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Lacmere University – Chapter 2: The One with the Chase [6.8k Words]
🕑 Added 2024-03-11 02:05:09 +0000 UTCWarning: this chapter has been ready for a bit, but the commissioner has been too busy to check it, so it's possible that I'll have to edit some stuff after he has the time to go over it with me. If you want to wait to read it until then, I'll perfectly understand. In any case, I hope you enjoy this one at least as much as you enjoyed the first one.
I am in good shape.
I am an athlete.
Yes, I am a nerd. A gigantic nerd. The kind of person who has trouble interacting with his peers because they are all dreadfully boring when compared to whatever book I could be reading rather than making awkward conversation. Not quite a kissless virgin, but near enough. By all rights, I should be the character being shoved into a locker and pitifully asking for reading material to while away the hours until school lets out.
But I am a fencer.
So, at least, I’ve got very strong legs to run the fuck away with from any would-be bullies when I don’t feel stubborn enough to try and fight back.
Tonight, in a deserted, moonlit library, I have just discovered that being chased by an actual werewolf somehow makes me that tad bit faster.
Take that, jocks whose names I never bothered learning; you weren’t even adequate terror-fueled motivation.
So, fueled by adequate terror, despite the jumbled mess of incoherent thoughts rushing through my head, I run.
Book spines blur as I race down the narrow alley made of looming bookshelves, and I hear the muffled sound of a body jumping to the floor below the tables I’m running away from.
The tables where a black shape with glowing amber eyes just stared at me.
It is near. I don’t know how fast it will be when it decides to chase, but… I know dogs. I had a dog.
It won’t be slow.
I reach the space between a bookcase and the next one, and I kick my leg forward, my foot as firmly planted on the broad slabs of grey stone as I can manage, forcing on it an abrupt turn that is murder on my ankle as I all but jump down the perpendicular corridor to my left, hoping to break line of sight.
But it’s a werewolf. It will track me by scent.
What’s the end goal here?
Other than surviving the night?
I can’t get out of the library, out of this cathedral-shaped building with tall doors and windows that let in shafts of silver light that trace stark darkness across the sharp angles falling from the top of tall shelves. I can’t run into open ground and hope to outrun it.
My mind races faster than my body, trying to come up with something, anything, that I can use to lock myself away from the creature, or an object that I can turn into a weapon—
I’m not going to last. I’m sprinting, and canines are endurance hunters.
Like humans. That’s why we pair so well.
I kick myself to my left when I go past the next bookcase, turning in mid-air as I bleed off speed, still rushing but trying to keep my steps quiet, to keep them from echoing all around me, and I take off my jacket.
Woodcut illustrations from the yellowed pages of books that should no longer be a matter of life or death in the current century flash through my head, and I almost snort when the name Capo Ferro comes out unbidden to taunt me with my earlier petty ramblings about a better fencer than I am.
Lucca. A better fencer.
I just hope I’m enough of a swordsman to survive this.
“Brian?” a voice distorted by midnight and distance echoes between the books, making me shiver like the howl did moments ago as the cold sweat dries on my brow, and I slow down my steps a tad more, looking over my shoulder to make sure it isn’t right behind me.
The open space in the middle of this mock temple is ahead of me once more, the tables filling it now devoid of any monsters with glowing eyes, and I step aside when I am at the last intersection before I’ll reach the middle of the library and be exposed to moonlight beams. I take the chance to recover and try to slow down my breath as I rest my back against the solid wood of the side of the bookcase, only to flinch when my drenched shirt sticks to my back.
“Brian,” the voice calls out, but quieter, and I think it’s taking its time, still going down the path I just rushed away from.
My jacket.
Fencing manuals.
Capo Ferro.
Using a cloak with your sword. To entangle an opponent’s weapon, to blind them with it, to hide your attack behind the dangling cloth until it’s too late and your stab reaches them from an unexpected angle.
To shield yourself. If that’s the best you’ve got.
There’s… There’s even a similar thing in Bartitsu, Sherlock Holmes’ martial art. You take your pocket handkerchief out and flip it at your opponent’s face, distracting them during the fraction of a second that you need to sock them in the jaw.
