Ahmir hesitated, but then he nodded.
“Close your eyes,” Kelly told him. “It’ll help you forget what’s around you.”
Ahmir obeyed.
“Now, just do what feels right, whatever you want,” Kelly said. Another trickle of arousal slid down hot and sweet inside her.
Ahmir pressed the flat of his tongue against her clit, the tip catching against the metal balls on the sides of the hood piercing. Kelly leant back against Malcolm and moaned. It was just a simple action, but the significance of it for Ahmir made it mean more for her as well. On his knees, he clutched his thighs as though he was afraid of what his hands would do if he let them free. But the head of his cock smeared the trail of hair that led from his navel to the base. It must have been torture not to touch himself.
He licked over her clit again then angled his head and laved down the length of her labia to the seeping entrance of her cunt.
Kelly spread her legs to give him better access. Beneath Malcolm’s arm, her nipples tightened and hardened. Her juices smeared over Ahmir’s face, and she smelt his blood racing through the throbbing veins within his angry, rigid erection. His forehead beaded in sweat as his desire reared its long-neglected, weeping head.
As Ahmir dragged her moisture back up to her clit, he took his shaft in hand and wrung the flesh desperately with an expression like he was in pain. He sucked at the small piece of flesh in his mouth, and Kelly whined. Perhaps some women would find the suction too much, too painful, but Malcolm smiled against her neck. He knew what that whine and the bonelessness of her spine against him meant. She clung to Ahmir’s hair and to Malcolm’s arm.
“Faster,” she demanded, pushing Ahmir closer.
He alternated between sharp swipes of his tongue around her clit and hard, open-mouthed, sucking kisses. His hand was a blur over his length.
Finally, his helpless moan vibrated through her entire body. He jerked forward, drawing more of her into his mouth and rubbing his tongue over the flesh until her cunt tightened and let loose its small flood of juices to drip down her thighs. He eagerly suckled her orgasm as long as she held him against her, and he nursed his own climax until he had drained himself dry.
Kelly loosened her grip on Ahmir’s hair, releasing him from his duty to her. He didn’t stop right away. His talented tongue became gentler, softer over her now hypersensitive bundle of nerves, prolonging her pleasure. Then he dipped his head farther between her legs to lap at the musky arousal. Kelly smiled, pleased that he could enjoy giving oral pleasure as much as she did. The crushing guilt would probably hit him like a bale of hay soon after he opened his eyes, but at least for a few minutes, he’d managed to do something that made him feel good.
She was right. As soon as he released his softening cock from his palm, Ahmir couldn’t meet her eyes. He kept his head bowed, wiping his hands against his legs as though that would help get rid of the sign that he had enjoyed something he was certain he shouldn’t have.
“Go,” Kelly said, stroking his head to reassure him.
He couldn’t appreciate it now, but maybe one day he would remember a werewolf witch who didn’t chide him for losing himself in her smell and his pleasure. “Run it off if you have to. Or sleep it off. One of the trailers should have a shower if you need one, although mine isn’t hooked up yet.”
“Thanks,” Ahmir muttered, getting up and retreating from the circle. He didn’t meet anyone’s eyes.
Kelly sighed and shook her head. He would take time.
“I like watching you,” Malcolm said. He kissed the shell of her ear and lightly stroked her abdomen.
“Mutual,” Kelly replied, reaching behind her to wrap her arm behind his neck. The peaks of her breasts thrust out over Malcolm’s arm. He was unable to resist, kissing down her shoulder and lifting up one breast to kiss the proffered nipple.
“Fuck, yes,” Kelly breathed as those teeth went sharp over the firm piece of flesh.
He pulled her nipple out as far as he could then released it, making her breast quiver.
“The others ran for hours,” he whispered, combing through her hair down the length of her spine. “We have all this energy to burn.”
“I can think of a couple of ways…” Kelly said, but she had already started to transform before she could finish speaking. Her limbs ached as they grew, thickened and shifted.
She was soon too ungainly to hold, but Malcolm’s arms weren’t exactly made for the standard human embrace anymore. They both fell to the forest floor. Most of the rest of the pack were content where they were and with whom, but Kelly lowered into a crouch then stretched her back legs and neck. Malcolm grinned at her as only a wolf could. He pounded his front paws to rustle the dead leaves and twigs—everything about his demeanour suggested nothing but play, and she was more than willing.
