24
NSFWish

    Rocking to the thump of the music and a drink in her hand, Nadine turned her head when someone touched her elbow to get her attention. She then, without thinking, withdrew her arm and recoiled. The man in question took the hint, holding up his hands in surrender and backing away with a rueful expression. He was actually fairly attractive, if not preternaturally so. An honest sort of a face, black hair down to his shoulders.

    What a strange thing for her to have done.


    She caught up to him in the crowd of writhing bodies, caught his arm and tugged so that he'd lean down and bring his ear close to her mouth.


    "Sorry," she said, "I thought you were someone else, for a minute."

    He smiled. "I'm glad I'm not him," he said back, breath tickling her ear. His voice was low and lovely, more handsome than his face.

    "Yeah," she said, "me too. Wanna get a booth?" He nodded, but before he could straighten she ran a hand over his jawline, too intimate but entirely unconcerned. The faintest hint of scruff, the kind that was rough in sensitive places in all the right ways. He smiled again, his eyes dark brown.


    She slid into the seat beside him, and didn't bother with the pretense of keeping any room between them. She ran her hand along his forearm until she could take his hand, turning it over to explore it like she was reading his future. Not soft, but not callused, either; he kept his nails short, but he didn't bite them; he had a scar on his index fingers that looked like a kitchen accident.

    "See anything interesting?" he asked, resting his chin on her shoulder.

    "You are at a crossroads," she said, running her fingertip along a random line. "You have a big choice to make, but you're conflicted. Sometimes you worry that you worry too much."

    "You got all that from my hand?"


    "Nope," she said easily, letting him go to pick up her drink. "That's just always what they say." He kissed the bare skin of her shoulder, and she smiled. "You got a name?"

    "Jake," he said, kissing closer to her neck. "You?"

    "Dean," she said, and she felt him smile against her skin. "What's your favorite bird, Jake?" He chuckled, and so did she.

    "My favorite bird," he repeated thoughtfully. "Is this a trick question?"

    "Nope. Just curious, is all."

    "Hm. Don't really think much about birds. I don't like pigeons, I know that. Peacocks, maybe. Those are cool."


    "Yeah," she agreed, "peacocks are cool."

    "Was that the right answer?" he asked, and she giggled.

    "There is no right answer," she said, tilting to the side for something almost resembling a playful shove, but which was more like settling into him.

    "Is there a wrong answer?" he wondered, draping an arm over her shoulders.


    "Ducks," she said decisively. "Ducks are assholes." He laughed. "Exceptions for mandarin ducks, but definitely not mallards."

    "There are different kinds of duck?" She snorted, taking another sip of her drink. She set it back down with careful deliberation, then reached up to pull him down, press his mouth against hers. He tasted like overpriced craft beers and cinnamon gum, and she traced her fingers over the curve of his ear.

    The club was closing when they walked to his apartment. He walked, and she wrapped her arms around his shoulders and her legs around his waist. Passerby assumed she was drunker than she was, and that was fine. She couldn't walk that far in her heels, and he didn't want her to take them off. Jake worked at a startup and he liked baseball and pro-wrestling, and he collected cigars as a hobby. He didn't mind if she smoked them, even if he didn't.

    He offered her drinks when they got to his place, because he liked being chivalrous. He helped her out of her dress, and he watched with awestruck lust and surprising patience as she smoked a Montecristo on his dining room table in nothing but her heels. Sometimes he kissed her to taste the smoke on her tongue.

    "That's a pretty nasty scar," he said against her mouth, sliding his fingertips along the lines of raised flesh.


    "Adds character," she said, turning her head to wrap red lips around tobacco leaves and suck. She could feel his erection through his jeans.

    "Where'd you get it?" he asked.


    "Guess," she suggested, thick smoke billowing over her face.

    He made an exaggerated show of thoughtfulness, turning his eyes toward the ceiling and twisting his mouth. She unbuckled his belt with her free hand, because it was cute. "Werewolf cunnilingus," he suggested, and she was so surprised she had to throw her head back to laugh, loud and unspeakably pleased. She nearly fell back against the table, but recovered herself enough to sit up and pull him closer, wrapping her legs around him.

    "Yes," she said heatedly, and it was amazing how honest her passion could be when someone made her laugh. "That is exactly what happened," she said, as she reached down his pants to stroke him through thin cotton.

    "You're probably sick of having to explain it," smiling as he bent low to kiss her throat. His hair fell around his face, brushed over her bare skin and made her breath catch and her blood freeze.