Except I’m not a boxer, nor a martial artist, nor, sadly, Sherlock Holmes.
I am Brian Campbell, son of Julien and Morwenna Campbell. I learned how to wield a saber before most kids learned to write. I am a fencer, a good fencer, and…
And if I survive the night, I’m going to call myself a swordsman without feeling embarrassed by it.
“Brian,” it calls out, the voice softer, as if confused when it turns and gets nearer and nearer, following my scent.
I could drop my jacket, try to distract it with the smell, maybe trace a false trail for it to follow.
I once had a dog.
It wouldn’t work.
I slowly slide to the other side of the bookcase and listen for padded footsteps on bare stone. It’s… I think it’s moving on all fours, and I hear it sniffing, cautiously and meticulously following my scent, getting closer to me.
To the bookcase I’m hiding behind.
I take a slow, steady, silent breath and try to peer past the stacked books to the corridor on the other side of them, and I see it.
Black fur melding with the shadows, spikes of it along its broad shoulders glinting in moonlight when it crosses between bookcases and a shaft of silver delineates the indistinct form crawling on the floor, its thick tail wagging behind it as it gets excited by the game it’s playing with me.
I wait.
One step. Two steps. Three steps.
And then it’s almost right behind me, on the other side of this tall bookcase.
So I push.
I push as hard as I can with legs trained for at least three hours every single day of my life. With legs strong enough to sustain bout after bout fought on a low stance that is murder on the thighs of any newbie. With legs that Dad always told me were as important to a fencer as a quick, precise hand, if not more.
My hands hold on the underside of the shelf running along my lower back.
The bookcase creaks.
And, with a burst of explosive strength, I roar, lifting and pushing until the solid piece of wooden furniture tilts back on its side, the books at the top raining down on the floor, the shape behind me letting out an animalistic yelp of surprise.
I push.
And the entire thing crashes down behind me.
There’s a pained cry, but now I am running. As fast as I can, sprinting toward the nearest table so I can grab the edge of it and jump over it, sliding to the other side and making it teeter when I fall from it, quickly grabbing the damn, stupidly heavy, unbalanced thing and giving it a last heaving pull to force it on its side so it will become a barricade, ready for when the monster bursts out of the pile of books I just buried it in.
Three lamps crash against the floor, green glass shades shattering around me, but none of the shards are long enough to act as a knife, so I turn around and try to break the leg of the nearest chair with a kick and end up hurting my foot.
A lot.
Okay. Okay, it turns out that solid oak furniture is sturdier than in the movies. This is both a good and a bad thing, seeing as I can’t afford to be limping right now, but this is also my new weapon, so it better be sturdy enough to withstand a werewolf’s bite, and—
“Why didja do that for, ya jerk?” a voice buried in books under a diagonally resting bookshelf whines.
I… blink at it.
Which, seeing as I’m not suicidal, doesn’t prevent me from grabbing the chair and resting it on top of the table like I’m holding a pike against a cavalry charge.
“You’re a werewolf chasing me,” I politely inform the monster confused about my reticence when it comes to letting it tear out my throat.
“Well, yeah,” it says. “You ran, so I had to chase. Those are the rules!”
I open my mouth to inform it that I haven’t been made aware of any such rules, but… I did have a dog.
You run. They chase. It’s what dogs do.
And I’m suddenly reminded of a Terry Pratchett book that almost verbatim stated that if werewolves are a cross between humans and wolves… doesn’t that sound precisely like what a dog is?
“Were you… trying to play around?” I ask it.
“Dude, she thinks you’re the only one I can play with. Come on, don’t make this weird,” answers the pile of books.
The pile of books that Roberta is going to murder me for. Assuming, that is, that I’m not speaking to either Roberta or the werewolf who ate Roberta before I got here.
“Roberta?” I ask like I did when I came in through the door. Hoping that a late-night rendezvous in a deserted library was precisely what it sounded like in my head, only to be reminded that things are very rarely what I expect them to be in my head.
