by Cara Adams
Everywhere else had only needed some repainting, new drapes, polishing the floors, maybe a few repairs, and that was about it. Now he needed to look at the top floor and see what work was required up there, plus make an apartment for himself and Oscar.
Danny took his broom, rake, and trash bag out to the barn. He looked at it with critical eyes. Yes. A bit of work was needed here, but he could do that in winter. It’d be a nice inside job when he wanted peace and quiet later on. He needed to make a lock-up storage area for a start, and a bathroom out here for the outside workers. Well, once they employed some outside workers, that was.
Danny pulled a notepad out of the back pocket of his jeans and sketched the area. His measuring tape was clipped to his belt, so he took some details of the length of the walls and the amount of space that needed to be left to garage his truck and Oscar’s car. They were both living here at the clinic now, on the second floor, but they’d have to move up to the top floor once there were more patients and once the top floor was turned into rooms. He was going to build an apartment up there for them, with a bedroom each.
Although they’d had some idea of sharing a woman, it’d be better to design their apartment with personal space. They were best friends, not gay partners, and the vague idea of sharing a woman may never happen.
Danny was twenty-eight, and not sure he wanted to settle down yet. It’d take a very special woman to make him want to stop going to the BDSM club on a Saturday night. Mostly he just watched, but occasionally he joined in. He and Oscar were both Doms, so again, sharing a woman may not work from that point of view as well as from the sex point of view.
Although they had developed their own version of Florentine flogging, where they matched the pace and style of their punishment of a sub, using identical floggers as well as identical strokes, which was very fulfilling for everyone involved.
He wasn’t at all sure where he’d find a female wolf he could love though. The shape-shifter gene was handed down from parent to child. But with far more male shape-shifters than females around, some men were marrying humans, so it was then a lottery as to whether or not their children were human or shape-shifter.
Besides, the more humans who learned that shape-shifters truly existed, the more likely it became that there’d be attacks against them. Speciesist rather than racist. Danny snorted. I’m getting fanciful here.
Now is not the time to be thinking about BDSM or about women. I need to think about all the construction work still to be done. And the wood I need to do it. Has Oscar paid the lumberyard account yet? I need that fucking lumber.
Chapter Two
Oscar was rather surprised to receive twenty responses to his advertisement for an office helper. “Listen to this one, Danny. ‘My dad says I’m very mature for fourteen and since I hate school I should get a job. I like talking to people so answering the phone for you and working a reception desk would suit me real good. Besides, since I’m not old, I’ll be cheap for you to pay.’ Should I interview that one?”
“Only if you want to get arrested for illegal child labor. I liked the one with a spelling mistake in every word better. He sounds like an interesting person.”
“Except if he wrote any letters for me I’d have to redo them.”
“Well there is that, yes.” Danny laughed.
“Will you sit in on the interviews with me, please?”
“What?”
“I’d like a second opinion before I hire anyone. I don’t know, it was so much easier to hire the nurses. I knew exactly what I wanted from them.”
“And you hired two wolves of course. This time you’re most probably going to get a human.”
Oscar stopped and stared at his best friend. He hadn’t even thought about searching for a shape-shifter office assistant. And that was yet another thing he hadn’t done yet. Thought up an official name for his clinic. It wasn’t until he’d been about to post his job advertisement online that he’d realized he couldn’t call it the Shape-shifter Clinic, which was what it was in his mind. He’d ended up using the letters SS in front of clinic, but it needed a name. A real name, a registered name. Well, once he hired his office assistant likely he’d have five spare minutes to think of a name. “Yeah, I knew the nurses, knew exactly what I wanted. With an office assistant it’s more I just want the paperwork to go away. I don’t even know any wolf bookkeepers and I can’t afford to pay an accountant to sit there answering the phone.”
“Uh-huh. How about this one then. ‘I’m studying business at community college and will need every Wednesday and Friday off for classes. But I can work Saturday mornings if you like. Because I’ve already passed the first year of my course I’ll obviously be way better than anyone else, so the fact I work less hours won’t matter.’”
