Archive of Our Own

When they get to the narrow stairway that leads up from the basement, his hand slips from hers. Her fingertips feel tacky and when she sees the traces of blood on them (blood from those...things? Things like him?) the waves of shocky nausea that were beginning to subside rise up again, lifting bile into her throat.

"Come on, it's okay," he says in a gentle voice. "We have to go." He takes her hand again, and she trails him up the stairs, staring at but not quite processing his gouged shirt and the stripes of blood that litter his V-shaped back. Near the top, he slows then pauses, bracing his free hand on the wall.

He sways, and she thinks *if he goes down, he's taking me with him,* so she hurries up another couple steps and slips an arm around his waist. His hands may be soft, but his body is, unsurprisingly, hard as a rock and just as heavy. For another couple seconds, he leans into her, and she grunts with the effort to keep him on his feet, but then he exhales sharply and forges ahead.

Upstairs, in the thin morning light, he somehow looks worse, pale with dark circles beneath his eyes, lids drooping for a moment before he shakes his head, lips drawing into a tight, thin grimace. He pauses and squeezes his eyes shut for a couple seconds, then they snap open and glow red. She fights the urge to drop him and waits as they fade back to a stormy grey-green, pupils constricted, lines of pain etched around the corners.

"Do you have a car?" she asks, gently herding him down a hall and toward a side door that empties onto the teacher's parking lot.

He lets himself be led a dozen yards or so before murmuring. "Not here. You should go. You should forget about what you saw."

She doesn't reply, but she doesn't let go of him either, and he doesn't pull away. They pass her classroom and she backs him against a wall. After a teacher-firm, "Stay," she ducks inside and grabs her purse. By the time she gets back outside, his knees are bent and he's bracing both hands back against the wall, a move which stretches his tattered shirt across his formidable chest. "Am I right that you don't want to go to the hospital?"

"Mm-fine. Healing just took more out of me than I thought."

"Of course. Right. Okay," she says, sounding way calmer than she feels. "Come on."

He looks like he wants to protest, but then she takes his hand, grips it firmly, and marches in the direction of her car.

*

Once the school's in the rear view mirror, she starts to ask him something, but a glance reveals that his eyes are shut, lips parted, head lolled to the side. "Right," she says with a nervous laugh. "Please don't die in my car. Please don't die period."

At a stoplight, she reaches over and tries to check his pulse, but his hand clamps around her wrist before she can reach his neck. He blinks, inhales sharply, then stares at her, dazed, and mumbles an apology before releasing her.

"Where do you live?" she asks.

"Downtown." He gives her an address on the far side of the city center, a fifteen minute drive on a good day. With rush hour traffic it would be closer to thirty.

"I, uh." She hesitates because she doesn't know this man, she doesn't even know his name yet. All she knows is that he let himself get ripped apart in order to save her life. And that she's drawn to him. And that as whole as he appears to be, he looks like he might collapse at any second. So she ignores some instincts and gives in to others. "I live a couple of blocks from here. Do you want..." her voice trails off because now he's staring at her like she's suddenly speaking a foreign language. "You could, I don't know, shower and change your shirt."

He looks down at the shredded, blood stained cotton, then back at her.

"Or I could drive you home. I'm," she laughs nervously, "I think I'm taking the day off. I'm Jennifer by the way, Jennifer Blake. Thanks for saving my life."

He blinks at her, then drops his gaze to his lap, where his hands are now folded. His shoulders slump forward, like he's trying to look smaller. After a nod, he says quietly, almost shyly, "I could use a shower. Thank you Ms. Blake."

*

She sends up a prayer of thanks that none of her neighbors are leaving for work to see her half-leading, half-dragging a tall, dark, handsome, blood-spattered man inside. She points him down the hall, "Bathroom's the second door on the left, I'll bring you some towels in a minute," then kicks off her heels and pours herself a glass that's 1/3 juice, 2/3 vodka and downs it in a series of gulps. It's only when she sets the glass on the counter with a rattle that she realizes her hands are shaking.