Thanks for that frequently repeated lesson, Mom.
“Oh, gosh, don’t. She’ll get mad if you mix us up!”
Fuck.
Slowly, and not just because of the throbbing pain in my kicking foot, I lower the smugly intact chair to the floor and drag it with me when I walk around the table that I was so proud of having just turned into a barricade.
The table with a clearly splintered top, now that, thanks to a certain wannabe action hero, it has fallen on its side.
“You still there?” it asks.
She asks.
Roberta’s likely alter ego asks.
… This is all very confusing, and my only wish is that I will come up with a good way to reframe the whole thing before Mom learns about it and I’m subjected to further cackling.
“Yeah,” I tell it.
“You gonna keep running? I liked you running, but I don’t like it when heavy things fall on top of me,” she says with what seems to be the kind of petulant pout I would never imagine on Roberta’s lips.
… Okay. There’s still a high likelihood that I’m going to get my throat bitten off, but this is ridiculous enough that I feel somewhat safe in assuming that possibility is not significantly higher than if I was talking to a regular girl, even if maybe slightly more literal than usual.
So… I set down the chair and crouch in front of the pile of books.
“Are you a werewolf?” I ask for clarity’s sake.
“I dunno. I think so?”
“Are you… is Roberta there?”
“She’s… I think she’s napping? It’s what I do when she’s out there. I think. Or not. Thinkin’s complicated like this. Don’t like complicated things.”
“Ah,” I say for lack of anything better to say.
“What do ya mean ‘Ah?’ What kind of lazyass answer is ‘Ah?’”
“It means that I didn’t even suspect that magic existed until a few minutes ago, and now I’m talking to somebody who’s likely a werewolf, so it’s not so much a lazy answer as a ‘My brain’s trying very hard not to default to panicked screaming’ answer.”
“Oh. Now I see why Roberta likes you.”
“There are a lot of things I want to argue about that line, but I’m now also trying not to blush in likely unrealistic assumptions, seeing as the last time I fell for that, I ended up shaving five times in a row.”
“Is that why you smell weird?”
I, mortally offended on behalf of the Campbell family line’s proud tradition regarding aftershave choice, glare at the books.
The books rudely ignore me and remain unaffected by my challenging stare.
“I don’t smell weird,” I inform the monster of myth, legend, and trashy horror movies.
“You do! You usually smell all nice-like, and Roberta once stole your fencing jacket for a night just so I could stay locked in sniffing it, but now you smell all like… like leather, and orange peel? It’s weird. Other men smell like it. Don’t like it. I like your smell.”
… Brian, this is your higher consciousness, here to remind you that getting an erection in this situation is not only a very stupid thing to do but also the kind of thing that Mom would point at you and laugh for, like the time you were chased by a wild raccoon who, apparently, wasn’t a fan of Marvel movies.
Also, let me remind you what ended up happening to that raccoon when it came too close to biting your ankles. Yeah. That. Try to keep an erection while thinking about that.
On second thought, don’t. Please, don’t try to keep an erection while thinking about that.
“Huh. Now that’s a smell I like,” the voice cheerfully states.
And then the pile of books rises up before they cascade aside, the rustling pages and creaking spines parting around a shape on all fours with glowing amber eyes, bright white fangs, and…
And there emerges a wild tangle of dark locks, with grey, almost tan-like skin, a collar of bristly fur around her neck and shoulders, pointed ears standing straight up past long hair, and a grin wide enough on black lips that throat-biting has now become another urgent concern.
Again.
“I… Roberta… I…”
“Not Roberta. Call me… I don’t have a name. I’m only she. It, sometimes. I—Bobbi! Call me Bobbi!”
“That’s… like a stripper or a dog—”
“Yes!” she says.
And she leaps over the books in front of her, straight at me, barreling against my chest, laying me down on the cold stone slabs with a girl taller and stronger than I am frantically sniffing my neck.
Sniffing me!