Oscar laughed. “I think I’ll give that one a big ‘no thanks’ as well. Let’s interview Shaun Morrison and Ambrielle Watson. If they aren’t satisfactory I’ll have to write the advertisement more carefully next time. But at least they both seem to know about running an office.”
“Sounds like a plan.”
Oscar smiled and drew a notepad onto his knee. “I’d better write out some questions to ask then.”
* * * *
Ambrielle had been pleased when she was invited to interview for the office administrator job at the clinic. The problem was going to be getting time off work. One of His Royal Idiotness’s more annoying habits was to automatically deny every request for time off, forcing staff to just take the time and lose the day’s pay. Or get a certificate from a medical practitioner and take the entire day off, when an hour or two would have been plenty. “That’s just another example of his total lack of people skills,” she mumbled to herself, tapping one long blue fingernail on her desk as she stared at her computer screen. Eleven in the morning meant she’d need the entire day off work. Even if she came straight to work from the interview it’d be after one by the time she got in here, and she wouldn’t have had lunch and likely she’d be wearing clothes that would make people ask where she’d been. So she was going to lose a day’s pay just for the interview. Oh well, such is life.
Ambrielle clicked on the e-mail, accepting the time and date and saying she’d be there.
Now, what would she wear? Ambrielle didn’t have a car. She rode a 2010 bright green Kawasaki Ninja 250R motorcycle. That meant she wore leather pants and a leather jacket over her usual office clothes of black pants and a business shirt to travel to and from work. She kept dress shoes at work to change into out of her biker boots, and also left a black blazer hanging on a hook on the back of her office door for if she needed to look smart or if the office wasn’t warm enough to wear just a shirt. But for an interview she really ought to wear a skirt, she supposed, which would mean changing after she arrived. And where and how would she do that? Or she could take a taxi. Or even hire a car for a day. But that was starting to sound expensive. She was already going to lose a day’s pay just for attending the interview. No. It was too bad. She’d wear pants as usual and just add a jacket and shoes as if she were at her current job. Hmm. If I wore leggings, I could pull off my leather pants in the parking lot and add a long skirt. That would be a bit nicer. Her green skirt would roll up into her saddlebag without looking messy and then she could wear her cream blazer which would be a nice change from black and still look professional. Add some green nail polish and I’ll be done.
Ambrielle smiled, changed screens to the work e-mail, and began to send out accounts. Tonight she’d Google the clinic again so she could ask a few intelligent questions at her interview.
* * * *
Danny wasn’t really sure why he was being included in the two interviews. Oscar was a true Dom. It wasn’t like him to be indecisive or unsure of himself, but hiring humans was a bit unusual, Danny guessed. Oscar had been forced out of his comfort zone quite a lot with this new venture of his own clinic, but Danny was glad it was happening. There was so much need for shape-shifters to be themselves, to run free and
transform as they needed to without fear of being seen or caught and abused.
Danny’d been really fortunate to have been brought up in a pack, the same pack as Oscar, which is why they were longtime friends. But he knew others hadn’t been so lucky and had spent their entire lives trying to pretend they were human. At least here, behind the high wall, no one could see wolves running through the trees and chasing each other around the small lake.
So, what skills did their new office worker need to possess, apart from the paperwork side of things? They needed to be a genuinely caring person. This was a clinic after all. And, perhaps, someone who was fond of animals? That would cater to the shape-shifter thing. How was Oscar going to bring that into the conversation? “Oh, by the way, I’m a werewolf?” was hardly going to set the new worker at ease. More like send them into a case of screaming hysterics.
Oh, wow, that was going to be really tricky. They ought to be told before they were hired. But if it was before they were hired they wouldn’t have signed a confidentiality agreement yet. He could just see the headlines, “Wolves Take Over Clinic.” Ah, shit! And the first interview was due to start in ten minutes. Danny jumped up, snatched the notes he’d made about the interview off his desk, and hurried into Oscar’s office. He wasn’t there. Likely he was already in the lounge room, well, the former lounge room, which was now a sort of lounge room plus meeting room plus rehabilitation room, and which was about to be the interview room as well.