They darted through the forest. New smells assaulted her, a new home, new territory. There was prey—not the best kind of prey, which would need to avoid and Kelly would have to help Malcolm with when the rest of the pack took one down. But for now, they didn’t want to hunt anything but each other. Together, they wove new paths in the underbrush, running until froth formed at the edges of their mouths. The moon shone on their backs like the sun on a warm day.
They thundered like demigods against the earth, crossing each other’s tracks until they reached the edge of the territory. Kelly veered to the left and Malcolm followed her.
Malcolm leapt into a moonbeam and slid over the dead leaves to spin around and face her. She halted at the edge of the light as though she hadn’t been running at all. They shifted back into human form.
“Show-off,” Malcolm said as soon as his mouth and throat could form words.
She stepped into the light, which turned her golden hair and pale skin silver. Malcolm’s eyes gleamed as she approached him. The heat emanating from their bodies formed a cocoon around them. Malcolm swayed towards her, but he waited, as she wanted him to.
She flexed her knees and jumped up to grab a tree branch. The bark bit into her palms, but that didn’t bother her, nor did it break her grip. She locked her legs around Malcolm’s waist, pulling him against her and settling against his hips. He nuzzled her breasts, the stubble on his jaw a pleasant texture as he rubbed it against the heavy undersides. She released one hand to fist Malcolm’s hair, so much easier to hold than Ahmir’s more closely cropped hair.
“Do you want me?” Kelly asked. She meant it as an invitation, but a touch of insecurity laced the question.
“I’ve wanted you ever since I laid eyes on you and your scent came to me,” Malcolm replied. A purring growl edged his declaration. “I tried as hard as I could to run from you, but you were always the one I came back to.”
Malcolm slid his hands over her buttocks, clenching the muscles firmly as he positioned her. The head of his cock probed at the entrance of her cunt, proving his words.
“I don’t know how I feel about how strongly I want you. Especially since I think I’d beg Grant to bite me again if it meant I could have this last month with you all over again. All of it,” Malcolm murmured against her cheek before pressing a kiss to her neck.
“Oh God,” Kelly moaned, and she lowered herself down over the full, beautiful length of his cock. His words and the run had gone to her head, filling it with mist even as her body seemed to come alive. Malcolm and Kelly groaned in unison as she slid him home.
He buried his face between her breasts and kissed the valley there as she raised herself back up. His sounds were muffled against her chest, but she let the woods hear her—hear the truth in the words she couldn’t say, but she could let him know nevertheless how good he was inside her, around her, in places no one could reach on the physical plane.
“You are beautiful and powerful, and I am yours,” he said. He followed each word with a kiss back up to her lips. That was when she let go of the branch, and he held her by his own strength. They were wrapped in silver light. He tightened his grip under her thighs and snapped his hips, thrusting his cock into her, taking her as she clung to him, their tongues tangling as though she were truly trying to become one with him.
She wanted to sink into his mind like he sank into her body, but she would save that for another night. For now, she was more than content with his rough thrusts, his fingers creating fast-healing bruises on her thighs, and his confession that she guarded precious inside her.
She was the one holding him, but it felt like he rode her instead, with all the strength and speed that his desire granted him. Although wind swirled around them, Malcolm lost none of his balance and endurance. Tears pricked the corners of Kelly’s eyes. Her skin burned hot with a fever of arousal so intense she thought she might burst. She clenched her muscles around him like a vice.
“Malcolm,” she gasped. She did burst, or at least that’s what it felt like. She howled at the moon, soaking in the beams as though drinking power.
Malcolm had no more words, just the never-ending rumble of his growl through her body that matched the rhythm of each penetration. Finally, he followed her over the edge of that cliff, falling to his knees but still managing to stay upright, at least until Kelly stretched her legs out and pulled him down to lie with her on the forest floor.