I’m not ready for sniffing! I’m a pure, virginal boy who’s still overly preoccupied with childish delusions of being a swordsman and trying not to consciously realize how utterly terrifying his mother can be! Mercy, Roberta, my heart is too tender for your sniffing!
Hey, I didn’t tell you to stop, did I?
“Good,” she purrs against my neck, which, honestly, would fit much better if she was a catgirl, but the tail I can see lazily wagging over her shoulders is definitely not a feline one, and those ears of hers, the left one flicking in and out of my field of view, are too pointy for a cat yet rounder than a fox’s, so she’s likely—hn.
“What… What are you doing?” I futilely ask the girl—the werewolfslowly crawling down my body, rubbing her dark nose against my chest, her hands moving from the floor to my shoulders, then down my maybe not bulging pecs, and—
“Better. It smells better down here. I want more of your smell, Brian…” she says with a drowsy voice that is finally devoid of any excess of energy, and I do recognize Roberta in there, even if her throat and mouth are different enough that she could pass as an older sister. An older, more voluptuous, sultry sister set on reaching a part of my body that smells more like me than my neck and—
Oh.
“Is… Is that what you want?” I ask, trying to keep my voice steady.
“Mmm!” she wordlessly answers, only briefly looking up at me to show me a broad, wide smile filled with white, sharp teeth before she immediately goes back to the current center of her universe.
And I, looking down at a squirming girl with her hips raised up as she rubs her face all over my balled, sweat-drenched jacket, struggle not to whine.
***
Bobbi is… very much unlike Roberta.
I’ve known her human side for quite a while. The overly ambitious student representative with a perfect attendance record who moonlights as a library assistant, apparently trying to get her hands on as many titles as she can pad her curriculum with.
The always immaculately dressed woman leaning a tad too much (yet still too little) into the strict, hot librarian archetype. The sharp-witted woman who can and will give me sass for every late-return fee. The…
… Okay, my friend.
Roberta’s my friend.
And my head is finally clear enough that I can realize how much of a mess she’s in.
“So! Like, there’s so much I could do, and she still tries to lock me up. She thinks I’m dumb, but she’s—she tried to handcuff me. Thought I wouldn’t know how keys work. How silly’s that?” Bobbi says with more of her energetic, non-stop chatter that I can only distract her from with a jacket that, at this point, likely has as much of her saliva as it does my sweat.
“She thought you wouldn’t know how to use keys?” I ask, still trying to keep a parallel thought process so that I can, you know, processthis.
Which Bobbi doesn’t help me with in the slightest when her energetic, answering nod translates to titanic quakes across her exposed cleavage.
Oh, hadn’t I mentioned this before? See, apparently, Bobbi is both taller and more muscular than Roberta, not to mention curvier. She has the kind of body that women who like to wear bikini chainmail would look up to.
That is: a much bigger body than Roberta’s.
So the frilly white blouse is unbuttoned down to just above her navel, what should be loose fabric pressing tightly down on breasts that are firm enough to quiver yet soft enough to overflow from the strained cups of her exposed black bra.
And she isn’t wearing her skirt.
Something that I assume has to do with both her broad hips, how stretched her black panties digging on her soft flesh look, and the tail enthusiastically wagging behind her as she peppers me with more and more stories about Roberta’s infructuous attempts to keep her wild side under lock and key.
So I’m trying to process the existence of magic, that a friend of mine is a literal monster, if a seemingly friendly one, and that I’m alone, at night, with a barely dressed girl who would put to shame any bikini models I disgracefully spent my puberty with.
Remember when I said that fencing is good at getting you to think on the fly?
I need more fencing!
“It was so silly! Like, listen, she just handcuffed one of my hands and left the key right there. I guess she was afraid she wouldn’t be able to get herself free when she woke up? Dunno. Hey, Brian, why would a girl chain herself to her bed if she was afraid she wouldn’t be able to get away?” she asks with wide, sincere, glowing eyes that hurt my very soul.
Gah! Too pure! The sexy monstergirl is too pure!
“Is it a sex thing?” she asks, with a canine head tilt perfectly complimented by a flick of her left ear.
Gah! Too straightforward! The cute monstergirl is too straightforward!
