Chapter Seventeen #2
“It was chaos. There were so many people running around, so much commotion… but I remember one thing very clearly.”
“What was it?”
“My mother, splashing wildly against the churning ocean, in the shape of a wolf. Bright red fur against dark water and sea foam. Then a huge wave took her under, and one of my aunts ushered me back into the house.”
“Nettie… I’m so sorry. That’s horrible.”
“You want to know the worst part?” I continued, anger and grief rising in my voice like those same stormy waves that took my mother.
“They never found her body. She just disappeared, swallowed up by the sea. All the other werewolves on Hollenboro said she’d gone mad.
That such a tragic accident was inevitable. ”
Rowena didn’t respond. Instead, she reached up, wrapped her hand around the side of my face, and wiped a stray tear from the corner of my eye. And in that moment, choked up with grief, that was all I needed from her.
“Come on,” I wrapped my arm around the back of Rowena’s shoulder, preparing to help her stand up. “We need to clean the blood off you.”
Rowena was still shaky on her feet, but she no longer looked like she was about to faint, so I was able to guide her into the bathroom and settle her into a small clawfoot tub.
Once she settled in, her maroon nightgown draped over her torso and thighs like a silk curtain, she gave me a deep, knowing gaze.
“I’m not shy,” she declared, her voice barely a whisper.
I chuckled softly. “Well, that’s good, because I can’t help you bathe while you’re fully clothed.”
Rowena’s injured arm wasn’t very useful or mobile, so I helped her pull both arms through her sleeves and slid the bottom hem of her nightgown up her torso. As I did, her bare body was revealed inch by inch; from her thin, pale thighs to her ribby torso and small, perfectly rounded breasts.
I tossed the bloody nightgown off to the side, discreetly wiping my sweaty palms on the fabric.
I was desperate to hide the desire that was so obviously emanating from my body, to maintain the professionalism of helping a friend clean her wounds.
A friend that definitely didn’t have a bare, slender figure that made my heart race with desire and my skin flush with heat.
I twisted a silver knob at one end of the bathtub, and it gave the same squeak as the hinges on my old, rusted cottage door. After a few seconds, a solid stream of water sputtered out of the nozzle, slowly warming under my outstretched palm.
The stream hit Rowena’s feet, and she flexed her toes as the hot water pooled around them. I noticed they were painted the same deep purple as her fingernails.
My heart was now thumping loud enough for me to feel it in my temples.
Stop it. I scowled as I fetched some soap and a sponge from a shelf above the bathtub. Focus .
I began scrubbing her skin, watching as the dried blood rehydrated, trickled across the tub, and disappeared down the drain.
Despite my self-scolding, the blood pounding in my ears only grew louder.
It spread to other parts of my body, forming a deep blooming sensation in my stomach, and a burning ache in the region just below it.
Gods, how I wished that sponge wasn’t in my hand. That it wasn’t separating my skin from hers.
Rowena was silent while I worked. She kept her injured arm hanging out of the bathtub so it didn’t get wet, and her skin twitched and rippled every time I scrubbed blood off the more sensitive parts of her body.
But the entire time, she never peeled her gaze away from me.
I could feel those deep brown eyes studying my every movement.
And they looked like they were filled with just as much longing as mine were.
Finally, I scrubbed the last bit of blood off her body – a stubborn spot on her inner thigh where blood had seeped through her nightgown.
I savored the way the movements made her delicate leg muscles tense.
Her body was so different from mine – slender and waifish, with small hips, barely budding breasts, and pale skin like porcelain.
I noticed she was clean-shaven – her legs and armpits were bare, and her pubic region was neatly trimmed to just a thin trail of hair.
As I finished cleaning her leg, I realized I’d been staring at that part of her body for far too long. And Rowena had noticed.
I bit my lip, my face burning from being discovered. She was just so beautiful. And fascinating. I’d never been with a woman before, and I ached to know how it all worked. I wanted to experiment. Figure out how to make her quiver under my touch, other than wiping dried blood off her body.
“Nettie?”
My hand froze, still hovering over her thigh with the sponge in hand. Rowena looked down and slid her uninjured arm down her leg, settling her hand on top of mine.
My blood burned, hot and aroused, beneath my skin.
“I need to ask you something.”
