Isabel and the Wolf: (Part 3) (7 page)

“He doesn’t have to know.”

“Mmm, he seems to have this way of knowing exactly what I’ve been up to. Like, how the hell did he know we were at the town hall dance?”

“Maybe he was there anyway?”

“Peter?” Isabel cackled. “The thought of him choosing to go to something like that is hilarious!”

“And that’s maybe why you should be with Jed. Remember how Jason never made the effort to dance with you?”

“He said he was a terrible dancer, to be fair to him.”

“Most guys are. But Jed isn’t. You’d have lots of fun together, I can tell.” Isabel stared into the distance, her thoughts alternating between the two men.

“Jed messaged me, actually, and apologized for last night. I haven’t replied yet, because I’m not too sure what to say.”

“Yeah, he wasn’t really in the wrong. What can you do when a wild beast attacks you?” Isabel giggled.

“He could’ve arrested him!”

“I’m not sure that’s how things work around here.”

“Or that Peter would be arrestable!”

“No! So how was the sex last night?”

“It was wild. He was punishing me for being with Jed.”

“That’s so hot,” Kara said dreamily.

“I know Jed will want to organize a date, but I’m so not ready to see him for a few days after
that
!”

I hear you. Sometimes it’s great to have two at a time. Other times, you need a gap between ’em to get the full effect!”

“Kara!” Isabel shrieked. “You’re terrible!”

“Look in the mirror girlfriend! You’ve got two incredibly hot dudes lusting after you. Every woman in the world envies you right now!”

“They wouldn’t if they knew how much weirdness I had to put up with! Anyway, enough of this! So – tonight?”

“Well, I had a message from Dan. I told him we were thinking of going to Santa Fe tonight. And he said he’s got some friends there, and they’d be happy to show us around. Only if you want, though? I’m also really happy to just have some one-on-one time with my BFF.”

“No, I think it’s a great idea! I’ve never been there before, so it’d be awesome to get the local experience.”

“That’s what I figured. I’ll tell Dan yes, then!”

*

The afternoon was spent wandering around the shops and art galleries of Silver City. Isabel was both relieved and disappointed that they didn’t bump into Jed, Peter, or Josie. They saw Marianna and Bill though, and had a coffee together. They were excited to meet Kara, and were soon chatting like they’d known each other for years.

“Did you girls make it to the dance last night?” Marianna asked.

“We sure did!” Kara replied, grinning widely. Isabel scowled at her, wishing she wouldn’t be so obvious.

“I heard there was a bit of a commotion at the end?” Marianna said.

“There was?” Kara’s eyes opened wide. “We must’ve left before then.” Isabel thought she saw a knowing glance pass between the couple, before deciding that she was being paranoid.

*

Santa Fe was beautiful adobe buildings, ironic Wild West saloons, one margarita after another, and constant hilarity. Dan’s friends were an energetic bunch, and they took the girls on a thorough tour of the bar scene, not stopping until they begged to go home.

