by DD Prince
Yep. I had a lot to figure out.
“Get dressed, little mate. We’re going to town.”
“Town?”
“I hadn’t shifted in years, so the pantry is practically empty. Only one can of fruit left. And some canned fish. I don’t like canned fish.”
He taps my bottom and gets out of the bed.
“I need a shower. I have all your…” I make a face. “All over me.”
He smiles. “Just down around inside your thighs. I’d like it all over you, though.” He looks at me thoughtfully and then turns and puts his knee on the bed, ready to crawl back to me.
“No! Bad.” I smack his hand and he startles. “Back up. I’m sore. You can’t do me again.”
He smiles wide. He has a beautiful smile.
I smile back, my sternness melting away. My belly flipflops.
Gah. No. I scoot to the bottom of the bed to get out of it and head toward the bathroom but then his large hands are on my hips and he brings my back against his front. His mouth touches down on that mark on my neck. My head rolls to the right to give him better access.
God, his mouth on that spot…
“Just a little,” he says, spinning me around to face him. “I’ll be very sweet to your princess parts.”
Oh, swoon.
His green eyes flare with a glow, then I’m turned, hiked up, and put against the wall in the small hallway between the bedroom and bathroom. He pushes his cock inside me again, making my mouth drop open. His eyes sparkle. And then his thumb caresses the spot on my neck and my eyes roll as his lips touch mine.
He rocks ever-so-gently against me, pitching me straight into a pleasure spiral, making a masculine purr sound in his chest. My forehead lands on his shoulder. My eyes drift shut while I inhale the aroma of his skin and revel in sensation. That noise he’s making, it makes me… happy. He smells so good.
14
Tyson
“Either we go to town to get the supplies or we can fuck,” I tell her. “Decide.”
I’m losing patience because we fucked over an hour ago and I can’t just stand here waiting all day. I’ve already waited while she took a shower and fiddled with painting her beautiful face with colors.
I have boots on my feet and truck keys in my hand, but yet she’s sitting there on the rug near the wood stove, frantically flipping through her belongings that are spilled on the floor in front of her.
There’s a lot of stuff. Face paint supplies. Papers. Electrical cords.
“They must be in the car,” she says under her breath. And then she looks at me with her eyes narrowed. “You dumped a bunch of my shit out in the car to figure out my name and my pills and phone must’ve fallen out.”
“What?”
She’s annoyed with me.
“My phone and pills. I need my pills, especially!” She’s a bit hysterical and waving her hands while she talks.
“Are you ill?” I kneel in front of her. “We’ll stop at the car and get them before we go to town. What are they for? Are you hurt?”
She doesn’t look ill. Her eyes are clear. Her skin is bright. I put my lips to her forehead. Her temperature isn’t too hot or too cool.
The idea she might be ill? It just sickens me. I search her face for answers, my heart racing, my stomach twisting.
I have no experience with pills. Uncle took some before he died, calling them killers of pain. They didn’t work very well for him and now he’s dead. I’ve never put pills in my mouth in my life and don’t think I want to if they are useless like that.
“My – uh… I just need them. Let’s go.” She gets into a squat and stuffs her things into the purse. She then reaches for the bag that contains her clothes from the bedroom. Her face is bright red. Not from illness though, something else. She’s in a panic. She sidesteps me and heads to the door.
Why won’t she tell me what the pills are for?
I take her bag from her and drop it. “We’ll look for them. You don’t need all those clothes for a trip to town for food.” I grab for her hand and her eyes widen in what looks like terror. “But you need a coat,” I add.
She’s chewing her lip and staring at me with wide eyes and red cheeks. I frown as I assess her face and then she fiddles with the bag.
“I left my jacket at the cabin of ill-repute. I’ll be fine.” She squats and grabs the strap of her large bag and rises, looping it over her shoulder.
Cabin of what?
“Why would you need that for a trip to town?” I take it from her.
Her face goes redder and she doesn’t answer.
