Keep your Errol Flynns, Paul Newmans, Mel Gibsons
all puppets—empty masquerades.
Tom, Dick, and Harry, too
the boy next door
I want no more.
You ask, what now?
Well, love comes with the night,
in the most inexplicable places
leaving the most unexplainable traces.
You see . . . a wolfman is the man for me!
True, hair in the sink is copious,
She grinned at where she’d stopped and, inspired, started writing.
and the house at night tends to be a mess.
But
The ringing phone jarred her. The caller ID said Tawdry, Godiva.
“Well, hi there, girlfriend. Long time no hear from.” Godiva’s voice was smug. “So, has anything new come . . . uh, up recently?”
Candice’s breath came out in a rush. “Shit! You know! How the hell do you know?” Then she gasped, a horrible feeling lodging in her stomach. “Oh, no! Did you do it, Godiva?”
“Do what?”
“Don’t play innocent witch with me. How did you manage it? Magic doesn’t work on me.”
“It might not work on you, but it definitely works on werewolves.”
“You made him want me!” she shrieked, feeling even sicker.
“Certainly not.” Godiva sounded offended. “All I did was to cast a lupine drawing spell right after the last time we talked. If it caught a wolf who didn’t find you attractive, he would have never approached you. Think of it like baiting a hook. If the worm—which was you— wasn’t juicy and tender and appealing to the fish—or in this case, werewolf—he would never taste the bait.”
“Oh.” Candice grinned, feeling so relieved she was weak-kneed.
“Details, please.”
“Let’s just say this worm has been well eaten.”
They both dissolved into giggles.
“And,” Candice said breathlessly, “I’m meeting him again tomorrow. Godiva, baby, he’s quoting poetry to me! Poetry! And he made the stupid fairies make art for me. Can you believe it? He said he wants to worship me like a goddess, and, honey, let me tell you. I definitely can’t get enough of that kind of attention! But it’s more than just how completely sexy he is. He’s smart and funny and totally into me. And, Godiva, I really like him.”
“Sounds fabulous! Who is he?”
“You mean you don’t know?”
“No. I told you—I just baited the hook. I had no idea which wolf would bite.”
“Oh, Godiva, it’s so deliciously naughty. He’s young, and”—she dropped her voice to a whisper—“he’s an ex-student of mine.”
“Oh, my Goddess! How wickedly yummy. Give. Who is he?” Godiva gushed.
“Justin Woods,” she gushed.
“Who?”
“Justin Woods. You know, his family are the werewolves who own Red Riding Hood’s.”
“Oh, Goddess.”
“What? What’s wrong? I know he’s young, but it’s not like he’s still a teenager—which would be totally and completely disgusting—he’s twenty-six. And a half. Practically twenty-seven.”
“Oh, Goddess.”
“Godiva Tawdry, stop saying that and tell me what’s wrong!” Candice was beginning to feel sick again.
“I should have known,” Godiva groaned. “But how could I have known? I didn’t think it would be him.”
“Godiva. Tell me.”
The witch drew a deep breath and then blurted out, “He’s a slut.”
“What?!”
“He’s the most promiscuous werewolf in town—or out of town, for that matter. The pack tramp. Truly a dog in all the worst connotations of the word.”
“Oh, no . . .”
“Oh, yes. I promise you. My Romeo has told me all about him. He’s the pack joke. Thinks he’s some kind of furry Don Juan. He’s always licking coeds and cheerleaders and whatnot.”
“Cheerleaders!”
“I’m so sorry, Candice.”
“And all that stuff he said to me . . .”
“You mean about making a woman orgasm with his mouth?”
Candice gasped in horror.
“Let me guess—he licked your foot and sucked your toes?” Godiva said.
“Yes,” Candice squeaked.
“That’s his move. He does that with all the girls—wolves—whatever.”
“I may puke.” She put her hand to her forehead and closed her eyes. How could she have been so damn gullible? “How about the poetry he quoted and the fairy art? Does he use that on all of his victims, too?”
“I don’t remember hearing about that, but hey, come on! Just forget about it.” Godiva forced perkiness into her voice. “You had a good time, right? A little fling—an unclogging of your pipes.”
“He played me for a fool.” Candice’s voice was quiet and intense. She let her anger build. As long as she was thoroughly pissed she could keep the hurt from blossoming like a black flower inside of her.
“No, he’s just—”
Candice cut her off. “No, Godiva! It wasn’t all fun and games—he made it appear to be more than that. I should have known . . . I should have been smarter, but he’s not going to get away with it. I said I was too old for this kind of shit, and I am. But not because I’m dried up and unattractive. I’m too old to be lied to and manipulated. So tell me the truth. He’s obviously not going on a supply run for his family tonight. I want you to find out from Romeo what he’s really doing.”
“Uh, if I do and I tell you, what are you going to do?”
“Well, my witchy friend, I can sum that up in one word. Retribution.”
He should never have agreed to meet the twins at the full moon party. It didn’t matter that his intentions had been right. He hadn’t told Candice the truth, which had been bothering him ever since the family restaurant supply run lie had blurted from his mouth. He shouldn’t have answered the damn phone, but he’d been feeling so good there with Candice—so right—that when the phone rang he . . .
