ROMANCE: PARANORMAL ROMANCE: Coveted by the Werewolves (Paranormal MMF Bisexual Menage Romance) (New Adult Shifter Romance Short Stories)

by Hawke, Jessa

  What the hell was he doing? He was a grown man of thirty one who liked his solitude. When he needed a woman, he went out and got one, then went back to his shop and it was over. He split before performances were over, and he only had the one friend. He liked his solitude the way some men like their beer—served cold and daily. Alexandra was dangerous, he could sense that clearly. One look at her and you knew she was the kind of woman who liked to build her own furniture and pretend that she never needed a man. The kind of woman who liked to make throw pillows and paint apartments together. She was the kind of woman who sucked men into her domesticity and made them believe that they liked it, that it was their idea all along. His green eyes glare at him hard in the mirror, the fluorescent lights illuminating the scant lines in his face and the scar above his right eyebrow, and then, without meaning to, he lets his gaze soften just for a moment. In the newfound softness of his expression, he catches one thing—he’s excited by her.

  He walks back to the laptop, opens it, and says, “Four on Tuesday at Spot Cafe.”

  The three weeks of silence after Facebook has announced that she has seen his message throw him into a not wholly unexpected mental somersault. What the hell happened? Where did she go? Did she just decide his performance wasn’t as good as she remembered? Dave scarcely recognized himself during those days, but then, he hadn’t recognized himself the night they met, either. He tried to go to his quiet place, to tell himself that life was rough this way sometimes, and that he was used to rough, but there was this small nagging part of him that hoped to see a response from her every time he opened his laptop.

  And then, just yesterday, there it was.

  “Dave! Can you forgive me for being away so long?” Alexandra wrote, and he could almost hear her earnest tone, though he had forgotten her voice. “I know that place and would love to see you there at five tomorrow.”

  “Yes,” he writes back, his fingers moving ahead of his brain. He stares at the three-letter word he has just sent out into the Internet’s stratosphere and a terrible feeling overtakes him. He has just catapulted himself into a vast unknown.

  God help him, he thinks he likes it.

  Dave feels his heart thundering slightly. The coffee before him has gone cold, but he takes a sip anyway. She’s due to arrive at any moment, but there’s this nervous rattling inside of his brain that he does not recognize. He is not the anxious type, he is not the hopeful type, he is a man who works with large and predictable machines; the only unpredictable thing he ever deals with are the accidents their riders get into, and then it’s like a fun challenge to solve—how to fix the big broken bike that got damaged in ways A through Z? He tries to force his brain to go back to the bike in his shop right now, a beautiful red sport bike that has deep gashes in the paint and metal, but all he can feel is the ticking aside of seconds and minutes, and how stupid he is for hoping that she’ll come. Because of course she’s not coming.

  And then Alexandra slips into the seat next to him, and the world for one brief moment is filled simultaneously with light and pain, and he’s so confused, and she’s so delicate and tiny and grinning from ear to ear that Dave loses his ability to think entirely.

  * * *

  The free flow of conversation allows Dave to forget himself. The gush of energy coming from Alexandra is mesmerizing, as is the way she is tucking a lock of hair behind one small ear pierced with a miniscule hoop earring. She has the delicate bones of a cat, and every so often, stretches herself out. They are sharing story after story; it seems as if their connections are endless and meaningful. One abusive dad leads her to talking about her emotionally complex relationship with a largely absent mother.

  “So you’re saying that she just locked you away in a dark room?” he asks.

  “Well, a screaming six year old is a difficult thing to handle.”

  “Don’t apologize for her,” Dave says, angrier than he expects to be at a twenty-year-old injury. “Just because she comes home after a late night drinking binge and you don’t know how to handle your shit as a little kid doesn’t give her an excuse to play Bluebeard on you.”

