FORTY
It was too cold for walking, but I needed the exercise. April is the cruelest month, the poet said, but my vote goes to March, which has the gall to call itself the beginning of spring, when it's really just winter in disguise.
I put on two layers of leggings, a turtleneck, and the faded flannel shirt Red had left behind. At first I'd tried to put it away, as I had done with his ring. But then there were all those long wakeful nights when I found myself searching for his things—his jeans, his Timex watch and worn cowboy boots—everything he'd left on my mother's front lawn the night he'd walked away. I didn't feel entitled to wear Red's ring, but it felt all right to try on his shirt. The ghost of his scent still clung to it, though fainter each time I wore it.
I was on the waitlist for a new internship at the Institute. Meanwhile, I was renting a room in Lilliana's East Side apartment, and had found a job spaying and neutering cats and dogs for the Humane Society. In my spare time, I was also working with Malachy, who had turned his Queens town house into a makeshift laboratory. I had contacted Malachy when I'd come back to the city, hoping he could prescribe something that would temporarily suppress the change.
Malachy seemed intrigued at the challenge, and had come up with some foul concoction that I drank every morning. So far, three months had passed, and I hadn't changed. I also hadn't had a period, and my hair seemed to be falling out. But I couldn't see myself going back to Northside and letting my wolf run free without Red around to guide me. And thanks to my brilliant decision-making, Red was gone.
As for Malachy, his health seemed marginally improved, and he made it clear that what he really wanted was to continue his research—ideally, with me as a subject. Barring that, he intended to set up a practice in Northside as soon as he'd saved enough money. The idea that something about the town amplified certain conditions did not strike him as insane, which surprised me. But then, I had never been known for my ability to judge human character.
But I was back in Manhattan, and Lilliana and I were having a ball, cooking dinners together and watching the complete Fawlty Towers on DVD in the evenings. On the weekends, we went to museums and saw foreign films. So, really, I had nothing to complain about.
Except for the pain of losing Red. It wasn't going away, even though I'd started accepting that I really had lost him. I'd stopped calling Jackie and asking if she'd seen any sign of him. I'd stopped trying the cell phone number on his card. My mother had said, Listen, when a man is really ready to settle down, he settles down with the woman who's available. That's the reality. Red wanted a wife and family, and you said no. So give up on that and go start dating again.
But how do you tell a potential lover about this little medical condition you have which makes you hairy and homicidally horny once a month? And how do you content yourself with boring, safe vanilla sex when you've had the experience of complete surrender? I suppose I could have tried looking for bikers, but the kind of danger I wanted was wrapped in a package with love and respect and specific desire. I wanted a beast who believed in riding into the sunset. And every day that passed I seemed to want him more.
I walked west to Central Park, smelling the change in the season. Everyone seemed to be out today, and the Great Lawn was full of dogs and their walkers, which was nice—in general, I'd been exercising in a local gym, and I'd missed seeing other people in the street. I switched on my iPod and Helen Reddy sang that she'd been down on the floor but was much too wise to ever go down again. The air was cool enough for me to feel it in my lungs, and the uncivilized part of me whispered, Run. The part of me that needed the smell of the park like a taste on the back of my throat didn't want to just walk, it wanted to leap and race, bad knees be damned. So I let myself pick up speed. It wasn't until I moved past a slow jog that it happened. First the golden retriever to my left, tugging, breaking loose from the thin female walker, taking chase. Then the terriers, all three of them. Then the dachshund, pathetically moving its runt legs along.
“Hey!” She ran after them, reaching for their dangling leashes, but now there were other dogs joining in—a beagle descending from another path, a basset hound interrupted mid-sniff, suddenly bounding off—easily outdistancing their elderly owners. A black shepherd mix, puppy-eager, jumped a bench and barked his plea sure as he reached me ahead of the rest.
I looked down at his happy, floppy face, still jogging, trying not to lose momentum. It's not cardio exercise if you keep stopping. “What is it, boy? What's going on?” I patted his head as I moved on down the hill, and the others galloped along, the basset hound skidding to keep up.
“Come back here! Hey! Get back! Bad girl!”
For a moment, I thought the shouting was meant for me. Then I looked back up over my shoulder and saw, silhouetted against the pale, cold sky, a Pied Piper's assortment of breeds and mutts at the crest of the hill, all bounding along, freeing themselves from their leashes and owners, canines aroused by the irresistible, infuriating scent of wolf. I wasn't just another jogger: I was the friggin' call of the wild. Turning around, I tried to count. Ten now, including a Samoyed; a giant, dark, square-headed Bouvier; two collies; and a Great Dane.
And suddenly I understood why so many people choose giant hunting and herding breeds to roam their tiny Manhattan apartments. In a city this vast, you sometimes need a dog the size of a person to form a pack with. Except that it isn't always easy to convince these giants that you are top dog, even if you do bring home the Alpo.
I, on the other hand, obviously smelled like a leader. That, or they wanted to eat me.
