Page 110 of Smut Lovers
? S I X ?
Flesh Between His Teeth
Georgie
G eorgie knows she’s not an athlete.
She learned that in second grade when she’d torn ligaments in her fingers because she’d fallen during dodgeball.
Again when she’d given herself a concussion in middle school after running into a pole.
There are countless times she can point to throughout her childhood and early teen years until she gave up the idea altogether.
No, Georgie isn't an athlete, but she pushes herself harder and faster than she ever has in her life because her dead mother told her to. Because she can sense the precipice of something bigger waiting for her if she gets caught.
That's the scariest part of all.
Georgie can't rationalize it, but she knows she wants to.
Everything in the universe wants her to.
Brambles hit her knees, the small little vines that try to cling to her ankles.
They try to slow her pace, to keep her contained, to keep her from moving.
They slice little hairline slits into her skin that she knows will leave burning scabs that stick on her leg hairs for weeks because the smallest cuts are always the most lasting.
Isn’t that how it always starts?
Evan started like that.
He started with small things, until those small things piled up into big things, and the things became so big she was willing to kill him to keep them from happening again.
Evan made her feel small, disposable. A caged animal with nowhere to run.
She’s dizzy, all the blood from her head rushing to her thighs, pumping in her calves. Her pulse thunders against the delicate skin of her ankles, in her wrists, the drum in her ears, the only delicate parts of her.
The air smells like moss. Wet leaves. Crumbling bark.
It smells like the time right before winter. Florida still won’t grow cold for months. The leaves are still green. They’re still fresh. Even in what other people call fall, Florida is still muggy and warm. It makes it hard to breathe, makes sweat break out across her skin, but she keeps running.
Georgie knows this land.
She knows every cicada, every toad, owl and snake. They’re watching her as she streaks through the night, running for her—what? Her life?
Then why is she so exhilarated?
She feels like that wolf looked when he was crouched on her bed, staring her down, licking his sharp teeth. Even then, she could feel his tongue between her thighs, but she thought she was just confused, just flustered.
Because even her body had still reacted with Evan sometimes. Even when she didn’t want it to. But this is different, isn’t it?
This leaves her feeling alive, if scared. Not broken the way she would have felt if she were running from a bloody-mouthed Evan with flesh between his teeth. Rather, it’s like she’s holding onto a live wire and can’t let go.
She doesn’t have to understand that to know it’s true.
Georgie pumps her legs harder, but a part of her wants to slow down, wants to see how far she’s come because maybe she’s gone too far—
She has to pull that thought back before it can finish itself out. What could be too far from that man-wolf? She closes her eyes, just for a second, just long enough to get her brain right, to try not to be some freakazoid that gets off on running away from a killer.
She can do that, can’t she?
She’s desperate to. Desperate not to know the weight of him, the heat of his skin. Too desperate, it feels like. It’s not real. It's a fake want, a fake need, a fake desire to get farther and farther from him because that’s how she should feel.
Her mother told her to run.
Still, the thought slips down her throat. Tastes like ash on her tongue.
She wants this man.
She should be ashamed of that. He killed her boyfriend. Not just killed him, he ate him and smiled down at her while he stroked her hair in her room on her own fucking floor- naked.
The gators, the chorus frogs, the crickets—they all beg her to keep going, their voices rising with every passing second.
So she does.
But she doesn’t really want to. She wants to stop, to stand and wait for him to catch up just a little before she runs off again, maybe in a different direction.
She wants to look him in his eyes, taste that swelling of excitement, the way her stomach flipped when she saw his claws dig into the sheets of her bed.
She wants to play the game.
And under that, under that is that lingering feeling.
Like star jasmine in spring, the way you can taste it in the air from blocks away, maybe miles even, like breathing in Jolly Ranchers.
This feeling inside her is the same feeling her Grammie told her to keep close, to remember, because sometimes the world tries to stomp it out no matter how tight we hold onto it.
It means something more than anyone else will know.
Her mother never did trust it.
But maybe she trusted that feeling once before, and it gave her papa, and that’s why she told her to run.
It doesn’t matter.
Georgie goes down, tackled to the side. A solid mass of heat and bone knocks the wind right out of her.
She’s rolling, branches cutting, sticks scratching, roots scraping as they tumble down a hill.
Hands grab at her, pulling her into a thick, hard body, curling around her so tight Georgie can’t tell where he begins and she ends.
Even though she can't get any air back in her lungs, it’s so damn good to be held so tight.
When they stop, it's sudden.
Fast.
