Authors: Emma Taylor
“I know how you feel,” Tooth said, in his slow, deep voice.
“Why don’t you ask us some questions about lycanthropy?” Dorian said. “I bet you’re curious about how it all works.”
It wasn’t until Dorian said that that Daisy realized that yes, she
was
curious. Before she had been so consumed with her own problems about her reflection –
you sound so silly when you think stuff like that
– that it hadn’t even occurred to her. Now she pushed through the self-loathing in her mind and tried to think of something to ask. Eventually, something came to her.
“Is it like the movies?” she said. “If you get bitten or scratched by a werewolf, do you become one?”
They both nodded. “Yes,” Dorian said. “I was a laborer out West – dropped out of college – when this man whom everyone called Mr. Bacon moved into a town nearby. They called him that because every morning he would go to the local café and pile his plate sky-high with bacon, and then munch it all down within seconds. Plus, nobody knew his real name. He never talked to anyone, just ate the bacon and returned to his apartment. You can get away with being untalkative in cities, but in small towns it isn’t so well-received, so he became a sort of talking point for the entire town. Every time I went to town I heard about Mr. Bacon’s latest food-eating exploits. Anyway, I was out one night looking for Toby – our dog; he had ran away – when out of the dark came this…” He shuddered. “Some Wolves revel in the fear they cause.”
“Monsters,” Tooth muttered.
“Mr. Bacon had roamed from town to town using his Wolfism as a weapon, as far as I can tell. Anyway, out of the dark, and then – swipe – right across the shoulder.” He looked around and then pulled down his shirt, revealing jagged scars across the shoulder that she couldn’t believe she hadn’t seen when they’d—That Night. “Most Makers would stick around in that situation, to let the Pup know what was happening, but not Mr. Bacon. He fled town the next day, and left me wondering why I could smell what the townspeople were eating before I’d even stepped foot in the town. Then the full moon came. That’s when I killed the child-killer. Thanks the Gods it was a child-killer.”
“I was luckier,” Tooth said. “I lived in England for a time. London.”
“Like the movie?”
Tooth looked at her blankly, and then nodded. “Like the movie. I was approached by my Maker – his name was Eli – and everything was explained to me before it happened. I agreed to it.” He fingered the tooth around his neck. “A year after he Made me, in Wolf form, he was dead. Some Wolf-hunters got him. There are bands of people all over the world who know about us, and they’re not pleased with it. I kept his tooth, and from that day on I took the name Tooth. I will never say my real name again. I do not want to be associated with the people who killed Eli.”
“Okay,” Daisy said, and nodded, the men before her slowly turning from utter strangers to only half-strangers. “But how did you two meet?”
“The Council,” Dorian said. “New Wolves are contacted by the Council at some point. Tooth knew about the council straightaway, because of Eli. I was only contacted after they heard about how the child-killer had died.
Random animal attack
. That’s a surefire sign to any Wolf that his Brethren might be near.”
“But, hold on,” Daisy said. “I thought you said you could – sort of – control it?”
“We can, now,” Dorian said. “Even then, if I had been told what was happening, I would have been able to. It’s not like the movies where you fall unconscious and this other thing takes over. Instead, you’re filled with a sort of—” He turned to Tooth. “How can I explain it?”
Tooth smiled faintly and shook his head. “I have no idea.”
“With a sort of animal instinct, I guess you could call it. The Transformation makes you taller, stronger, hairier, more wolf-like, and then your sense of smell is even stronger, and you feel like
hunting
.”
Hunting! And they want me to be their prey. Why doesn’t that idea scare me as much as it should?
“But now you can control it?” Daisy said.
“Oh, yes,” Dorian said. “We’ve been at it now for almost two decades.”
“And this Scenting, how exactly does that work?”
“We were one city over when this powerful
urge
came over us both. We had heard about Scentings but had never experienced it ourselves. Scentings – for some reason; nobody is sure why – only happen to the same Pack. Tooth and I are a Pack. We either had to come and find you or else go crazy. And I mean really, really crazy. If you ignore a Scenting it can turn your mind to mush. So here we are.”
“Yes,” Daisy said, “here we are.”
“Food’s done,” Tooth said.
Daisy looked around. She couldn’t see anyone with their food. And then, about thirty seconds later, their food was being brought to them. She smiled at him. He nodded and they began to eat. They were silent for a few minutes as they tucked into their food, and then Daisy, unable to stop herself, said: “You’re not using me, are you?”
Tooth looked up sadly, his expression so full of meaning that he might as well have said
how can you ask that?
Dorian shook his head. “We are not using you,” he said. “You are a Scented One. That is a high position in Wolf culture. Our need is to give you pleasure – and to receive pleasure from you – but only if you are comfortable with it, only if you enjoy it, only if you
want
to do it.”
And Daisy had to ask herself: did she want to do it? It was an intolerable question for many reasons. Firstly, she already knew the answer. It was yes, of course it was yes, she
wanted
to do it. But that came with all the accompanying doubts and worries, all the depression and that horrible reflection. And what would happen if they left her after it was all done? She wasn’t even sure if she believed that they were werewolves. Oh, she believed that they were telling the truth. But werewolves weren’t real, so what if she were just in an insane asylum right now, pacing up and down her room.
Oh,
the nurses would be saying,
she just couldn’t handle the shock of two divorces any longer
.
“What do you two do for fun?” Daisy said. “When you’re not, um, Wolfing, that is.”
“Tooth paints,” Dorian said. “He’s an excellent painter. You should see some of his work. That’s why he doesn’t have to get a boring old job like me. Some of his pieces sell for quite a lot of money. I play the guitar as much as I can. I’ve been playing since I was a boy. But I’m not cool enough to be in a band.” He grinned at Tooth. “He’s a typical artist. Just look at him.
