He takes in a deep breath, glancing up at the sky again like he’s keeping an eye on the clock, not yet hurried enough to leave, though. I don’t know whether to trust that. He’s always been a leave-the-house-ten-minutes-late kind of person.
He scratches at his chin, keeping an eye on the sky rather than look at me. “The closer we get to the full moon, the harder it is to control ourselves. This is my family’s curse. And for all I know, I’m going as feral as my aunt did. I’ve already hurteveryone by coming back. You shouldn’t come outside in the evening anymore.”
“You never hurt me when we were in the woods—” I start to say, but catch myself. I had sort of assumed the dreams were something more than dreams. Like they were clearly about him, even if I hadn’t recognized him in them at first.
His expression narrows. “What? What are you talking about?”
“Nothing, sorry. Just a dream I had.”
Shawn pushes off the wall, his curiosity moving him. “What dreams?”
“Meeting you out here, finding you in the woods. All those times I’ve seen you in the woods, and we...I-I mean you,” I start to make gestures and immediately abandon them.
He backs away a step, like I’m the dangerous one, or the weirdo who’s willing to fuck any wolf I just met in the woods. Like he’s not literally the wolf.
“You’ve been meeting me in the woods?” I hedge and grimace, mostly to just stop digging my own grave. “Or it’s a dream. I’m pretty sure it was just a dream.”
He looks utterly bewildered. He sort of shakes it off, and I don’t blame him for not wanting to try to make sense of the dreams either. “Look, I just want you to know I’m sorry for everything. This is why I couldn’t tell you where I was. What I was. Why we...”
He trails off, but I know the words he won’t say. Why we can’t be together.
Maybe it was always destined to end. This was why his family wouldn’t hear of him bringing me home. Maybe he always saw telling me as what was always going to be what broke us.
I swallow and push forward, crossing the distance between us to stand. I get closer, and realize, the transformation is already creeping in along his edges.
Already, his teeth look a little sharper. Traces of fur and whisker started slowly peeking through along his jawline, his brow, his arms. I can see the way his fingernails have lengthened and become thick, dark; the way the process bruises his knuckles.
Despite it all, I reach out and carefully touch his face. He closes his eyes and lets out a breath, looking like he’s trying his best not to lean into my touch.
I rake my fingers into his hair, cupping his face. “So, what do we do with the whole wolf thing?”
A glassy glint of vulnerability in his eyes, Shawn asks cautiously, “Do you think...is this something you could put up with?”
“Shawn...” I swallow. Looking in his deep-brown eyes, I see it. The fear that this was something he would have been correct to keep from me. It wasn’t a secret he had kept to hurt me, even if that had been the outcome.
“Maybe we could figure this out. Give it a try,” I offer just as hesitantly, ultimately hedging on what was in my heart.
“Yeah?” He nods, looking painfully hopeful and still uncertain.
My hands already threaded in his hair, I tilt his face towards mine and lean in, pressing a kiss to his mouth.
My forehead touches Shawn’s, and I sigh deeply, the sound almost blending into the chorus of the few September crickets left. My throat feels tight, like at the end of a good long cry.
I brush my tongue over his lower lip, and then against the edge of his teeth. Shawn leans into the kiss and within a few breaths, it becomes deeper, full of teeth dragging against skin, nipping at one another.
A low growl thrums through his chest to mine and makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up. The prick of fear under my skin, the urge to glance at the sky pulls me away, out from the kiss.
Then he moves me bodily, a display of unexpected strength. I let out a little squeak of surprise as he gathers me up in his arms, his grip digging into my ass while he pulls me to him, the fat of my stomach against his bony hips.
And something else. The longer I stay with my body pressed to Shawn’s, kissing him, the more apparent it becomes, digging hard into my stomach. I shift just enough to make space to trace the outline of his hardened cock through his jeans.
“You’re cute,” I tell him, if only to see the way the color rises to his cheeks as he glances away from me. He’s even cuter when he’s bashful.
“If you only knew what you do to me.” He sighs, and I lean my head against his collarbone, listening to his muffled heartbeat.
Tomorrow’s the wedding. There isn’t a whole lot of time to do everything I want with him. I want to bring him back to mycottage and curl up on my couch with him for the evening, even though rationally I know that’s impossible.
He must have a similar thought, because he kisses the top of my head with an air of finality.