There's a ripple of hysteria she can feel right beneath her skin, and she knows that it would be the easiest thing in the world to give in to it, but she doesn't. The warmth in her stomach is already spreading, smoothing her frayed nerves as she grabs a stack of towels from the closet, and then she's knocking gently on the bathroom door.

He didn't shut it all the way, so it swings in some and she calls out, "It's me," so he can hear her above the running water. She tells herself she isn't going to look, just set the stack on the toilet then fetch his dirty clothes from the floor, but she can't help herself. Her shower curtain is clear with big yellow and magenta cartoon finches all over it, and she can't see everything, but she sees enough to blush and turn away. She hears his feet squeak on the floor of the tub and hears herself asking, "What's your name?"

"It's Derek, ma'am."

Her eyes slide back to the blurred form turning behind the curtain as he briskly scrubs his body. She can make out the white of lather, the curve of his ass, a dark splash of hair between his legs. He must have the shower up as hot as it can go, because the room's already so heavy with steam it's a little hard to breathe. "Okay," she calls, backing out and shutting the door.

Clothes. Right. She goes through her closet for one of her ex's old shirts. The moss green tee she finds has seen better days, with its frayed hem and faint pit stains. But it's not see-through or blood-stained, so it should work. She grabs an old pair of sweatpants her father left the last time he visited, and as she's heading back to deliver them, the water goes off. A moment later, he's standing in the bathroom doorway with a rose-pink towel knotted around his waist, using a second to scrub at his hair.

When he's done, his hair's sticking up in a dozen different directions, and she tries not to stare, but Jesus fucking Christ, he's built like something out of an ad for gay men's underwear, and there's not a scratch on him. She looks him up and down, and when she finally gets back to his face he's staring at his feet, looking more embarrassed than anything else. "How are you not hurt?" she blurts out. "How are you not *dead*? I saw what those things did to you."

"I am one of those things," he says with a frown. But he doesn't sound angry or defensive. More apologetic than anything else.

"What *are* you?"

He stares at her for a long time, like he's weighing something. Finally, he says, "I'm a werewolf."

"Right," she says with a scoff.

He raises an eyebrow, then slings the hair towel over his shoulder and leans casually against the door frame before holding up a hand. Claws spring out from his fingertips, and his eyes flash red.

She takes a step back, hitting the hallway wall and dropping his clothes. She isn't scared, exactly, but the rush of adrenaline floods through her all the same. The claws disappear, then he's crouching down and fetching the clothes from the floor. "Thank you," he says, looking up at her.

"Werewolf," she repeats.

He rises to his feet and shrugs, like he just announced he was vegan or Presbyterian or something. "I'm gonna," he nods back at the bathroom and retreats to behind the door.

"Werewolf," she mutters to herself, "of course," before heading back to the kitchen, because she has a werewolf in her bathroom who looks like an underwear model and whose viscera she's pretty she saw about an hour ago. And that calls for another drink.

She's digging through her fridge for a yogurt, trying not to think about the part of the evening where she almost got shredded like so much ropa vieja, when she hears him clear his throat from just a few feet behind her. She's proud of the way she doesn't startle. "Do you want anything to eat?"

"I don't want to trouble you more than I already have," he says. "You've done more than enough."

"Sit. The least I can do is feed you. I have, um," she looks around the pitiful contents of her fridge. Three cups of Yoplait light, a bag of arugula she should have tossed days ago, a door full of condiments, and leftovers. "Chinese?"

"That would be wonderful. Yes, thank you." Then, after a pause, "Are you all right?"

She grabs the half-quart of sesame chicken she ordered after work yesterday, and the lo-mein she barely touched, and dumps both on a plate, then sets it running in the microwave. "I'm fine," she says, "I'm great. I'm pretty sure I'm going to have a nervous breakdown or wake up any minute now, but other than that." She turns to find him sitting at her kitchen table, watching her closely.

"You're taking this better than most people would," he says evenly.

"It's all an act."

He shakes his head. "You don't smell afraid."

"Oh yeah? What do I smell like?"

His nostrils flare. "Chalk dust, photocopies, the Diet Coke you were drinking last night, ink, that blouse was recently dry cleaned, there's a band-aid somewhere on your body and..." he looks up at the ceiling and then at the far wall.