“Brian?” she asks, tilting her head to the other side fast enough that her ears bobble.
…
I give up.
Mom’s going to cackle at me. I just know it.
“Has… Has Roberta tried to communicate with you? Left you a note or something?” I ask, very deliberately avoiding answering her earlier question.
“Oh! The note!” she says, perking up and sniffing something other than my balled jacket before launching away from me, leaving me to blankly blink at the recently vacated spot where I’m no longer constantly tempted by supernatural cleavage.
And yes, I know, priorities. Boobs shouldn’t even rate under the current circumstances, but, in my defense, they are literallymagic boobs.
Also, I keep reading about how life and death situations cause serious issues with both misattribution of arousal and birth rates, so I can always say that biology is against me, which, really, should come as no surprise whatsoever to any nerd in the world who’s ever been confronted by that sad fact of life—particularly when about to give a presentation to a crowded classroom.
“Here! Here, Brian!” she cheerfully says as she vaults over the table that I’ve been sitting against, the still-standing, overturned testament to my attempt at frantically fleeing from the very monster that I’m now trying not to ogle.
And then she shoves a crumpled piece of paper at me.
“What’s—”
“She left you a note! Dunno why. She was expecting to still be herself when you got here? Anyway, read it, read it!”
I look at the girl crouching while leaning forward, her open hands on the floor, her tail excitedly wagging behind her.
I try not to stare at her.
Honestly, I should be much more weirded out by the ears and tail than by her outrageous outfit. What kind of man focuses so much on things like that when frantically trying to ignore that the world no longer makes sense? When striving to find any and all excuses not to think about what this means regarding not only the existence of werewolves but any other myth and tale through human history that may suddenly turn out to be distressingly real? When trying very, very hard to keep a casual conversation going without offending the woman who should be a murderous, mindless beast?
Yeah, just what kind of man latches onto any hint of normalcy rather than process all at once that the world is a very different place than he ever thought it would be?
Apparently, the kind of man who will politely smile, nod, and pretend to read the note in his hands like he’s not about to freak out, hoping against hope to find a reassuring piece of information that will make reality make sense again.
‘Brian, if you’re reading this, I’m already dead.’
… For fuck’s sake, Roberta!
‘I always wanted to write this—’ Fucking knew it! ‘—it’s the rest of this that I…
‘I don’t even know what to write. I don’t even know whyI’m writing. To clear my head? To manage in a few minutes what I haven’t been able to in months? There’s no need for that. He’ll get here before I transform, I’ll explain things as far as I’m able to, and leave the beast in his hands. He’s… I know he can handle it. I just… His scent. I remember it. The effect it has. I know how it calms the monster and turns it docile. How his aroma makes it focus only on him rather than…
‘Than blood on my hands. Waking up in the middle of a forest, strings of raw meat stuck between my teeth, thinking that I should feel like throwing up rather than so…. Fulfilled. Like I should be exhausted, drained, terrified, rather than better rested than on any moonless night.
‘It’s what scares me most of all. Knowing how I should feel and feeling otherwise. It… It makes it seem like it’s gaining on me. Like every time it takes over, it could leave behind something that is not me. Gradually changing my mind like it abruptly changes my body.
‘I’m scared, Brian. I’m terrified. I am…
‘I need help.
‘There. I wrote it. I finally admitted it outside of my head. I need help. I need somebody who knows. Somebody who knows me and understands what’s going on. Somebody who can tell me that I’m still myself. If I am still myself.
‘And there’s only a smart, dumb boy who fits the bill. Only a single person in the whole world that it… that it will accept.
‘Only you, Brian.
‘And I know I’m harsh. I know I’m annoying. I know I never let you get away with any of the things that would privately amuse me to see you try. I know I am not the girl you’d want to spend your nights with…
‘But I need you.
‘I need you so much. I need you to guard me. I need you to watch over me and help me be myself. I need you to put that brain of yours to work with mine, to trawl through every ancient book in this crazy, impossible library filled with more ancient texts than many museums.
‘I need you to help me find a cure.
