Nico sighed. “You guys are assholes. You know that?”
Francisca and Eliza laughed as we walked across the field toward a house at the end of one of the three streets of the Lorenzo compound. Once we were inside, Eliza immediately opened the fridge and pulled out a bottle of white wine. “Who’s down?” she asked, waving the bottle over her head.
“Me.” Francisca raised a hand.
I nodded. “Absolutely.”
The three of us took seats on the couch, wine glasses in hand, shoes kicked off. It was strange. I’d met the two of them less than fifteen minutes before, and we hadn’t even started our conversation, but I already felt like I’d known them for years.
“Okay, Miss Maddy, what do you want to know?” Eliza asked before taking a large sip of her wine.
“Well, uh, I guess I wanted to know exactly what you guys went through when you did your first shift. What was it like? Any tips for getting over the hump, so to speak?”
“Oh shit,” Francisca murmured. “We could go on for days on that.”
“For real,” Eliza added.
“Is it really that much different from men at that age? Like, isn’t it basically the same?” I felt dumb for even asking the question, but I wanted to know.
Francisca chuckled and leaned forward. “Sweetheart. Think about what you’re saying. When normal human men go through puberty, they grow some hair on their balls, their voices get deep, and then their dicks get bigger and start getting hard at the drop of a hat. Women? Jesus, the boobs, the hair, fucking cramps, blood leaking out of you, and so freaking many hormones. It’s a whole ordeal. Now, imagine that, along with a fucking magical creature living inside you and wanting to come out and change your body. It’s so much more difficult. Girls usually don’t have their first shift until after most boys, simply because so much shit is happening with our bodies that it’s hard to focus on shifting. Boys are usually nine or ten. Girls are ten or eleven, on average.”
I drained my glass and sat it down so Eliza could refill it. “So, tell me what you do to get that first shift out of the way?”
The sisters gave me pointers that were sort of on the same line as Nico’s meditations, but they also went deeper into what to say to the wolf. They had tidbits of wisdom and some funny stories about their own attempts to shift the first few times. We sat and talked for a couple of hours, finishing two bottles of wine. Nico’s cousins were plowing through glass after glass, andI was doing my best to keep up as the conversation went on, but I was getting tipsy.
“Oh shit,” Francisca said, glancing at her sister. “Look at Maddy’s eyes.”
Eliza leaned forward and looked at my face. I had a hard time not giggling at her. “Damn. We’ve literally been sitting here talking about how she hasn’t shifted yet, and we let her get drunk.”
At the back of my drunk and fuzzy mind, I remembered shifters metabolized alcohol ten times faster than humans. It looked like I hadn’t received all the benefits of shifterdom yet. I was buzzed while they still looked fit to drive cross-country.
“Umm, I better get going,” I said, rising unsteadily to my feet. I felt a dizzying rush swoop through my head. “Oh damn.” I put a hand out and balanced myself on the couch.
“Welp, let’s get you home,” Francisca said, standing up and putting her glass on the table.
She walked me home, and as I moved, I realized I was plowed. This wasn’t buzzed. This was way more drunk than I’d been in months. By the time we got to Nico’s place, I wasn't stumbling over myself and hanging on Francisca, but I was still fairly hammered.
“Can you get the rest of the way in, or do you need me to get you inside to a chair or something?”
I patted her shoulder. “No thanks.” I chuckled and leaned in to whisper conspiratorially. “I’m gonna go in here and try to get Nico's pants off. After that, I’ll?—”
“Gross, stop.” She held her hands up and looked like she’d throw up. “Whatever you do, have fun, but I don’t want to hear about my cousin knocking boots.”
I made my way, carefully, up to the front door. I glanced over my shoulder as she left, waving at her before I went inside. I fumbled through, locking the door behind me, and walked into find Nico standing in the kitchen, looking delicious as hell. I did my best sexy saunter toward him, though if I was honest, I probably looked more like a drunk sloth than Jessica Rabbit.
“Well, how did that go?” Nico asked.
Moving close, I ran a finger down his chest. “Good. But not as good as things are about to get.” I blinked hard two times as the room started spinning slightly.
Nico glanced down at my finger as it slipped past his belly and down to slip across his crotch. He smiled. “Is this what I think it is?”
Confusion swirled in my head, and I looked down at my hand. “Uh… it… it is a penis, right?”
Nico burst out laughing and shook his head. “No.”
“It’s not a penis? What the hellam I touching then?” I was so confused, and I had a hard time focusing.
“No, I mean, are you trying to seduce me?”
