Running From Wolves

Ashlynn allowed him to put her in his car before she felt her brain slowly flicking back on, thoughts like daggers plummeting through her quickly waning bliss.

As the engine hummed to life a few moments later, logic was beginning to seep back in. She would owe Marlene an explanation, but worse, she was going to owe herself one. She knew better.

"Where are you taking me?" she asked, her throat dry as she stared pointedly out the window, her thighs pressed tightly together.

She could hear the smug grin on his face, though she refused to look over at him. "Your apartment. Hayden mentioned there was something I needed to see there, besides, you'll need to grab your things and we could use some privacy. . ." he replied, running through a mental checklist, that had her heart through the floor, but she was a little more concerned about the intimate images that wrote like a diary across her living room.

Heart dropping through the floor, Ashlynn blanched. "No, I really don't think. . ." but even before the words could slip free, Ashlynn felt the car slow in front of her house. There was no point asking how he knew which one was hers; such was the curse of falling for a mangy mutt. It had taken many crazy careful steps to get out of state lines without being tracked. She had been intensely cautious about carrying items that could conceal her scent, to the extent of heavily infusing all of her body scrubs with scented oils, crossing multiple waterways, and transferring transportation with overly-cautious frequency. As he was already out the door and halfway to hers, she had far more pressing concerns.

"Blaise, I really don't think I want you to. . ." The door was already open as she scrambled through the door after him, and nearly rammed into him as he made it into the living room, where all the floor space was littered with canvas.

The visions that haunted everything from her best dreams to her hardest nightmares. Wolves, proud, graceful, and at times garish, but more importantly, the amber and auburn blended wolf that was Blaise was in every one. Fierce and bold, Ashlynn couldn't help but find him in every image she painted. Like the lens of a camera forever focused on a single muse, she felt trapped. She held her breath as she watched him take it in: the beauty and the ugly she had already come to know of him. Trees, cityscapes, blood, and even lust lurked in her lines, the colors, and every brush stroke.

"This is the reality of what I am to you? A subject to your artwork in place of a partner to your life? Can you really see me as such a villain?" Blaise's fire burning in fuming embers. His fingers running over the angry wolf from the alley that she'd seen that first night.

"It's not all so dark." Ashlynn wandered around, her fingers taking sheets off more canvases, unveiling more scenes, many of which showed the longing in those wolfish eyes that she'd been trying to forget. "I see you as a beautiful raging nightmare, Blaise, but I also see you in my daydreams. You are every image that haunts my imagining, both good and bad. When I used to paint, I painted to show people what could be, what is, and what never will be. I painted paradise and hell in a young girl's tears. My art would have been famous, but now I only paint one thing, and that is what I meant when I said you ruined me. My heart, you might have had, but you took my gift so unintentionally, and so thoroughly."

"You only paint me?" he asked, as he slowly noted the volume of the work, and took a closer look at one painting in particular. One with a girl in a red dress pressed up against a wall by a wolf. "We keep ending up this way, don't we?" he said grinning.

Fierce blush warmed her cheeks as she slowly backed away. Blaise rose and each step toward her resembled his wolfish side stalking her down. Knowing it was useless, Ashlynn turned and ran toward the front door. Her hand barely clenched the door knob as his large hands rested their weight on the door, his broad chest, hot against her back.

"Honestly, you'd think I was trying to hurt you," he huffed, and her muscles pulsed for want. His hand swept down, tucking her hair behind her neck. Beside herself, she lengthened her neck, baring it to him, relaxing before she heard a rough growl exit his chest.

"What is this?" he growled, finding the spindly black circle tattooed across the back of her neck.

Ashlynn locked her lips tighter than a clam's shell. After all, what would he do with that information once he knew? Ashlynn shook her head.

"Nothing," she answered, forcing her voice to stay steady. "Just a tattoo."

"Ash, this is my world we're talking about. I know what magic looks like," he grumbled, pulling the rest of her hair aside, and studying the mark, like he was assessing damages on purchased property.

Feeling the urge to shake him off and walk away, Ashlynn would have, if she could find the strength in her knees. "Is it common for wolves to mate with humans?" her voice quaking as she posed the question.

"Not common, but not as rare as you might think. Werewolf lore has lied about a great many truths, as you well know. Our capacity for love, is as true to our animal side as it is to our human. We love with everything we have, and for the scope of our lifetime, but with a lifetime longer than either from our ties to the netherworld."

Ash relaxed, using his answer to catch her breath. "Blaise, I warned you at the restaurant. I don't want back into your world. That's your life, and I cannot be part of it, I've seen enough. I crave you like a heroin addict reaching for a hit; knowing it could break me, but desperate for the high."

Fingers brushed against her own with a gentleness his touch rarely knew. "Ash, don't start this again. I thought we were making progress."

"Progress into my pants perhaps, but not my life. Blaise, you're not the only one with secrets; I'm just better at keeping them," she said, and this time, she slipped away, putting some distance between them.

"I may not know everything about you, but I know every inch of your body. Eight months I spent studying your flesh before you took off, disappearing like a ghost in the night. I woke to a cold bed, an empty kitchen, and a ring in place of a note on the dining room table."

Ashlynn, hid the tears in her eyes recalling how much harder that single action had been then the course of this day would be. That ring the promise of a future she had come to desire a great deal, only to have it pulled away by the anniversary of another year of life proving she had more to do than settle down.

Ashlynn faced a painting, desperate not to see the pain in his eyes, to have another vision to mark from memory to canvas. "What you said in the parking lot about me being fire? For what it's worth you're not the only one I'm running from."

"What are you so afraid of? If it isn't vampires and it isn't me, what are you running so hard from?" he asked.

