Cry Wolf

by Aurelia T. Evans

  Kelly drew him to her without touching him. When he was close enough, she took his chin in ungentle fingers, his facial hair prickling harsh and delightful against her sensitive skin. She pulled his face level with hers. His gaze was drawn to her lips.

  “What makes you think that this is because of the werewolf?” she asked.

  Kelly licked his lower lip then shoved him against the wall again. She floated herself the short distance to him before unfastening the button and zipper of his trousers. He wore nothing underneath, and as she took his cock in hand, she pressed their lips together. The kiss was less of a battle this time, but that took none of the edge off his desperation as he jerked his erection into the warm circle of her hand. She wrenched a moan out of him and drank it down with relish.

  Her hand tightened around him as his magic flew them through the air and dropped them onto the bed. The springs creaked under the dark coverlet. He winced when her falling momentum made her tug too hard on his erection, but he forgot about that brief pain as she slid her hand farther down to cup his sac, teasing the flesh behind it until his breath caught.

  Abraham eased her hand off him so that he could remove his trousers. Then he knelt above her, tracing the serpent up over her hip and taking in the glint of metal in her nipples. He touched the dark filigree that started just below her breasts and slid his hand up, tilting his head to the side as he studied it.

  “Amazing work,” he murmured. “It’s like a drawn spell. A very appropriate one.”

  “I don’t understand,” Kelly said, propping herself up on her elbows.

  “You put it on your body, but you don’t know what it means?” Abraham asked incredulously.

  “It came to me in a dream trance,” Kelly said. “I awoke with the knowledge that I had to ink it in, but I never knew why.”

  “You mean you never saw the words?” Abraham asked. “It’s subtle, but once you see it, it cannot be unseen. It’s clear as day to me.”

  Kelly clenched her fists in the coverlet, incensed. Her own magic had taken over her body and made her draw the design, had compelled her to put it on her body. She had seen it for two years every time she’d looked down or looked in a mirror. It had never revealed its secret to her. But it had revealed itself to him. He, of all people, had been given the answer to the mystery. Kelly’s claws pierced through the blanket.

  He covered her with his shadow, tenderly stroking the halo of hair around her face.

  “You are magnificent,” he whispered. “To have all this magic and not even know what you are capable of, to not even know what you are or what you could be. And yet you insist on imprisoning yourself in this wolf.”

  Kelly wrapped her leg around his and deftly flipped them over so that he was beneath her. His laughter was abruptly cut short when she brought the sharp tips of her claws against his throat, poking his prominent Adam’s apple. He swallowed, but his amusement remained.

  “Tell me what it says,” Kelly said.

  “Why, Kelly, where are your manners?” Abraham chided. “Put the monster away. This isn’t the time for that kind of magic.”

  “If I were as unscrupulous as you, I’d turn you here and now,” Kelly said. Lupine teeth grew from her gums, clicking against each other as they set.

  “Why don’t you put the wolf away and convince me in a more civilised fashion—with the gifts that interest me?” Abraham said.

  Kelly opened her mouth wide, displaying the full range of deadly teeth, any of which could deliver the cursed bite on his bare, vulnerable flesh. She shredded the magic that tried to tell her she wanted to become wholly woman and submit to him.

  She was more than a little insulted at this point by his efforts to control her, by his assumption that she was there to service his pleasures alone, that he wanted her to force him the way he had forced her. He wanted to make her into the kind of witch that he was when all she wanted to do was eat him up, spit out the bones and take the sleeping Malcolm as far away from Salvation as possible.

  “One of these days,” Kelly lisped through her mouthful, “something will show you what a monster you really are. Monsters like you shouldn’t be able to hide so well.”

  “So you admit that these, too, are the instruments of a monster,” Abraham said, taking her hands in his to feel the pricks of the claw tips on his palms.

  Kelly lowered herself onto his thighs. Abraham cautiously pushed himself sitting so that they were on an equal level.

  “I can take this away for you,” he said.

