Werewolf: Impossible Love (3 page)

Yandel stood in front of the bed for a minute with Serenity in his arms, clicking his teeth. He set her down with he
r ass on the edge of the bed with her right leg gripped in one of his hands. That predatory grin came over his face again as he looked her up and down.

“Please?” Serenity whimpered, wiggling her hips as best she could without sending pain shooting up and down her leg.

“Hard to resist when you put it like that,” Yandel growled, stepping close enough to tease her with his cock.

Serenity giggled. “Pretty please?”

He leaned down and kissed her as he eased himself inside her. Serenity gasped at the sensation of his manhood pressing slowly into her. He apparently hadn’t learned to go down on a woman like that without also learning that he was liable to hurt somebody with that cock if he wasn’t very gentle with it.

He moved inside her slowly, gently at first while they covered each other in kisses and got their fingers tangled in each other’s wet hair. Serenity’s body squirmed of its own volition, enticing him to come into her harder and faster.
Her arms reached around to claw at his broad, strong back, to feel the muscles rippling beneath his skin.

As their pace quickened, Serenity could feel
a delightful tension spreading through her vulva. It surprised her. She was familiar enough with her body’s prelude to an orgasm, but, truth be told, she hadn’t realized that it could happen with a man inside her.

Her squeals grew louder as he pushed her closer and closer to the edge of ecstasy. Yandel grinned as he looked into her eyes, all too pleased with himself at having reduced her to a panting, heaving mess on the bed. His touch on her body overwhelmed even the morphine in her blood. Her eyes rolled, her hips jerked, her spine arched upward as she plunged into an all-consuming orgasm that pulsed to the rhythm of his thrusts.

Yandel caught her lips in his and kissed her as he came. His cock plunged so deep into Serenity that she yelped. Startled, he pulled off of her, worry carved into his features.

Serenity giggled. “It’s okay,” she said, reaching up for his free hand.

His face flushed, and he looked down at his feet for a moment. He grunted, scooted Serenity up on the bed so her leg could rest on it, and lay down beside her.

She grinned at him and traced a line down his neck, his chest, his hips. “You’re gentler than you look,” she said.

“Am I?” He gave her a sidelong glance; his face darkened momentarily. “Feh. You’re on drugs.”

Despite Serenity’s grasping at his chest, he stood up and looked her up and down. “I got some of that Plan B shit hanging around here somewhere,” he said. “It was supposed to be Linda’s, but she’s convinced that anything but a juniper miscarriage is a white conspiracy to sterilize all her patients.” He shrugged, his brows arching. “Which, all things considered—eh, fuck it.” He shook his head. “Politics later.”

Yandel tossed the washcloth onto the bed by Serenity before picking up his clothes from the floor and getting dressed again. He peeked out the door.

“Snow stopped,” he said. “Are you ready to feel like a genocidal piece of shit?”

“Umm—”

Yandel let out an evil chuckle. “This is gonna be good,”
he said, going to the sink and pouring a cup of water. He chugged it, re-filled it, and brought it over to Serenity.

“Thanks,” she said.

He took her hand, pinched it, and glared at the slowly-deflating ridge of skin. “Ah, shit,” he grumbled. “Hold on, I’ma get a saline drip in you.”

Serenity watched as he went back to the cabinet and took out yet more medical supplies—and a hammer and nail. He set the loose parts of the IV drip down on Serenity’s lap while he pounded the nail in above her head. “You gonna need a bedpan?”

“Umm.” Serenity felt her face turn purple. “Uh—”

“Don’t be such a goddamn princess,” he grumbled, hanging the IV bag on the nail and hooking it up to the tubing with an expert’s precision. “But I guess you’re too dehydrated anyway. Here, give me your arm and grip it.”

Yandel had her swabbed, needled, and taped up within a few seconds. When he was done, he inspected his work with a smile.

“I’ll be back in a couple hours,” he said. “Don’t take
the needle out, don’t get up, and try not to piss the bed.” Without another word, he grabbed his coat, put his boots on, and headed out the door.

****

              A warm, peaceful silence filled the room once Yandel had left. Serenity scooted around to prop herself up against the pillows and covered herself with the woolen blanket as best she could. Out of instinct, she cradled Mr. Binky in her left arm as she shut her eyes. She wondered how long it had been since she’d felt safe enough to just lean back and nap like this—and in a man’s bed, no less. She had no chores to do, no man demanding she pleasure him, no punishment to escape. In fact, the morphine and the soothing waves of fading lust made it hard to keep her mind on anything but drifting back into sleep.

             
The sound of wood slamming on wood jolted Serenity back into the waking world. She sat up quickly and looked toward the door; her moment of panic subsided when she saw Yandel’s hulking form come inside, wrapped in his coat and surrounded by swirling snow.

             
“Sorry we’re late,” he said. “Guess the snow wasn’t done after all.”

             
A short, squat figure in a cowboy hat followed him inside—Serenity guessed that this must be Linda. She relieved her shoulders of the oversized Carhartt coat that sheltered them and hung it on the hook next to the door. Beneath it, she wore a plain black flannel shirt tucked into a pair of ancient mom jeans.

             
“Is this your
wasichu
?” she said, pointing to the bed.

             
“No, this is the other one,” Yandel scoffed. “How many fuckin’ women you think I’m keeping up here?”

             
“One in the front, two in the back, six million in the ashtray,” Linda muttered as she unslung a satchel from her shoulders.

             
An animal growl escaped from Yandel’s throat; his body language wasn’t entirely human as he turned his face to her and his back to Serenity.

