18
Elise
It’s one of those dark, rainy mornings where the night holds on with both its hands, covering all the windows with dreary clouds. I couldn’t go back to sleep, so I texted Deanna that I was coming over early to get some work done. It’s been on my list to gather a bunch of the herbs Deanna’s been growing for a personal touch to the food, so I’ll have time to wash and chop everything slightly in advance. There’s still so much wedding prep left to do.
I turn on some of the greenhouse lights, grab some garden shears and a basket to carry it all back in.
It doesn’t escape my notice that it’s yet another morning like the ones in all my dreams where I wander into the woods and get cornered by a wolf.
But I’m awake this time. I’m sure.
I haven’t been able to sleep. Not since I overheard the brothers talking in the living room yesterday. I’d been just outside, packing my equipment up in my car, when I heard their voices. I hadn’t meant to listen, until those words—
She said you lied to her.
Of course I did.
I had hidden in the doorway, unable to stop myself. I couldn’t just go into the living room where they were and interrupt them, but I had to know. And now I wish I hadn’t.
I watched Shawn from the reflection in the glass cabinet, just the hunch of his shoulders as he leaned against the sofa.
It cracked something in my chest, to hear him say that.
I don’t know if I believe it, or if I just want to. That’s the treachery of him. It was always too easy to love him, to want to forgive him. And I can’t believe myself, how ready I was to want that. It’s like I learned nothing.
His brothers didn’t press him for more explanation than he gave, which is utterly baffling to me. They don’t want to know what he was lying about? They just kind of shrugged and accepted it as a normal thing.
My heart has been nonstop thudding in my chest for hours, the edge of unease that just won’t peak.
I don’t know where my head’s at. Shawn insists he lied to me for a good reason. I’m having the weirdest stress dreams about this wolf I keep hearing doesn’t exist.
This is only happening because I stupidly let myself care about him again. It shouldn’t matter that he admits he lied, that he still thinks it was the right thing to do.
I don’t know that I even care what he lied about.
I don’t know what to make of any of it. I don’t know why stress dreams about the animal attacks would lead me to that. Or maybe it’s because I went to bed horny after getting rejected by my ex-husband. Truly a plethora of options, really.
After cutting dozens of chive blossoms, a bunch of lemon grass, and pulling some heirloom carrots and radishes, I walk across the lawn to the kitchen’s back door. I stop halfway through pushing it, when something catches my eye.
There are fresh scratches in the paint, cutting down through the wood.
Not many, like a frantic, frenzied clawing of an animal trying to get in, but a careful, deliberate slice next to the latch, suggesting that it could have opened it, but chose not to.
I let the door fall closed and stare out the kitchen windows again for several long minutes.
It’s dark enough outside that I can nearly believe that dreams are real. To fully believe there’s a creature out there, regardless of what Deanna says, and it’s stalking me. Is it the creature that ripped apart that deer, the source of the animal attacks? Or am I just buying into my own weird stress dreams?
I don’t know what makes me think a kitchen knife will defend me against such an enormous and ferocious beast, but I grab one before going over to another window that faces the woods. It’s still too dark to really make anything out, just shapes blurred by the rain.
But I see it. The wolf.
My head feels heavy, my hands too tight around the knife as I watch the creature I’ve seen in my dreams emerge from the woods. Heat creeps up my neck, my breath stalls on my chest, my hands grow clammy.
In the same heartbeat that I’m afraid to encounter it again, curiosity—morbid and aroused—holds me in place. I can’t believe I’m seeing it again so close to the house. Something about how I had only seen it in the woods before made it feel less than real, made it easy to convince myself it was a dream.
The barest shreds of dusk peak though the woods, capturing and turning the unmistakable silhouette of it, and filling it in with detail as it saunters towards me.
It slows its tired pace, coming to a stop maybe a hundred yards from the house.
I put my hand up against the kitchen window to hide the light’s reflection and make it easier to see into the weak morning light.
The wolfish creature hunches down in the grass, each moment looking not quite the same as it had the second before.
My nose nearly touches the glass.
The beast rolls its shoulders, and stretches its arms overhead, suddenly far too human, far too familiar. My heart stops.
Shawn.
My heart is thudding in my chest. I can’t think. I don’t know how to process what I just saw. It couldn’t have been Shawn all along. I know what I saw. I know the wolf was right there. But how can Shawn be both himself and that beast?
I stagger away from the window. I catch myself against the kitchen island, holding on for support as my knees feel less than sturdy.
I don’t know what to think. Reality and those dream-like encounters in the woods are crashing together.
I look up at a flicker of movement in the corner of my eye, and Shawn steps through the kitchen doorway, appearing tired, carrying an air about him that is far too serious, a little scary even.
His dark eyebrows draw together when he sees me. “What are you doing here?”
I gasp, startling back a step. I don’t know what to think. I just saw him—he was out there. He wasn’t human, he was something else, some kind of creature, something out of my nightmares.
