Blue Eyes: Wolf

Lucia was at the lounge with Kitty and Soffia that night when she saw him. Wolf in red sweater. He was sitting over there, across the room, and Lucia thought he’d seen her too. She relaxed. He was found.

“I’m going for a little walk,” she said.

“Ok pretty. Have fun.”

She smoothed her way over to her favorite beast, slowly, no jarring motions, and stroked his arm. Complemented him. He smiled and Lucia loved him all over again. She didn’t stay long but slipped past his table as if she’d got other faces to greet, keeping her psychic hips turned his way so he'd feel her wherever she went. The lounge was anchored by an oval bar, setting in motion a circular flow, an orbit about the center point of bottles and taps. Lucia smiled, shined sweet and seductive hellos in general directions, taking care to offend no one while keeping her trajectory true. She was on her way back to where her girls sat so beautiful at the innermost curve of the bar.

She sidled up to them, leaned gently against the back of Soffia’s stool and murmured suggestively the name of this one neglected, much loved man.

"But he bites," Kitty said simply.

Soffia knew Kitty was right, that he bit, if only metaphorically, and that Lucia had permanent imprints to show for it. He bit, snarled and skulked. Trusted no one, or only a few.

“I’d give him up every day if only he’d trust me,” Lucia confessed as if she’d read her mind, and Soffia heard a wistful loyalty in her voice.

"He's alone." Lucia and Soffia both understood that Kitty meant more than that he was sitting by himself.

“He smiles every time he sees you. Like he can’t help it,” Soffia noted.

“It wasn’t always like this,” said Lucia.

“He grins now. He used to lick his lips.”

“Considering a sauce.”

“Red wine sauce?” asked Kitty, and smiled.

Soffia lifted her glass and they toasted with the house chianti.

“No, I think something a little better to eat me with, my dears.”

Lucia is flashed back to his room in the attic years ago when they lay tangled together on his bed. Suddenly, he jumps up on some impulse and is in the kitchen, opening first one cabinet, then the other. He’s back with something. She hears the twist of a cap being loosened, then after a second’s silence the wet sound of his hands rubbing together. Lucia smells olives, he smoothes olive oil onto her back in strong strokes, heating and releasing kitchen scents and a rush of pleasure into the air. He pours the oil in a long line down her back, between her cheeks, finishing with an upward flick of the wrist that splashes a final heavy drop onto her. It's cold on her warming skin, running thick into the deep between her legs, she’s smelling like dinner, he’s going to eat her, Lucia is game.

He reaches his arm over her back, digs it in under her hip and flips her over to baste. She opens her eyes slowly, she’s high, sees him licking the ravenous dedication off his lips better to kiss her with. His mouth falls over hers, his thick tongue fills her, their lips press together, and Lucia’s panic at the sight of him so hungry is overwhelming.

He sits up then, lifts the bottle of oil over her, tips it and Lucia gasps as the first cool drop hits her bones and her breasts. He smoothes it over her skin and pours more, pours it the length of her thighs, fingers it between her toes, leaving her slick and helpless under him. Lucia breathes deep then lets go, surrenders. She closes her eyes again and feels the long, tall bottle slip against the flesh inside her thighs, the cold glass cooling her, sliding up, pressed to her, then easing down, the flat of the side giving way to the long round neck that parts her and slides just inside. He is careful, he senses her submission and takes care of it. He slides the empty flask one more time along her, then sets it aside and dedicates himself to massaging the oil into every part of her, spicing her skin with the sweat from his own until she is glistening and soft and olive salty. She looks up at him, catches pride in his glazed, hungry eyes, and sees, for one of the few times since that night years ago, a warm smile. She is, simply, in awe. She closes her eyes again as he began to lick the oil off of her slick and spicy skin.

Soffia’s voice brought her back to the lounge.

“He loves you.”

“And, Soffia, Baldur loves you too.” They looked intently at each other for a moment, knowing that they were both right, and that there wasn't a hell of a lot they could do about it. Their men had made decisions that left Soffia and Lucia alone on long Tuesday nights and the fact of their love did nothing to change the fact of their deep unavailability. Baldur locked away in some other woman’s cage, her wolf in the one inside his soul.

“Nice to be loved,” mused Soffia.

Lucia glanced over at her wolf and wondered if it was true. How worthwhile is love, though, if its expression is only found in seasons, past midnight, after drinks and with a hint of sin? He turned his head and caught her look, then smiled a smile that only she would ever get to see, one years in the making and based on a lover’s secret trust. She blushed, began a wide grin then turned to Soffia as it emerged.

“It is.” It was all worth it just to see him smile.

The night swam on. Lucia slid back over to him eventually and told him how it was that day when he walked past the café where she had been sitting, and how she had stood up for a glass of water and had seen him from across the street. How she had whistled a short, sweet whistle at him and he looked and smiled and she was leaning in the doorway with her little glass of water looking like the girl next door with a twist of sex at ten in the morning, looking like she owned the place and smiling sly and shy at him like they were the only two people in the universe, met on this street looking like they did. She told him in spare words how she’d sat back down that morning pleased with herself, all set to read the paper but how her whole body was like a long slow explosion where his morning smile hit her soul and how her hands shook…and he took Lucia’s face in his hands there at the lounge, looked into her eyes and kissed the last few words into his mouth.

