Chapter 4

So it goes.

I rolled out of bed in my apartment that overlooked the little valley town of Jamesburg. It’s... a funny place, to say the very least.

Green, green, green, as far as the eye can see.

This is a light, woodsy, airy kind of green, nothing like the impenetrable density of a Southern swamp. I don’t think I’ve closed my windows, except for during heat waves since I moved out here.

We’re way out in a stretch of the Appalachians so forgotten that the Tennessee Valley Authority couldn’t find the place on a map to string electric lines.

It’s just as well though, because as it happens, an entire town full of all kinds of shape-shifting creatures, and led by one Erik Danniker, the alpha of all alphas, would probably be quite a thing for modern science to get excited over.

As it stands, no one has any clue we’re here. Not even the IRS bothers to come our way.

Us. I wanted somewhere to belong so badly that after two years, I already think of myself as one of them.

When I first came down here, it took me a good long time, and a whole lot of insistent voices from my GPS yelling about recalculating until I managed. There’s this strange little outpost that straddles the Kentucky, Virginia, and West Virginia borders, and that’s where Jamesburg is.

Duggan Degger, part-time hedgehog and full-time historian, gave me the rundown when I first arrived. Unbeknownst to me, Jamesburg has sent fourteen of her sons – mostly werewolves, but also couple bears – to die in various wars and also had its fair share of moonshiners, bootleggers and country music stars. He insisted that he keeps their identities a secret for privacy’s sake, but promised I’d heard at least two were-panthers on the radio.

The only thing about this place that’s easy for me to understand is that no one who lives here would fit in anywhere else, me included.

I’m an agnostic who grew up with a Baptist uncle, if that gives some kind of clue what sort of slightly tilted worldview I’ve come to embrace.

I’ve tried pretty much everything at one point or another and finally settled on a happy medium where I don’t pretend to know anything about the universe, and I take it that the universe doesn’t have much interest in curvy, funny, and sometimes irritable Isabel Deschaine.

It’s better that way.

For the universe, at least.

In Ohio I woke up every morning and wished I was somewhere else. Mornings in Jamesburg are a time for me to be glad I’m where I am.

Where I fit in, where I belong.

With a whole bunch of shapeshifters.

Yeah.

Like I said, it’s a funny place – a funny life. But that’s what it is, and I wouldn’t trade it for the world.

My phone buzzed against the coffee table where I habitually left it, as I stood at the open window drinking my morning joe and listening to the birds. Vaguely, I wondered if any of them were people I knew moonlighting as nightingales. The rhythmic buzz and rattle of smartphone on glass took me out of my little fantasy and back to reality.

“Oh hey, look who it is,” I almost cooed into the phone. Erik does awful things to me that I’d never, ever do otherwise. Cooing into the phone, for one. I didn’t even baby-talk my corgi. “You’re up early.”

I looked over at the clock, which read half past nine. Good thing about working for a werewolf is that you’re never expected to show up very early.

“Huh?” Erik said back. He never got my jokes if it was before noon. “I was just testing this new cell tower. Don’t ask how, but we got someone to come in and lay a bunch of cable for the town. Part of the deal – the part I’ll talk about – is that they did it in exchange for a cell coverage monopoly.” I couldn’t help but laugh. “Isn’t that against the law? Won’t Teddy

Roosevelt or someone come barging in and bust it up?”

“No,” Erik said, very seriously. “Teddy Roosevelt was a big game hunter, you know. Last time he came through here things didn’t go so well.”

He managed to keep the act up for all of four seconds before he cracked up.

“Anyway,” I finally said, trilling slightly as the dying ember of Erik’s round laugh vibrated in my belly. “What are you doing up so early? Don’t tell me there’s another day of court you have to deal with?”

“Nah,” he said. “The restless natives are, for now, quelled. Most of them are, anyway. I expect that guy I clocked with the lectern will try to fight me or some idiot thing like that, but no, no court.”

“Well what is it then? You’re not going to seriously make me play a guessing game, are you? You’re the one who called me, Erik.”

“Oh, she’s using my name,” he said. His voice was full of naughtiness that got me clenching all over again. Every time he talked it seemed like I wanted him more, if it was even possible for me to want him more. “And being feisty. I love it when you get feisty, Izzy.”