  “No, you can’t,” Kelly said. “You aren’t going to take the werewolf away from me. At best, you can disguise it as you do yours.”

  “I’ve never been a werewolf in my life,” Abraham replied.

  “But you’ll always be a beast,” Kelly said, taking his face in her hands and pulling her fangs back in so that she could kiss him, rekindling the trembling inside her. She wrapped her arms around his neck and slid up his thighs until his erection rubbed against her stomach.

  “I choose to do this,” she murmured. She licked his Adam’s apple, tested it with her teeth then sucked on it until Abraham relinquished his hold on her to brace himself on the bed. His magic swirled around her like smoke. It enveloped her until her cunt, clit and labia swelled with pulsing blood and her nipples tightened painfully where they pressed against Abraham’s chest.

  The house shook.

  “Stop,” she whispered, but she tossed her head back and presented the hardened peak of her breast to his yearning mouth.

  He pulled her back down to the bed with him to make her breast heavy on his lips. When he wrested a moan from her, he pressed his lips into the valley between her breasts where the riddle tattoo began. He brought his hand underneath her to slip a finger through her folds. His finger came through wet, smearing her juices over the magically sensitised flesh of her clit and making her hips rock. The house shook again as though in an earthquake.

  “Stop, please,” she begged. “It’s going to tear the house down. The people…”

  “It’s just wind and thunder,” Abraham said, slicing his finger through her once more and making her shudder with pleasure.

  His magic called to her and drew her juices from her body, from the heat he conjured inside her—deeper even than the heat of the werewolf. It made her nerve endings sing, her fingers spark where she touched him. The lamps in the room flickered like strobe lights while the lightning—Am I conjuring a storm?—caused a similar effect outside the bedroom window.

  “I’ll keep the house together. Push the monster back. Let the magic out.”

  “No,” she protested as his thumb stroked her pierced clitoral hood and he thrust two fingers inside her. His cock smeared pre-cum over her stomach, but he simply stared up at her with those fiery eyes under his impressive eyebrows, his previously tidy hair now tousled and his teeth clenched in a kind of fierce, manic eagerness.

  “Fear the monster, not the magic,” Abraham urged. “Call the wrath of the heavens down upon us. Let it come.”

  His magic plucked at each piercing. The rigid string of sensation between them and her pleasure suddenly resonated with impossibly intense stimulation. Kelly slammed her clawed hands into the bed to keep from hurting Abraham as she ripped her way through her orgasm, screaming like roaring wind as something snapped inside her.

  It could have wiped out half the Earth, more potent than the Tunguska blast. That’s what it felt like to her. For a split second, she could see through the blinding light erupting within, and it was as though she could see everything—the past, present and future all at once, all inevitabilities, all possibilities, the entire tapestry of the universe and its dimensions. It was just a fraction of a moment and only seemed so large from her perspective as a comparative ant to the things revealed to her. But she could not deny that she saw more than she had ever seen before, more than she could ever hope to understand.

  That was just the opening of the door.

  Chapter Ten

  And
she was still here. Abraham was still beneath her. She hadn’t exploded, although all the light bulbs in the room had.

  He combed his fingers through her hair as sleet and rain pounded against the window.

  “It looks like the world didn’t end,” Abraham said.

  “Not here anyway,” Kelly replied. Her voice had a strange quality, as though the air around them was thinner and she could hear it better or brighter.

  “That’s the spirit.” He guided her down to kiss her deeply and thoroughly, in no rush even though he had not yet come. He wiped the hand that he’d been stroking her with on the torn coverlet. His thick cock was dark and heavy against his stomach, the head slick from pre-cum, yet everything about Abraham’s demeanour was as calm and collected as he’d been on the platform in the revival tent.

  When magic skittered over her arms and down her back again, she thought at first that it was his. But it didn’t do anything to her, didn’t pluck at her arousal like a harpist, didn’t tear off the planks she’d used to close her magic in. Those planks had been obliterated anyway, the doors and windows opened. Whatever had been shaking the iron bars at the windows didn’t have to anymore. She was no longer shivering.