Yes, there he was, standing by the window. “Oscar—”
“Shh. Shaun’s just arrived.”
Danny walked over to the window and stood beside Oscar. Outside in the parking lot a man was climbing off a bright green motorbike. “Nice bike.”
“Kawasaki Ninja 250R.”
Danny stared at Oscar. “I didn’t know you knew anything about motorcycles.”
“I don’t really, but these are quite distinctive and I find them rather appealing.”
Danny nodded, watching the rider take some things out of a saddlebag then remove his full-face helmet. Her helmet. A cloud of black hair tumbled down to her waist. She unzipped her leather jacket, rolled it into a tight ball and put it in a saddlebag. Then she unzipped her leather pants and rolled them down long legs to her knees. She reached onto the seat of the bike, picked up a bunch of green fabric, and flipped it over her head. It became a long green skirt. Quickly she removed her boots and pants, put them in the saddlebag, and stepped into pumps. The skirt now hid her legs, which had been encased in cream leggings, so unfortunately he hadn’t seen an inch of her flesh. Now she brushed her hair, put on a cream blazer, picked up a purse and a folder, and began walking to the main entry of the clinic.
“I’ll go let her in, shall I? I assume that Shaun is a he, and that this is Ambrielle?” asked Danny, trying not to breathe heavily or lick his lips. She had a very nice body indeed. Just the kind he liked with those long legs and rich curves at hip, ass, and breast.
“Tell her to wait on one of the seats in the entry there. Shaun—and yes, he’s male—is scheduled for the first interview, but I’ve set up a little test for them both before they even come into the room,” Oscar said mysteriously.
Danny just shrugged and hurried back to the main entry, eager to get a closer look at Ms. Ambrielle Watson. Of course, close up she might be quite ugly. And even if she was pretty she could be married, or have a significant other—or others, he reminded himself, thinking of his and Oscar’s plan to perhaps share a woman.
Fuck, she was lovely. Shiny black hair poured down her back, huge, sparkling black—no, dark brown—eyes in a pretty face, and round tits that made his mouth water. His cock was trying to climb out of his pants, too, so he escaped to stand behind the reception desk, where he could spread his legs wide apart and give his aching dick some space. “May I help you?” he asked, playing innocent.
“My name’s Ambrielle Watson. I have an interview with Dr. Oscar Thorne at eleven.” Her voice was sweet and musical, but held the faintest undertone of nervousness as well. That was interesting. Her body language expressed confidence. Hoping his dick would behave, he gestured to the three chairs against the wall. “Please take a seat and I’ll tell him you’ve arrived.”
Danny kept his back to her as much as possible as he left the reception area and headed back down the hallway to the lounge room. As he left, his phone beeped. That meant it was ten forty-five and time for Shaun’s interview to begin. Maybe Shaun had come into the building through a side door or something. But the room held only Oscar.
“That was Ambrielle.”
“Yes. I just texted Fergus. I need to watch, though.”
“Huh?” Danny had no idea what Oscar was talking about, but followed him out another door, through a back hallway, and then they circled around through some other rooms until they were behind the reception area and had a good view of Ms. Watson sitting primly in a chair, her purse at her feet and her hands resting on the papers on her knee. She was looking at her hands, perhaps staring at her bright green fingernails that matched her motorcycle and her skirt.
Fergus was one of the nurses at the clinic. He was also a wolf with a red coat, which was very distinctive and meant he could never hide among a pack of dogs. Suddenly Danny understood. Oscar had been way ahead of him and was going to test his interviewees about their reaction to shape-shifters. Oscar could have used Campbell, the other werewolf nurse, who had brown fur and could quite easily be mistaken for a rather large dog. Instead, it was to be Fergus.