I ran faster, nervous laughter bubbling up in my throat. I ran all the way through the park, up to Third Avenue, and back to Lilliana's apartment, where I had trouble getting my key in the lock.
The dogs went wild, barking, yipping, the shepherd managing a low approximation of a howl as I finally got the door open and slammed it in their eager faces. I ran up the stairs, still energized; well, I ran up the first two flights. At the door to the apartment, I stopped, trying to catch my breath. I braced my hand against the door, which I had locked not forty-five minutes earlier, and it opened.
The fear lasted only a moment, because I didn't have to look to know who had invaded my apartment. I could smell him. But I still couldn't believe it when my eyes located him, straddling a chair, regarding me with that familiar lazy smile.
“Did I wait long enough, Doc? I figured, April—she'll feel it by then. But I missed you too damn much.”
I stared at him, conscious of being sweaty and unmade-up, my hair falling in a lank ponytail down my back. “How did you get up here?”
“Fire escape.”
“But the windows were locked!”
“Jackie never told you? Right before I apprenticed with that shaman, I spent some time with a master thief.”
I walked closer to him. He'd lost weight again, and there was grayish-red stubble on his chin. He was wearing a backwards baseball cap and a perfectly hideous green sweatshirt with a picture of a stag on it, and if I'd never met him before I'd have figured him as the type to hunt from the back of a pickup truck. But my stomach was coiled tight with excitement and fear, and I had to concentrate on my breathing. In and out, that's how it's done, I reminded myself.
“I've been calling and calling you, Red. But you never called back, and all Jackie would say was that you were out of town.”
He unhooked his leg from the stool and stood up. “I know. Jackie told me that you'd talked to her a couple of times when I got back from Canada.”
“How long since you got back?”
“Three days. It was easier to stay far away, you know what I mean? Since you sounded so damn sure of yourself on New Year's, I figured I'd better wait till it was really spring to come after you. Not that this feels like spring, but hey, it's coming. You can almost smell it on the wind.”
I touched his face, tanned from a winter sun, and the shock of the contact raced all the way down my arm. “So what happens in spring?”
Red wrapped his arms around me and kissed me so hard my teeth hurt. Then he pulled back, laughed at my expression, and kissed me again, harder, his hands cupping the back of my head.
“How about this for a proposal: Come live with me and be my love and if you've got insomnia, hell, we can go chase sheep till dawn. No more lonely nights. That's my proposal.”
“I've been pretty stupid about men up till now.”
“I've been pretty stupid about women. Kept chasing after the ones who wanted to run away.”
“I don't want to run away.”
“Sure you do. But you also want to be caught.”
And he grabbed my wrists and held them behind my back and we kissed again, till I could feel the rapid beat of his heart against my chest.
“Are you ready for a little adventure, Doc?”
“What kind?”
“Let me see. How about something that calls for you to hang on to the back of a motorcycle. We spend some time exploring out west. I'll show you where I grew up in Texas. Then, when it really warms up, we head for northern Canada, where my grandfather lived.”
“And then what?”
Red traced my mouth with his thumb. “And then we go home.” He kissed me again, and this time, his tongue found mine.
Maybe somewhere between complete surrender and total independence I could find a middle path. Maybe there was a way for me to forge a veterinary career that could bring me closer to Red, not distance me from him.
Maybe I was thinking below the waist and had completely lost my ability to reason.
But really, when you think about it, Manhattan is no place for anything on four legs. And certainly not for something the size of a wolf.
I pulled apart from Red, wanting to find the words to reassure him that my answer to all his questions was a most definite yes. But then Red growled and began circling me, and I let out a nervous laugh.
“What am I supposed to do now? Say, My, what big teeth you have?”
Red just smiled and didn't answer. And suddenly I really was a little frightened. For the first time, I was seeing Red with his guard down. Not careful because I was new to the change. Not cautious because he didn't want to frighten me off with his intensity. This was a man secure in himself, and as he moved deliberately around me, I could feel the balance of power between us shift and reconfigure.
I didn't know the name of this game, or the rules. In all the years that Hunter and I had made love, we had remained bound by certain unspoken guidelines. I like this kind of touch, not that; touch me here, not there. We were like those people who go on vacation the same time each year to the same room in the same hotel in the same place. When Hunter had first come back from Romania, he had crossed our unstated boundaries a little, but only a little. Maybe, deep down, Hunter had known that if he'd pushed too far, he'd have discovered the surprisingly deep reservoir of cruelty in himself.
But this was different. Red was different. I stood my ground as he closed in, forcing myself to hold eye contact, that primitive, dangerous intimacy which provokes all manner of animal desires. A shiver of anxiety raced through me and I recognized it for what it was: that age-old fearful longing to surrender and let passion consume you.
Red's teeth closed over my shoulder. I had finally met my fate, and it was delicious.
The Better to Hold You is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
A Del Rey Mass Market Original
Copyright ? 2009 by Alisa Sheckley
All rights reserved.
DEL REY is a registered trademark and the Del Rey colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.
eISBN: 978-0-345-51273-4
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