Bearly In Control (3 page)

Grace grabbed his wrist and yanked it away. “What are you doing?” she snapped. “That’s a Picasso.”

“No. It’s a painting,” he said. Edwin knew that. He had seen a painting at the diner in town.

Grace was shaking her head. “It was painted by Picasso. Pablo Picasso?”

Edwin looked at her blankly.

“It is one of his later works,” she said, with her chin up as she admired the painting. Edwin admired her as she stared. Her blond hair was tied back over her shoulder and she was wearing a flowery dress. She was gorgeous.

“See the elongated limbs?” she asked. “That is influenced by El Greco.”

Edwin didn’t know who that was either. Things were much easier when she had been in the forest with him. He was already feeling homesick.

“I would love to have a quarter of his talent,” she said, her eyes glossy as she admired the paint strokes.

“Do you paint?” Edwin asked.

Grace shrugged. “I used to,” she said, a look of sadness flashed across her face. She shook her head and smiled.

There was so much unfamiliar stuff. “What’s this?” he asked, lifting up a huge blue and white ceramic vase. It was as tall as his armpits.

“Don’t touch that!” Grace said, grabbing it from him and putting it back. “That vase is from the Ming Dynasty. The German Chancellor gave it to my father.”

Edwin didn’t like this place. What good was having all of this stuff if you couldn’t touch anything? If it wasn’t for Grace he would’ve left for home by now.

“Who is this?” a woman’s voice asked. An older woman in a bikini was walking down the hall towards them, staring at Edwin with lust in her eyes. She had a see-through piece of fabric wrapped around her waist, barely covering her long legs. Her breasts were large and exposed except for a tiny bikini top covering her hard nipples. She was holding a white slushy drink with a little, purple umbrella on it. She sipped it from the straw, never taking her eyes off Edwin.

Grace rolled her eyes. “This is my stepmother Daisy.” She crossed her arms and turned her body away, looking up at the ceiling.

“Well nice to meet you Grace’s new friend,” she said, stepping in close. She cupped his left cheek with her icy hand and kissed his right cheek slowly with her cold lips. Her hard breasts pressed against his arm. They didn’t feel soft like Grace’s and they perked up at an unnatural angle. Something was wrong with them.

“Why are your breasts so hard?” he asked.

Grace snorted a laugh beside him.

“Ooooh I like this one,” she said, running her fingers down his arm. “He’s feisty. I’m going for a swim. Why don’t you join me?”

“I didn’t bring my bathing suit,” Edwin said.

Daisy pulled the straw from her drink and licked it along the length, never breaking eye contact with Edwin. “Perfect.”

Grace yanked him away. “Let’s go.”

Daisy waved at him. “I’ll see you later Edwin,” she said with a wink.

three

Grace stretched out on the bed of the guest room as Edwin walked around, examining everything. He picked up an ash tray and turned it around, looking at it as if it was an alien artifact.

God he’s hot.

His tight shirt hugged his round shoulders. She wished that she was back in the forest where he was walking around naked.

He walked over to a painting that Grace had done when she was a teenager back when her dreams of being a painter were still alive. Edwin smiled at the beach with the violent waves crashing into the rocky shore.

Grace had painted it in Prince Edward Island in Canada on a family vacation. Her Dad had patted her on the head in that condescending way that parents often do when she showed him. “Great,” he said and then checked his cell phone.

It was one of the paintings that she submitted in her portfolio to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, a very prestigious, very hard to get into art school. She was thrilled when she got in but her father hadn’t shared her enthusiasm. He refused to let her attend. “You’re a Briggs,” he said, unwilling to hear any of her arguments. “You will be a lawyer or a doctor or you will be homeless.”

Edwin moved on from her painting to the thick maple desk. “You have so much stuff,” he said, picking up a pencil sharpener and examining it.