    "I should get a sign," she agreed, focusing on gentle hands and split ends and scruff, deep breaths and the smell of cigar smoke.

    "How big of a sign are we talking?" he asked, his voice so human and so male it calmed her heart. She pressed against him, buried her face in his hair to remember it as nice men and nice things.

    "Good point," she said, muffled by his mane. "Maybe a tattoo," she suggested instead.

    "Good idea," he said, and he used the tip of his finger to write the words on her skin like the scars were rule lines. "Werewolf... cunnilingus..." he said as he spelled it out, and she shivered with pleasure even as she laughed. She held the cigar in her teeth like an old action hero, left her hands free to reach into his pockets and find a condom.

    He fucked her on his dining room table, exhaling his name with smoke, his hands on her hips leaving no marks. Again in his bed, and she toyed with his hair, caught it in her fists as she came. And in the twilight on his balcony, gripping the railing, watching the sun rise while he told her she was beautiful. He asked if he could take her picture, and he tried to leave her face out as a courtesy; she insisted that he keep it in, because she wanted him to remember it. She didn't mind if he shared. Why would she?

    She took his phone to take a picture of his face, took another in a mirror of his hands on her breasts. When he went to the bathroom, she recorded a video of her saying filthy things she thought he'd like. He didn't leave for work until the afternoon, and she didn't stay long after. She liked him, so the only thing she took was a baseball jersey.

    The Pacific Northwest was not complete garbage.

    Nadine stared at the coyote.

    The coyote stared back.

    "Don't suppose," she said to the coyote, "that you're a skinwalker or anything."

    The coyote said nothing, and continued to stare. Still laying on her back on the hard ground, Nadine tilted her head forward to look up at the moon instead. It looked a perfect circle in the sky.

    "Didn't think I'd be that lucky," she muttered at the silence. The desert night was cold against her bare scalp.

    Nadine was a difficult child to discipline. It was why her grandmother had sent her away. She hadn't wanted anything so strict as a military academy, and it was ironic that she'd accidentally chosen someplace worse. But even here, she continued to be difficult.

    The pit had been ineffective. Nadine could go a remarkably long time without eating. Isolation didn't bother her when she had spite to keep her company. So now she got the cage. The cage was reserved for the worst of the worst. Nadine spent most of her time in it sleeping. The only real problem was the sunburns.

    "If you want to eat me," she said to the coyote, "you're going to have to get me out of here first. Which, if you can, I'll let you have my leg for free."

    She was very careful about rationing her water. She liked being smug about it when they brought her more before she'd had to ask. Stubborn and spiteful, and she would probably let herself die out there in the desert just to prove a point if it wouldn't have made her grandmother upset.

    None of this was her fault. Nadine was difficult to deal with. She'd done the best she could. Too old to raise a child nothing like her.

    "Is this what you want?" she asked the coyote, holding up her water bottle. She tilted her head back to look at it. Its ears had perked up, watching the water as she shook it. She sighed. "Of course you do." Her voice sounded raw to her own ears. She rolled onto her stomach, tricky in such a small space. "This whole desert," she said, "and you came here." The coyote looked at her. It looked back to her water bottle.

    Grumbling all the while, she unscrewed the lid of her bottle. Cupping one hand, she poured water into it. Slowly, so as not to spill any of it, she wiggled her hand out through the wires the kept her trapped. Lucky for the coyote that her hands were so small. It lapped at the water, licking her palm and her fingers, and she giggled. She tried not to smile, because wild predators did not care for the sight of teeth, and she didn't want to risk her fingers any more than she already was. When it had licked her hand clean, the coyote sat down, seeming to wait.

    "I can't give you any more," she said. "I've already screwed myself, here."

    The coyote whined.

    She scowled, and treated herself to a small and unscheduled sip straight from the bottle. Then she poured more into her hand.

    "Okay," she said as it started to drink again, "fine. Maybe you're not, like, a dude, or whatever. But neither was Lassie, right? So if you can figure out how to call the cops, or something, that would be great. Because I know I haven't been great, or anything." She almost choked, but didn't. "But I'm pretty sure this is still super illegal."

    The coyote licked every bit of moisture from her hand, and she made a face, because its breath was raw and rotting meat and the heat of the sand. "That's it for real this time, okay?"

    The coyote seemed to get the hint this time. It trotted away, and she was almost disappointed. She didn't know why. It probably had fleas. It was probably just waiting for her to die so it could eat her corpse. She wiped her hand on her pants and curled up, watching it disappear into the shadows and over the horizon.

    She missed having hair.