Deep Woods

Bethany brought back all those teenage longings. She was from a world so different to mine, it might as well have been Mars: WiFi and electric cars and ordering things on a computer and having it delivered to your door in a couple of hours. She was soft and delicate in a way I found hypnotic. Every part of her: the sneakers with the blindingly white rubber, like they’d never seen mud. The jeans that hadn’t been made for toughness, but to hug that wonderful ass and curving hips. The sweater that wasn’t just a practical layer, for warmth, but had little gold threads woven into the cranberry-colored wool, creating little sparkling tracks that arched like contour lines as they reached the hills and valleys of her breasts.

She had hair as jet black and glossy as a stretch limousine and it fell in thick, glossy waves halfway down her back. When she’d crashed into me, the tumbling locks had brushed my chin and it had been so silky soft, and smelled so good, that all I’d wanted to do was bury my nose in it. Her eyes were a warm, rich hazel, and her mouth...hypnotically soft, wide lips. And when she smiled, it was with one of these lopsided, shy little grins that was goddamn adorable.

The best thing about Bethany, though? Her curves. If I hadn’t been so held by those big brown eyes, I wouldn’t have been able to stop my gaze rolling down the sweet slopes of her body. Those full, lush breasts pushing out the front of that cranberry sweater...the sweep of her waist that I wanted to follow with my palm, in and then gloriously out to a mouthwatering bounty of hips and an ass I needed to grab hold of right now. She looked old-fashioned, in a way I couldn’t put into words.

Her skin was milky-pale, like she’d never spent a day outside in the sun. And when I’d taken her hand to pull her up, her fingers had been so amazingly soft and soothing on my big, calloused paws. I couldn’t get enough of that smooth softness. I kept thinking back to the glimpses her sweater had revealed: the elegant curve of her throat, down to her collarbone; the top of the soft valley between her breasts. I wanted to start just below her jaw and kiss downwards, exploring her with my lips, feeling her writhe against me. I wanted to see all of her, wanted to hook my hands under that sweater and drag it up and off her, run my hands all over her. I couldn’t help but have visions of her nipples, imagining them darkly pink against the whiteness, rising into peaks beneath my thumbs. Dammit, I wanted to push her up against a tree and…I gave a little growl of lust, just imagining it.

She was the most feminine woman I’d ever met. Not girly, not giggly and look-at-me, but soft and sweet and sexual, a femininity that was completely intoxicating. There was this word I couldn’t get out of my head, from some book my mom read to me as a kid: entranced. I was entranced by her. I felt like Rufus when he chases after a butterfly.

When she told me what they had her doing, being a chew-toy for customers to savage, I’d felt something rise up inside me I hadn’t felt for a long time. A deep, protective urge. There’d been a second, as I looked down into those big brown eyes, when I just wanted to scoop her up into my arms.

And there was something else. Beyond the need to run my hands over those fine curves. Beyond the urge to protect her.

I’d felt myself react to her in a way I didn’t think I could, anymore. In a way I hadn’t for a long time. I’d felt this pull, way down deep and stronger than any river’s current.

But then reality returned and I scowled and marched faster down the street, Rufus trotting by my side. I didn’t deserve someone like her, after what I’d done.

I was a monster. And monsters belong in the woods.

We’d only come to Seattle for the funeral. The idea was to be in the city for less than an hour. We’d found the cemetery and stood there in the rain as the casket was lowered. Only a few other people had been there: his relatives, I guess. They’d glanced curiously at the giant in the plaid shirt with his dog, but no one had plucked up the courage to talk to me and as soon as I’d paid my respects, we headed home. I didn’t want to go to some reception or wake and try to make small talk, or, worse, have to lie to Shawn’s folks about what he and I used to do for a living.