  “Bluebeard, huh? Well, isn’t somebody well read?” Alexandra teases, poking him in his upper arm, and there it is again, that sensation that someone has catapulted him back into middle school and he is sitting next to a girl that all of his friends will make fun of him for liking later, but he doesn’t care. There is a comfortable, warm silence between them that leaves enough to the imagination to tantalize, to simmer in, to covet. Alexandra scrapes the last mandarin sorbet off of her plate with her fork, and he’s lost in the details of her. She turns to him and with a smile says, “You know, I’ve told you a lot about my family and things are feeling pretty uneven.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Yes. It’s time you shared a deep, dark secret with me, or that’s it, mister. I’m cutting you off.”

  Dave laughs aloud. “Cutting me off? What, you think I can’t live without your company?”

  Alexandra squints and peers directly into his eyes in an expression of mock seriousness. “No, I don’t.”

  “What, you think I’m that weak?” Dave asks, teasing her, enjoying their banter, but her expression suddenly changes, turns into a real serious without much notice.

  “I think you’re trouble,” Alexandra says softly, and Dave feels his stomach do a little flop.

  “Trouble?”

  She considers his face for a long time, and he feels as if he is falling into the depths of her penetrating, lively eyes. She has not said a word, but he feels as if she can see right through him, through every lonely night he has endured, as if during every trial and tribulation, she was watching him, holding his hand. “I think that you like being independent. I think you see other people as anchors, and not in the good sense. I think that underneath all this, you want to reach out to others, but only a select few. And I think your criteria for who matters is very secretive and very strict.”

  Dave feels as if he has just lost the air in his windpipe and opens his mouth wide, gasping for air. “You want to know what I think?” he asks her, and suddenly, she looks meek and scared, as if she cannot believe what just came out of her mouth. “I think,” he says slowly, reaching for her hand in an act that throws her completely off-course, “That you need to know somebody better before you start pegging them with such deadly accuracy.” He watches Alexandra’s face break open in relief as she laughs, a shaky laugh that reveals her nervousness. Her eyes drop down to his wrist and her eyes widen in shock.

  “Shit! Is it really eight already?”

  “Yeah,” Dave says, startled out of the intimate moment. “You have somewhere you need to be?”

  “Yes, yes!” she says, grabbing her purse and jacket.

  “Wait,” says Dave, reaching out to stop her by the shoulder. The blouse she is wearing pulls back slightly at the wrist, and he can see a dark purple shape at several odd junctures at the joint. “Ouch, what happened there?” he asks.

  “Nothing. I’m always getting bruises I can’t place,” she says, but he catches sight of something akin to pain in her eyes before she looks away, finishes gathering her things, and is at the door.

  “When can I see you again?” he calls out after her, knowing it is futile to stop her.

  “I’ll let you know,” she says, and just like that, the door of Spot Café swings closed behind her.

  Dave has no idea when he’ll see Alexandra again. He comes home every night for the next week from the shop like a starving man in search of the slightest crumb of food. This time, however, there is more communication forthcoming. Alexandra is warm and sharing; she sends him links to articles that have caught her attention, and Dave suddenly finds that it is three in the morning and he is still discussing them with her. His phone chirps with messages that are not the silly, mindless, society-dictated expressions of caring, but rather, a snippet into Alexandra’s mysterious life, funny little anecdotes that cause him both to laugh aloud and be once
again thankful that there is no one in his tiny repair shop but him. He is losing sleep and he does not mind; he is walking around in a happy drugged state. When he tells this to Alexandra, she sends him some of the latest research on dopamine receptors in the brain. It is wonderful and frustrating all at once.

  The frustration stems largely from his not seeing her. One week goes by, another, and he begins to think that Alexandra is avoiding him. He’ll tell her about his rose tattoo, the one on his upper arm, and she’ll listen rapturously, asking questions that cause him to probe deep, but when he offers to show her in person, she backs off. She is busy, she says. Always, eternally busy. But how busy can a freelance writer be? After all, shouldn’t they set their own schedule, isn’t that part of the allure of working for yourself? Dave is afraid to press too hard, however; who knows what will make Alexandra flit away from his life as suddenly and magically as she flitted in?

