by Briar, Robin
That’s actually surprisingly close to how I feel, but again, about my role in the coven. There’s more to me than just being a Maiden, than gathering magic. Mason has shown me that as well.
“I get that you have standards for authenticity,” Sylvia continues. “I admire it. You know that Mason is invested in you now. Not just because of what I’ve said today, but because of what I’m sure he’s told you as well. You know this. Don’t lose what you have with Mason by falling into old patterns, by hoping that things will magically work out.”
Sylvia’s right, but not in the way she thinks. If I go back to the coven, it can’t be like before. If I want to nurture a relationship, that has to be an option for me. I never regretted not having a relationship until I actually had one. The intimacy that’s engendered between two people through shared experiences is so much more satisfying than casual sex.
I’ve been patient with Candice and Saffron, following their guidance, letting them teach me at their own speed. They’ve given me so much—all the time in the world—but this is my lost time now. I can do whatever I want with it. They never forbade me from developing feelings for somebody—not explicitly, at any rate.
I know Candice and Saffron have plans for me. They’ve treated me well and I love them both dearly, but I’ve never had an experience like this before. A meaningful relationship, like I’m sure they’ve both had in their impossibly long lifetimes. Now that I am, I want it to be everything it can, but without guile.
Sylvia has managed to bring all of these desires to the surface for me, even if she did it unintentionally. So rather than shoot down her idea down, I have something else in mind.
“Okay, I’ll do it, but not as a commission. I don’t want money for this. That would definitely feel wrong. Also, it might not be the exact painting we talked about. It might be something else. We’ll see. I have an idea.”
9. A Trail of Breadcrumbs
I coast toward the front door on my bicycle. It’s been a long day, but not because of work. There’s a lot on my mind, my talk with Sylvia being foremost among them. She stopped pushing after I agreed to a version of her plan, albeit on my own terms.
I’m confident you’ll manage just fine, she said.
I step off one pedal, swing my leg over the bike frame, and alight on the ground. Silent as a cat. I’m about to fish for my keys when Mason opens the bottom door, the one leading up a flight of stairs to my upstairs apartment.
“I heard you coming,” he says quickly.
I have to smile. The look on his face is like a hound waiting for his owner to come home.
“Really? And here I thought I glided in without making a sound.”
“Yes, well, my hearing is better than the average dog.”
Mason takes my bicycle and walks it up the stairs. He really heard me from the top floor? That is impressive. Mason notices the reference books in my front basket while carrying the bike on his shoulder.
“You didn’t leave with these today. Bringing your work home with you?”
“Just the opposite, actually. I’m looking for something new to paint at work. Thought I’d flip through these to see if anything jumped out at me.”
“I hope you’re hungry,” he adds as we walk back into my loft. “I’ve been cooking dinner.”
He’s not kidding. The apartment smells incredible. Some kind of grilled meat with steamed vegetables.
“Well, if I wasn’t hungry before, I am now.”
“Nothing heavy. Venison steaks. I’m not done yet, so settle in. You have time to sit down and relax.”
“Well, aren’t you a catch. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you were trying to woo me, Mr. Boone.”
I give him a lingering kiss and trundle off to freshen up. When I glance back, he’s watching me go. An appetite in his eyes, and not for food. I like being the object of that hunger.
I change into a comfortable top and a light pair of leggings. He’s still minding our dinner on the stove when I return. The reference books from my basket have already been stacked on the kitchen table.
“Make yourself comfortable. Tell me about your day or flip through your books.”
I sit down at my modest table.
“Sylvia came by the studio. Said you called to let her know I might be late. You didn’t have to do that.”
“I know what my sister is like. I didn’t want you to get in trouble, especially as it was my fault.”
“Nothing I didn’t play an equal part in,” I say, smiling at him mischievously. “But thanks. That was kind.”
I open the first book on the stack. “You and your sister seem close,” I throw out while casually turning the pages.
