Chapter 36: Isabelle

The idea of being watched made Isabelle’s skin squirm and tighten itself into bumps. She wondered if Cormac felt that way too. He wasn’t about to answer any of her questions, she was sure of that, but the curious side of her that never stopped asking was itching to know.

At night, she sat across from Cormac at the kitchen table and watched him nurse the tail end of his beer.

“You look like ya got somethin’ to say,” he said. “God, you’re ‘bout to ask me questions.”

“Can I, please? Just a few.”

Cormac shook his head. “I don’t think I can handle any more tonight.”

“Ok, well then just answer me this one: who do you think is watching us? Those guys out there in the truck today, what’s your guess on what they’re doing?”

“That sounds like more than one, Isabelle.”

Behind her on the wall, the kitchen phone rang. Both of them startled, and considering how late it was, Isabelle felt the bumpy, squirming flesh return so soon after she had managed to chase it off.

They made eye contact as Isabelle got to her feet and brought the receiver next to her ear. “Hello?”

A hacking cough came through, Wes’s raspy voice hot on its trail. “Isabelle, it’s Wes. I’ve got an update for you.”

“Oh, Wes, hi! Yeah, an update would be really helpful right now. Got a new lead or a contact for me?”

“Not exactly.” The struggle in the barely functioning lungs was audible in every word. Him breathing them into Isabelle’s ear drew her shoulders together. “I’m pulling you off the story. I want you heading back to Denver as soon as you can make arrangements.”

Isabelle lowered the receiver, exhaling several times sharply. When she brought the phone back to her ear, a surge of hatred and anger shot through her. “You can’t pull me off the story, Wes. You promised me this one.”

“Yeah but that was before you were gettin’ a little too friendly with the subject, if ya know what I mean.”

Her skin didn’t have time to squirm. Instead her stomach dropped out. Everything Gus and Lee had mentioned seemed to click into place. She had been foolish to believe that this was an accident, a silly thing she got tangled up in, when the truth was that she was sent there for a reason, and Wes was manipulating this all.

“How would you know anything about that, Wes?” Isabelle asked, her throat going dry.

“I got eyes everywhere, kid. Your man ever talk about someone named Maxine?”

Isabelle glanced furtively over her shoulder at Cormac who was leaning forward with every word. “What about her?”

“So he has?”

“What the hell is going on, Wes?”

“Ya know what, Isabelle? I changed my mind. You stay there, you stay right there. Enjoy yourself. Fuck your cowboy a few times. ‘Cause you’re in over your head. You have been since the moment you got there.”

The line went dead. Isabelle stood frozen until the irritating beep of the disconnected tone pierced into her ear drums. When she hung up, Cormac was so close to her that she could feel his breath against her neck.

“That was my boss-”

“I heard.”

“He asked me about-”

“I heard.” Cormac took her by the elbow and pulled her into him. He smelled like beer; his grip on her arm was tight in a way that told her he was nervous. “Isabelle, he knew about Maxine.”

She hadn’t expected to see Cormac so rattled though she hardly blamed him for that. At least she had been tossed upside down this whole time, unsure of what she was doing or what was happening. Cormac was supposed to know the moves, the scents, the players involved in this bizarre scene, and he was caught as unawares as she was.

“However he knew her and whatever he’s planning on doing, I think it might be best if we get the hell away from here,” Isabelle said.

Cormac held his arms wide, gesturing to everything around him. “Where am I supposed to go, Isabelle? How am I supposed to leave my home?”

“Then-” she swallowed for the millionth time that day- “maybe I should just go.”

The drawn expression on Cormac’s face caused regret to bubble up inside her the moment she said it. All this time, he had been telling her to leave, to run when he told her to run. How could he want anything different now that the web was coming clear, and they were both aware of how thoroughly they were ensnared in it?

“I don’t want you to,” Cormac said after a long beat. “I want you to be where I can see and protect you.”

“Cormac, there might not be anywhere in the world where you can protect me.”