“What is it?” I replied, my tone rushed and breathy. You can ask me anything.
“I just need to know… before this goes any further…”
Her fingers clasped around mine, and my stomach dropped as if I’d just plummeted off a cliff. I was absolutely burning down there.
“You’re still here, in Wisteria Grove. I thought you were leaving? Today was your last day at the café…”
Her voice trailed off, her last words punctuated by a spike of sadness. My arousal dried up like water evaporating, and a deep, unsettling chill ran down my body.
Rowena was making her intentions clear. She wanted me. But I still needed to explain what happened over the past twenty-four hours. Why I tried to flee this town without so much as an explanation.
“I need to confess something,” I sighed. “I heard you talking with your father last night. And when you two disappeared into the woods, you’d left your door cracked open, and, well, I…”
“Oh goddess,” Rowena’s face paled. “You saw the crate.”
“And the chains, and the muzzle. This may sound absurd… but I thought you were a werewolf hunter. That’s why I planned to leave without explanation.”
Rowena exhaled, unlacing her fingers from mine and rubbing a hand over her face. “I’m so sorry, Nettie. I completely understand how you came to that conclusion. I would’ve fled, too.”
“But that crate, and all the restraints… I understand now. They’re for you. You lock yourself up every full moon so you don’t harm anyone.”
Rowena nodded, melancholy lining her face. “It’s so hard… being an outcast, alone, with no one to talk to. Until you came along. This spunky, beautiful redhead bursts into my café out of nowhere, and I can smell that she’s a werewolf. A runaway, hiding her identity like me.”
“Wait… that’s why you swore you’d protect me,” I realized. “Because you knew I was a werewolf, like you.”
“Yes. I felt a deep kinship with you from the start. But then I got to know you, all your little quirks, your sass and humor, your ridiculous notion that coffee is better than tea–”
I giggled. Rowena scoffed.
“–and I saw how much you loved working here. You have so much passion, so much kindness, and such a big heart. My whole life got better when you entered it. It’s just–” Rowena inched closer, so our faces were less than a foot apart.
“–I know you’re in danger here. Our time together was always limited.
But I don’t want it to end. I want more.
So much more. Is that wrong? Am I insane? ”
Gods, Rowena… I slipped my palm around her cheek, running my fingers down the soft, peach-fuzz skin of her temples. She did the same, and our embrace tightened and intensified until we were holding each others’ heads and our foreheads were touching.
“No. It’s not insane,” I whispered, my eyes on Rowena’s slightly parted lips.
Lips that were just inches from mine. “We werewolves believe in fate, that our futures are decided for us long before we’re born.
I defied my own fate by leaving my home island.
At first, I thought I’d made a horrible mistake.
But I didn’t. Running away was the best decision I’ve ever made. ”
I curled my hand around the back of her head, strands of her black hair tangling through my fingers.
“I decide my own future,” I declared. “But the superstitious part of me, the one raised in the way of the werewolves, still believes some things are meant to be. Meeting you was fate. Discovering that you’re a werewolf, just like me, was fate.”
I could feel her breath on my lips, her sweet perfume in my nose, and I wanted to consume this moment, to feed it into my soul so it would live there forever.
“You, Rowena, are my fate.”
I didn’t remember who initiated the kiss. All I remembered was the way my red hair tangled in her fist, the slight tug at my scalp that nearly made me come undone. Her lips were so soft, so warm, and I could feel every muscle in my body burn as time slowed around us.
“Nettie…” She whispered my name with desperate urgency. It was beautiful. I wanted to hear it over and over again.
Lost in the haze of the kiss, I blindly grasped for her body, my hands caressing her bare shoulders and working their way down to her breasts.
A chilly, unfamiliar trickle crept through my body as I touched them.
A few weeks earlier, I’d never thought I would be attracted to a woman.
I was used to the hard biceps and v-shaped torsos of the men.
Rowena’s body was all slender curves and soft angles, and I found it more intoxicating than anything the werewolf males had to offer. No one, man or woman, filled me with as much adoration and lust as she did.
Rowena was also pawing at my body, struggling with the obstructiveness of the clothes that still adorned me.
When she tugged a bit too hard at the sleeve of my shirt, nearly pulling a few stitches loose, I decided it was time to break the kiss and move our intimate session to a more suitable location.