Page 106 of Smut Lovers
He waits, his breath coming in rough, uneven heaves.
He tries to give her this moment, to not jump in and take control—not yet.
He waits for his slick little fox to snap back at the man, to bite his head off like he’s seen her do so many other times to men like him at work, but the words don’t come.
He waits, but the smell of her fear only grows. It drives him mad, this smell. This rotten, festering smell that clouds his lungs. It makes it hard to breathe. He can see the effort as his breath blooms in front of him.
The man stands tall, blonde hair buzzed short, blue eyes just a little too yellow to be healthy. He smells like liquor and venom; bitter camphor that burns the backs of Derrick’s eyes swirls in his throat.
Even without the boots, the man’s steps are heavy, thudding, and loud against the bare plywood flooring of Georgie’s old trailer.
He knows it’s hers because he’s found the property tax receipt, freshly paid in her name for the next year, stuck on the fridge with a star-shaped magnet, an absurdly low amount next to the ten-acre count.
The dead man’s hands are on her now.
He soothes himself with the knowledge they won’t be attached to his form for much longer as he drops from the railing.
He could go through the front—he hadn’t heard her lock up, not that it would have stopped him much, but he prefers the idea of cutting him off from the back.
The trailer is settled onto a hill, half of it on stilts. He’s seen it a few times out here. Florida doesn’t have mountains or valleys the way the rest of the country does. It has hills, though they’re small in comparison; the bathroom window is about 10 feet off the ground.
It’s nothing for him, human or wolf, but he imagines that its height is why Georgie doesn’t worry about whether or not it’s always open.
He pulls at the back of his shirt, ripping it from his shoulders and throwing it to the ground.
Unbuckles the belt at his hips and shucks the jeans off his thighs, his pager clinging to his pocket in a heap.
All it takes is a leap.
He reaches up, gripping the sill, and swings his leg up into the trailer window.
He’s more like a cat than a wolf then, the way he squeezes his shoulders together and slips inside the little window the rest of the way.
It’s barely big enough to take him, but he makes it work, his feet hitting the laminate flooring.
The change starts the minute he’s inside.
Start small.
It starts with his legs shaking as he settles himself in the corner of the bathroom. His knees give out, thudding on the dingy checkered pattern. His hands flex in front of him. He can see part of the room, but he knows she won’t be able to see him. Not until he wants her to.
His muscles burn against the muggy night air.
Sweat drips off of his temples and follows the line of his jaw as it distends, warps. His skin stretches, rippling with the shifting of muscle and bone as it becomes something else. Something better.
Sometimes Derrick thinks his wolf form is his truest form. The realest parts of him. Some wolves hate the pain, hate themselves, and the change.
But not Derrick.
No, his face tears as his back shrinks, and Derrick groans softly at the feel of his bones transforming into something shorter, sleeker, more alive, and filled with more power than even his human body is capable of.
Blood drips onto the floor. Slowly at first until it’s pooling in the corner, all the way out the bathroom door.
His body is ripping itself apart to accommodate the beast in his belly.
It flips him inside out until he’s nothing but a mass of muscle and bone on the ground. It’s close enough to the full moon; the change doesn’ take long.
He shakes his fur out, a sniffle of blood caught in his snout. Huffs, his head spinning.
He can smell her. Taste her. His mouth waters at the taste of the air that’s touched her skin. If he closes his eyes, he can see her movements, tracking them as if he’s watching the ghost of her move through the very room he’s in.
He feels closer to her like this. There’s a tie between the two of them that he can feel as a human but can only see with his wolf eyes.
It’s thin, a small golden string that glitters a flickering trail across the room, out the bedroom door.
It becomes stronger now he’s in his fur. More pulled together.
He watches it like fireflies in the dark, burning brighter the longer he stares.
He hears shouting. There’s noise and commotion that filters through his wolf ears sharply, disorientingly loud, but he eats at the chaos in the air and breathes it in with the satisfaction that he’s going to eat that son of a bitch.
And that, more than anything, would rip away any hate he held in his heart for his wolven form if he’d had it, but Derrick loves being a wolf. He thought he loved it more than anything, but he knows it’ll take a back seat to Georgie. Second place ain’t bad though. Ain’t bad at all.
He sighs, licking at his paw, enjoying the tang of blood between his claws.