  Two and a half weeks in, Dave and Alexandra are discussing the heavy subject of rape when she suddenly switches gears and says, “Hey. This is pretty heavy. You want to talk on the phone instead?” It is ten P.M. and Dave is still in the shop. Without a second glance at the bike he has on the rack, Dave grabs his phone and punches in the numbers Alexandra has given him.

  “Dave,” her rich voice purrs in his ear, “I cannot believe you would say that it’s better to say nothing if you’re witnessing a violent crime.”

  “This? This is what you want to talk about?”

  “Well, it’s just that I’m surprised.”

  “Why are you surprised?”

  “Because you’ve got a good heart underneath the tats and the bikes.”

  “You lie.”

  “I do not! Come on now, what’s your reasoning?”

  Dave takes a deep breath. Is he ready for this? Is she ready for this? Tell this story is like jumping off a cliff for him; nobody knows it except for a select person in his life, and the thing is is that hearing Alexandra’s voice in his ear now makes him quite sure she will understand. This is not something he has ever felt before, and right before he opens his mouth, he can feel his heart pounding against his ribs in anticipation.

  “About ten years ago, I was working the graveyard shift over at this local liquor store; Benny the manager wanted me to get in our last shipment and lock up. So as I’m finishing up, I hear this woman, right? She sounds kind of panicky and freaked, so I decide to take a peek and see if she’s all right. I turn the corner and I see them there—two of them, the woman and her boyfriend. And from the side, my side, it looks like they’re just talking. Until she says something that makes him back her up against the wall and wrap his fingers around her throat.”

  “Jesus,” Alexandra swallows.

  “Yeah. So there’s this bubbling rage inside of me that comes out and I run up to him, grab him by the collar, and tear him off of her. She slips down, clutching her throat, and the guy gets up and starts whaling on me. I’m punching back, yelling over and over again for her to run, and all of a sudden, I hear the whine of sirens behind me. It was the cops.”

  “From the disturbance?”

  “We were behind a liquor store alley. It was her. She had called the cops.”

  “The woman?”

  “Yeah,” Dave says, and lets out a long, loose sigh. “The court stuff lasted almost a year. I never could wrap my mind around it, you know? Why she didn’t run. Why she called the cops and made me seem like the bad guy.”

  There is a long pause on the other end of the phone and for just a moment, Dave wonders if he’s made a mistake sharing the story with Alexandra. His heart is in this throat as she speaks. “She was scared.”

  “I know, that’s why I came to help.”

  “Of him. She was scared of him. After it’s all said and done, he knows where she lives. If she runs, he can always find her. And then the pain will just go on and on.”

  “You sound like you’ve thought a lot about this.”

  Dave hears a noise from Alexandra’s end of the phone, and suddenly, everything is muffled, like she’s holding her hand over the phone to block out noise. He waits a few seconds, then a full minute, and suddenly, she’s back, and she’s whispering. “I gotta go,” she says.

  “Don’t go. Why are you whispering?”

  “I just need to go,” she hisses, and he catches the unfamiliar and toxic note of fear in her voice.

  “Wait, when can I see you? I want to see you. Please, come on,” Dave says, not recognizing the desperation in his own voice.

  “I’ll message you,” she says, and then there’s a click so ridden with finality that Dave’s heart sinks.

  Nobody likes a woman of mystery more than him, but he also knows that it is a double-edged sword. Does she even like him? Is she giving him the slip? Dave runs a hand through his hair and groans aloud. He’s hopeless. It’s all hopeless. And the thing that’s needling at him the most? That fear; what is she hiding from? His phone beeps and he looks down.

  “Ten A.M. Monday,” writes Alexandra. “Our place.”

  * * *

  Dave’s mind is made up. No more. No more wondering, no more trying to figure out what is going on in the mysterious world of Alexandra. It’s never been his style, and he’s starting to have bad dreams. He does not deserve bad dreams. He should know better than to arrive on time, but he can’t help it; he shows up fifteen minutes early. Again with the steaming cup of coffee, again with the waiting. If he didn’t already have PTSD from the courts, he’d certainly be getting it today.