I lean in. “Ivy. Answer please.”
“I need to go.”
“Go?” I ask.
“Home. I need to go home, Ty… Tyson. This is my stuff, so it comes with me because I have to go.” She huffs and blows a lock of hair away from her eye.
What?
I take the bag from her once again and this time I toss it out of reach. It lands by the stove.
15
Ivy
His expression drops when I tell him I have to leave and for some reason, my heart chooses to drop, too. Why? Maybe because of the way he stares at me, eyes working like he’s reading a math question written across my face.
He took my bag and tossed it and now he licks his lips behind his teeth, before saying, “You are home. Your home is with me.”
He’s gone rigid, like he’s decided to dig his heels in on the issue.
Fuzz. I was afraid of this.
“I… have a job. A family. An apartment. A car.” I bite my lip briefly. “Well, a car that’s got broken door handles, a broken window, broken windshield, and it’s smushed into a tree, but it’s my car and I –” For some reason, I let that hang. The look on his face is making it difficult to speak.
After an endless moment, he speaks in a scary deep voice, his eyebrows up high. “Have a boyfriend?”
I say nothing. How will I reason with him that this just won’t work? He can’t just keep me.
He gives me a hard stare and leans forward, aggression rolling off him. “If any man who thinks he’s entitled to you comes near you, I’ll rip his throat out with my teeth.”
I jerk back. Oh my God.
He keeps snapping. “We’ll go to town. We’ll stop and get your pills from that car, but then we will come back here, and I’ll make this home better. For you.”
I open my mouth to speak, but something about the look on his face has my heart stampeding in my chest. Not because I’m scared that he’ll hurt me. He’s angry, it’s clear, but more because he looks not just angry but also so… distraught.
I reach for my sad-looking Uggs, which… surprise… I somehow expected to be worse. Thankfully, I sprayed them with protectant spray before I wore them for the first time yesterday.
Yesterday, when things were so different. Yesterday, when I was excited to put on new boots. Yesterday, before I lost $200 to Megan’s scammy quasi-cousin. Yesterday, before I had to flee from a cabin figuring I had to leave to avoid sexual assault and then left and found myself in a car sliding down a muddy embankment or something, and being chased by the werewolf I hit with my car.
Werewolf. Still blowing my mind that this is who I’m with right now. Yesterday, when I thought a lot of the stuff Aunt Nelle talked about was nothing more than harmless fantasy.
And then what transpired after that? My face burns with the memories of all the dirty unprotected sex I’ve been having. In a cabin in the woods. With a stranger. A werewolf stranger!
Aunt Nelle, rest her soul, would be nodding knowingly right now, I think. An “I told you so” all over her face, but smiling instead of being snide about it because she was never snide about anything. She’d be tickled pink, I think.
I always thought she was a little kooky; but wasn’t really sure if she told me all her stories as a bunch of parable cautionary tales or if she was romanticizing those stories wishing she lived in a world where she could interact with all those things she talk
ed about. Vampires. Witches. Werewolves. Fae. She looked me right in the eye on my sixth birthday and told me I had a ‘fae’ look to me.
“You believe in fairies, Ivy?”
“Like Tinkerbell?” I’d asked.
“You have a fae look to you. Sometimes I swear, Ivy girl, that the stork switched you with our Ivy. That you’re a little fairy who has been dropped off here for now. Maybe my fortune teller was right when she told me about your future. You’re gonna have a magical life, my girl.”
“Tinkerbell was really tiny in Peter Pan, Auntie Nelle. I’m not that tiny.”
She winked and smirked at me like we had a secret. She was always whispering to me about her fortune teller. I had chalked it up to nonsense.
Now, though, I was wondering about it.
I lose my balance while getting my second boot on, stumble and wind up in Tyson’s arms. He’s looking down at me with piercing eyes. He looks angry. I find that I hate it. I feel like crying.
“You don’t need this.” He gestures to my purse that’s hanging over my shoulder.