When they got back to their hotel rooms at the end of the night, Isabel lay on her bed, watching the room spinning, before unconsciousness took over. She woke up some hours later, still in darkness, to the sound of Kara and Dan fucking next door. The bed springs were squeaking, the headboard was banging rhythmically against the wall, and Kara was making plenty of noise, as usual. Isabel pulled her pillow over her head and tried to get back to sleep. But it was no use. In addition to those noises, there was now a rhythmic slapping sound, signifying that they were doing it doggy style. Against her will, Isabel started to feel aroused.
No! This is wrong! Please stop it!
she said to herself.
I’m not thinking about Kara and Dan – ew! As if! It’s just the memory of last night.
And, at that, an image from last night burst into her mind in HD – of herself on her hands and knees, The Wolf sliding his cock in and out of her mouth – and her clit jumped. She slid her hand down into her panties. She was already wet.
No point wasting it, I guess.
She went back to the beginning of her own private movie, running last night’s events from the point The Wolf had pulled her panties down. The memory of him spanking her turned her on like crazy. She reached out and flicked the light on. There was a closet mirror at the bottom of the bed. She turned her back to it and pulled her panties down to her knees, and looked at her ass. It was covered in purple bruises. Mostly undefined patches, but some of them were clearly handprints. She shuddered. The sight of them was deeply arousing. She bent forward, into a hands and knees position, wanting to see exactly what Peter saw when he ordered her to pose on the bike for him.
Pretty hot
, she concluded.
Is it wrong to be turned on by the sight of your own body?
Having seen enough, she flipped onto her back again. She pulled her panties off completely, and watched herself in the mirror as she masturbated. The scene continued to play in her head, but when she got back to the bit where she was sucking Peter’s cock, Jed suddenly appeared from nowhere. As he watched them, he pulled his cock out of his jeans and started to jerk himself off. Then, he stepped behind Isabel, dropped to his knees and penetrated her. As she imagined the sensation of having Peter’s cock in her mouth and Jed’s in her pussy, both claiming her at the same time, using her for their own pleasure, she came violently, biting down on her lip, to stifle her sounds. Although, she didn’t know why she bothered, she thought, as she switched the light off, the cacophony from next-door showing no signs of stopping.

*

On Sunday, Isabel and Kara drove back slowly, nursing hangovers, and going on diversions to take photos of the scenery and landmarks.

“I’m going to look out for digs happening down here. I hadn’t realized the landscape was so beautiful,” Kara said. “And then we could see more of each other!”

“That’d be great!” Isabel said, grinning.

Kara had tears in her eyes when they parted at the airport later that afternoon.

“Chica, I’ve had the best time with you! It’s been so good to see you! And I’m so glad that I got to meet Jed, and see The Wolf for myself. You better keep me updated on how
that
progresses!” She took Isabel’s face between her hands and looked deep into her eyes. “Please don’t forget, you can do anything you want. It’s your life, and you’re not answerable to either of those guys.” Isabel hugged her tight. As they let go of each other, a sense of loss hit her square in the chest. She walked back to her car quickly, not wanting to see the plane fly away.

*

Isabel had to know if Peter was telling the truth about Josie. All the recent weirdness she’d encountered was interlinked in some way, so if it turned out that Josie was his cousin, it seemed broadly reasonable that everything else could be true as well. And if he was lying, well, she’d obviously been having incredible, wild sex with a crazy man.

It was midday on Tuesday, and Isabel was driving over to Josie’s place. She was going to ask her straight out if she and Peter were related. She couldn’t even think of a subtle way of doing it, so that was how it was going to happen. It was another flawless, New Mexican day, the sun burning like a vengeful god in a pitiless sky. She’d found Josie and Rob’s address on the internet, and, as she pulled into their driveway, she was pleased to see that it was another adobe house, whitewashed, with a sloping tiled roof. She rang the bell and waited, but no-one came to the door. She walked down a narrow pathway at the side, fleetingly wondering if she’d see Josie in a similar position to her last sighting, but the pretty, well-groomed garden was empty. She walked back to her car, and was climbing inside when a next-door neighbor called to her.

“Hi there!” A plump, round-cheeked woman in a fifties-style housedress said. “Are you a friend of Rob and Josie?”

“Sure am!” Isabel said. “Looks like I missed them though.”

“Oh, Josie took off 20 minutes ago. She said she was going to Rob’s work to drop his lunch off.”

“Thanks!” Isabel replied. She got into the car and drove to the conservation center. She turned off the highway and drove onto the track, and, when she was around 100 yards in, she grinned to herself at the memory of the dirty sex she and Peter had had there only three days previously.
Was I really sitting astride his bike, naked from the waist down, while he rode me from behind?
The mere thought flooded her body with arousal. Since she’d known Peter, she’d done so many things she had never thought she’d dare to.

She walked into the center and saw Josie immediately. She was dressed in a bright orange blouse and a denim mini skirt, and she was balanced on the edge of a table, chatting to Rob, while he seemed to be absorbed in something on a laptop screen.