  What he is not prepared for, however, is that an hour goes by, then an hour and a half, then two hours. By the end of two hours, four cups of coffee, and some extremely pissed-off Spot Café employees later, Dave is seething. That answers that, he supposes, but he cannot help the surge of pure anger that is pushing adrenaline through his every limb. Never again, he tells himself, over and over, buying himself more seconds, more minutes of time in the hopes that she will still show up. This is it, for the rest of his life, Dave tells himself; he is never going to let another woman show him up like this. He can feel his waiter’s eyes boring into his back, and then he sees her. She is standing right outside, he recognizes her from the underground vantage point. Why the hell has she not come outside?

  He tosses a bill at the waiter, tells him to keep the change, and heads outside. The cool air clears his head, and he walks up the narrow, rickety staircase until he is standing right beside her. “Hey,” he says, releasing a white puff of air into the frost.

  She jumps a little. “Hey! I didn’t see you there.” She is wearing huge dark sunglasses and her jacket is buttoned all the way up past her mouth. She looks even smaller than he remembers her, but in this moment, all he wants to do is shake her.

  “Why are you standing out here?”

  “I guess, I’m late, huh?”

  “Alexandra, no offense, but what the hell?”

  She doesn’t say anything. There is a stone bench before them, part of the café’s façade, and they sit down without saying anything. A full five minutes ticks by, and Dave cannot believe he is still here and has not stormed off. Finally, she draws in a long, sticky breath, and says, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you wait so long.”

  “But what happened? Did something happen?”

  Again the silence, the perfectly infuriating silence that is driving Dave up a wall. He is about to bubble over, he can feel it, and then he sees her slip off a glove and wipe a tear that has coursed its way down her cheek from beneath her sunglasses. “What’s wrong?” he asks, concern replacing his anger. This is fun Alexandra; tears are not her game. She sucks in breath after breath, and suddenly he understands that she is hyperventilating, that she simply cannot get enough air. Hurriedly, he unwraps the scarf around her neck and face and pulls down the zipper of her coat; she doubles over, the collar of her jacket spilling open, revealing a little bit of her neck.

  It’s then that he sees it.

  Some of them are yellow, some of them have
tinges of red and blue at the center. There is no way of telling how old some of them are, but then, Dave has never had much reason to study the age of bruises before. Wordlessly, he reaches up and removes Alexandra’s sunglasses; she does not fight him, but when he sees her face, she drops it in shame at the expression of fury that comes over his.

  Her left eye is swollen to twice its normal size, and the right one bears a contusion right below her lower lid. It is clear that someone has punched her, recently, and hard. As he considers this, Dave unwittingly remembers a part of his performance that Alexandra said resonated with her—something about his dad kicking a dog when Dave was about seven. He remembers that dog, a lively terrier pup who had pooped in his dad’s shoes. He remembers watching his dad kick it again and again until the pup could not even whimper any longer. The sick, helpless feeling he had then overtakes him again now as he imagines that someone somewhere has just done the same thing to this tiny girl, this happy, lively woman who feels unbelievably small as he gathers her into his arms.

  She cries quietly and she cries for a long time. Every passerby who tries to stare at them as they walk by gets a death glance from Dave that tells them they better hurry up and get to steppin’. Dave is quiet for a long, long time, feeling Alexandra shudder and sob into his jacket, into his chest, and he can feel something lengthening inside of him, something on the border between protection and pain, something that is stretched so thin he knows that it, or maybe he, is about to snap. Finally, as he feels her sobs quiet, he tilts her face up to his; she shudders once, twice, and then swallows back her tears. He asks if she is okay. She nods and squeezes her eyes shut, as if that will stop the flow of tears, and it looks like it hurts. Dave stomps on the rage inside of himself.

  “Alex, we’re going to go inside. And then you’re going to tell me who did this to you.”

  She shakes her head no.

  “Alex, Alex listen to me. I’m not a hothead. I just need to know exactly what’s going on here. You can trust me. Do you trust me?”