He what? He’d answered it because he’d wanted to yell from the mountainside that he’d FOUND SOMEONE INCREDIBLE! In retrospect that seemed stupid and immature. And instead of telling the world about Candice, he’d quickly agreed to meet Brittney and Whitney at the party that night. There was little he wouldn’t have agreed to just to get them off the phone before Candice heard their silly female voices on the line and dumped him right then and there.
And actually going to the party hadn’t seemed stupid—not until he’d stepped into the forest and felt the moon’s call on his blood. He’d answered that call automatically, embracing the sweet savage pleasure and heat of sinew and bone changing and re-forming with the power of the beast. He’d meant to show up long enough to tell the twins—and any of the other numerous females he’d pleasured—that he was officially taking himself off the market. He meant to make a clean split with his old life, so that he could begin his new one. Earlier that day he’d even gone online and looked up the Denver Art Institute. Then he’d actually begun a sketch. Just a woman’s eyes. They were green and framed with thick blond lashes and soft laugh lines....
Thinking of Candice, Justin let the moon caress his fur as he raised his muzzle to the sky. Surrounded by young wolves who were breaking off into intimate groups, he howled his passion for Candice into the night.
The full moon was so white against the absolute black of the starless sky that it almost looked silver. Sitting at the edge of the clearing, Candice breathed deeply of the warm night air and waited. It wasn’t long before she heard them approaching through the trees. They weren’t being stealthy—there was no reason for it. They were being young and uninhibited and very, very horny.
Godiva had been right (again). It was easy to tell which of the wolves was Justin. That thick sand-colored pelt was as distinctive as his eyes (and his tongue).
She stood up and stepped into the clearing. Keeping the hand that clutched the collar h
idden behind her back, she cocked her hip and shook out her hair. With a sexy purr in her voice, she called to him.
“Justin, come here, boy!” The big wolf sitting between two blonde bitches who were drooling over him (literally) while he howled at the sky cocked his ears at her. Candice ran her hand suggestively over her body. “I have something special for you that I just couldn’t wait till tomorrow to give you.”
With an enthusiastic woof, he bounded toward her, his all-too-familiar tongue lolling. With one quick movement, she dropped to her knees beside him and slipped the heavy-duty choke collar around his throat.
“Arruff?” he said, staring up at her in confusion.
“Tonight you’re coming with me,” she whispered. When the bitches yapped at her, she grinned over her shoulder at them. “Don’t worry. I’ll give him back to you—but not till I’ve had my way with him.”
He whined and squirmed as she dragged him to the Jeep she’d borrowed from Godiva. No damn way his hairy ass was going to fit in her lovely little Mini—even if she did allow dogs to ride with her, which she definitely didn’t.
“Don’t bother with the whining and big doggie eyes. They’re not going to work,” she told him. “And remember, my magic is nonmagic. You can’t change as long as I’m close to you. But isn’t that convenient? I hear that your favorite position is very close to a woman. Any woman. So get comfortable, fur-face.”
“Thank goodness I caught you before you closed, Doctor.” Candice smiled as she dragged the whining wolf into the veterinary clinic.
“Is there something wrong with your . . .” The vet hesitated, narrowing his eyes at the wolf.
“Dog,” Candice supplied innocently. “Yes, there is something wrong with my dog. I need you to perform emergency surgery.”
“Really? He looks healthy to me.” The vet reached down and ruffled the “dog’s” sandy fur.
Justin whined pitifully.
“You’re a big boy, aren’t you?” the vet said.
“He certainly thinks he is—which explains the emergency. I need you to cut off his . . .” Candice paused, glanced at Justin, then dropped her voice and whispered into the vet’s ear.
“Well, I don’t know. It’s pretty late. I was just closing,” he said.
“Surely you can fit him in. Pretty please, Doc?” She fluttered her lashes at him.
The vet smiled and shrugged. “I suppose I could for my favorite teacher. Go, Fairies!”
“Go, Fairies!” Candice chimed in automatically.
“If you wait here, I’ll take him in the back and be done in no time.”
“No! I mean, I’ll come with you. If I don’t stay close to him he’ll change . . . into something that might surprise you.”
“But you won’t want to watch!”
“Of course not,” she assured him. “I’ll stay in the room, but I have a poem I need to finish, so I’ll be concentrating on that while you take care of his little problems.”
“Suit yourself, teacher,” the vet said. “Bring him back.”
Justin began to growl.
“Doc, I think we need a muzzle.”
Candice settled on a metal folding chair not too far from the operating room table, careful to keep her back to the busy veterinarian and his unwillingly drugged patient. She ignored the tight, sick feeling in her stomach and, while Justin was being prepped, she picked up her pencil and smiled grimly as she finished her poem.
Keep your Errol Flynns, Paul Newmans, Mel Gibsons
all puppets—empty masquerades.
Tom, Dick, and Harry, too
the boy next door
I want no more.
You ask, what now?
Well, love comes with the night,
in the most inexplicable places
leaving the most unexplainable traces.