“Of course I do. It’s my purse! Can you take me where I can call to get my car towed out of there, please? I need to get home.”
He stares at it a moment with skepticism before he grabs my hand and we step outside onto the porch. Looking back at my overnight bag longingly, I trudge behind him.
When I look ahead, I find myself squinting at the eyeful of sun I get. It’s a sunny day, but it’s brisk. And the surroundings here are rough and gloomy looking as winter ran long this year. It’s spring but it looks like most of the vegetation around us is still asleep. The house is pretty, but it’s surrounded by overgrowth. This place has been sorely neglected. There’s another building set back. He walks us back there through dead-looking tall hay-like grass and unlocks the wide door with keys in his hand and pulls it wide. I see some farm equipment and tools as well as a red Chevy pickup truck in there with the hood open and a battery charger connected to it. It’s old. Like around maybe 1940s or 1950s old. And mint. This truck has been loved.
He gets the passenger door open for me, so I climb in, thinking about my overnight bag and all the things I’m going to be leaving behind. Two new bikinis, a pair of jeans that I haven’t even worn yet. A super soft robe. The price of those will be coming off my next paycheck at the boutique. Some nice tops. And some high-end loungewear for a chalet weekend, too. Shit. My expensive ceramic curling iron and two bottles of perfume (one of them kind of pricy) will be lost.
Well… can’t be helped. This little excursion has to be over, that’s all there is to it. He slams the hood and gets in. The truck starts right up, and he pulls out.
He gets out, leaving it running, while he climbs out to double back and shut the garage door. And that’s when it hits me. This is my best chance at escape.
Heart thundering, I scoot across the bench seat over to the driver’s side, lock the door, and take control of the vehicle. I take off, squealing down the overgrown field, kicking up dirt as I head out. In the rearview mirror, I see him standing there, hand on the still-open garage door, looking at me.
I squeeze my eyes tight a second at the strange sensation that sweeps through me, that image of him burning into my retinas, and then I make myself focus on the road instead.
***
I haven’t seen a house since his despite driving for at least five minutes. I keep going down this endless country road with no intersections, zero traffic, and nothing but trees to look at.
Feeling a little lost and overwhelmed, I put my elbow to the door and hand to my neck. That’s when I feel it. That spot he bit.
Oh.
Suddenly, I’m totally, inexplicably grief-stricken. Tears stream down my cheeks.
What the heck?
Why am I crying?
Because I’ve been through such a scary twelve hours?
Because I had sex multiple times with a stranger (and liked it)?
Because of that look on his face when I said I had to go?
Because of the likely look on his face now that I’ve left him there, after I’ve stolen his truck?
I choke on bitter laughter while the tears continue trailing.
I catch sight of myself in the rearview mirror and my eyes look so freaking purple. It’s weird. They were always a blue shade verging on purple, but they look so violet right now.
I keep my hand on my neck and feel those teeth marks under my fingers. I rub the spot briefly and my nipples tingle, my sore vagina aches and not just from overuse, either. It aches with sorrowful need if that’s such a thing.
It is such a thing; I feel it acutely.
Glowing green eyes flash in my mind and I get a little dizzy. I force myself to focus on the road ahead. It winds some more, and I find myself coming up to a dead end bordered by a wooden fence. And… several people stand there on the other side of a big willow tree. Four men and a woman.
Oh! I can ask for directions. And since I’ve only been on one road, it’ll mean I have to pass back by his place. Ack. But they can help me get back on a road I’ll recognize and I’m sure from there I can find out where my car is.
I slow right down before I stop the truck and roll down the window. And that’s when I see the guy… the guy that was at the cabin, the one that became the brown wolf. He’d been turned the other way when I slowed but now he’s looking straight at me. Damn, but he looks a lot like Tyson. They could definitely be brothers.
Retreat!
I immediately throw it in reverse and back up. Fast.
The guy who was the wolf jerks his chin in my direction and says something to the other people he’s with, one woman and three other men (large ones, too), and I do a three-point-turn to go back the way I came.