Ashlynn turned around, looking him straight in the eye. "When we met, I knew, but it was like a fairy tail, a ghost story told at bedtime. My mother was disavowed along with her mother from a much larger family tree, for falling in love with mortal men. It was cold, but that was the way things were. When we met, I had yet to hit a quarter of a century, but since I've gone. . . that marker has been passed. Lucky me, unlike my mother I still have my inheritance, three generations worth because I fell in love with a man who is way more than mortal."

"What are you talking about?' he asked, those eyes that pierced so hard they could bear her naked in the light of day.

"My ancestors were witches. As of my 25th birthday, it would appear, so am I. You are not human, and my ancestors would have no problem slaying you, my love to get to me. Meanwhile, I have about as much interest in witchcraft as I have in fangs, and too many worlds trying to lay claim to my sorry ass. Look around, this apartment is shitty, my art is doomed for a storage unit and I can barely afford to live, but at least I'm not a danger to you or anyone else."

Blaise chuckled, and Ashlynn's face tightened in shock. "A witch? God, I thought I was the only thing weighing you down. Alright, well then, let me just be the first to say, there are things worth standing your ground and fighting for."

"I need a drink, can I get you something?" she asked.

That moment in the restaurant had been all she'd ever needed, to know how much she wanted him here. After the restaurant, he'd made alarmingly clear his willingness to fight for his desires. Now, even as she began to tip the iceberg on the wall between them, she knew he would stay and fight. Problem was, could she?

"Water," he offered, leaning on the wall, and watching as she pulled down dollar store glasses, and wandered over to the tap. Trying to ease her discomfort, he returned to scanning through the paintings, while she tarried in the kitchen.

Finally she came over carrying a glass of water, the glass sloshing from the shaking in her hands. He took it, and sipped carefully at it, watching her warily. "Ashlynn, I owe something to my pack, because I haven't been any kind of leader since you left. But whatever it is you need from me, you have." Resting his empty glass on the only open coffee table space available, mixed with paintbrushes and pallets, he stared at her completely exposed and this time with his pants on.

Breaths later, and they were on her bed. Kisses like fireworks took her breath away. On his arms and knees, he pressed against her, delving into her mouth, and trading breath for breath. Hands that ran hotter than a human's traveled down her curves. Reaching the hem of her skirt, he lifted the whole dress off her, and she raised her hands, revealing an old bra and cheap panties, but he looked wonderstruck as his eyes traced into her flesh and his hands studied the familiar curves he'd promised himself he would trace into memory if he ever again had the opportunity.

Closing her eyes, Ashlynn moaned at the feeling of his hand splayed across her stomach as it wrote goosebumps on her skin and traced upwards towards her breasts. With measured focus his fingers slipped under the wire, pushing the bra over her breasts as he palmed the flesh, drawing his mouth down to lick and consume her exposed nipple. Throwing her head back she moaned, her body hot and flush with need, and still plenty damp from their earlier escapades.

"Blaise," she moaned, as he explored her body with hands, letting his tongue trace a thick journey. The dog sure know how to use that tongue, she knew just before her panties landed in tatters and his mouth demonstrated its full talents. "Uhhhh," she cried, her back arching and feet curling as she screamed out in a fulfillment. Blaise pressed deeper reveling in his earned prize as she tried to squirm away, too sensitive. "Stop," she cried, feeling her pulse race, as he lapped away, his tongue pressing deeper. What was unbearable soon become another round of, "Please, oh god, please don't stop," as she arched again, seeing spots against her vision. This time, he did pull back, panting and licking his lips.

"Oh yes, I missed that taste," he huffed.

Biting her lip, and in desperate need of a moment, she rolled over and reached up and grabbed the front of his pants as she moved upright. Taking the corners of his shirt, he raised his arms as she dragged it off him, loving the hot planes of his chest. Then making quick work of his belt and button, she drew his jeans down to reveal another part of Blaise that seemed more than happy to see her. His breath caught as she leaned forward and dragged her hand up the full length of him. Like most werewolves, he was muscular, and hung like a bull, her thumb and fingers still a long way apart and the length of him the full length of her forearm. If she didn't know better, she would never have thought herself capable of taking the full of him inside her, but memories of exactly how well his equipment took her, had her tongue tracing every ridge of him as her mouth stretched to accommodate his girth.

It was Blaise's turn to moan. She smiled at the power she felt over him as she pried his pleasure from him, one lick at a time. Feeling him harden, she prepared for his hot release, before he pulled out and pressed her down on the bed. "No, I've been waiting too long," he groaned pulling her up against his chest like she weighed nothing. More than happy to assist, she spread her legs to either side of him as he met her gaze for gaze as he lowered her down on his equipment. She gasped as the pressure to stretch her apart had her moaning like a bitch in heat.

Slick and hot, he moved his hands under her legs and around to her backside with her on her knees as he dragged her down. Moaning louder, she felt him splitting her in two. "Blaise," she cried as she felt each slick ridge of him sink home. Sinking home, she felt him pulse, and she followed.

"I love you, Ashlynn," he whispered.

Collapsing into his arms, he stayed inside of her, as he drifted off. Still panting she waited a long moment before disentangling herself. "Oh sweetheart, you are one hell of a good fuck," she sighed as she pulled out some fresh clothes and grabbed her shoes. Sleeping, he had a stunning smile on his face, and the tranquilizers she had slipped in his water would keep him out for a little while. "For what it's worth, I love you; that's exactly why I run. Taking on my family is a war you and your pack don't need."

Grabbing an emergency duffel she kept in her closet, she headed out the back door and into the evening. "I'm sure we'll meet again, love. I just hope it's not too soon," she offered, hurrying off into the woods. It was still daylight, she still had time to make a clean break.