The ringing sound of metal against concrete pierces the air, the cold sharp edge catching my heel as it rebounds.
I don’t have time to think or react—somehow, I’m up on one of the tables before the knife hits the ground again, Shawn’s hands digging into my thighs as he sets me down.
“Shit, Elise,” he mutters. The storm door slams behind him, rain flecked across the screen so heavily it blurs together the autumn-colored mountains behind him. “What happened to kitchen safety?”
I don’t understand how he can joke like that right now.
“You startled me,” I say, and despite being the one bleeding, I feel like there’s bigger, more important things to worry about.
He raises his eyebrows at me and takes my ankle in his hand, lifting it up enough to press the edge of his T-shirt against my cut, where the knife glanced off my foot. A little spot of red wells up through the white fibers.
I don’t know that I even felt it happen with how preoccupied my mind is. My hands are clutching his arms, when did that happen?
It’s just Shawn, my Shawn. The way he’s always been . . . but he’s not.
Shawn is a . . . werewolf? I just saw that with my own eyes. I’m trying to process what this means. Are the things I think I know about werewolves true, or is he something else entirely?
He doesn’t seem quite himself, the man I know in the daytime. Or maybe, I’ve just never really seen him, knowing all that he is.
He breathes heavily, the flush of red up his cheeks. There’s rainwater dripping off his face, his hair and clothes are soaked, the scent of the woods on him.
My eyes rake over the way his T-shirt stretches across his shoulders, down to where he’s pulled the edge up, revealing the thick trail of hair disappearing into his unbuttoned jeans.
“What are you doing up so early?” he asks again, his eyes searching mine carefully.
He wants to know if I saw him.
There’s a flicker of tension in his hands against me, like he wants to dig his fingers in to grip me hard, but he’s doing his best to hold himself perfectly still.
My heart thuds in my chest. If he didn’t tell me all those years ago, if he never told me, he wouldn’t want me to know now. I haven’t had time to think what knowing this means to me, or what it might mean to him.
I don’t know if I can tell him what I saw.
“I couldn’t sleep,” I tell him, swallowing hard against my uncertainty. “Stress dreams.”
His grip tightens protectively against me. “Is my family getting to you?”
I give a half-hearted shrug. I was just starting to deal with all that, but this is all getting to be too much.
He nods a little, letting his gaze drop from my eyes as he starts drawing slow, comforting lines up and down the whole length of my legs, and it should not be making my blood heat the way it is.
A noise escapes me, a breath of relief that rides a little too close to sensuality. He always knew the places to touch me, even just to comfort.
The world is condensed to just our breath clouding in the space between us, that seems to grow smaller the more aware I become of it.
Shawn is the creature that’s been chasing me in my dreams. My body reacts with sudden, prickling awareness, as the meaning of that dawns on me. He’s the one that eviscerated that deer behind the bar, the one scratching up my doors, following me. Maybe that should inspire an all-consuming fear, and maybe it does, but it doesn’t feel entirely like fear.
It feels like my body coming alive with that same need and willingness to surrender, to let the creature he is ravage my body any way it wants, not as some roll over and let me survive instinct, but because I want it.
A fraction of moan escapes me as I realize that, arching into his touch. I can feel my clit pulsing to attention as he stands between my parted legs. This is not the time.
“You can’t keep teasing me like this,” he pants, and presses a kiss to the side of my neck, just below my ear. He stays there, heat radiating off him, his body hanging inches from mine.
“I’ve been the tease? You left me hanging.” I gasp, thinking about the other night in my cottage.
“I had to. I’ve been trying to stay away, but it’s almost impossible.”
I stare over his shoulder, wondering what he means by that. Is that connected to what I just saw? Is he able to control himself when he becomes a beast?
But there isn’t time to linger over every question I have, to try to figure out the answers. Shawn is here, now, touching me. A beast, the beast I’ve been dreaming about running into in the woods, maybe.
I’m wet when his fingers move lower, skimming up my thighs and then finding my folds. Pulling my underwear aside, he drags his fingers through, parting me with embarrassing ease with how slick I am.
He pauses only to taste the wetness off his fingers.
A jolt of arousal makes my hips jerk. I hate that he remembers just how to turn me on, but at the same time, there’s something about being known and remembered so well that it lays me bare and doesn’t even give me the chance to hide my feelings, that makes me want to melt in his grip and give into it all.
“God, Elise. You don’t know what you do to me,” he sighs, something gravelly in his voice. “I think I’ve had dreams about the way you smell.”
My heart is thudding in my chest. It’s equal parts terrifying and arousing to imagine the depth of that statement. Maybe because I’ve also been having that dream about him.
He’s never eaten-eaten me before, right? Yet, I’m still starting to worry that he will, that the power he moves with is the same as the wolf’s. He could tear through me easily, and perhaps chooses simply to touch, but I want to know what the extent of that power feels like.