  She pulled away from the kiss when she realised the magic whispering over her skin wasn’t his—it was hers. Kelly held her hands in front of her, battling between horror and wonder. The magic was as invisible to her as air, but if she looked closely enough and called it forth, it spread like a cloak of mist over her skin in pale sage green. Abraham considered her, toying with the ends of her hair and rubbing his hands over her hips.

  “Didn’t I tell you?” Abraham said. The vapour faded back into invisibility, but she could still sense it there. “Didn’t I tell you that you were capable of greatness?”

  “I don’t…” Kelly stopped and started. “I can’t…”

  “You can and you will,” Abraham said. He sat up, groaning a little as he rose to his knees. He leant down to brush his lips against hers again. She traced with her fingernails the line of his facial hair at the sides of his mouth and up his jaw.

  When her hips canted forward, the heat of his erection branded her abdomen, unusually warm to her for a human. But she didn’t question it when he bit her lower lip, making her cry out and tangle her fingers in his hair.

  “So,” he said, peering at her from under heavy lids, “not only do you enjoy inflicting pain, you’re amenable to receiving it as well.”

  She was still high and dazed from her unfettered magic’s revelation. She didn’t respond quickly enough when he grabbed her shoulder and hip to twist her down, forcing her onto her hands and knees facing away from him, her face pressed into the coverlet. She coughed—his grip on her shoulder had been close to her neck and made her briefly think he was choking her.

  When she tried to reorient herself, he pushed her upper body back down. She was still mostly kneeling, though, her legs together and her ass in the air. Somehow he’d compensated for his human weakness in the face of her werewolf strength, and she was unable to right herself.

  “My turn,” Abraham said, “after I’ve been so kind.”

  “Kind?” Kelly snarled. Her spine arched in a ripple of change, but he tapped between her shoulder blades, and amazingly, the werewolf receded like flood waters. She wondered if this was how Malcolm had felt when Abraham had changed him back.

  “I’m showing you what you could be,” Abraham replied, “with my help. I wish I could have seen what you saw. It looked fantastic from this end.” He hummed as his forceful hand turned gentle, stroking the lifelike petals of the flowers over her upper back and shoulders. “Mmmm, of course you like pain. It was foolish of me to ask.”

  “On my terms,” Kelly said.

  “How about on mine?” Abraham asked. He soundly slapped her right buttock.

  Kelly managed to squirm out from under the hand that made her bow, and she elbowed him in the ribs. He grunted, nearly falling to the side, but he grabbed her by the hair to keep his balance. She shrieked, more out of surprise than pain. He yanked her upright and wrapped one arm around her to hold her arms against her sides. He kept his fist in her hair.

  His teeth were clenched, but she heard his smile when he said, “No need to fight, my dear. I wouldn’t dream of treating you less than you are worth. I can give you what you need.”

  “You have no idea what I need,” Kelly said.

  “Would you like to make a small wager on that?” Abraham asked, tugging on her hair.

  “I don’t have much money,” Kelly said.

  “Then how about an exchange?”

  “Name your price.”

  “I want you to see yourself,” Abraham said.

  “I see myself every day. More often than you. I’m a bit hard to escape,” Kelly replied.

  Kelly saw it coming in her mind right before it swung haphazardly through the living area to prop against the wall across from the bed—a full-length, hand-carved antique mirror. There were candles in a tarnished metal candelabra on one of the side tables near the entrance, and Abraham brought them, table and all, near the bed.

  “Light them,” he whispered.

  “Fire and sex is usually a bad idea with me,” Kelly said.

  “Personal experience?” he asked, unable to conceal his amusement.

  “Bad one. I never kept candles in my apartment after that.” And with her internal gate wide open, with the results of her magical release pounding down on the cornfields outside, she didn’t want to take any chances.

