“All I ever wanted was the man I’d heard about.”
“You heard about me...before we met?”
“Hood respects you highly. You didn’t know?”
“Not really.”
“And Giselle said nice things, too. Before, I mean.”
I guessed, “Things Bark told her, probably.”
“Maybe.”
“Amber.”
“What?”
“If you don’t, be honest. I can take it.”
“What?”
“Love me.”
“You’re like a dog with a bone.”
I sniffed. I don’t know why I didn’t get the fact that she was messing with me, teasing me. But I worried all of a sudden. I’d given the bitch power. I’d told her that I loved her. I’d written it down. Someone else could be reading it at the moment. I could have put her in danger doing that.
“Fuck.” I went to get up.
She hung onto me, though. “Where do you think you’re going?”
“I gotta burn that damn book before somebody reads it.”
“Why?”
“Too much...about you, Wolf, Hood, Lobos.”
“Fuck me first.”
I stilled above her. It sort of broke my heart, thinking she couldn’t manage to lie to me, even. Three little words.
They’d seemed so big...before. But they weren’t that much to ask for, were they?
“Fine.” I buried my nose into her shoulder and biting lightly the fleshy part, I pumped into her. I don’t know when my desperate thrusting changed momentum, and my teeth opened to let my tongue out to lick. But I think it was when her hips started gyrating beneath me.
And her lips uttered, over and over again, “Oh, Mark. You know I love you. Don’t you?” A sigh, “You know I do. Right?”
Epilogue
Right after we collapsed in orgasmic relief, Frank came running, huffing, yelling, “The building is under attack.”
He yanked open a locker with weapons and munitions and cranked a backpack over his shoulder, as well as two rifles, and strapped an ammo belt on. By then, we were up and Amber was reaching for her coat, pulling it on. Taking a few pills from her pocket. She shifted, complete, and the smell of cat dissipated from her skin within seconds.
Frank tossed me equipment, and she said, “Me, too.”
I helped her strap things on, showed her where the safety was. Gave her the two minute tutorial.
Chaos reigned above us. We could hear it. Frank told me, “They’re outside the perimeter but they came with armored tanks, Mark. We won’t be able to hold them off long.”
Evacuation lights were spinning in the halls, casting red blinking glows. A buzzer intermittently went off. Frank unlocked the cell next and we took our straight-jacketed prisoner, dragged his dragging feet, carrying him while Amber watched our backs.
She told him, “Pick up your feet, Leo. We’re taking you to safety. If another wolf comes down here and finds out you’re the cause of this, you’re dead.”
He picked up the pace and stopped fighting us then.
We went down several labyrinth style halls until we were on an outer point. We went up several flights of stairs until we popped open a hatch on the roof. Not just any roof. It had a false top. The choppers were filling up fast. The thing opened so we could lift off--just as we climbed in.
“Where to, Boss?” My pilot asked, “Lobos, Pack City?”
“Lobos.” Our one leverage was Leo. We had to get him to safety.
Several helicopters took off about the same time. One was shot down.
Amber said, confidently, “We’ll be safe at Lobos.”
The others in the army transport eyed her as if they doubted her. I said, “She’s right. We knew this might happen...eventually.”
That’s why we were so prepared. Even before Bark’s disappearance, or the capture of Leo Felini, we’d known it was a matter of time before we had to defend ourselves from the bastets--or non-kin humans.
The others turned to look at Leo, then. Noses wrinkled. I heard snarls, saw muzzles growing, claws extending. The sound of bones popping to crinos started.
“Holy shit--we don’t have room as it is. Hold your human forms!” The pilot couldn’t keep her steady with all the movement. A few of my people writhed with the morphing.
“You’ll have to come through me,” I growled, “This man is my trade for Bark. Anybody touches him, they’re dead.”
To my surprise, that stopped it all. They mutated back to human without another word. That is not to say that they didn’t snarl off and on in his direction, or snap their muzzles in and out at him.
He never flinched.
And I knew that he was filing away every single fact he could. I don’t know why, or how, but I knew, without a doubt, that one day I would have to kill him. Even if I got my brother back. But I couldn’t worry about that right then. I had to take charge of the evacuation. To my people, I asked, “Anybody hurt?”
I got a show of hands. Amber hesitated, only a moment, before going between them, administering what first aid she had supplies for in the chopper kit.
To the pilot, I said, “Radio Lobos. Let them know we’re coming.”
The End
Carys Weldon is a great fan of the White Wolf Gaming system, especially shape-shifters. She writes her horrific romance from a haunted hollow in the Missouri Ozarks, not far from Branson.
Carys has won over one hundred awards in the last three to four years. Of most recent note in Romance and Erotica: Third place in the RWA Inner Vixen contest with Confessions of a BBW Cover Model, Mays Reviews Over the Moon Award of Excellence for Chaos, and a second place recently in the Writer's Zone Erotica competition at OCW for The Wet Spot.