Just then the shape-shifter nosed open a door and stalked into the entry area. He was moving slowly and gracefully, not in a threatening manner at all, but quite definitely a presence. Ambrielle seemed to sense him and looked up. Then she smiled and held out a hand. “Well, aren’t you a beautiful boy. Have you come to say hi to me?”
Fergus gave a toothy grin and crossed the room to stand at her knee. Ambrielle bent over, petting his back, stroking his fur, and rubbing behind his ears and under his chin. She kept up a soft conversation with him, telling him how handsome he was.
Oscar nodded to Danny and they silently withdrew. Oscar gestured with his thumb to Danny and Danny nodded, then walked briskly into the entry area.
“Fergus, it’s time for you to go. Ms. Watson, can you follow me please.”
She jumped to her feet, snatching her papers and her purse, then walked beside him into the lounge room. Oscar was standing by a group of chairs, and said, “Thank you, Danny. Ms. Watson, how about you sit here.” He pointed to a chair where both he and Danny would be able to watch her face clearly.
“Thank you for giving us your time today. I see you like animals,” said Oscar.
The woman gave him back bland look for bland look. “My aunt is very fond of cats. All different types of cats. She spends a lot of her time surrounded by them.”
Well, well, well. “Different types of cats,” eh? It sounded rather as though her aunt didn’t just have house cats, but that she either was a panther shape-shifter or lived with some. Danny couldn’t imagine Ambrielle would have used those particular words if the aunt simply liked both long and short-haired cats or various kinds of regular domestic cats. Now that was interesting indeed. It was vitally important their new member of staff accepted shape-shifters and wanted to help them live their lives properly again. A woman who didn’t just accept animals, but who liked shape-shifters would be absolutely perfect for the clinic.
Danny watched the interplay of reactions between Oscar and Ambrielle as questions were asked and answered. He thought she would be able to do everything work-wise and she appeared to be a genuinely nice person as well. Certainly, that little scene with Fergus was revealing. Although there were people who liked animals and did not get on well with other people. He hoped she wasn’t going to be one of those humans.
Oscar’s cell phone beeped and he glanced at the message then handed his cell phone to Danny. Intrigued, Danny read, She knew what I was and was unafraid. She called me Mr. Werewolf. F. So
he’d guessed right. Ms. Watson knew all about shape-shifters and she seemed to know all about what to do on the job. How amazing that one of the few humans who knew about shape-shifters had applied for the position. Or had she guessed from Oscar’s advertisement? Surely not. SS could stand for anything. Whatever, she’d be an ideal match for their clinic.
Oscar stood up. “Thank you for your time, Ms. Watson. We still have one more person to interview, but I expect to contact you one way or the other tomorrow morning. Should we offer the position to you, when would you be able to start work?”
“On Monday,” she said firmly, standing up as well.
“You don’t need to give two weeks’ notice?” Danny asked, surprised.
“My current employer does not place a high priority on following the exact details of our contracts,” she replied then shut her mouth with a snap.
“I can assure you that any contract we both sign will be adhered to,” said Oscar, sounding more like a Dom than Danny’d heard him for a while.
The woman smothered a grin and nodded.
Oscar escorted her out and Danny stood back from the window, watching her pull on her leather pants, roll up the skirt, change into her boots, change her jacket, bundle her hair into the helmet, then roar out of the parking lot. Once again his dick was aching. Her every action was totally sexually arousing, yet carried out with unconscious grace.
Oscar returned to the room. “So where’s Shaun Morrison?” Danny asked him.
Oscar scrolled through his phone. “I don’t have an e-mail or a text from him, so I don’t know.”
“How are you going to give her your answer if you haven’t judged Shaun against her?”
“Ah, but I have judged him. He didn’t turn up on time and she did.”
“That works for me,” said Danny.
“Now, sit down with me and let’s go through that interview properly. My gut feeling is that she’d be perfect, but it’s time to put your cock back inside your pants and use your other head,” said Oscar.