             
They began to snap back and forth at each other in a language that she didn’t understand. At first, she thought it was Sioux, but as their words got more heated she realized that they were yelling at each other in German.

             
Linda ended the argument by drawing herself up, flinging the door open, and shouting,
“Raus!
” as she pointed out into the snow. Yandel actually curled his lip and snarled at her as he skulked out and slammed the door behind him.

             
The short woman snorted and strode over to the bed. “Where are you from?” she said.

             
“Billings,” Serenity replied.

             
“Long way from home.” Linda raised her thick eyebrows and, with a businesslike flick of her arms, flipped the blanket off of Serenity’s body. She flattened her mouth as her dark eyes studied the bruises and wounds. “These are old,” she said, gently laying her hands on the flashlight-shaped marks that covered her ribcage.

             
Serenity nodded, her throat tightening at the touch.

             
“Hmm.” She changed her focus to Serenity’s leg, clicking her tongue against her teeth as she examined the bandages. “He’s a good little seamstress, isn’t he?” Her round cheeks nudged her eyes shut as she chuckled. “Well—this is going to have to come off.”

             
Serenity whimpered, prompting an icy glare from Linda.

             
“If you’re going to be a little bitch about this, I’m leaving,” she said. “I got patients besides you, and all of them can shut up and let me do my job.” Every inch of her sun-browned face was dead serious.

             
“Okay,” Serenity said.

             
“We don’t do local for broken limbs up here,” she said, setting the satchel down on the bed and taking out a pair of scissors. “We need it for C-sections and this ain’t gonna work if you don’t appreciate the pain.”

             
“Umm—”

             
“You’ll see.” The corners of her lips wrinkled in amusement as she snipped through the layers of bandaging.

             
As the scissors brushed a bruise, Serenity fought the urge to cry out. “You speak German?” she said instead.

             
“Tch. Ein bisschen.” Linda shrugged, not looking up from the bandages. “My dad was a code talker in the Second World War. Taught us German to kill time in the hard winters.”

             
Serenity’s eyes got wide. “Wow,” she said. “That’s—” she bit her lip to keep from whimpering again. “That’s really cool.”

             
“He didn’t do it to impress you,” she snapped.

             
Serenity flushed and stared down at her belly, embarrassed. “Sorry.”

             
“Hmph.” She kept snipping in silence until the entire bandage was opened up. Gently and slowly, Linda lifted Serenity’s leg out of the splints. She held Mr. Binky up to her mouth to muffle the scream that she couldn’t hold down, prompting Linda to chuckle. “You think
this
hurts?” she said.

             
Serenity nodded.

             
Linda shook her head and muttered something under her breath as she set her leg down on the bed and disconnected the IV drip from her arm. “Stay still,” she warned, taking her hat off to reveal short-cropped hair that was as much grey as it was black. She reached into her satchel again and pulled out a leather bag. Inside it were several strings of beads and amulets that Linda carefully placed around her neck.

             
“Now, be silent,” she said, pulling another bag from the satchel and going over to the stove. She turned the damper down so that the fire inside died to mere embers; then, she opened its grate and threw several fistfuls of dried leaves inside.

             
As the smoke rose, a strange, oppressive silence filled the room. Serenity had not realized how noisy it had been before—the crackling of the fire, the howling of the wind outside, even her and Linda’s breathing were all muffled by the fragrant, soporific haze.

             
More leather bags came out of the satchel. One contained a headdress made from a coyote’s face; the other contained a fan of feathers; the third held a rattle with a paw on the end. Linda put the headdress on and ducked her head beneath it. In her own language, she began to sing a low, slow melody as her heavy legs took measured, practiced steps in front of the bed.

             
Serenity found her eyes drawn to the dead hollows where the coyote’s eyes had been. But were they really hollows? The mask seemed to gaze at her, seemed to look into her and learn her and probe her and—

             
She was surrounded by shadows, running without pain. Behind her, she could hear the baying of those fucking hounds. Her feet were bare—all four of them, she realized—and the icy ground stung her pads as she sprang through the snow.

             
A wall shot up in front of her; Serenity sank down on her haunches and whimpered up its glassy black face. A great white owl sat on top, staring down, indifferent as the hounds bayed closer. She didn’t know where the words came from, or how they left her throat in a human voice, but—

             
“Eat my stomach!” she called, rolling over on her back and exposing her belly.

             
The owl hooted as it dove to her on silent wings, opened her up with a talon. Serenity screamed at the pain, her own voice mixing with the feral howls of her new body—

             
And she was running, running with her remaining entrails dragging on the ground behind her. She was faster without her stomach weighing her down, but she could hear those hounds baying closer and closer.

             
This time, it was a tree that blocked her path. Serenity crashed right into it this time, and looked up, dazed, at the grizzly bear standing over her.

             
“Eat my heart!” Serenity begged, rolling over again to expose the gore that had once been her underbelly.

             
The bear wasted no time in clawing out her still beating heart and slurping it up. Pain unlike anything else seized Serenity’s body. She tried in vain to scream, to sob, to pass out, to make it stop anyway she could, but again she found herself running, running free and fast and so afraid of the hounds that kept gaining.

             
Now, it was a vast, dark lake that stood in front of her. She looked around in vain for an animal to devour some other part of her and make her light enough to cross. The hounds went suddenly quiet.

             
She turned her back to the lake and saw its antlers, hung with strips of fur and flesh, swaying in herky-jerky rhythm with its stride. The antlers crested the hill and she saw its idiot-grinning human face, eyes hollowed out and mouth gaping like a lamprey’s. It let out sickly giggles as it moved toward her, slowed only a little by the distended belly that dangled between its bony-kneed legs.