Underneath her, the earth stirred with the reawakening of spring, the nutrients of the dead infusing the living with the ability to grow, to spread root, to drink in water, to turn the soil, to continue a cycle that had started millions of years before, reusing the same atoms and molecules of the past. That past seeped up into her skin, and the weight of the present settled over her—a warm body and a sweet, open, compliant, but not slavish heart.
“Said the Witch, ‘Let us ride’,” she muttered. “Said the Wolf, ‘Let us run’. So they ran and they rode till the dawn.”
“Hmmm?” Malcolm asked, but he was boneless and content over her, already half asleep.
The poetry had just come to her, as true as any spell. It was not prophecy—it merely stated what they were and nothing more, marking the occasion like a baptism. Her magic crackled with the aftereffects of the pleasure that she and Malcolm had shared.
Kelly couldn’t remember a time she had felt such…peace. At peace with her magic, at peace with her wolf, at peace with a man and at peace with herself. The sun would rise, and she would remember her sins, far greater than anything Ahmir had ever imagined for himself. She would crave flesh and blood, and she would sway Malcolm away from it as well as she could. They would fight. He would doubt himself. She would be at odds with the pack and ever be apart from them in her own way. She didn’t need a prophecy to know that the peace couldn’t last.
But in spite of everything, maybe
they
could.
Epilogue
Kelly sat next to Malcolm, her arm outstretched where the new tattoo gleamed wetly on her wrist. It was comparably simple, just a black pentacle on her left inner wrist, acknowledging in stark ink what she was, for better or worse. But her magic had settled for a while, especially after the stinging of the needle that had left her more than a little buzzed.
She reached across the aisle to hold Malcolm’s hand. Kelly had only needed to push up her sleeve for her tattoo, but Malcolm had had to take his shirt off. She felt so good at that moment that she wished she could climb in his lap and lick him from navel to sternum.
His hand tightened in hers, grinding the bones. Kelly smiled as the blood drained from his face.
“It’s okay, honey,” Kelly said, squeezing him back. “It’ll only hurt a little. I’ve done worse to you, you know.”
Javier, her wonderful tattoo artist and piercer, glanced up with amusement dancing in his dark eyes.
Why does that not surprise me?
he asked himself, loud enough for Kelly to hear it.
Kelly hadn’t yet been able to convince Malcolm to get a tattoo, something he had talked about but always balked at when it came to actually doing it. However, when she’d asked him if he would get a nipple ring for her, he’d gone quiet and the apples of his cheeks had grown rosy. He couldn’t hide from her the way it made his cock twitch. Kelly’s own piercings had been for her own pleasure, and so would this one, because he would be doing it for her, her mark of ownership upon him.
“It’s just that I’ve never been one for holes where they don’t come about naturally,” Malcolm muttered, but he watched Javier with a kind of fascination as he rubbed disinfectant over Malcolm’s right nipple and prepared the curved needle. The titanium ring—different from her small bars—waited on a piece of cloth.
“Just imagine how it’s going to feel,” Kelly murmured low and husky, “when it stings, moving inside you, pulling against the hard flesh, throbbing and…”
“Okay, I get the picture,” Malcolm said. Without his shirt, he could do nothing to hide the bulge in his pants from Javier, who ignored it like the well-inked and pierced gentleman that he was.
Javier was an artist and an expert. He slid the hollow needle through and inserted the ring in a matter of seconds, only enough time for Malcolm to hiss at the sharp pain through his small, tightened nipple.
“There you go,” Javier said, addressing both Malcolm and Kelly, as though he knew that the piercing was as much for her as it was for him. “I’ll leave you two to admire. Pay up front.”
Kelly nodded, and as soon as Javier went behind the counter, she bent over and kissed Malcolm softly, her tongue teasing his lower lip like she was going to tease his new piercing as soon as it healed. And of course, it would heal fast. A little magic would ensure that it would remain in place before and after transformation, like hers.
“Mine,” she whispered against his mouth.
“Yours,” he agreed.
“You were very good,” she said. “I promise, Malcolm, that I’ll swallow down every drop of pain you might feel now.”
“Fuck,” he muttered, shifting in his seat. “You know I have to walk out of here, right?”
Kelly smiled and put her bandage over the tattoo. She technically didn’t need to, but Javier didn’t know that, so she would just wear it until they reached the trailer.