Tame

***

You were eleven and it was the first time you'd ever told a girl you'd liked them. At the time, you weren't even a hundred percent sure what it meant to say something like that. You were already friends. Best friends.

But your body got hot when you saw her buck-toothed smile or thought about holding her pudgy hand. It seemed somehow important, to say it, and to say it right.

You were showing her how to climb a tree. Something about being that high up made you feel daring, and tall. You looked down at her, and said something like:

"I like you, Jessica."

When she didn't immediately say anything back, your body, on instinct, went into overdrive. All that pleasant warmth grew into stifling heat, swelling your throat shut and causing your eyes to water, as you looked down at hers, which weren't watering and yet, seemed to tremble. A sensation was ballooning up your chest. You thought you must be happier than anyone else who ever lived, and for some reason that made you terrified and miserable.

How badly, you just wanted to touch her.

You reached a hand out to her, only what came into view wasn't your hand. It wasn't any hand. It was a claw. Thick with silvery fur and fingers ending in cruel talons, sliding through the air like a knife, to slice the girl with the twin braids, your best friend, whom you liked so much.

You let out a yawp, hugged it to your chest as if you could stifle its hungering instinct. In response to your sound, time caught up with her. She bleated, like frightened livestock, slid down the tree, and escaped the yard.

That was the first day you felt like that. Out of sync with the world. From that day on, your body grew sallow and slow, your gut swollen around a bolus of sadness you were too weak to digest.

***

She tips her chin towards you. "You've barely touched that beer."

You're too embarrassed to tell her that you didn't realize it was nearly 10% alcohol when you grabbed it from the bodega, so strong that even a sip trampolines around in your stomach. You tolerance plunges near the full moon—usually, that makes things easier.

It's late enough that the moons almost at apex, and it still hasn't happened. Some childish part of you wants to believe that it won't happen. The change comes slower when you're nervous, when you're scared, you know that.

You keep spooling up your courage to ask her to leave. To say Thanks for the help, I'm all set and wave her off. But every time you open your mouth, you find the words have left you.

Soon, the night is cold enough to force even someone like you to cast off your prodigious fear of intimacy and huddle together with a pretty girl for warmth. It feels right, to lie back in the grass with someone, have your arm looped around her waist, and her head moving with your chest as you breathe in mild sighs, synced with the timing of her breath, as she spoke to you about nothing, fingers idly clicking the chain of the lead that ran down from the collar and pooled in shining silvery links between your breasts.

The moon winks at you through the broad leaves of the tree above. A tingling, that's all you get. Your body revs into motion, sloughs off its aches and pains, and begins to twist. A spastic wriggle spills through your fingers. Eun, half-dozing, lifts her head. "Is it happening?"

You shuffle the arm behind your back. "Whatever happens." You swallow. "Please don't be afraid of me."

She tucks her fingers around your ear. Draws you half up to sitting, in a roman recline. You eyes watch as her hair shimmers in the twilight, as she pulls it out of her face and back behind her. She leans in.

How brittle your skin feels. Sharp and vulnerable, like broken glass.

Her breath spills warm like fire over your frozen nose. Before you realize it, you've grabbed her. That muscled arm with thick fur. Already, cruel claws sink into her vulnerable flesh. You want to hide it, but you can't let go. You're revving on instinct now, there's barely any of you left. Your head nudges forward, lips parting, but she chokes her grip on the chain, keeping you at the shortest lead possible, her mouth denied.

"Not yet."

"Please." The plea bursts through the tightness of your throat. Your lips scrape open air. "Please, kiss me."

Her fingertip, against your lips. "Not. Yet."

You start to cry, openly, like you did when you were kid, as your face begins to morph.

You are shaking, trying to push her away even though your fingers are locked so hard into her top you can't believe you haven't torn it to pieces. You are shaking. "Leave, please. I can't stop it."

The heels of her hands goad into your cheeks, she silences you with a whisper of breath. "You don't have to."

This time, with her lips so close to yours, she does. At the last possible moment, she kisses you.

A whip-crack of energy ripples through your body. You bristle. You burn.

She is astride you now, rocking her crotch against your thigh. She strokes her fingers through your eyebrows as they grow long and thick. Over your nose as it flexes and pulses, breaking into a snout.

Your clawed hand grabs her, pulls you to her. With a moan, she cinches the leash, hard. Her knee grinds down into your crotch, and you howl.

You throw her to the ground, face down in the dirt and grass. Your hips join to hers, slam forward, and drive her face down into the dirt. You mount her, claws shredding her shirt, tracing lines, bright, bold, and red in the moonlight, down her flesh beneath. She takes a fistful of grass for traction, so she can match your thrusts, and her other hand doubles the wind of the chain around it, yanking you down by the neck, into her. You roar. Your body shakes and you are alive. You pound against her with insensate lust. Nothing but desire to plunge, to purge, to feel.

Your hips batter hers, and she squeals. At first you think it's fear, and that stirs hunger in your blood. When you realize it's delight, you float back into your body, and tranquility washes over you like warm water on your skin.

She takes you by the face, cantilevers you to the ground, somehow pinning you with her weight. Her hips move smooth and fast against the muscles of your leg. She is wet. She is kissing you, on your head and at your ears and between your eyes. She braces her hands against the back of your skull. Rubbing you with fingers. Groping around your pointed ears and twisting them until you howl with pent-up energy. Kissing you with lips moist and drooling. Smearing your nose with her wetness. Her breath is like the exhaust of a forge, and every time her hands tighten around you, she pulls herself deeper into you, and you deeper into her, until your bodies threaten to break and reform, merge and complete each other, suffer and... and... and...

Her face buries against your neck. Muffled by your fur, she screams out your name. Except she can't get it out. Leo—! Another frantic thrust of hips and cunt. Then Leon! And she drives herself against you once more, taking fistfuls of your fur and screaming into your neck. You hold her, arms shaking as bad as she is, burying her into your muscles, threatening to crush her, but even that doesn't stop her. She beats her body into yours, tugs the chain in wrenching counterforce to each thrust of her hips that you can't believe she doesn't tear the collar right off your neck, and digs her teeth—flat teeth, human teeth—into the corded muscles of neck, and even that can't muffle her scream of:

"Leona!"

You realize that no one's ever said your name, when you were like this.

***

The sky threatens snow, and in winter, even in here up high on this hill overlooking the cliffs, the air is humid and heavy on your skin and hard on your bruises. It's the worst, waking up the morning during the cold months. The loss of all that fur always leaves you colder than you expect. It's the only time you really miss it.

She curls against you like a pet might—or a child? Not that you'd know—spooning you with her small body and clinging you to her with arms and legs. Her breasts and stomach swell against you back with her breathing, that's how close she is, and every inhale compresses skin against skin, activating your bruises. It's the kind of hurt you like best.

The kind you're most comfortable with, anyway.

She is so precious, in your arms; small, and plump, and indescribably beautiful. A flicker of warmth you hadn't noticed before radiates from her core. The flutter of her lips as she breathes through her mouth in her sleep. Even the little speckles of dirt clinging to her skin here and there. You're too sore to move, and she's too peaceful to wake. So it's an even deal, like that. You hold her loosely, at the small of her back, and wait for the sun to burn the morning mist away.