I spare a glance for each picture. Nothing more. I know where I’m heading, but I’m not in any rush to reach that part of the book.
“We are. Sylvia and I looked after each other during our years in Europe. I wouldn’t say we had absentee parents, but they were always busy. Too busy to watch over two rambunctious kids. Sylvia and I took off on our own regularly. We had a lot of adventures together, most of which our parents still don’t know about.”
“I’d love to hear about them sometime. I’m sure you were holy terrors. You must have driven them mad with worry,” I say.
“You’d be surprised. While some parents are overly strict, I think you can also give a child too long of a leash. Our parents raised us to be independent on purpose. To minimize being a distraction to their work.”
There’s a hint of bitterness in his voice. It’s slight, but there. I look up at Mason, but his back is turned to me. He does have an independent streak. Mason certainly has no problem amusing himself while I paint. By all accounts, he’s still too independent for his own good—according to Sylvia, at least.
A few moments pass without either of us saying a word. I keep flipping pages, but without looking at them. I’m looking at Mason instead. He turns around and catches me in the act.
“Hey, creeper,” he says lightheartedly, “I could feel your eyes on my back.”
“I was just thinking about what your childhood must have been like… and admiring the view.”
“Uh-huh. What’s that you’re looking at there?” he asks, eager to change the subject.
I look back at the book.
“It’s a retrospective of painters who focused on the same subject, but throughout history. It follows how depictions of the same character changed over time. Monsters. Gods. People. That sort of thing.”
My fingers lackadaisically turn the pages. The book arrives at Greek gods. Mason takes notice, but I keep focusing on the book, ignoring him completely. It draws him away from the stove as he cranes his neck to look over my shoulder.
“I don’t think I’ve seen this book before. It’s very well put together. Thick pages. Large color plates.”
I thumb through the major gods first. Hades. Poseidon. Zeus. Then the offspring of Zeus. Athena. Ares. Persephone. Finally the children of Zeus and mortal women. Apollo. Artemis.
“Zeus was certainly a horny fellow,” I remark.
That gets Mason’s attention.
“Have you ever reproduced any of these paintings before?” he asks.
“No, but I’ve wanted to. Do you know anything about them?”
“A little,” he says. “That character there. She was renamed Diana by the Romans, but she’s better known as Artemis of the Wildlands. Goddess of the forests and hills. Mistress of animals.”
“That doesn’t sound like a little information. You know quite a bit, don’t you?”
“Okay, maybe I know more than a little. Artemis is venerated as a skilled hunter. She has been known by many names throughout history.”
I turn the page to an image of Artemis with a dog running beside her. It’s not the painting Sylvia wants me to paint. About two hundred and fifty years too early.
“It says here she was also known as the moon goddess.”
I turn a few more pages until I come to the image Syl
via warned me about. The Vision of Endymion. Artemis is naked, descending from a full moon. She’s approaching a mortal, a shepherd named Endymion, to whom she means to give a vision.
I look at the image silently, taking it in longer than the rest.
I can see Mason looking back and forth between me and the image out of the corner of my eye. He’s waiting for me to say something. I don’t, keeping my thoughts to myself.
I touch the page delicately, push it down to make the glare go away. The silence is too much for him. Mason finally breaks it.
“What is it? Do you see something?” he asks. There’s hope in his voice.
“I don’t know. This painting… it’s more sexual than the rest. Artemis is a huntress, but in this picture… she’s almost tender. You rarely see this side of her in any other pictures throughout history. Centuries pass, but she’s always depicted as statuesque. This painter went in a different direction. He gave Artemis a sensuality that's been missing.”
I look up at Mason. His eyes are wide and he’s breathing heavily, moved by my words. He has forgotten about dinner, overcome by the moment. He’s looking down at me with excitement in his eyes. Disbelief too.
“I can relate to this Artemis,” I tell him.
