Authors: Charlotte Stein
The sight of him coming, hard, all over her working fist and
his tensing belly…it was enough to get her to accept it fully. She’d done
this—made him spurt all over himself. And he was still shaking with it minutes
later, breathing hard into a hand that now looked bloody, a fine coat of
perspiration just visible below the streaks of soap and water.
She looked at the glistening fluid that marked his stomach
and could hardly believe what she’d done. It was on her too—between her
fingers, slick and sticky—and though the urge to wipe it off surged through
her, something else had hold of her at the same time.
She wanted to lick it. Taste it. Taste him. He hadn’t moved
and she felt almost certain he was drifting into sleep, so really, how much
would he know if she just put a finger to her lips? How much would he know if
she just slid her hand between her legs and rubbed over the swollen mound of
her sex?
It wouldn’t take long. A couple of firm strokes over her
clit and she’d come just as he had, hard and too loud and then oh, the relief.
That’s how he looked, she realized—like a weight had been lifted off him or
some great pressure had eased.
Would it really be so much to ask, to have him ease the
pressure on her too? He could do it, she knew he could. He had such long, thick
fingers and they’d feel so good sliding through her slick folds, so good
grasping at her body and then maybe he could…
She stood straight too quickly, before the idea could take
hold. Before she went mad and just climbed on him and fucked a goddamn
werewolf. Where was her mind—Jesus Christ! The door didn’t even have a lock on
it and though no one ever came by it didn’t mean they wouldn’t, one day. It
didn’t mean they couldn’t catch her, with his slippery come on her hand and her
uniform all in disarray, face too hot, hair all a mess, everything looking as
if she just needed to be fucked, right now.
When she finished bundling together her tray—cloth, bowl
full of soapy water, various pathetic medical instruments and vials—and turned,
he’d opened his eyes. And she could see it in his gaze, how sluttish she
appeared. She could see him burning still, hand almost out as though he wanted
to grab something on her, pull her back.
So she ran. She ran with the tray in her hands and the water
sloshing over the front of her uniform, and him calling to her forever in her
head—Serena, Serena, Serena.
She realized then with a kind of pained clarity that she
should never have told him her name.
Chapter Two
She tried not to think about it. She tried not to think about
it in the canteen, while Tara droned on about her duties doubling and the
stupid wolf she was having to deal with lately—
he thinks he’s going to bite
me with all his teeth pulled out!
—and how much she hoped they would all
die. She tried not to think about it while staring up at the ceiling in her
tiny room, listening for every tiny creak and crack it made because sometimes,
they broke through the brittle ground and got into the walls and then you just
had to run and run and run.
Would she have to run from Connor one day? He couldn’t
possibly carry on living like this. She didn’t understand why he hadn’t tried
to escape a thousand times already, when really he’d never even attempted it
once. He just sat in his rusty, rickety old hospital bed, waiting for her to
come to him and…
She closed her eyes and forced the images away. Why had she
done it, for God’s sake? It just seemed so impossible and insane whenever she
let it slip into her ordinary, everyday thoughts. It seemed like something Tara
would do, only in reverse. Tara would sneak in and stab him in the night, then
get seven hundred demerits for her trouble. Tara would sneakily pull his hair
or otherwise tamper with him, then laugh about it over potato soup in the
canteen.
Tara would not jerk a wolf off and then wonder what it would
feel like to have him touch her in return. Maybe with his hands. Maybe with his
mouth.
An agitated sound burst out of her and she shoved herself up
against the wall, back to the blanket darkness, fists pressed into her eyes. He
was a wolf, a wolf, and she’d touched him so lewdly and wanted him more than
she’d ever wanted any human and nothing in her could figure out why.
Because he was handsome? Because he was big? None of those
things tempted anyone else. And she’d seen other wolves just the same anyway,
wolves that could still talk the charming talk and smile with all of their
ordinary-looking teeth, before suddenly ripping off their man-skin to reveal
the beast beneath.
