Page 34 of Folds
“Yes, Lucy,” I confirm with a short laugh.
“I didn’t want you to hold back.” She’s tracing circles in my fur now, her delicate finger brushing over my hot skin, and I squeeze her tighter to my side. She feels good against me, molding to my body, so soft against my unyielding muscled curves.
“I can be safer with you. I want to be safer in the future.”
The future?I didn’t mean to say that out loud.
“Why weren’t you more scared of me?” I ask quickly, uncomfortable with the easy way my mind wanted to insert Lucy into my life.
This wasn’t supposed to happen once, and it shouldn’t happen again. Right?
“Why weren’t you at least surprised to discover werewolves are real?” I pull Lucy off me, needing space to rein myself back in. I prop myself up on an elbow, brows scrunched as I look down at her, repeating with more insistence, “Why weren’t you shocked, Lucy?”
“My dad is an incubus,” she says casually, shrugging, and I jerk back at her statement.
“Not possible.” I sniff the air and her skin. “Your life force is not strong enough to carry magic.”
“Hey! I’m plenty strong,” she laughs, “but yeah, you’re right. My mom is human, and I inherited her human life force levels, so I’m human too. I don’t get all the special magical goodness you get with your Strange extra life force, but I do get to know what goes bump in the night. I’ve got plenty of Strange among my family and friends—well, a few anyways. Never met a werewolf before, but I learned about them from books, and then…well…even more in your class. I thought I was making that clear in my last paper, but…um…writing has never been my strong suit, so maybe I fucked it up.”
The erotic passages, the graphic and verbose detail, the unique way she managed to describe the transformation…
Relief I didn’t know I needed washes over me. Lucy knew all along; she knew my power and strength, and she still chose to bounce into my classroom, and on my tongue, tonight.
“No, you did not fuck it up,” I tell her firmly. “It was there, on the page, and I just couldn’t see it. Maybe I couldn’t believe you might be able to see through my cover,” I admit, squirming a bit against the admission of my inability to see what had been right in front of me. I’d been so desperate for it, it seemed far too good to be true, but maybe Lucy is just really that good.
A very odd, very good girl.
“I am an artist, you know. I can be pretty observant. ” She says it so sweetly, I kiss her.
It’s brief, no tongue, but I taste myself on her lips, and it feels right.
“Also,” she laughs, “I wasn’t joking when I said you nearly bit that kid’s head off for cheating on the mid-term. I saw your fangs.”
“Shit.” I reach to cover my mouth and then laugh. It’s too late for that. “I really do need to escape to my cabin for a bit.”
Lucy is suddenly quiet, her body still and her blue eyes focused on the glowing, almost full moon in the window above our heads.
“What’s wrong?” I finally ask.
“Nothing,” she says with a quick, insufficient smile.
“Answer me, Ms. Anderson,” I demand, realizing I’ve returned to my professor voice, questioning and pushing for a more thorough explanation. “Tell me, Lucy—or should I send you back to the corner?”
She blushes but then speaks quickly, her gaze firmly on mine. “You’re wrong by the way.”
“I was wrong?” I ask seriously, because it seems Lucy has a great ability to point out my blind spots. “Tell me. Now!”
“With the whole me not thinking things through thing you said earlier in the hallway,.” she says softly, but there is certainty in her voice, and I trust what she is about to tell me is the truth. “Imean, I don’t think things through all the time, that's true. I never know where I’ll end up when I start painting. I still have no idea what the hell I’m going to do in the fall…andI didn't know what I was going to say to you when I got here tonight. But I knew I wanted you, that, I was sure of, and I knew what I was getting into. I know I want exactly this.”
“You weren’t worried I would turn you down?” I ask.
“Why would I let that stop me from at least trying to get what I always wanted?” she says with a breezy shrug.
“Rejection? Failure? Complete humiliation?” My voice grows louder as years of feral desires held back by fear push towards the surface.
“Oh, huh…” She shrugs again. “Yeah, I guess I didn’t mind a bit of humiliation if it was coming from you. You were worth the risk.”
Lucy snuggles deeper into me as I lie back down and squeeze her tightly to my side.
