Chapter 4
Chapter 4
B urying his face in the chainlink didn’t offer Fenn any solace, considering how it still left him very exposed. No, he’d have to actually look at her. Worse yet, the embarrassment wasn’t helping his erection die down—especially with his knot lodged very firmly on the other side of the fence links. His only consolation was the empty kennels behind him, cleared out for the full moon—without Connor here to watch over everyone, the regulars had found somewhere else to handle their shifts. Fenn could have been all on his own, eagerly prowling the forests of Happenstance Park for deserving predators if he hadn’t let his moon-addled dick drive him to schedule Addison’s interview tonight, of all nights.
If it had been any other fence, this wouldn’t have been an issue, even with the monster knot currently sticking him in place—yeah, it would have hurt like hell, but he could have extricated himself. But no, Connor just had to invest in a fully silver-infused fence to keep their more boisterous clientele reined in. The coating short-circuited Fenn’s transformation and sent him right back to human.
Except, of course, for that fucking knot.
With a groan, his gaze swung to Addison, gawking at him as she took in the scene.
“I—I swear this isn’t a weird sex thing,” he stuttered, his topside cheeks burning. “I was chasing the chew toy and was doing my best, I really was. It’s just—the moon—and I was being such a good boy, I really was. And Connor’s stupid fence—I’m so sorry, this is so embarrassing and inappropriate, and if you want me to, I’ll tell Connor everything and quit and turn myself in.”
Addison chewed her lip, her expression inscrutable.
“You know, as explanations go, that was utter shit,” she eventually offered with a nervous laugh. “Why don’t you try explaining this to me like I’m five?”
Fenn groaned, dropping his forehead against the fence with a dejected metallic rattle. “No way in hell we’d be in this situation if you were five.”
She rolled her eyes, but Fenn didn’t miss her nearly tangible curiosity as her eyes kept drifting downward. “Come on, you know what I mean.”
“Well, uh, you don’t see the dog anywhere, right?” Fenn started, hesitantly.
“Shit! The dog! Did you see him?” Her focus shifted immediately, brows furrowing as she chewed her thumb, eyes anxiously tracking the treeline beyond the fence.
Don’t even think about it , he chided his dick, swallowing thickly as visions of her nibbling on him rocked his imagination. He was trying very hard not to be a creep, despite appearances.
“Only when I look in the mirror,” Fenn let out with a half-hearted chuckle. “There is no dog, Addison. There never has been.”
He saw the gears turning as Addison processed what had to be the world’s biggest mindfuck, but she needed to come to her own conclusions. Fenn had heard this type of discovery go very badly for others of his kind, but maybe if he gave her space he could salvage this mess.
Addison’s eyes followed the leash laying against his spine, gaze shooting back up guiltily as it reached the loop grazing his bare ass. Patience was his mantra as she squinted at his collar, stepping forward— not away his heart noted, lifting with hope. A soft whine escaped him as her fingers grazed his neck, hooking the nylon band to reveal the attached tag.
“Shit, sorry, I didn’t mean to…” She apologized automatically, completely misinterpreting the sound. “This is…this is Fenn’s tag,” she murmured, brow knitting as her fingertip traced the single, familiar scratch on the surface of the tag.
Fenn held his chin high while she examined it, baring his throat with an ease that was particularly foreign to werewolves.
He was not your average werewolf.
Fenn immediately missed the tension on his collar as she relinquished her grip. The muscles of her lips moved from side to side with unspoken words, eyes darting back and forth as if she was reading—or maybe scanning a mental conspiracy board of reasons why what he was couldn’t possibly exist.
Her gaze cleared suddenly, focusing intently on something in front of him. Through the moon-drenched spaces in the chainlink, several forgotten dog toys lay scattered in a pile.
She hummed with interest, raising a brow. “Guess I’m not the only one with an aggressive arm.”
With that, she walked away, disappearing around the back of the shed and tree. Fenn started to panic, straining his neck and torso as much as the wildly inconvenient restraint of the fence would allow.
“Addison? Addison!” Fenn called out for her in a loud whisper, tone a little more desperate than he intended. He didn’t need any nighttime park-goers finding him before she—hopefully—returned.