Connor had never tried to charm her. She knew he hadn’t. He
barely talked and when he did it was careful, so careful, as though at any
second she might pull out a pin and stick it in him. And when they’d finally
started their little hesitant conversations, he’d seemed almost reluctant to
offer his own lost loves.
As though sharing the books he missed or the films he longed
to see again meant he had to give away a piece of himself. As though she might
tell him he was wrong for loving things the government hadn’t archived—like
Near
Dark
or
I Sing The Body Electric
.
He’d told her he remembered that one for the title, and then
he’d seemed to pause, eyes so still and watchful, as though considering if he
should go on. But he must have seen something in her face—something
trustworthy—because he had continued.
He’d told her that those words described how it felt, to go
from a man to a wolf.
Like my body is singing electric
, he’d said, and
maybe that was when she’d first fallen for him.
Because she had, of course. She’d fallen for him, utterly.
That’s what it meant, when you couldn’t think of anything else but another
person—Tara had said so, and she knew better than anybody about love and sex
and all of that stuff.
Not that she could actually talk to her about it and
confirm, however. Or she could—yeah, she could if she really wanted to. They
could sit down and have a nice chat about her feelings for a fucking werewolf,
and Tara would smile and nod and dispense truly excellent advice.
Shortly before Serena found herself on a one-way trip to the
incinerator, courtesy of her best friend in all the world.
* * * * *
He called himself Commissioner Reddick, but he wasn’t
really. She didn’t even know where he’d gotten the term “commissioner” from,
though once—very early on, when it had still been a little startling to hear
Connor suddenly speak—he’d told her it was from something called
Batman
in that cool, almost sardonic tone of his.
Ever since, she’d wondered why on earth Commissioner Reddick
thought of himself as a superhero made out of bats. He didn’t look like a bat,
and there was nothing super about him, and when he demanded to know why she
hadn’t been seeing to “the big one” she just wanted to stab him in the eye with
a pencil.
“I’ve been busy with other duties,” she squeezed out, and
Reddick’s little round face became even smaller, and rounder. He had eyes like
buttons, and when he got angry they seemed to lose all of their sheen. As
though someone had turned a light out inside him.
“I don’t see any extra duties on your rota, Nurse Kent,” he
said.
And, well, yeah. He had her there. Everyone was pulling
extra time because of the ration bar shortage and the broth shortage and the
general shortage of everything, but she was almost an actual, real nurse. She’d
scored high enough in initial aptitude tests to garner her some proper
training, and once you were properly trained no one wanted you slaving away in
hydroponics or laundry.
They wanted you to one day beat werewolves with lead pipes
and then write the results down in a ledger. She’d already started writing
proper reports about Connor for them, after all. Reports like,
Today I
couldn’t get his dislocated shoulder to go back in the socket
.
“I’ve been helping out in the Class Three ward,” she said.
Which was a complete and total lie. The Class Three ward
made her barf, but luckily Tara was only too happy to take on the mangled limbs
and blood-red sheets. You know. For shits and giggles.
And in exchange she’d taken on Connor, because Connor was
boring and never screamed when people scored him with rusty nails.
“I see. I see. Well, may I just remind you how important the
big one is?” She thought of said big one’s face, so still and lovely. “It’s
been a year and he’s shown no sign of rebellion, no change to a bestial form.
He could be a halfway point.”
How she hated Commissioner Reddick and his ridiculous,
half-baked theories. Everyone knew there were plenty of wolves that didn’t
change all the way. Everyone knew it, and still they battered him and
electrocuted him and hosed him with ice-cold water, as though if they could
only hurt him enough the human race would be proven superior.
“Of course,” she said and nodded.
“So if I hear you’re not visiting him every day, we’ll have
to have another chat.”
She tried not to close her eyes. He thought she was just
shirking duties! God, if only he knew. If only he knew she had a truly
excellent, excellent reason for not visiting Connor every single goddamn day.