So fast the world is still spinning even though her hands are touching the ground.
Georgie staggers to her knees; her dress is ripped, the buttons torn open in some places as she tries to lift herself up, but the stars are still spinning too, so fast above her that she can see the streaks they leave behind.
His laugh is rough and broken. It’s like running over chipped glass or the Chevy in the drive when it comes up under the carport after a long day at work.
It floats above them, brushing the tops of cedar that’s a hundred years old as they witness this pathetic attempt at defense from an even more pathetic little girl who just likes fucked-up things.
It’s almost angelic, even when she’s got mud under her fingernails. Even when she’s gripping at the earth below them. The sound that escapes him makes her wonder if her tias have been right all along, that nothing beautiful on earth comes from the lord.
It’s all a distraction sent from the devil himself.
It grips something inside of her that begs to be released, to laugh with him, but she shoves it down. She swallows it so hard that she can track the desire burning as it goes back down her chest as a hard lump inside of her.
Then, she’s scrambling up to bare feet that squish in the muck. Heavy hands grip her ankle and yank.
She goes down like a two-ton weight. Her knees scream harder, louder than any noise that could come out of her mouth, but if she did, her scream might sound a little like a laugh.
Georgie kicks at the man.
Still on her belly, she tries again; she kicks out. He grabs her ankle; with it, his hand slips up further to her calf. His other hand grabs at the inside of her thigh.
Georgie nearly gasps at how large his hand really is. It startles her enough that she forgets how close it is to that soft space between them before he flips her, using her body's weight against her to land her on her back.
It’s a game to him, she realizes. A game she tries to tell herself she doesn’t want to play, no matter how his arms flex or how thick and solid he is nestled in the crook of her body.
She’s played this game before. It's only ever brought her trouble.
So much so that she was willing to kill the last man she played with.
But she didn’t.
Part of her is angry about that, and that, that reaction is sobering. She didn’t want to kill Evan—it was a need . She doesn’ like hurtin’ people, ‘specially not people she loved, even if they did bad things to her.
All the people she loved had. He was no different. His brand just hurt more.
But she hadn’t even gotten a chance to because this man, this wolf-man, did it for her.
She’s embarrassed to say that does something to her. Something more than seeing the stars above him settle, his green yellow eyes glittering back at her. This man killed Evan, and that does more for her than any man, woman, or otherwise ever has.
You want this.
She squeezes her eyes shut against the accusation. The swamp night hoots and hollers at her, mocks her with her desires, making it near impossible to keep her head on straight.
As if he can taste her hesitation to fight him off, can smell it on her skin, the man pulls her towards his body. He raises himself up enough to reach his hands under her backside, pulling her hips up to his.
There’s a small sound that escapes her, somewhere between a whimper and a yip, as he maneuvers her in front of himself, between thick thighs the size of her waist.
Evan could move her, could lift her clear off the ground, and throw her on the bed in a frenzy of their excitement, but this?
Georgie shakes her head; maybe she even screams at him; maybe she says “no,” but all she knows is the heat boiling in her blood from his presence. Like he’s infected her.
Maybe he has.
Maybe he’s changing her, and she’s going to be a wolf-woman, roaming the earth eating bad men who hurt women.
Georgie pulls her hand back. She pretends she’s letting go, that she’s giving up, and watches the delight in his eyes as he pulls her closer, his dick hard against her thigh, pressing up towards her cheap cotton panties.
She wants to arch her back, to lift her hips, rub against the thickness there, reveling in the conquest of it all.
Instead, she throws a punch, imagining the flat of her palm going through him just like the instructor had taught her.
Callous fingers grip her wrist before she can stick the landing. “You don’ wanna do that, sweetheart.”
He’s right, the fucker, and that just makes Georgie madder’an hell because how dare he assume anything of her.
“Fuck off,” She grits the words through teeth, which only makes him smile wider, that dimple she wishes she could carve out of his face popping. “You don’t know me.”
Is it a Cheshire grin, if he’s a wolf? He dips his head down to whisper so softly Georgie thinks she doesn’t hear him at all when he says, “I know you plenty, Little Fox, but I don’ need to know you to smell the way your cunt is crying for me.”
The heat licks at her skin.
She can taste the swamp water.
It’s seeping into the back of her dress as her body digs into the soft earth. She bites her tongue so hard she can taste blood.
She doesn’t answer him. Doesn’t dignify it with a response.
Instead, she screams, wailing, kicking, hitting at his shoulders, his neck, anywhere she can reach because he’s fucking right, but he doesn’t have to be so goddamn smug about it.