Laura's Wolf (Werewolf Marines) (45 page)

“Don’t let go of my hand,” Roy said softly. “I want to keep the music playing.”

“I won’t.”

His right hand tightened around hers as his left hand unhurriedly caressed her breasts, then again returned to her belly. But this time, when he stroked downward, he unbuttoned her jeans, fumbling a little one-handed, and then unzipped them. He reached into her panties and began to rub her, slowly working his way inward. Heat pulsed through Laura’s entire body, and ripples of pleasure ran up and down her spine.

She had no attention to spare for the music and couldn’t imagine how Roy did. It was all she could do to hold on to the pack sense and hold him in it. If he hadn’t been doing some of that work himself, she wouldn’t have been able to keep the connection.

His warm finger, rubbing and stroking, getting her more and more wet, making her tremble and gasp. Another finger sliding into her, caressing her from the inside. Roy’s feelings and sensations, which Laura perceived as vividly as if they were her own: touching her slippery heat, feeling the pulse of her inner walls, his own building desire, his overwhelming delight in the music and her soft curves against his body and his ability to please her, his anticipation of feeling her come against his hand…

Laura hated to stop him, but… “Roy?”

“Yeah?” The pad of his finger, circling and rubbing, teasing unbearably…

She had to concentrate hard to speak. “We’re still in the pack sense. If you make me come now, you will too.”

The circling stopped. “Oh.” He glanced down at his jeans, then laughed. “Right. Talk about revisiting high school!”

Laura giggled. “Did you ever actually…?”

Roy took his hand out of her pants and placed hers on his side, under his shirt. “Keep your hand there.”

As he released her other hand and lifted off her blouse, then her bra, Laura said, “Well, did you?”

Roy tossed her clothes to a chair and kissed her, very thoroughly. She was so caught up in frustrated desire that her head was spinning. But not so much so that she couldn’t tease him. He was so charmingly teasable.

“I haven’t forgotten,” Laura said sweetly, when he came up for air. “I want to hear your embarrassing, sexy high school story.”

Roy pulled off his shirt and sent it to join hers. “Only if you tell me one of yours.”

“I had sex exactly once in high school, with a guy named Jackson who thought my name was Angela. It wasn’t embarrassing but it wasn’t very sexy either. I’d sum it up as Part I: Ouch. Part II: Is That It?”

Roy gave her a rueful smile. “Yeah, I gather that’s how it goes for a lot of women. The guy equivalent is Part I: Holy Shit, This Is Really Happening. Part II: That Was Fast.”

Laura traced the line of black hair that divided Roy’s belly, vanishing into his jeans. When she hit his waistband, she eased her fingers under it, moving downward. “I’m waiting.”

“Funny you should do that now,” Roy said, his breath catching. “Okay, here’s the story. My girlfriend and I were fooling around in a parked car. I was in the driver’s seat. She was in the passenger seat. I put my hand down her pants. She put her hand down my pants.”

Laura giggled, reaching further down. “I see where this is going.”

“Uh…” Roy seemed to be having trouble concentrating. Also trouble breathing. His words came out faster and faster, as if he was trying to cram as many as possible into each increasingly short breath. “And we weren’t very experienced, so neither of us realized that I had a shorter fuse than she did till it was too late. I was embarrassed and she thought it was hilarious. I dropped her off, and then I had a very uncomfortable drive back home. And I’ve got way more endurance now but you’re making me crazy, Laura, I don’t know how much more I can take.”

“Now you know how I felt.” She gave him another stroke, feeling his surge of excitement and the resultant shudder of his body, then released him, moving her hand up to the hollow above his hip. “Back up and sit down on the sofa.”

He obeyed, Laura moving with him to maintain skin-to-skin contact. Roy’s legs hit the sofa, and he sat down as heavily as if his knees had gone weak.

“Hold on to my shoulders,” Laura said.

Roy grabbed them, his fingers alternately tensing and relaxing. Laura kicked off her shoes, then stripped out of her jeans and panties. Then she knelt and looked up at him from the floor.

“How’s the view?” she asked.

The black of his pupils had nearly swallowed the gray. His fingers clenched on her shoulders. “You’re incredibly fucking hot from any angle. But yeah. That’s a good one. Feel free to kneel naked at my feet at any time.”