He smells like heat, like stoked fires and like sauces, she though, like minced melon and dashed ginger, like Marlboros, like my lips. His skin was salty and spiced, unsunned and tender over his bones, tattoos showing his passage the way his soft skin never could. One year his hips showed so clear as he lay there sleeping. His bones showed and she traced them softly, wondering at the world that could leave a beautiful man so thin and raw and bare. He rolled over onto his side and she traced the work on his back, memorizing it with a sense that she might never lay with him again.

It hurt to see him so thin. Lucia wanted to hold him and feed him and love him, but he’d never let her. His pride was the most sacred thing about him, and she was his lover, the one he tied gently to the bed with silk scarves, the one he smoothed with olive oil and stripped bare to fondle. She gave him all the power in their sex and would never admit that his fragile body hurt her to witness, and that his hip bones crushing into hers left her bruised. She’d never let him know that she prayed to powers for his health, or that his defenseless and tired body was anything less than lovely to her.

Who feeds you, she asked once, who cares for you? He’d closed his eyes and turned just slightly away from her, pressing his face more firmly into the pillow, silent. In the morning when she woke he was gone. To work, out into the world, untraceable. She had heard him padding through his apartment, and remembered his soft kiss on her lips, had sensed him standing quietly beside the bed, watching her, before he left. Then she’d slipped back into sleep, alone in his apartment, knowing that some bridge had been crossed. She had showed a slip of pity and her wolf had gone, leaving her with the lingering memory of his hot, full, almost desperate kisses and the thin white skin over his hungry, hurt bones. She knew when she woke in his tiny and very private home, that it would be a long time until she saw him again. She sat up and ran her fingers along the spines of the books that lined the head of his bed, then pulled his comforter to her face and submerged herself in the tangy smell of him. She licked the inside of her elbow where his salts had gathered, and thought of his gaunt face while the taste savoured in her mouth. She dressed, took a last turn through his rooms, then left.

Within weeks another, very different man, was pressing his intentions into Lucia, and though her thoughts never strayed far from him, her wolf had disappeared.

How long did they last away from each other? Exactly as long as the other man stood beside Lucia. The minute that one traveled away her wolf resolved himself from the Smoke City ether and kissed her long and sweet right there, at that spot on that sidewalk, until she blushed and lost her breath.
You rock, she whispered, and he swelled with raw pride. In this zoo of beasts, his was the cage she entered most often, most willingly, most truly.

I have to talk to you, she confessed one evening all those years ago, that first season. She'd known of him for a few months, been introduced to him, knew him a bit, but not well. I feel this need, I have to talk to you…

He looked sideways up and almost into her eyes and murmured, So you’ve finally realized. His eyes shifted imperceptibly and locked onto hers for a flash moment of truth, then slipped away. His head was still cocked as if he was listening, and maybe he did hear the sharp intake of breath and the quickening of her heart as the antiquity of his words sank in. She sensed that she’d confessed this way to him a thousand times before and that his patience was a practiced thing.

She was stunned, standing there beside his chair in the darkened bar party, music and bodies pushing against her skin, smoke wrapping itself seductively around her body, laughter tumbling about her in strangely deadened avalanches. He knew, he’d known, something she’d just come to realize, and it was both a shock and a relief. He’d been waiting, how long had he been waiting and watching her sidle up to other bodies, sparkle for little boys and the men whose new and too obvious charms were an insult to the facets of their history. She was honestly slightly embarrassed at having been caught at such cheap seductions, but his words had relieved her of the need to keep on charming, keep on dancing for unknown monsters in the forms of men; she could stop the pantomime, wipe off the paint and rest a while because he knew her deepest secret, had pierced with his words and with his eyes straight to the heart of her soul. But standing there, in the heart of the city on an island far out at sea, late at night in a crowded café, she was speechless.

She saw rather than heard him say something, so she leaned in closer, asked him to repeat himself. He closed his eyes as he began to speak, a condition of his shy intensity that she’d grow to know so well since then, and murmured, we’ll meet later. He was dismissing her, freeing her from her dazed stance, but he was also declaring her his, at least for the night. She was to go dance and mingle as if nothing had changed, though everything had, and was to come at his summons when the night had folded into itself and couples tucked away into secret rooms to spend the last hours unalone. A flash of curiosity crossed her face that it could be so deep and succinct as this, re-meeting an eternal partner. Then she smiled in acquiescence. He’d turned slowly back to his beer but Lucia had a feeling that he saw her compliance with the surety of one who knew the script well, knew that she would have to play her role now or be compelled to play it eventually. He seemed secure that she’d understood the ritual and didn’t watch as she walked away.

Lucia gave into him that first night, succumbed and let him lock her into his world of sweat and spices, of cur-like snarls and drunk nights, of bones and flesh and confessions and so, so many moments of silence. And sitting at the lounge with her Kitty and her Soffia she knew she’d give into him again.