‘And I also need you to get here fast. What’s keeping you? Why are you wasting so much time when the moon’s out, and silver light will peek past the windows at any moment? Why are you not here?
‘Why aren’t you by my side, Brian?’
The note, this journal of a single page, ends in an incomprehensible scrawl.
My blood runs cold.
Bobbi’s tail keeps wagging side to side as she smiles at me with pure joy and expectation.
So I throw my balled jacket at her, and she pounces on it, immediately burrowing her nose into the tight folds.
I look at her. At the adorably energetic girl that I’ve gotten to know over the past half an hour. The chattering, bright, unable-to-focus woman who keeps smiling at me in shifting degrees of joy and enthusiasm.
At Bobbi.
And I…
I move away from my seat against the sideways table and crouch by her side, carefully reaching to scratch the collar of midnight fur around her neck, only for the pleasured mumbles coming out of my jacket to intensify as her tail wags that much faster.
Then, as many conflicting voices scream inside my head, I try to keep calm and friendly, distracting a playful werewolf until the moon goes away and I can speak to the cursed woman inside.
***
“You’re sleepy,” Bobbi says, bumping her head against my shoulder hard enough to make the chair under me creak more audibly than when I kicked it.
“How can you tell?” I answer, trying not to show the irritability that only people unused to being awake at four in the morning can understand.
“Well, you keep yawning! Also, you’re only answering me with grunts and nods. And I don’t think you’re listening. Do ya wanna play? I could chase you again, and you could try and trick me, and that would get your blood pumping.”
“Bobbi… I think that if I tried to run from you, I would end up tripping on my face.”
“Oh. Do you want me to suck your cock, then?”
“No, thank—what?!”
“Suck your cock?” she asks with a curious blink, as if I’m too slow on the uptake. “You know, lick you, taste you, get your hard meat down my throat until you’re ready to pound me from behind? You smell like you want it.”
I blink at her. As if I am too slow on the uptake.
“What?”
“I mean, most guys smell like they want to. Like they alwayswant to. But… you…” her nostrils flare, and her pensive expression turns into a dreamy smile. “Your smell makes me want to…” she continues, her tone once more dropping into that incongruous purr before she rubs the side of her face against my chest, her twitching right ear tickling the underside of my excessively shaven chin, her hands on my shoulders trailing down.
“Bo—Bobbi,” I try to say in the harsh tone a dog would react to despite a part of me being very much all right with what’s about to happen—with the thing that is most definitely not going to happen.
“Brian,” she murmurs, her lips furtively sneaking a single caress between the row of buttons of my shirt, her touch in the middle of my chest making my eyes shoot wide open and any sleep fog immediately dissipating.
“Bobbi… I… Roberta wouldn’t—”
“Don’t mix the two of us. She’ll get angry,” she says with a hint of warning as her hands rest on top of my thighs.
And then her face is between my legs, her fingers going around the waistband of my pants, and I—
I win an internal Pyrrhic victory and grab the back of her fur collar.
“Down,” I say. “Bad girl.”
She whines.
Something that quite clearly does not have anything at all to do with the current state of my uncomfortably tight pants.
“Brian… Why won’t ya let me—” I pull on her fur, and she yelps, jerking away from my crotch and looking at me with upturned, sad eyebrows that are entirely too canine for comfort before she drops into a deep squat, and her ears flatten against her hair.
“Is Roberta okay with this?” I ask her with as stern a tone as I can manage with an erection pushing down my pants leg—which I just discovered is a tone surprisingly sterner than any I ever managed before.
“Wha—why does she matter? I want it. Youwant it. Lemme grab your cock and—”
“Sit,” I say with another tug.
She yelps and drops further down, her rotund ass resting on cold flagstones, her hands bent in front of her chest, her head tucked down, and her tail finally still.
“Why are you so mean to me…” she says, her eyes looking away from me and back in what years of finding the contents of my wastebasket strewn across the floor of my room inform me is very likely insincere regret.
“Do you want me to keep you company?” I ask, looking down at her from where I’m seated on a chair so old-fashioned that this scene could easily be roleplay of a very different kind.