He’d
fit into a band.”
“A real Bohemian cliché, then,” she said, smiling at Tooth.
Daisy was shocked when he laughed. It was more of a growl-laugh, really, but a smile lifted his lips and he nodded. “Yes,” he said.
After dinner – when they were all standing outside the restaurant – Daisy looked at the Wolves, wanting them to kiss her goodnight. But then the taxi was here and she found herself being driven to her apartment. When she got in she paced around, too full of energy to read. She felt like she knew them now, a little more, at least: felt like they were no longer the strange men (wolves) they had been before this night.
And maybe she could be with them. After all, she
wanted
to. And what harm would it cause? Who would it hurt? Some glaring reflection? She walked into the bathroom and looked at herself in the mirror,
forced
herself to look—
And then she remembered her Mother, her old-school Mother, standing over nine-year-old Daisy. “Never be a slut, Daisy.” And Daisy had had no idea what that even meant. “Never be a slut,” she’d repeated, as she chugged from the vodka bottle. “Men will laugh at you if you let them use your body.”
Daisy stared into her reflection harder, and realized that it hadn’t been
her
face she was seeing, but her mother’s, who had poured all this nonsense into a head far too naïve to know any better. Because they weren’t
using
her body, were they? They were sharing bodies. It was a subtle difference Mother would never be able to see.
She
had been used too many times – by a string of bad boyfriends – that she didn’t know the difference between sharing and using for pleasure. Well, Daisy
did
know the difference and she wouldn’t—
Just then, Jessica rang. They talked late into the night, and as they said goodbye, Jessica said something that affirmed Daisy’s realization. “This isn’t Victorian England,” she said. “Women can do a lot more these days.”
Oh, it was a flippant comment, but Daisy found it whirring around and around her dreams, and when she woke she walked straight into the bathroom and looked dead-on in the mirror.
She was able to now.
*****
She hadn’t meant to run into Dorian in the storage room – she had only been in there to get some new pens and a stapler – but when she opened the door, there he was, sifting through the messy place. “What are you looking for?” Daisy asked.
Without turning, he said: “Stapler.”
She found the staplers, took one for herself, and gave him one. Then they just stood there, even though they were both done. They stood in silence for two minutes and then Daisy said: “Full moon in six days.”
Dorian’s eyebrows went up. “Does that mean—does that mean you want to?”
Daisy nodded. “Yes,” she said. “I’ve always wanted to.”
They stood staring at each other for a moment longer, and then Dorian moved close to her and put his hands on her shoulders. She had so longed for the touch that even something as innocent as this sent warmth through her body. She felt her pulse quickening and suddenly the storage room became very cozy. Without thinking, she reached out her hand and touched the front of his pants. His cock was hard as soon as she touched it, like she’d pressed a button.
“No,” he said, and moved her hand away, “let me.”
She was about to say, ‘let you what?’ when he put his hand up her skirt, pushed her underwear aside, and slipped his finger inside of her. She hadn’t realized how wet she was. He slipped in easily. She opened to him and he pumped his finger over her sweet spot. Outside, the printer beeped and she could hear people on the phones, yammering away. But she didn’t care about that, not right now: didn’t care that at any moment they could be caught.
She braced her hands on his shoulders and buried her head in his neck to stifle her moans. He moved his finger quicker and quicker, with more force, rubbing her sweet spot. And then he slipped another finger inside of her, and began to wiggle them both together. She bit down on his collar as the pleasure rose within her, the uncontrollable pleasure. She couldn’t stop now even if she wanted to, which she definitely did not want to do.
He moved his fingers even faster now, like there was a hot motor down in her vagina, constantly thrumming. She bit down even harder and then it all came over her: washed over her like wave after wave upon a beach. And Daisy was sure this was a tsunami. Her vision went blank for a moment and all she knew was profound pleasure. She gyrated on his hand and then fell back into the door, suddenly aware again of real life happening outside, completely detached from their little episode.
When it was done Dorian turned around, found a pen and paper, scrawled something, and then handed it to her. She looked at it: an address, date, and time. “That is where we will be,” he said, “come the full moon. We have set up a safe room, a private room, where it will just be the three of us.” Daisy felt a surge of exhilaration, a post-orgasm flush. “I hope we’ll see you there.”
Daisy clutched the paper as she left the storage room and returned to her desk. She was so distracted that she had forgotten the stapler. She returned the storage room collected the stapler, and then continued with her day. She couldn’t help looking at Dorian across the office as the mundanity of everyday life chugged along, like a well-oiled and boring machine. At the end of the day Angela was standing at her desk, reminding her that they had agreed to go for drinks.
Sitting in the bar, listening to Angela talk about her husband’s bedroom problems (he was addicted to pornography and the real thing wasn’t doing it for him anymore) Daisy could not help but be happy that she was no longer married. She knew it was a wrong thought to have when her friend was talking, and she tried to push it away, but it only returned with more vigor. No marital politics for her, just two Wolves and a sacred piece of paper.
Daisy gave some advice, however, because that’s what friends do: “You should get him to watch some softer porn, some loving porn where it actually looks like the woman is enjoying it. The problem with porn on the brain, I have read, is that it actually alters the structure of the brain. Talk to him about it – it sounds like he wants help – and maybe watch some porn together, but some arty, lighter stuff, where the woman derives pleasure as well as the man. You never know… you might enjoy it, too. And when his brain is restructured back to normal, he might be able to stop the porn altogether.”
Angela nodded her thanks and then reached across the table and placed a hand atop hers. “How’re things with you, anyway?”
“Oh, fine,” Daisy said.