She pushed past him. The idea of staying in a well-lit hotel in the center of a small city was appealing. She wondered how long it would take to get to Santa Fe.

Cormac followed her into her room, asking questions as if he could read her mind. “It’s too late to get out of here. Where do you think you can go?”

“I thought you wanted me to run.”

She didn’t bother to face him as she spoke. Everything in her was on autopilot; the only focus she had was the rickety plan she was putting into action. Cormac’s body heat, his very presence and energy, was prickling down the back of her neck. It felt like the flexible white hairs on a cactus, the ones that stuck into flesh and could barely be seen. Painful yet hardly there.

“Do you want to see me shift?” Cormac asked suddenly. The question halted Isabelle in her tracks. Her head pivoted slightly towards him. “Want to see how it actually works when it works right?”

Her instinct to follow a story wouldn’t allow her to walk away from an offer like that. Without words, they walked out into the mercurial light of the desert darkness, Isabelle a lingering step behind him the entire way. Cormac didn’t face her as he stripped his shirt off and tossed it haphazardly on the ground. The static glow of the moon morphed the definition of his chest into deep grooves that Isabelle lacked the ability to look away from.

“You’re not going to lose control of yourself and tear me to pieces, are you?” Isabelle asked, gathering up the discarded garments tossed in the dust.

“I’m not really an animal when I shift. I may look like a wolf but I’m still a man.”

“Same difference, I’d say.”

She saw that he was smiling to himself. What a concept to think about at a time like theirs: control. As if control was an ideal either of them could grasp.

Cormac hunched his shoulders, the ridges of his spine impressing against the skin. Behind them, muscles powered back and forth in an inhuman way. It took Isabelle a second to notice the dark hair sprouting and spreading across his torso; by that time, she was so focused on his elongating face that she couldn’t be sure what she was looking at in general. She had to fight the screaming voice in her head that was telling her this was all just a glamor in the moonlight, her eyes playing tricks on her.

Isabelle approached slowly and held her hand out like she was waiting for a dog to sniff her. “Even seeing it with my own eyes, I can’t believe it.”

Cormac’s lupine tongue flicked out of his mouth, caught the salt dried along her knuckles, tasted the iron-twinged dirt that carried onto her from his clothing. Isabelle’s legs betrayed her; she found her way to the ground, and now they were face to face. Cormac lifted his snout upwards.

“You’re really beautiful like that,” Isabelle told him, her voice cracking and dropping as she spoke. She cleared her throat. “You look like you’re in your element.”

Cormac released a howl so sudden and powerful that Isabelle startled then shivered. She was aware of everything: the wind and the smell in the air and the continuous coursing blood through her veins. And Cormac. She was aware of him in a way she didn’t even understand. It was like she could see him moving before he did, watched the hair on his back rippling when it was lying flat against him.

He took off running in one direction then came screaming back the other way, bursting past Isabelle like she was the finish line. His paws skidded across the ground; he made a sharp u-turn and bounded towards her again. As he got closer to her, Isabelle watched his shape start to shift, and he was human when he was close enough to grab her by the arms, pull her to her feet. They were face to face again; Isabelle listened to the surge inside of her, a symphony made from pumping blood and adrenaline firing through her nervous system like bullets.

“Kiss me, Cormac,” she whispered, his mouth so close to hers that she could almost reach it. “Please. I want you to.”

He moved so swiftly that Isabelle couldn’t remember if she had had the time to ask for the kiss. Their mouths met.

“Why am I the only one that’s naked?” Cormac asked, tearing Isabelle’s shirt over her head. “Do you want to fuck me, Isabelle? Is that it?”

Isabelle pressed her nails into his bare shoulders, her newly exposed nipples pushing hard against his chest. “Yes.”

“Yes what?”

“Yes, please.”

Cormac kissed her neck then let his mouth trail to her breasts, suckling each one as Isabelle fumbled with the drawstring of her sweatpants, and they crumpled to her feet. Cormac’s fingers pressed between her legs.