Oh my God, he was growling. The little snarl in the back of his throat had me just about burning for him. “This is so unfair,” I said. “You’re just calling me to taunt me, aren’t you? You want to get me all worked up and then tease me all day while you make me sit around taking notes at some town council meeting, don't you?”

It wouldn’t be the first time. Or the second, or the third. Come to think of it, that was one of his favorite hobbies.

“Well...”

“Oh, no,” I groaned. “No, no, no, last time you did that I almost made a total idiot of myself in front of the whole town.”

“Get serious, Izzy. They only broadcast those meetings on public access channels. No one ever watches them.”

He didn’t answer me. Whenever I guessed right, he didn’t answer me.

“That’s exactly what you’re doing, isn’t it?” I asked again. “Why do you do this to me? It’s like you know I can’t do anything about it, and you get off on tormenting me. Wait, that’s exactly it, isn’t it?”

He didn’t say anything for a moment, then he took a swallow of something. “Sorry,” he said with a cough. “Got distracted for a second. I was thinking about you, with that long, curly black hair running down your curvy body. I was thinking about your—”

“Oh my God stop it,” I said. “You’re not allowed to do this. You don’t get to—”

“Thinking about running my hands down your sides and kissing the back of your neck where your hair falls on either side. Then I’d go down your back, kissing every single bone. As soon as I got down to your perfect ass, I’d flip you over and bury my face between your legs.”

“Okay,” I whispered. “You’ve got my attention. But I’ll tell you right now that if you keep on like this I’m gonna—”

“Scream when I twist my tongue inside you? I want to tie your legs together, make you stay absolutely still while I taste you, lick you, drink you.” Erik’s voice dropped an octave and started to get huskier. I called it his sex voice. “You’d like that, huh? When I had you just about ready to scream, I’d kiss all the way back up your stomach, suck your lip between my teeth and let you taste yourself on my tongue.”

“You’re gonna make me do something I haven’t done since I was a teenager,” I said.

“Yeah?” Erik was breathing hard. “Do it, stick those fingers in. Pretend they’re me, Izzy. Hurry up, do it before you burst.”

With a whimper, and then a groan, I cupped two fingers around the swell of my body, and slipped them inside. I was already so wet just from his talking and my imagination that they went straight in, smooth as anything.

“Oh God,” I whispered. “How do you do this to me? How do you—”

“Do it harder,” Erik said. His voice was hard, tight, and made me reel.

“Curl those fingers, drag them down that sweetness.”

“Oh... okay,” I said. “Oh my God that feels good, why can’t you be here? I need you so bad.”

“Lay back on your couch,” he said. “Take off those little pink shorts you always sleep in and pull your knees up. Get deep.”

Feeling slightly silly, but so into it I was about to send myself over the edge, I did just what Erik said. The couch springs squeaked a little as I shifted, and then more when I started to writhe. “So good,” I moaned. “How are you doing this? You’re...” A surprisingly loud groan that came rumbling out of me cut off my talking. “So good, so, so good.”

I could hardly keep my head up or my eyes open. Turning my fingers deep and hard had me lulled almost dumb.

One instant, I had a vague notion that my doorknob was turning. The next, Erik was inside my apartment, stripping off his clothes as he approached.

“How did you...?”

“Shh,” he said, putting a finger to my lips and kissing down my throat. Erik grabbed my hips and pulled me further down the couch so he could kiss me all the way down and not interrupt my finger work. “Keep going,” he urged. “Keep on with those fingers.”

Matching my pace, he slid his tongue down one side of me and up the other then settled on my clit with slow, patient circles. “Harder,” he said, taking his mouth away from me for a second. “Do it harder, Izzy.”

I let my head thump backwards on the couch cushion, and was semicognizant of Erik saying, “Just like that, perfect,” before I lost myself in a crazy swirl of pleasure that radiated out from my center.

Rolling my head back and forth on the couch, I ran the fingers on my free hand through Erik’s wavy, shoulder length, shaggy hair and then along his jaw. The small, slightly sharp stubble of his beard bit into my fingertips.

He sucked a long kiss on my sweetest parts and then grabbed my wrist, yanking my fingers out. I squealed a little gasp that was immediately quieted when Erik closed his whole mouth around me, gliding his tongue up and down my length.

Erik groaned, his voice vibrating through me. “God you taste so good, Izzy. You’ve got me so hard I can barely contain keep myself under control.”

“Then don’t,” I said, kneading his huge shoulders and tilting my hips to let him kiss and caress every inch of me.