  “In case you couldn’t tell, I am as good with fire as you are with barometric systems,” Abraham said. “Light them. You’re safe in here with me.”

  Lighting candles wasn’t a new spell for her, but she was surprised at how much more easily it came to her—and it had been an easy spell before. In fact, when she used the same low effort as she had in the past, the candle flames blazed almost to the ceiling before Kelly ended the spell and they flickered to a normal height. Abraham laughed into her shoulder before kissing an open rose there lightly.

  The fire in his eyes reflected at her through the mirror as she took in the sight of her own emerald eyes and the artwork on her body. She didn’t need any additional light to see them clear as day, but Abraham was human. He conjured more candles onto the nightstand to replace the lamplight, lighting those himself. Kelly thought they were probably not following some important fire code, but she was pretty sure that she could save herself and Malcolm and escape through a window if she had to.

  “Now,” he said, “do I have to hold you down? Or perhaps I should bind you open to me.”

  “I’d really like to see you try,” Kelly said. Binding magic was child’s play. “But no, not yet.”

  “Oh, we’ll just have to try that at some point,” he murmured before biting her earlobe. “If you’re nice, I’ll show you what you and I can do, what we could be.”

  “You’re awfully optimistic, Father,” Kelly said.

  “Well, I’m not as prophetic as you, but I have no reason to doubt myself,” Abraham said. He loosened his hold around her and moved his hand to flick idly at her left nipple as he stared at the two of them in the mirror.

  Of course he had no reason to doubt himself. Why would he? The very bed on which they knelt had absorbed the sweat and moans of every conquest, and here she was, the end of a long line of Abraham getting exactly what he wanted just because he could.

  “I’m fairly certain you will find me quite mild in comparison to your usual partners,” Abraham said, “but you are special to me, my dear, and I’m inclined to satiate your baser desires. I think it will be my pleasure.” He twisted her nipple sharply.

  She shouted, arching back, her head on his shoulder.

  Abraham always seemed to come back to the filigree tattoo, and he did so again, curling his hand around her breast to stroke it. “Do all your tattoos come from dreams?”

  “That one. And the fairy. I just wanted the rest,” Kelly said.

&n
bsp; “And these?” he asked, plucking at her nipple again. “What kind of metal?”

  “Not silver.”

  “I already knew that,” Abraham said dryly.

  “Titanium.”

  “I would have thought stainless steel or platinum,” he replied.

  “Titanium is light,” she said.

  He hummed again, stroking up over her arms and down her back. “Do you smell that?” he asked.

  Kelly breathed in. The smell hit her like greenhouse earth—roses. It came from her, emanating from her pores where the flowers draped over her shoulders.

  “Roses. And you taste like cinnamon and honey when you kiss me,” he murmured. “I wonder if you taste like that in…other places.”

  Kelly stiffened. “What did you say?”

  “I say a lot of things.”

  “Cinnamon and honey,” she whispered. That was what David had said her magic tasted like. No one else had ever told her that she tasted like that, not even Malcolm. Just David, who had sensed her magic. As Abraham did. “Can non-magical beings sense magic?”

  “Non-magical is a useless term,” Abraham replied. “Where there is life, there is magic. Some people are more sensitive to it than others, even if they cannot use it as we can. Why?”

  “The man who turned me, he said I tasted like cinnamon and honey,” Kelly said. “But I never sensed any magic to speak of from him, aside from the wolf.”

  “Then maybe your magic was particularly strong at the moment that he tasted it,” Abraham said, coiling her hair to drape it over her shoulder. It separated over the peak of her breast. He closed his eyes and swallowed at the sight. “Tell me, my dear, did that man know what he had? Did he appreciate the gift that he damaged with his curse?”

  “Sometimes,” Kelly said softly. “No more or less than any partner, I suppose.”

  “You know I would do so much better,” he said. He passed his hand down her spine.

  She cried out at the sudden pain that stabbed multiple times into her back.

  “What did you do to me?” she said, falling forward on her hands to gasp against the aftermath.