“We do this differently,” he told her, breathing hotly against her neck. “There’s no such thing as casual in the shifter world.”

“If this was just casual, Cormac, I wouldn’t still be here.”

He spun her around quickly and brought her down to all fours. Isabelle stretched her arms forward into the dirt, her fingernails filling with dust, raking them across the textured surface as Cormac’s tongue connected to her clit and dragged along the length of her pussy. He stopped it just before the quivering pucker of her ass but somehow she could tell he didn’t want to.

“You understand,” Cormac said, pushing the tip of his cock against her wet, warm opening, “what does this means then?”

“What us fucking means?”

“It means we’re bonded. We’re mated.”

She felt the head of his erection start to enter her, start to push the flexible sides of her cunt open. He stopped before he fully penetrated her; Isabelle looked back at him over her shoulder.

“Do you not want that?” she asked.

“I just want ya to know how important this is.”

With that, he thrust himself the rest of the way into her. The move was sharp, and Isabelle felt it in her stomach. A shiver burst upwards from the base of her spine. He had hit something ancient and powerful deep inside of her, and she was rushed to the very edge of climax before sinking away from it.

“I don’t know how you did that,” Isabelle panted as Cormac began to move steadily in and out of her, “but do it again.”

She had never been fucked so hard in her life. Each time Cormac slammed himself into her then held still, she felt her body screaming for release. He was silent and stoic behind her, pumping his hips then watching in amusement as Isabelle quaked on her knees. His fingers found her clit; he moved and stroked at the same time.

“When we mate, we belong to each other,” he told her. She was trying to listen but also shaking and coming close to orgasming over and over. “You’re part of something very old now.”

His breathing sounded labored but Isabelle was so far away that she didn’t even notice the gravel pressing into her legs or the return of that strange, acrid scent. Her body was trembling, begging to explode yet wanting to keep going. The climax crept out of her guts and bowels, crept up along her spine towards her heart and temples and anywhere else where the evidence of pumping blood was obvious.

Just as the climax overtook her, Cormac flipped her onto her back, his weight on top of her as he held her face in his hands. “Let me see it,” he whispered when she began shuddering and her eyes rolled back into her head. “Let me see you come.”

Her body arched against his; her vision went dark. It came clear slowly, and the first thing she saw was silver stars blinking out from a crystalline night. Aftershock ran through her, Cormac kept thrusting steadily.

“I can’t come inside you yet,” he told her. Had Isabelle had the wherewithal to speak, she would have demanded he not do that anyway but she was swimming into the moonlight, drifting beyond the field of stars above her. “Not until we’re properly bonded.”

She nodded, still dreamy, still lost in the chemical swirl passing through her brain and blood. This was more than just an orgasm, more than just a moment, by product, and driving force behind sex. She understood he was saying about being part of something very old; the longer she lay there, sweat cooling along her hairline, the more she lost the barrier between her and the coarse red dirt scratching against her back.

Cormac pulled himself out of her and came across her stomach and breasts with a long grunt. Isabelle watched the stream of it as it was released in silky ribbons lit silver by the moon. She touched the very tip of his cock with her finger.

“Part of something…”

She wasn’t paying close attention but Cormac sat up suddenly, his head swiveling from side to side. “Get inside the house.”

“What?”

As soon as Isabelle asked the question, the scent in the air returned, the one she had caught when she was crouched face to face with a wolf. It was a burning, acrid smell; it unfolded around the two of them.

Isabelle pressed the back of her hand against her nose. “Jesus, that smells like someone lit piss on fire.”

“Get inside the house and don’t come out until I come get you,” Cormac said, gathering her up. “They’re only here for me.”

Isabelle turned to protest but Cormac was sprinting off into the night, shifting as he moved, becoming a beast right before her eyes then shadow moments later. She waited for a howl, a long moan piercing the oblivion but there was nothing. Only her and that putrid scent in the air. It lingered for a second as Isabelle got to the front door. Before she could get inside, it was gone.