Mason is wearing the silver pendant at the moment, as usual. He reaches for the loose bolo cord around his neck and takes it off. He walks over to the kitchen doorway and hangs it up next to the oven mitt.
Then, with his back turned, he turns the light out. The kitchen becomes shadowy. The drapes are pulled on the window beside me, but it’s still light outside. Mason turns around and looks back at me, his chest heaving and his brown eyes gleaming in the dark.
“You see me, Jess. I don’t know how, but you do. I feel truly exposed for the first time in my life, but it doesn’t frighten you. I want you. Have wanted to meet somebody like you for a long time. I still can’t believe that somebody like you exists. You’ve been on my mind all day, ever since this morning. I couldn’t wait for you to get home.”
I stand up, cross the kitchen floor, and touch his arm lightly. It’s tense. Every muscle in his body is flexed. Mason is straining against himself. Sinew pressing outward against his clothes.
“Jess. I don’t know… if I can… stop myself.”
“Then don’t,” I tell him.
It happens fast, the blur of his hands. One moment they’re at his sides, the next they’re on my clothes, gripping my top. I try to follow the speed of his movements, but I can’t. I do hear the fabric ripping.
I don’t know when it happened, but I’m naked from the waist up. Pieces of the top I just put on are floating to the ground. Mason’s hands are already on my waist. How did they get there? His fingers feel sharp, like he forgot to cut his nails.
Mason lifts me up and tosses me backward at the kitchen table. I’m hurtling through the air. He lurches forward at the same time, moves with me at this speed. He even pulls his shirt off while I’m airborne, tearing it off his chest.
His hands return to my body before I reach the table, catching me. I land on my backside, or rather, Mason places me on my ass. No collision. No crashing impact. I’m sitting on the table edge. Mason did that somehow.
More clothes rip, my leggings this time. I still can’t see his hands. The crotch of my pants tears open. Was that my underwear too? I can’t be sure. Mason’s jeans tear by themselves, leg muscles bursting through denim. He rips off the remnants with one hand. How is that even possible? His strength is monstrous.
As I look up at Mason, my eyes pass over a hairy chest that wasn’t there before. His gaze is harsh. A growl erupts from deep within his throat, long and sustained, filling the room. The corners of his mouth twitch, baring teeth, and then I finally catch up with myself.
I feel terror for the first time. The fear of mortal danger with no hope of getting away. There’s no escape, not from Mason, the creature he has become. My life is at his mercy, in the claws of this beast now towering over me.
I’ve never felt so helpless before, not in all my life. Not as I do at this moment. The sudden awareness of my situation is overwhelming. It washes over me, floods me, but I can’t stop it. I also can’t resist the speed and strength of this creature. If there was a choice, there isn’t anymore. Something tells me I made the choice when I showed that painting to Mason. No point in fighting it now.
So I don’t.
I embrace the fear as two meaty claws grab my knees, spreading them apart. His nails dig into my flesh. I’m powerless.
That’s when a wave of endorphins hits me, saturating every limb of my body. I shudder as they race through me, both from within and without, firing through my core and burning across my skin like a dry field catching fire.
The heat travels deep into my nethers, and a sudden burst of moisture discharges from me. Slippery, to make what inevitably comes next easier to bear. To receive him. The pendulum between his legs, a glorious red truncheon, already strobing with blood. Throbbing with lust.
Mason is engorged beyond reason. It’s not natural, but then none of this is. The coarse hair all over his body, places it’s never been before, covering his tattoo. His frame looms over me, broader and taller somehow. Menacing.
He looks down at me from a steep angle and inhales deeply, the scent of me. My readiness. He knows.
I’ve been so foolish, blind to what was right in front of me the whole time. All the signs were there. He even tried to tell me without saying the exact words. I either didn’t listen, or knew all along but denied it to myself. His true nature. His inner self. His dark secret. I both knew and didn’t know.
