavily on the gravel of the paths as they moved.
Then they came to the final cage. The motley pack stood in front of the bars, looking into the fog. Massive, dark shapes moved in the mist, deep snorts sounding. Soon, the dark animals were revealed: a pack of massive brown bears. Quickly, they shifted, revealing pairs of stout-bodied men with bearded faces and wide-hipped women with flat, toned stomachs, large breasts and pale skin.
“We go?” asked one of the women, her voice in a rich, Slavic accent.
The pack confirmed. Shifting back into their bear forms, the bears joined the group, and the dozens of animals rushed towards the exit. And as they moved, they shifted back into their human forms and, with hopes of creating a distraction, let out several other animals. Within minutes, hyenas, a rhino, and two lions ran free, stalking through the grounds of the zoo, their various animal cries filling the night as they rampaged.