“Same to you,” Laura said, tugging off his boots.

Roy closed his eyes as she took off his jeans and boxers, his lashes long and black against his flushed face. He held absolutely motionless once she had stripped him, not even breathing. He could have been a statue from some other time, the figure of an ancient warrior. His perfectly proportioned body, defined musculature, and handsome face made him magnificent; his scars made him human. The sculptor might have carved them in as a reminder that unlike the statue, its model lived and changed and would some day die.

Laura’s heart swelled with tenderness and the anticipation of loss. No matter how many times she saved him, Roy wouldn’t live forever. More than the fear of betrayal or abandonment, it was the certain knowledge of death that made love so terrifying.

Roy breathed and moved, scooping Laura up without ever letting his hands leave her body. They lay together on the sofa, pressed in close, side by side. Roy was hard as steel against her thighs. All the interruptions hadn’t quenched their desire, but only made it burn hotter; she could feel his as well as her own.

He was alive now, and so was she. If loving Roy meant living in the clear bright place that you could only reach by walking through fear, then she would live there with him.

They kissed passionately, their emotions and sensations echoing back and forth until Laura could barely tell which of them was feeling what. She only came back to her own body when she felt Roy lean over, grab a condom from his pocket, and roll it on; she was so deep in the pack sense that she caught an echo of his sensations when he did it, and that felt strange enough that she was pushed farther back into herself and out of him.

“Ready?” Roy asked, his velvety voice no louder than a murmur.

“God, yes.”

There was barely enough room on the sofa for both of them to lie on it side by side, let alone maneuver. If Roy hadn’t had an arm clasped tight around her, she’d have fallen off. Then she was on her back and he was on top of her, kissing her. He kept his weight off her, propping himself on his elbows, but held her hand tight.

“I love you,” he said, and she felt his love as well as heard his words.

Then he entered her, and her reply was lost in her gasp. He slid in easily, deeply, burying himself all the way inside her with his first thrust. Laura stiffened with the rush of pleasure and the anticipation of fulfillment at last.

“I love you too,” she said, and knew that Roy could feel her honesty.

Then they were kissing again, and there was an end to words. He moved in her, pulling her with him on his journey into ecstasy. His eyes fell closed but she kept hers open. She loved to watch his face change as every bit of tension and weariness ebbed away, leaving nothing but anticipation and joy. Laura let him carry her until she too lost herself, and his climax took them both in a burst of brilliant, blinding light.

Roy lifted Laura, then re-settled her on top of him. That task done, he lay utterly relaxed beneath her. One arm dangled carelessly off the sofa, his palm upturned and open on the floor. The radio was still playing, though Laura hadn’t paid any attention to it since Roy had put his hand down her jeans. It was halfway through “In My Life.”

She watched Roy resting in the afterglow, more peaceful than he was in sleep. He’d had a terrible nightmare after DJ had left, and had been so sick afterward that he’d actually asked her to call Keisha. She’d given him shots for nausea and pain and anxiety, which had helped, and Russell had come over and curled up at his feet as a big black wolf, which might have helped more. But though a month had passed and he hadn’t had any nightmares since, she could still perceive a fragility in him.

They were so closely intertwined in the pack sense that she could glimpse the web of deep, interconnected cracks in his psyche, like a stone wall weakened by an earthquake. One tap with a hammer in exactly the right place, and the entire structure would collapse. But that metaphor wasn’t quite correct: you couldn’t rebuild a crumbled wall overnight, but Roy did regularly put himself back together and go on.

She wondered if he could see the cracks in her.

Laura had never looked that closely into the pack sense with anyone but Roy, and she’d never gone so deep with him before. But she suspected that the rest of the pack had cracks too. Maybe everyone did: some lucky people with only a few shallow scratches, and others, far worse off than her and Roy, whose walls were never rebuilt at all.

When the song ended and the DJ once again reminded them that it was Valentine Week at KDJK, ‘The Hawk,’ Roy opened his eyes. They widened, startled, and she felt a shift in the pack sense.

Before she could move to keep her hand on him, he lifted her, put her back on the sofa, and stood up, staying in the pack sense but breaking off their physical contact. Even without skin-to-skin contact, Roy felt steadier, more in control.