“What?”
“Do you want me to be here? With you? When the moon comes out?”
She blinks at me. And her silly, enthusiastic, overly energetic smile comes back.
“Every night?” she asks with a single brush of her tail across the floor.
“Every night,” I confirm with a resolute nod.
“Like, every, every night? Always? For real?” she asks.
And here’s the thing:
Dogs get lonely.
They mourn, whine, and howl when they are left alone. They want us to be around them. They need company.
Because they are, under layers of soft fur and mournful eyebrows, wolves.
And wolves are social animals. They live with their families, hunt together, survive together. Wolves need others around them just to live.
So do we.
And I’m talking to a girl who’s spent her entire, confusing existence by herself.
So she needs… me.
Like Roberta’s desperate, written confession tells me that she does.
“For real. Just as long as you don’t mind me napping from time to time,” I say with a smile that softens as my grip on her collar turns into soft pats.
Her tail moves once again, fast enough that her prominent behind follows the cadence in ways I try not to focus on, and she leans forward to rest her chin on my thigh, still looking up at me and doing her best to entice me into further pats.
I provide them.
And, as she descends into wordless enjoyment of my touch and presence, I try very much not to think about how furious Roberta would be if I dared accept the advances of the girl she shares a body with.
Mostly because the idea of Roberta’s flushed cheeks and narrow eyes is something that isn’t as good of a detractor from lewd behavior as it should be…
***
My throat is sore from too much talking, my wrist is cramped from excessive petting of black hair that is now slightly more orderly than when the night began, and my eyes keep itching.
“You can nap,” Bobbi says with a hint of worry as she turns her head over my chest to look up at me.
We’re cuddling on top of the pile of fallen books, the closest thing to a mattress we could find in the library, and I’m using my irreversibly crumpled jacket as a blanket of sorts for the both of us. I don’t know if she needs it, but…
But she keeps sniffing at it and me, small smiles peeking across her black lips when she does, so I’ll happily provide her with any distraction that doesn’t require conscious engagement on my part.
“I don’t want to leave you alone on our first night,” I finally answer after a noticeable delay.
“Oh. That’s sweet,” she says.
“I try,” I say, lying through my teeth.
“I think I’m gonna nap, though. You don’t mind?” she asks.
“I… by all means?”
“Thanks! Good night, Brian. Let’s play again soon,” she says.
And then her hands push down on my chest, her long, black nails elongated enough to prick me through my shirt, and she’s over me, looking down with glowing amber eyes, her mouth opening as she slowly lowers toward my neck, her head turning sideways as if about to close her sharp fangs on my throat…
And I can only stare.
At the beautiful, cheerful monster. The one keeping me pinned, unable to escape. The one that could kill me oh so very easily now that I’m defenseless, below her, unarmed.
My heart races once again, primed by the same ancestral fear that overtook me when I saw her howling at the cascade of silver light casting her silhouette in stark contrasts. The terror that made me flee and almost erased my thoughts before I got a hold of them.
She draws closer, hot puffs of breath washing over my sensitive, exposed neck as her lips get near enough that I can feel the phantom pressure of her.
That I know it’s impossible for me to run away or push her off. That I’m entirely at her mercy and my life is hers to do with as she pleases.
It’s an irrational, stupid fear. It’s something incongruous with me having spent the past few hours getting to know a girl who will sit on the floor if I tell her to in a harsh enough tone.
But it’s fear.
And it’s not strange that it’s irrational.
“I don’t like that smell on you,” she whispers.
And then she licks me.
Her tongue is broad and warm, flat against my neck, and I shudder, reflexively grabbing her waist as she moves up, both her breasts and tongue rubbing along my body.
“Don’t shave next time,” she says right into my ear.
And then…
Then she shudders.
Her waist shrinks between my hands, the dark gray abandoning her skin in uneven patches as the light dims from her eyes and her ears and fangs retract, the girl on top of me giving me a last, parting, sad smile as her claws stop prickling my chest.