You see . . . a wolfman is the man for me!
True, hair in the sink is copious,
and the house at night tends to be a mess.
But if that wolfman breaks my heart,
if he thinks that we should part,
I’ll wait until the moon is waxing full
that magic time when his change is soon,
(my love is quite helpless then, as a puppy . . .
baby . . . body in a mortuary)
I’d collar that fur-faced gigolo
and make a timely visit to the Vet.
Ah, well, I’m sure there’ll never be a need.
I haven’t seen a neutered werewolf . . .
Candice glanced up at where the vet obscured her view of the sleeping, spread-eagled Justin.
. . . Yet.
As the vet picked up an evil-looking scalpel, Candice closed her notebook.
“Doc?”
The vet paused, blade hovering above the spread-eagled “dog,” and glanced over his shoulder at her.
“I’m sorry. I know this is going to seem odd, but I’ve changed my mind.”
He frowned at her.
She gave a purposefully silly, girly-girl laugh. “Oopsie, sorry. I guess I just can’t go through with it, no matter how . . . uh, naughty he’s been. I’ll still pay you for the neutering, though. Don’t worry.” She fished her checkbook out of her purse and hastily wrote the vet a check. Then she nodded at the sleeping Justin. “How long will he be out?”
“A couple hours.”
“Perfect. Can you help me lift him into my car?”
Nine
Justin woke up in the ditch not far from the clearing where the party was still in full swing, as evidenced by the randy growls and breathless giggles that drifted on the night air. At first he was totally disoriented. His mouth felt like a bird had shit in it and he had a killer headache. What the hell? He’d gone to the party as a farewell to his old life, and then...
With a terrified yelp, his memory rushed back. Commanding his human form to come to him, he sat up, gasping and reaching between his legs. All there! He was all there.
What had happened? Why had Candice freaked out?
But even before Justin found the neatly folded note she’d left staked to the ground beside him with . . . he shuddered . . . something that looked disturbingly like a scalpel, he knew what had happened. Someone had told her about him. He was fully aware of his bad reputation. He’d never really given a shit. Until now. He opened the piece of notebook paper. The full moon had brightened the sky enough for him to easily read her bold writing.
Girls might think it’s cute or exciting to be with a man who collects lovers like a dog collects fleas. Well, that’s just one of the many differences between girls and women. Gigolo men piss grown women off. I’m a grown woman. The game you played with me pisses me off. I suggest you stick to girls. Next time you may lose more than a few orgy hours. Keep in mind, “Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned, nor hell a fury like a woman scorned.” Ah, to hell with that poetic crap. Basically, I wanted to say, GO FUCK YOURSELF, JUSTIN!
When he returned to wolf form he didn’t notice the sensual stir of his morphing flesh, and he didn’t rush back to the clearing to pair up with an eager young wolf to reassure himself that everything was still in working order. Instead he padded slowly home—the garage apartment his parents pretended to rent to him as part of his salary and benefits at the restaurant, which felt as empty and meaningless as his life had become.
“You should be almost done with that awful poetry class, right?” Godiva asked her friend.
Candice was sitting on her balcony, arm resting against her little table, pad and pencil beside her. She stared out at the forest while she propped the phone against her shoulder and kept doodling on her notebook paper. “Yep. Almost.”
“And that means the whole MFA is almost done, right?”
“Yep. Almost.”
“And snow is almost done falling out of that giant flying rabbit’s ass, right?”
“Yep. Al—” Candice frowned, realizing what Godiva had really said. “Don’t be such a smart-ass.”
“You know
, I hear he’s back in town.”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“So don’t talk—just listen. He’s back in town, but werewolf gossip has it that he’s only here temporarily. Seems he’s just come to collect some of his stuff to take back to his new apartment in Denver.”
“And why should I care?”
Godiva kept talking as if Candice hadn’t spoken. “Word also has it that he’s still not slutting around. No parties. No orgies. No cheerleaders. Not even the slightest hint of a girlfriend, wolf or not.”
“Godiva! I do not give a shit. I haven’t talked to him in weeks.”
“Well, maybe you should!”
“I cannot believe you’re saying that. You’re the one who told me what a slut he was. And I saw it with my own eyes. He lied to me and was fucking every bitch in sight that night.”
“Girlfriend, I told you what Romeo told me—that several werewolves told him that Justin wasn’t doing anyone that night. And, as far as my excellent gossip network—which includes forest fairies, and you know those little shits live for gossip and red meat—can tell, Justin Woods has not been with anyone since the three dates he had with you.”
“Two dates. And one of them wasn’t even official.”
“Whatever. I think you should call him.”
“What! I am not going to call that boy.”
“Oh, give it up. You know very well he’s no boy.”
“Again I say whatever. And he knows my phone number. If he wanted to talk to me, he’d call me.”
“Candice Cox, may I please remind you that the last time you interacted with him you almost had his balls cut off, you dumped him in a ditch, and you left a scary revenge note, complete with a literary quote and a go-fuck-yourself.”
“He lied to me.”
“True, and circumstantial evidence pointed to his definitely being an asswipe. But since then he has behaved respectably, by either man or wolf standards.”