“I want your fingers in me,” I gasp, feeling my body respond.
“I can’t,” he groans, the gentle graze of something sharp but well-handled against my skin. I’m too distracted by his mouth on my neck to see if it’s nails or claws.
“Then your tongue,” I say, and he stills. “Don’t you miss the way I taste?”
The words are too bold to have come from me, and for a second, I regret saying it out loud. But the beast from the woods has done nothing but try to lick my cunt, and if that was him, I guess it makes enough sense for me.
He doesn’t answer, but his eyes remain on me.
For several agonizing seconds, I think he’s going to reject my offer just like the other night, but then I watch the last of the resolve in his eyes snap.
He hooks his hands under my knees, pulls my hips to the edge of the counter. I squeak in surprise, because I don’t think I’ve ever felt him throw me around quite like that before.
He starts slow and reverent, the heat of his breath ghosting against my needy sex. He takes in a deep inhale, followed by a groan. I thought I was wearing shorts at least, but after the way he ripped through my underwear the other night there’s a good chance this is now a terrible denim skirt.
I wriggle against his iron grip on my ankles that keeps my legs spread apart, when he parts me with his tongue.
“Shawn,” I gasp, my hips bucking into his mouth when he delves his tongue deep into my core. The heat of it makes me forget what I was going to say, except, “Oh, god, keep doing that.”
Every stroke of his tongue that makes me keen with pleasure grows closer, a heat and tension building deep in my core. Heat spreads through my body, and I feel tingles up to my shoulder blades.
After a few tantalizingly slow laves against my cunt, he finds my clit and focuses on it, and my body traitorously threatens to orgasm before I’ve enjoyed enough of this.
It’s too much, it’s too intense.
I bite my lip to hold back a cry, grabbing fistfuls of his hair as I rut against his face for every greedy taste he takes from me, riding out my climax.
“Tell me you missed this,” he growls with a dark note of jealousy before dragging his tongue hard against me, every additional stroke against my over-sensitive nerves makes me moan. “Tell me you thought about this when others tried to please you.”
I should maybe kick him for just assuming I couldn’t find good sex with anyone after him, and I think to say as much to him when his tongue delves deep within me again, unsated. I whine in response, lifting my hips to shy away from the intensity of the pleasure.
“You don’t have to compete with guys I broke up with”—I pant, my body just a mess of aftershock twitches—“but I did. I thought of you every time.”
His hands dig hard into my hips, spurred by a possessive surge, something sharper and thicker than his nails creasing into my skin. I get a glimpse of the fur starting to cover his arm for just a second, before he unleashes another vicious focus on my clit, and my head tips back involuntarily with a gasp.
Suddenly, his tongue feels a little different than I’m used to, a different texture, rougher, hotter, more ravenous against my sex. Each drag through my folds that reaches my clit makes me whimper for more. My hands are twisted in his hair like I’m hanging on for dear life. He’s always known how to make me feel good, but I had no idea how much he was holding back.
It doesn’t cease, even when I struggle against his hold on me, even when I can’t keep fully quiet. If there’s been a deficiency of orgasms from my last partners, he’s more than making up for lost time.
My thighs clamp together around his head, my hips bucking again as he licks me through another orgasm, not stopping for as much as a breath.
I think I forgot he was like this. Maybe convinced myself I’d made it up that he had to put me through a couple orgasms before he’d even get a condom out.
“Slow down,” I pant, tapping at his shoulder, the top of his head, whatever I can reach. His grip on my hips remains, but he at least parts his mouth from my cunt.
He drags his teeth against the fat of my thighs in a way that is familiar, but also, I completely forgot he always did that, and it makes a lot of sense now. I think. There’s a lot of little things I just brushed off that are starting to make a weird sort of sense, reinforcing what I can’t believe I saw.
Shawn is a werewolf. The werewolf I’ve been having dreams about. The wolf I’ve been ready to ride in what I’m not entirely sure were dreams now. It didn’t seem possible that it could have been real.
I lean up on my elbows as Shawn plucks one of the clean dish towels up from the stack and dries his face with it. He starts to offer it to me, when he stills, and then I hear someone coming down the stairs.
I scramble to push off the counter, tugging down my less functional shorts to cover myself. The kitchen light flicks on before I finish checking myself over.
Logan stands in the doorway. His eyes fall on us immediately, looking rather unimpressed even as Shawn leans against the counter to hide his erection. It’s probably fairly obvious we weren’t just chatting at five a.m.
“Christ, man. Now I owe Aiden money.”
Logan saves most of his judgment for his brother, barely glancing at me. I turn and head out the kitchen side door before my embarrassment can catch up with me.
A different sensation does instead. Something splits, and it feels like I’m standing on the edge of my dreams and my usual reality. Logan showing up reminded me of everything I’d been willing to put aside earlier.
Shawn may be the beast my body has been craving, but he’s still my ex-husband.