I stare, mesmerized, as the tight shirt falls loosely upon now pale breasts resting on askew cups and wild tangles of hair turn into Roberta’s tamed waves. As her eyes close and a guttural moan pushes past her throat, her head arching back, her hands sliding to my shoulders and falling past them into the books behind me when Roberta’s soft, human body comes down to rest on mine.
“Brian?” she asks after a minute of shared silence that the cathedral-like library makes that much louder.
“Roberta?” I ask just… just to make sure. To know who I’m talking to.
“You were late,” she says.
“This is a very bad time to bring up my list of grievances against the library’s return policies.”
“No, you… You moron,” she says with a bit of her fire finally making it back to her voice. “You were late tonight. I… I tried to wait for you, but… but it—”
“She.”
“What?”
There’s a hint of betrayal in Roberta’s eyes.
But they are far too much like Bobbi’s eyes for me to go back on my word.
“She. I… I’ll help you. But I’ll help both of you,” I say, making a stupid, rushed promise that I don’t know if I can live up to.
The kind of promise that both Mom and Dad would be proud of me for.
“It’s a curse,” she says, her lips set into a thin line.
“She’s magic,” I counter.
Her eyes close, and when she opens them back, there’s still the familiar amber of the woman I’ve grown to know over the past few months, even if I’m tempted to trick myself into thinking that there’s a spark of another amber. A clearer one.
A glowing one.
“I know,” she breathes out.
And then… then Roberta looks down at her open blouse and quite exposed breasts and grimaces in distaste before deciding to rest back against me, looking away so that I can only see the top of a head covered with black hair without canine ears poking through.
“Is it tiring?” I ask. Because there are a lot of things to ask, but I don’t even know where to start, so I may as well try to be considerate.
“Sometimes. Others… it’s like dreaming. Like dreaming of something that is perfectly right in the moment. Until you wake up,” she answers.
“How much do you remember?”
“Like dreaming,” she repeats. “Foggy glimpses. Haphazard cuts of a movie that you were too late for.”
“Ah,” I say. And then I realize that I’m still holding her waist, that I haven’t let go, and… “So, that thing about sucking my cock—”
For some reason that would likely induce plenty of motherly cackling, I don’t get to finish my sentence.
For about the same reason, I have a hand firmly pressed down on my mouth, fiery eyes looking down at me, and a half-naked woman being disturbingly pleasantly angry at me.
“What?” she asks, maybe not entirely cognizant of my enforced mudity.
I try to signal with blinks and eyebrow furrowing my current lack of communication capabilities, only for her eyes to narrow further into angry slits and her to, rather than further inquire, speak again:
“I was going to give you permission to… to rut the beast because I can’t imagine you sticking around for so long without getting something out of the deal, but you just… how dare you do that without my permission. How dare you use my body to—”
My hands go from her waist to her wrists, and I turn us around, Roberta suddenly looking at me with surprised shock from beneath me, amber eyes vulnerable and open, and I speak with all the fury that a rush of adrenaline that has lasted through the entire night has given me.
“I would never take advantage of you. Of anyone. I had to tame an actual werewolf to keep her chaste, and I can’t believe you would think that I—wait, wait, wait, what the Hell do you mean that you were going to give me permission to rut—”
“I—I don’t—I know how she gets with your scent! I just—she’s so—that’s not me! That’s just—can you… I… Brian?”
“Yes?” I answer with a dry throat that has nothing at all to do with Roberta seemingly having had lycanthrope-themed wet dreams about me.
“Why are you hard?”
“… Because I’ve been holding my confused, panicked libido back the entire night, and I’m pinning a barely covered, attractive hot librarian under me on top of a pile of books, and I would be lying if I said I haven’t jerked off to this very scenario a few times.”
“… I’m going to count to ten, and then I’m going to knee you in the groin.”
“Fair enough,” I say.
And then, with a last burst of adrenaline, I push up and away and start running like I did hours earlier.
Yet again, I find myself thinking that nameless jocks were an inadequate motivation.
Really, nothing quite compares to fiery, amber eyes.