Too much stuff.
Her social circle was so caught up in material items. The girls would compare their new jewelry and expensive clothes while the guys showed off their new cars and boats. But her Dad was on the next level. His friends and him compared private jets, companies and yachts. And young wives.

She ran her hand over the soft, Egyptian cotton bedspread. “Come try out the bed.” She leaned over onto her elbow in a way that made her dress fall down, exposing more cleavage.

Edwin’s inner bear purred when he looked over. She missed that sexy, primal sound.

He came over and sat on the bed. He bounced up and down, testing the mattress. “I can sleep outside,” he said.

She could never tell when he was kidding. But the look on his face told her that he wasn’t.

“My father,” she said, “is a bit old school. Please just try to act natural around him at dinner.” Maybe natural was the wrong choice of word. Edwin’s natural was very different then everybody else’s.

“I’ll try to fit in,” he said, running his hand over the bed sheet.

His wildness and lack of concern was what drove Grace to him in the first place. How could she make him change that? She loved that he was so different from the fake, materialistic people in her social circles. So why did she want him to act in that way?

“Come here,” she said, waving him over.

He leaned down and kissed her. She kissed him back hard. She had been waiting for him for three weeks and now that he was here, all she could think about was having him inside her.

She slid her hand down his shirt to the belt buckle on his jeans. His chest vibrated and purred as she poked her finger into his waistband, past his rough pubic hair. She slid her other fingers in and pushed her hand down.

“Hm Hm,” a man coughed in the doorway.

Grace snapped her hand back and sat straight on the bed, praying that it wasn’t her father.

“Dinner will be served in ten minutes,” Alfred said in a thick British accent. He turned to Grace. “I will escort you to your chambers.”

Grace jumped off the bed and closed the door in his face.

Edwin walked into the dinning room by himself and swallowed hard. It was the size of all of the cabins back at Brooke Excursions put together. There was a roaring fire in a stone fireplace, the size of a truck, at the head of the table. A huge deer’s head hung over the mantel.

The long, thick, wooden table had over twenty chairs. There were only four settings set up at the end. There were so many utensils next to the plates. He tried to remember what Connor had said about using them from the outside in. Or was it the inside out? “
Just don’t eat with your hands and you’ll be fine,”
Connor said, when Edwin failed to remember for the fifth time
.

Grace walked in wearing a bright yellow dress to match her hair. Edwin’s breath caught in his throat when he saw her. She glided across the room as if she had little wings on her ankles. “You look spectacular,” he said. He could stare at her all day.

She was about to respond when a large man wearing a gray suit walked into the dinning room. He was a good looking, older man with black hair, peppered with white, and an easy smile. “Nice to meet you young man,” he said, walking over with his hand extended.
That must be her Dad.

Grace watched them nervously.

Edwin glanced at his open hand. He knew what to do here. He stepped forward and shook his hand firmly. A whimper escaped from her Dad’s throat. Maybe he squeezed too hard.

“Please call me Richard. Senator Richard.”

Edwin tried to remember what Connor had told him to say.
I am the one porking your wife. No. That was Sidney.

He let go of his hand. “I’m a big fan,” he said, finally remembering.

“Really?” he asked, his face lighting up in a smile. “Which one of my policies are you a fan of?”

He looked at Edwin with his eyebrows raised. Edwin just stared back. Connor and Sidney hadn’t told him the next part.

“My foreign policy with Iran? My immigration reform?”

Edwin’s heart thumped. “That one,” he said. “Migration reporn.”

Grace’s stepmom, Daisy, walked in with an almost empty glass of wine. She was wearing a low cut, red dress, with her ample cleavage in full view.

“There you guys are,” she said, taking a sip of wine and finishing the glass. She was staring right at Edwin. “I was waiting for you by the pool.”

Grace grabbed his arm. “He was with me.”

Senator Richard stuck his head in the doorway leading into the kitchen. “Can we get some wine out here?” he called out.