She didn’t even want to look him in the eye, for fuck’s
sake.
“You won’t have to have another chat with me, sir,” she
said, and that much was true, at least. It was tough to have to go to him, but
Lord it had been tougher to stay away.
“I’m trusting you, Nurse Kent,” Reddick said, but he was a
fool too.
She couldn’t even trust herself.
* * * * *
When she first walked into the ward, she did her best not to
look at his face. He was staring at her intently, she could tell, but if she
could only keep her eyes on the tray in her two hands or on the clinical green
of the floor or on nothing, nothing at all, everything would be okay.
She was Nurse Kent, professional. He was a blank spot who
needed cleaning and fixing.
Lord, she didn’t know how she was going to get through this.
Even if she managed to pretend he didn’t exist, somehow, at some point she was
going to have to run her hands all over his naked body. And something about
that just seemed desperately unfair.
Who on earth had ever thought of this stupid practice?
Couldn’t they clean themselves, for God’s sake? Well, the ones who no longer
had hands probably couldn’t clean themselves, but as far as she knew Connor
still totally had those two appendages.
Unless they’d taken them on the day she’d been away from
him. Oh God, what if they’d taken his hands or worse, his face, or even worse
than that his gorgeous, amazing—
She breathed out, long and slow. No, no, no—his hands and
face were still there. And his…other thing was still there too. She could see
it beneath the bed sheet, already too thick and probably halfway to hardness
and oh this was all just a mess.
“I thought I’d never see you again,” he said, which just
made it even more of a mess. At least if he’d said something simple and
straightforward like,
Oh, I see my half-hard cock is making you wet again,
she could have pretended there was just a weird sexual current between them.
No deep sadness and sweet longing. No hearts and flowers and
other things that probably didn’t even exist anymore, up there in the world
she’d never seen.
“Don’t be ridiculous. I’m your nurse.”
There. That straightened things out. Now he could see what a
professional she was, and absolutely nothing more.
“Yeah, but last time you did things that most nurses—”
“Let’s talk about something else!” she said, only it came
out way too shrill. It almost sounded like the morning whistle blowing—that’s
how shrill it was.
But it made him quiet. She could hear him shifting on the
bed, but that didn’t really count as noise. Her own tremulous breathing—that
counted as noise. The way her own chest was rising and falling, and her uniform
was chafing against her burning-hot body—that counted as noise.
It sounded loud enough to block out rational thought in her
head.
“Well, I wasn’t going to mention it…” he started, and she
willed him not to finish his sentence, oh how she willed him not to. “But then
I realized how desperately aroused you are and it seemed sort of rude not to.”
She whipped her gaze to his, immediately. Was he messing
with her? Was that the ways things were now? She’d touched him intimately, so
he got to make little barbed comments about her ridiculous horniness while his
eyes fixed on her in some awful, hungry sort of way?
She didn’t think so. Oh no, she didn’t think so.
She snapped around and faced the little table by his bed,
back almost to him. Hands busy with very important nursing kinds of things. And
if her legs were sort of trembling as she did them, well, it didn’t mean
anything. It just meant she’d had a hard, hungry day—because of him—and she had
a tough, annoying task ahead of her—also because of him.
If he didn’t want to do anything to make those problems
better, he could just go screw.
“Serena,” he said, which was almost as bad as the arousal
comment. The urge to spit at him that he shouldn’t call her by her first name
swelled up inside her, large and black and awful, just awful.
But then, if she did he’d never call her by her first name
again. If she snapped at him, he’d probably retreat and then what? They’d go
all the way back to cold silences and empty nothingness, until one day some
doctor would give her a card saying he’d died and she’d been moved to Ward Three.
“Serena, I didn’t mean to offend you,” he said, because he
was too good at this game. He was so good she didn’t even think it was a game.
He’d long since passed the point where he could rip off his man-skin and
surprise her with a claw to the face.