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.
Of course, Jessica knew about the threesome, though Daisy wouldn’t talk about it. She wouldn’t even acknowledge it to Jessica – though she had made the phone call That Night – because then she could trick herself into thinking that Jessica didn’t know. And that, she thought, was better all around. So when Angela nodded – apparently more concerned with her own problems, thank God – and turned her head, Daisy was relieved.
There was no way to explain all of this without sounding completely insane, and Daisy didn’t like the idea of Angela looking at her like she needed a straitjacket. After drinks, Daisy walked home and lay on her bed, thinking about the Wolfish pleasure that she would soon be experiencing. There was still that tugging, that Mother-tugging, that told her not to be a slut, but she pushed it far back into her mind, far back where it couldn’t hurt her anymore, far back where she didn’t have to listen to its patronizing words of non-encouragement.
That night, she dreamed she was in a forest surrounded by darkness. And then out of the darkness, luminous: four great eyes. The eyes moved through the darkness towards her, and she couldn’t move. She was helpless. They moved closer and closer and then two great beasts – one with a tooth hanging around his neck; both with the same white-blue eyes – advanced upon her. She woke before they reached her.
She couldn’t sleep for a long time, and then, finally, when her eyes closed into oblivion, two pairs of white-blue eyes were imprinted upon her vision.
*****
For the rest of the week leading to the full moon Daisy maintained an exterior of cool nonchalance as best she could. She tried to mask her budding excitement under whimsical, pointless comments and everyday chitchat. She had dinner with Jessica – carefully avoiding the topic and redirecting the conversation – went to the cinema with Angela, spent the evenings in her books, or else going to the gym. But always, across the office, there was Dorian, sitting at his desk and smiling up at her every so often.
She hadn’t known that her relationship with Dorian had become gossip until Angela rung her up one day after work sounding breathless and excited: Angela in full-throttle Gossip-Queen mode. “Daisy,” she said. “Everyone at work thinks you and Dorian are going to become an item.”
That phrase… become an item… she hated it. What did it even mean? What were they going to do, coalesce into some inanimate object? You’re being too literary and literal, darling. It means everyone thinks you’re going to shack up and get married and have lots and lots of kids. Daisy tried to keep her voice level when she said: “Why do they think that?”
“It’s not hard to spot,” Angela said. “The looks across the office, the meetings in the hallways, the way you sometimes leave work together. It’s become the Topic of the Week.”
“I’d rather it didn’t,” Daisy muttered.
Daisy ended the call as diplomatically as she could without outright hostility; there was no reason, as far as she could see, why anybody in the office should care. But this was exactly what Mother had been talking about, wasn’t it? This was exactly what she had meant. She paced the apartment (which had become such a habit of hers lately that she would soon have no need of the gym) and pondered the whole messy thing. She needn’t worry about Angela, or anyone at the office. After all, they weren’t her, or Dorian, or Tooth, and so it was of no concern to them—
You’re going in circles, a voice said. It’s none of their business. Just leave it at that.
And so when the night of the full moon came around, Daisy did just that. She got ready for her appointment with the Wolves, dressing in what she thought was a sexy yet classy dress, and taking a taxi to the address written on the scrap of paper. The sun was setting as the taxi weaved through the traffic and pulled up outside of a one-story shack-like building on the outskirts of the city. It was a rough place – the abandoned buildings and graffiti on the walls told her that – and if ever Tooth and Dorian were going to betray her, kill her, or worse, this was it. And yet she felt oddly calm as she paid the driver and advanced upon the front door.
Before she could knock, Dorian pulled the door open and regarded her. Sweat stood on his forehead. From the back of the room, somebody – Tooth, it sounded like – groaned. “Come in,” Dorian said, with what seemed like a great effort at speech.
Daisy walked into the room and Dorian closed the door behind her. The shack was only one room, with a small hallway. The main area was divided into two sections: at the far end there was a cage, in which Tooth sat, his head pressed against the concrete of the unpainted wall; at the end nearest the door there was a clean-looking couch. Daisy allowed herself to be seated by Dorian in the couch and watched as he joined Tooth in the cage.
He locked the cage behind him and then threw the key onto the couch. “You are in control now,” he said, smiling, and then fell back with Tooth.
They both lay there, groaning and writhing. “Is it happening?” Daisy said, feeling exceedingly silly but needing to know for sure. “Is it happening right now?”
“Yes,” Dorian said. “The moon is rising. In about an hour we will have changed.”
“And then?” Daisy said, voice small.
“And then you either leave or open the cage and come to us. It is up to you. I told you: we would not make you do anything unless you wanted to do it.”
Daisy fingered the key – small and cold and full of power – and watched in silence for fifteen minutes as Tooth and Dorian whined in more and more wolf-like tenors. She inspected the bars and decided that they were strong enough to hold a full-grown silverback gorilla. Let’s hope these two Wolves are weaker than a gorilla then, shall we, just in case we want to back the way up, up, out of the door and all the way back to our normal, mundane life.
Another fifteen minutes passed; the capital-T Transformation started.