I courted this man into my life, because I want that closeness. The intimacy of a relationship. I wanted to feel like something other than a seductress of men.
I can’t even plead ignorance like regular people. People who have never had dealings with sort of thing. While it’s true that I’ve never been this close to a shifter before, with my sex completely on display, I knew that they existed in the world. I know a few things thanks to my coven and one extremely importantly rule at a time like this.
Don’t show fear.
Calm yourself, Jess. Get a hold of your emotions. You may have tripped into this situation with your eyes closed, but they’re open now. Use them.
I slap Mason across the face with all my strength. He doesn’t see it coming.
“What are you waiting for?” I spit at the beast in my bravest voice.
10. Wolf in My Pantry
The bestial version of Mason is much larger than normal. Not just height and width, girth and length too. At this moment, however, he couldn’t care less how well we fit together. In fact, Mason doesn’t seem aware of anything except his own desire.
His sharp-nailed fingers grab my hips and pull me closer.
I don’t know how—maybe it’s the shock of his transformation, or my racing heart—but I widen to accept him. Just. I can hardly breathe, but it seems my nethers knew what to expect even if I didn’t. I gush again, more than I’ve ever known myself to do. Not a moment too soon.
There’s no time to adjust any more, no time to ready myself. His arousal won’t be denied. I take him because I have no other choice. This is not a conversation, or debate. He’s fucking me and that’s all there is to it.
Somewhere deep inside me, sparking in my core, the perverted little twit that I am finds that exciting. I actually like it. The lack of permission, his primal urges, but only because it’s Mason. I can’t see him right now, but I know he’s inside this hairy brute somewhere. He may look strange, but he’s not a stranger. This is the man I crave. I want him to take liberties with me.
The excellent houseguest of the past week is nowhere to be found, not in this hulking form. All that matters to this creature is having me, mating with me, the lone object of his lust. Mason’s lust is all that matters. Given the chance, I could soar on that desire, get used to this pain. Accommodate him if nothing else.
I want to give Mason the a
nimalistic satisfaction he craves, so I make that my only goal right now. To be there for him, no matter what. To make him feel welcome inside me, genuinely wanted, even in this terrifying shape.
No matter what, I’m not going to reject him, especially knowing what I do now. No other woman could handle him. I won’t be like all the rest. I’ll be the one who doesn’t scare.
I bite my lip and bear his size. His thrusts are still even. Perhaps there’s still a mind in there after all. I’m breathing more evenly now and manage to look up at him. His eyes are wild, inhuman, but still warm and brown.
Mason might be claiming me, but his measured strokes tell a different story. The muscles from my waist down relax, more out of shock than effort. Perhaps I can even match his rhythm a little and make room for my own pleasure.
I push the reference books off the kitchen table. They land on the floor with a slap. I lie back and wrap my legs around his waist, pull the creature Mason has become closer. I do this before I’m ready for him. I don’t care. I can take it, the preternatural strength of his body. I want that so badly, despite the cost to my body.
Mason can’t be made to feel like he’s doing anything wrong. I need him to know that I want him the same way he wants me. That his secret is safe with me. That he chose well. I’m different too, after all, in a way Mason doesn’t even suspect yet. A secret he can never know, according to my coven.
Mason is sharing his secret with me now. He made the first leap of faith, even after it must have backfired in his past. I don’t doubt that women have been sent screaming from his arms after seeing even fraction of what I am seeing now. I’m certain this is the reason why he’s been so nomadic.
As Mason starts to speed up, it occurs to me that I may be have overestimated my threshold for pain. There’s just so much to take. It’s not just his monstrous size, either, but the rest of his body. His dark side revealed. His true nature manifested.
I need to be a lot hardier than my frail body is right now. I’m still sore from our morning romp in the shower. I need to look elsewhere for strength. I need to draw on the reservoir of power that’s at my disposal. The quicksilver pool. The basin from which my mentors and I all draw our strength. Not much, just a trickle.