I dare to look in the mirror to see what’s happening behind me and they’re all staring.
Through the windshield, I see a huge black wolf. He’s barreling straight for the truck. He stops in the center of the road and the truck squeals as I’m hitting the brakes. He shows his teeth and then barks at me, all his fur seeming as if standing on end.
The wolf bursts into Tyson and, naked, he stalks toward me, pointing his finger. The look on his face is terrifying. He’s looking at me like he plans to rip me limb from limb.
I’m just sitting there, staring, open-mouthed. I clamp my mouth shut as he grips the driver’s side door handle and I hear it ricochet against the car with resistance.
He growls at me. “Remove the lock, Ivy!”
I stare at him, mouth agape.
He sticks his hand inside the already open window and does it himself. I scoot over to the passenger side as he climbs in.
His eyes burn with fiery anger, so I instinctively reach for the handle to get out that side because… scary!
Wait. Why did I just sit there while he got in? I can’t make sense of it. He made a demand and I just… did nothing.
I don’t get a chance to get out of the truck though, because his massive hand clamps down on my wrist and stops me in my tracks.
“Ow,” I whimper. It feels like my bones aren’t far from being crushed in his bruising grip.
His eyes change, just marginally, and he releases my wrist.
God, my heart is thumping so hard. My wrist throbs.
“Th-that wolf, that’s the brown wolf!” I’m jerking my thumb behind me.
“I know.” He shifts the truck into drive, and we speed off.
His chest is rising and falling with his anger. And I’m holding my left wrist in my right hand and staring at his profile, trying not to stare at his nudity, too.
Not a word is spoken and we’re driving extremely fast.
We get to his house. He stops and gets out, leaving the door open and reaching to the ground to fetch the clothes and boots that are there in a pile. Obviously, this is where he shifted. He dresses quickly, not taking his angry eyes off me, looking like he’s alert in case I plan to dive to the driver’s side again. I don’t. I’m perfectly still and
watching him with all sorts of strange emotions washing through me. He gets back in the truck, saying nothing, with anger still rolling off him.
I see that the other guy’s clothes and shoes are still there in the driveway. Tyson drives over them.
He then pulls ahead and instead of going the way we just came in, he takes the other direction, driving toward a big weeping willow tree in the middle of the dirt road. He goes to the left of the massive trunk.
Oh. We’re obviously heading to town, in the direction I should’ve gone. Story of my life… always making the wrong decision. In my defense, it didn’t look like this direction was an option.
***
After ten or fifteen minutes of driving in silence (that somehow vibrates with his anger), we’re in civilization. It’s a small town with a quaint folksy painted sign that welcomes us to Drowsy Hollow, and there are restaurants, we’ve passed a small hospital, and have just pulled into a strip plaza. The place is bustling with plenty of Saturday shopper types. I’m feeling all sorts of chastised even though he hasn’t said a word.
He parks, gets out of the truck, and quickly moves around to the passenger side. He opens the door and grabs my hand as I climb out. I’ve got to jog to keep up with him as he stalks into the grocery store and roughly yanks a cart out of the cart corral. He lets go of my hand and waves at the aisles ahead.
We’ve gone down two aisles when finally he huffs, “Ivy Savage?”
I look over my shoulder at him. I’d just been walking slightly ahead, arms folded across my chest, though just loosely because my wrist is killing me.
“Ivy Brennan,” I correct.
His face falls. Why does that make my chest feel funny? I unfold my arms and plant my hands on my hips. I stare.
“Choose the food you like,” he gestures. “And do it fast.”
“Fuck this,” I whisper.
Aggression is rolling off him.
He scowls at me and points… at what, I don’t know. Food?
My eyes scan the area around me. A little old lady ticks by in a motorized scooter with a front basket filled with food. She’s not gonna be much help. I try to make eye contact, but she only gives Tyson a head to toe eye-sweep. She’s old, but the eye sweep is appreciative.