He held up his palms to her, open and empty. “Look. No hands.”

“How…?” Laura gasped.

Roy’s smile quivered on his lips, as if he could hardly believe it himself. “Same as before. Practice.”

After they showered, they began experimenting. Laura’s ability with the pack sense had also strengthened with time and practice. Between that and Roy’s new level of control, it didn’t bother him to have the radio on so long as she was somewhere in the house, though it started to give him a headache if she went farther away than the garage. She didn’t even have to focus on the pack sense to allow him to listen, but merely had to be in the vicinity.

Delighted with his newfound freedom and the chance to listen to music. Roy kept the radio on all day, listening to everything from classic rock to hip hop to country. He only turned it off, somewhat reluctantly, when they went to bed.

***

The next morning, the radio went on again as soon as Laura woke up, tuned to a station playing Spanish songs; Roy told her it was Tejano music.

Later in the day, she walked into the living room and found him listening intently to a news report on advances in battlefield medicine. The veteran being interviewed was describing how her prosthetic hand could do anything but snap its fingers.

“Are you sure you want to listen to that?” Laura asked.

“Yes,” Roy said.

The host introduced a surgeon who began to describe the third degree burns that had forced him to amputate the veteran’s hand.

“That sounds a lot like what happened to DJ,” Laura said.

“It’s similar, yeah.” Roy cupped his hand around his ear, leaning closer in to the radio.

Laura could see she wasn’t going to convince him, but she couldn’t help making one last try. “This can’t be good for you. Why don’t you turn it to a music station?”

Roy looked up, his eyebrows pulled together with annoyance. “Because I want to know about this. Drop it, Laura. I’m missing the story.”

Laura walked out, realizing as she did that if she went far enough, Roy would be forced to stop listening. For a brief, angry moment, she was tempted. Instead, she went into the bedroom, closed the door, opened her laptop, and emailed Keisha.

To Laura’s relief, Keisha was not on shift at the ER, and responded within minutes:
That sounds frustrating and I agree that the show is liable to be a trigger. But Roy gaining some control over his power is a huge step forward. Please ask him if I can do some experiments with him and you tomorrow after the pack comes over for breakfast.

Goals: to set a baseline for your current joint ability to regulate his power, so we can measure how/if/how much it changes over time, and to see what conditions affect it. Also, to see if he can now watch TV. If he can, maybe you could get Miguel to disable the news channels. (Joke.)

PS. I have attached an article that you might find interesting and/or helpful.

Laura opened the article, “A Longitudinal Study of the Outcomes of Cognitive Processing Therapy vs. Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder in Male Veterans.” Given the source and the title, she was unsurprised to find it completely incomprehensible.

PPS
, Keisha added,
Speaking of therapy, Roy’s not the only one of us who could use some. However, there is the obvious difficulty of determining which therapists could be trusted with crucial werewolf-related information, even given their ethical obligation of confidentiality. I know you have no medical or psychological expertise. However, you are our alpha and so an expert on our pack. Any ideas?

PPPS. Want to see a movie with Nicolette and me tomorrow night? Girls only. We will have cocktails afterward and discuss girl things. If the guys want to get together separately and howl at the moon, they are welcome to do so.

Laura’s frustration dissolved into amusement as she tried to imagine what Nicolette and Keisha thought of as “girl things.” It was probably 50-50 between nail polish and biological warfare.

Laura wrote,
Thanks for the article and the sympathy. Also the movie invite. I will definitely be there, and I think we should have at least one pink cocktail. I’ll ask Roy if he wants to go howling with Russell and Miguel. I’ll also ask him about the experiments, but I’m sure he’ll say yes. He’s been eyeing the TV hopefully lately.

Sorry, I can’t make heads or tails of the article. Do you mind translating it into English?

Regarding therapy for the pack, I have two thoughts. One is to consult the Torres family. They might know of a werewolf or werewolf-friendly therapist in Northern California, or be able to ask around for one. The other is this: do we even need a therapist? What if we got together as a pack once a week and talked about what happened, how we felt about it, how we’re doing now, etc.? Roy and Nicolette won’t want to do it but we could peer pressure them.