Daisy walked behind them, brushing her breasts on Edwin, as she passed. “That’s too bad,” she whispered. “I was tanning topless.”

“Ugh,” Grace said with a look of disgust.

A waiter hurried in, carrying a silver tray. There was an old bottle of wine with a faded label next to four glasses.

Senator Richard opened the bottle himself and poured a bit into a glass. “I’ll let our distinguished guest do the honors. This is a nineteen sixty five Barolo, Otin Fiorin, from Piedmont, Italy. The pope himself had the last remaining case in the world. I was lucky enough to get a bottle from the Italian Prime Minister on my last trip to Rome.”

He handed Edwin the wine glass with just a little bit of wine in it.
Is that all I’m getting?

Edwin drank the wine down and placed the empty glass back on the table. Everybody was looking at him. Was he supposed to do something?

“So?”

“Do you have any beer?” Edwin loved beer.

Her Dad frowned and poured himself a glass of wine. He shoved the cork back in the bottle and placed it on the tray. “Bring a bottle of Chateau Margaux. The nineteen ninety three. And a…beer for this…young man.”

Edwin sat down with a smile. He was getting a beer. Grace looked beautiful. This was going great.

“So what school did you go to?” the Senator asked as he sat down at the table.

Grace jumped in. “Dad I don’t think-”

“I went to Brightfield Elementary,” Edwin said. He had been in the fifth grade when his parents had abandoned him in the forest.

His Dad forced out a fake laugh. “College,” he said. “My alma mater is Princeton. What is yours?”

Edwin looked to Grace. What was he talking about?

Grace took a sip of water and looked to the side wall. “Edwin didn’t go to college,” she said.

“Neither did I,” Daisy said, with her hand on her neck. She was gazing at Edwin with glossy eyes. “We have so much in common.”

“I highly doubt that,” Grace said.

Her Dad looked flustered. “Well if any of the reporters ask you what school you went to tomorrow than why don’t you tell them Yale.”

Edwin looked to Grace. She glanced down at her plate avoiding his eye.

Alfred appeared in the dinning room out of nowhere, standing straight, with one gloved hand behind his back.

He cleared his throat and the whole table turned towards him. “Tonight you will be dining on Kobe beef, air shipped from Hyogo, Japan. It will be served on a bed of wild rice and topped with a creamy ginger sauce.”

Grace’s Dad nodded. “Sounds delicious Alfred.”

Edwin studied his movements. He nodded in the same way, trying to fit in. “Yes Alfred. It sounds delicious.”

Grace giggled as she watched him.

Alfred sneered at Edwin. “And how would our guest enjoy his steak?” he asked.

That was a weird question. “I would like to eat it,” Edwin answered.

Senator Richard did not look amused.

“I should hope so,” Alfred said. “How would you like it cooked?”

Edwin was used to living in the forest. He hardly ever cooked his food. “Raw.”

All eyes turned to him.

“I think he means rare,” Grace said.

“No I like it raw,” Edwin corrected. He was getting hungry and couldn’t wait to eat.

“Very well then,” Alfred said, in his funny accent. “Three medium rare steaks for the Briggs family and one raw steak for the…guest.” He curled his lip up and returned to the kitchen.

“Cook it rare,” Grace called out after him. She looked at her father. Her cheeks were red. “He’s just kidding.”

Edwin had seen that look before. It was a look of shame. It was how his parents looked at him when they realized what he was. When they discovered that their son was a shifter. He wasn’t good enough for his parents. Why would he think he’d be good enough for Grace?

Her Dad began talking about the upcoming election and all of his supporters. Edwin wasn’t able to follow what he was saying. He was talking too fast and using too many words that Edwin didn’t understand. He watched the Senator’s lips moving as he nodded his head. That’s what people did when they listened to someone else talking. Connor had taught him that.

Edwin flinched as he felt something slide up his leg. Daisy was holding her wine glass by her lips and staring at him. She licked her lips before taking a sip.