Unrelenting arousal and self-pity duked it out in his brain, neither one giving an inch. He couldn’t budge and now there was a human that knew going god-knows-where, leaving him to be found bare-ass by the first client in the morning. Connor was going to kill him—metaphorically, anyway. He was going to be a particularly fluffy entryway rug by the time his boss got done chewing him out. The moon-drunk distressed wolf inside him let out soft, constant whining that rumbled in his throat.
The fence rattled slightly, tugging on Fenn’s knot in a way that made his whining stutter in favor of a swallowed moan. Miraculously, Addison appeared on the other side of the fence, having slipped out the side gate and was once more approaching him. She stopped short of where he stood, instead crouching down and tossing the lost toys back over the fence.
“Figured you guys could use some help with these, being short-staffed and everything,” she said, more to herself than him directly.
Addison was….cleaning up? She just found out werewolves existed and squeaky toys got her attention?
This was definitely not the reaction he’d expected. His fingers gripped the chainlink tightly as he pressed his forehead into the cool metal mesh, watching her pick the toys up one by one. Instinct drove him to push his nose through the gap, only to be blocked by the muzzle, scenting each toy as it was lifted and tossed overhead. He recognized each one, which human or animal had last touched it, and through it all an impossible rosemary-tinged wisp of fragrance: Addison was still aroused. She still wanted him?
“Would it help if I said the word?” Fenn ventured quietly, both amused and concerned at her literally stepping around their conversation. “I was trying to ease you in.”
She snorted derisively as she picked up the last of the toys, a braided rope so frayed it was practically a pom pom, sending it sailing back into the yard.
Okay, well at least she wasn’t in full-on shock if her humor was still intact, right?
“Werewolf,” Fenn blurted, desperate for her focus. “I’m a werewolf.”
She stood up at the admission, facing out towards the treeline that separated their business from the park, unmoving and silent. Shit . He’d totally fucked this up. He’d have to tell Connor even if he did manage to get free of the fence before morning. He needed to do what he could to make it up to Addison, as well as make sure she didn’t blab. He needed to take immediate responsibility for his actions, as horny as the moon made him.
“Listen, I can’t tell you how sorry I am for—” he started, fingers twisting nervously over the thin metal bars in his palm, internally wincing as he recalled nosing her crotch within seconds of “meeting” her. He definitely regretted the lack of informed consent, but he couldn’t bring himself to regret that amazing noseful of pheromones.
She spun slowly. “Somehow, Fenn, that is the most sensible explanation for finding you muzzled, leashed and stuck in a fence.”
Her eyes trailed down to the appendage stuck on the other side of the fence, his gaze following hers guiltily.
“Fucking hell,” she hissed, jumping back a step. “What the hell , Fenn?”
He stared down at it himself, worried there was something else wrong with it besides being stuck. But no, he was unsheathed with the biggest knot in memory, mostly because of her—though the silver-infused metal currently acting as a Home Depot cockring certainly wasn’t helping.
But then he caught that intoxicating scent of arousal once more. Grabbing the fence tightly, he bit back a groan, desperately trying to behave, even as his inner wolf was pawing for her.
“It’s the moon,” he started, lamely.
“That’s no moon,” she shot back, sarcastically.
“No, I mean—the full moon. It makes us insanely, stupidly horny. I wasn’t really thinking straight when I told you to come here at night, to be honest, and it was pretty fucked up in retrospect considering. I’m so sorry. If you just go and get some wire cutters from storage—”
Her eyes bugged out. “You seriously want me to cut metal next to your dick with blades that won’t know the difference? You’re not already worried about that inflammation near the base? God, I’m going to have to take you to a hospital from the looks of it.”
His gaze dropped down again, trying to understand what she meant. There were his balls, then where the shaft began and the full knot—
Oh.
He tried not to laugh too hard.
“That’s my knot,” he said simply.
“Your knot,” she repeated, some joke underlying her words that he didn’t get. “You say that as if every guy has a knot. Normal human anatomy. Or I guess, it must be normal werewolf anatomy.” Her lips quirked. “So please tell me, Fenn, what the fuck is a knot and why do you have one right now?”
He squirmed under her constant observation, unable to shake what those brown eyes were doing to him just by being .
“Ah, umm… so, like canines, when werewolves mate, there’s an evolutionary advantage given to the penis,” he explained, his throat growing dry. “Typically we mate for life, so when the male inserts their shaft inside the female, the knot near the base will essentially inflate like a balloon to keep the female locked in, ensuring the sperm will breed her.”