“Bella!” Josie called, before Isabel had a chance to greet her. She was a little apprehensive about seeing her, given how they’d parted the previous time, but she saw only friendliness in Josie’s sparkling black eyes. “It’s great to see you!” Josie jumped down from the table and threw her arms around her.

“I was hoping to catch you for lunch, but your neighbor told me you were here, so I thought it’d be a good opportunity to say hi to both of you,” Isabel explained rapidly.

“Well, I’m very glad you did. Rob’s been working like crazy lately, and hasn’t even had time to stop for lunch, so I’ve started becoming ultimate homemaker and bringing him a lunchbox everyday!”

“Oh, hey, Isabel!” Rob said, finally looking up from his laptop and seeing she was there. He walked over and gave her a hug.

“So what’s been keeping you so busy?” she asked, when they’d enquired how the other was doing.

“There’s so much stuff going on with the wolves at the moment. The one I told you about looks to be the tip of the iceberg. We’ve come across four more that seem to be unrelated to the local packs. They’re quite significantly bigger, and their coats are different – we’ve seen two more like black bears, one brown, and one that was almost white, which is pretty much impossible. They’re not Mexican grays, that’s for sure. If I didn’t know better, I’d say someone with an exotic – and highly illegal – collection had released them into Gila. Two out of the four we shot didn’t even get knocked out by the dart – they just ran off with it stuck in their hide. With the most recent two, we managed to take blood and measurements and tag them. But what’s weird is that, within 30 minutes of releasing them, the tags stopped emitting a signal. It’s possible that one of them could have malfunctioned, but both? It just doesn’t make sense.” Rob paused and massaged the back of his neck. “And what’s even weirder is that the photos I took of them didn’t come out – not even one.”

“I’d put it down to Rob’s camera skills, but the fact is, you can’t go wrong with the digital camera he uses. It’s just point and shoot,” Josie added.

“So they came out blurry, or what?” Isabel asked.

“Have a look at them.” Rob retrieved his laptop and turned the screen so they could all see it. There were twenty or thirty photos, all of the forest floor, and all perfectly in focus. Almost all of them featured a dark shadow in the center, in the approximate shape of a wolf, as if the wolf had been between the photographer and the camera’s focus, so only the shadow was visible.

“How would you get that angle, though?” Isabel said. “The sun would have to be really low in the sky, and shining clearly through the trees, which doesn’t seem to happen much in Gila’s dense foliage.”

“That and the fact that the wolves were lying down, out cold when I photographed them.” On five of the photographs, there was no shadow, but a bright flash of light, as if the sun had hit the lens directly, obscuring the image. The edges of the shot were blurry gray, with no sign of foliage.

“These are equally bizarre. I look in the viewfinder as I take the photos – as you might imagine – and I would’ve noticed if I’d been blinded by a flash of sunlight.”

“And again, the angle’s all wrong,” Isabel said.

“Nothing adds up here. And to tell you the truth, it’s been keeping me awake at night,” Rob said, his forehead furrowed.

“I can testify to that,” Josie stage whispered.

“Sorry, honey,” he draped an arm around her shoulder.

“I’m only kidding, babe,” Josie said, and puckered her lips towards his for a kiss. “I wake up when you get out of bed, but only for a moment.”

“I’ve been in touch with all the conservation centers across the US, Canada, and even Mexico, and they’ve had nothing similar going on. They have to have been imported from somewhere, but that doesn’t explain the photos.”

“There’s a lot about the world that we don’t understand,” Josie said, resting a hand on his arm. Isabel did a double take.
What was it with the people in this town, and their higher-knowledge hippy values?

“Trey and I are heading out to do some more tracking now. You can come if you want, ladies? You might have more luck with the camera than I did.”

“I don’t have anything better to do,” Josie said.

“Sure!” Isabel agreed. Rob led them over to a pick up truck.