Addison breathed slowly, her thighs squeezed together. “You’re not breeding now. I mean. You’re stuck, and I’m gonna be sick if I fuck up with the wire cutters. Isn’t there an easier way to… fix your problem? Something that doesn’t involve sharp objects? Just like—what are our options?”
“Um…” he eked out, his voice barely working. “How honest do you want me to be?”
“C’mon, Fenn. We’ve already done the werewolf reveal, you’re hard and… knotted I guess, and trapped in a chain link fence butt-naked. You’re pretty damn stuck at the moment, so it looks like I’m kinda calling the shots here. I can handle it.”
He groaned at her phrasing, pressed his forehead further into the chain link as he shook his head.
His voice was barely a whisper as embarrassment flooded through him. “I need you to do more than handle it.”
The soft rustle and crunch of leaves made his ears perk up as she stepped closer. “C’mon, Fenn. Be a good boy and ask me properly.”
His heart hammered, eyes flicking up. She looked intently at his face, which was undoubtedly visibly flushed at this point.
“You like that,” she said, with an amused sort of curiosity. “Don’t you? When I call you a good boy?”
He nodded slowly, brain fuzzy and soft with pleasure. She was so close, all he could smell was her: that gentle musk and rosemary now tinted with the smell of treats on her fingertips, the anxious sweat from running after him, all wrapped in the lust of pheromones.
“You don’t have to do this,” he said, struggling to regain sense. “I deserve… I deserve whatever punishment you think is fitting for roping you into this. I need to…release, though, or I can’t get free on my own.”
“I think I’ve got something in mind. First, though, can I touch it?” she asked. “I’m curious if it will…help.”
“You are?” he gasped, even though he had the proof of it way up in his nose. But Fenn also wasn’t a pup, he knew that bodies and brains weren’t always in tune with each other, and he didn’t want to take further advantage by being a knothead. “It, uh, it will help. It should work.”
“Tell me what you want, Fenn. What you need. Do you want me to take the muzzle off–”
“No,” he choked out quickly. “Please don’t.”
She pressed up close to the fence, careful not to touch him—she realized he still hadn’t given permission. A dark look flitted over her features, a sort of mischievous, gleeful anticipation.
“Tsk. Bad dog, Fenn. You said this wasn’t a weird sex thing,” she purred, an entirely new confidence coloring her words.
The burning, welcome shame of her gentle teasing did him in. He thrust against the fence, unable to hold back his whine as she watched, amused and out of reach.
“Do you have a safe word?” she asked, arms folded across her chest as she waited.
Fenn stared at her, not quite believing how well this was suddenly going.
“Stop lights work. Red, Yellow, Green,” he managed after a few false starts, his vision of her rippling like a heat mirage.
“And do you want to give me your leash?” she asked, eyes trailing up his shaking body, fingertips casually extended to receive it.
After a quick metallic rattle, he eventually shoved the lead handle through the fence so she could grab it. His hard panting was audible now.
“Please. Anything. Anything you want. Touch me. Punish me. Whatever you want, Addison,” he rambled, openly begging like a dog under the Thanksgiving table.
“And if you can’t talk, what’ll you do?” she asked.
Come, probably , his brain answered, before he managed to course-correct into a question. “If I can’t talk…?”
“Mhm. A non-verbal safe word, Fenn. Show me how you’ll signal me to stop.”
She tilted her head, regarding him with a casual, unbothered demeanor. His opinion of Addison as a trainer soared exponentially.
Something he could do if he couldn’t talk... C’mon Fenn . “Uh. I can…snap my fingers?”
She pulled the leash down, shoving his face against the fence. “Good boy.”
“Yes, oh fuck yes. Please, Addison. I’m your good boy. Please touch me.” he panted, voice high with need.
His knot was throbbing so hard he was surprised it hadn’t unraveled the goddamn metal weaving. The noise he let out when her fingertips finally made contact with his knot—too gentle, but still heavenly—was from Fenn-the-human, but the howl he let out when she nonchalantly squeezed his knot was pure wolf .
“Little puppy, I like it when you beg,” she cooed. “Now let’s see just how much of a good boy you can be for me.”