"What?"

"That's it," he says unconvincingly. And uncomfortably. In fact he squirms in his seat.

"No, what?" She lifts an arm and sniffs a pit. "Yeah, my deodorant wore off sometime yesterday. Sorry."

"No, that's fine. That's better than the alternative, actually. I don't know how Sc-- how some of us handle all the chemicals teenagers douse themselves in."

"Axe body spray?"

He shudders.

She smiles. "Then what is it? Come on, tell me."

"You're ovulating."

The microwave dings, and as she watches, two spots of color appear on his cheeks.

*

When he says she doesn't smell like fear right now, he's lying, but it's a white lie, one designed to keep her at ease. Earlier, as she watched his flesh get shredded, her terror was a thin, high, piercing note, winding its way through the rich flood of rage pouring off Boyd and Cora. Cora, Jesus. If she wakes up, it won't be until this afternoon at the earliest, not with the thrashing he gave her. His baby sister. Cora.

No, he can't think about that. He thinks instead about the woman in front of him, who invited him into her home after witnessing what he is capable of. He watches her dig through her kitchen for plates and silverware, and saying she doesn't smell at least a little like fear is a lie. Yes, there's the faintest whiff of her earlier terror clinging to her clothes, but that's old. Radiating off of her ever since they got in her car is a particular sort of wariness--subtle but unmistakable. It's in the slight jump in her pulse every time he speaks, the awareness in the way she hold her body, combined with a particular undertone you smell mostly on women when they're in a vulnerable position with an unfamiliar man.

She is in a vulnerable position with an unfamiliar man.

When she questions him about her scent, he is grateful for the distraction and he rattles off the other things that come to his mind as he inhales. The sticky sweet garlic heat of the Chinese and its underlying poultry scent are billowing, rapidly blanketing the threads of her scent, and the last one he picks up is, he thinks at first, arousal. Just a trace, but another sniff and he catches the spiky tang of hormones that tell you that in a week to ten days, you'd better just mind your manners and keep your head down. Another few after that will come the savory, rusty bass line that trails after breeding age female humans every month or so.

Between the pit of hunger that snaps at him in the aftermath of the bone deep healing and the exhaustion from the same, he can't quite manage to hold his tongue when she asks him for the truth. He knows how creepy it must sound when he says that she's ovulating. He's glad he manages, just, to say that instead of fertile.

He can't smell her anymore, at least temporarily, with her over there and the General Tso's sizzling as the microwave whirrs away. Still, when he sees her flush in response to his words and hears her heart stutter, he can't quite believe the speed with which the embarrassed heat hits his cheeks. Because he's a grown man. He's not--he's not the boy he suddenly feels like when he looks at her. He needs to remind himself of that.

He's not the fifteen-year-old boy who got a friendly ride home one day when it rained after practice, when she said she just had to pick something up in her apartment, and would he like to come up and maybe he should get out of that soaking wet uniform and wasn't he all grown up. And wouldn't he like to get warm. And didn't he know this would have to be their little secret. She'd been fertile that afternoon. She'd rolled on the condom with her mouth as he shook with the strain of not embarrassing himself, but during, a deep, wild part of himself knew what was possible. Knew what it was striving for as they--

The microwave dings and he shakes his head as if to dislodge the memory. Desire wells up inside him, a desire to press his nose to this woman's neck--Jennifer's neck. Not to claim her. Not even to kiss her, but to wash Kate's phantom smell from the back of his throat.

She spoons a quarter or so of the food into a bowl and sets the rest of the hot plate in front of him with a fork. "Thank you," he says, scooting in his chair and stabbing the largest hunk chicken.

As he chews, she pokes at her noodles and says, without looking up, "I've got a lot of questions, but I'm not so sure I really want the answers right now."

A couple gulps of orange juice and he says, "Trust me. I *am* sure you really don't want the answers."

"Why did you save me?" She sets down her fork and presses that hand to the table, her other remains curled around a glass that's orange juice plus astringent alcohol.

He's not sure--he'd have to get much closer to her and smell her breath--but he thinks she's got a buzz. It's in her voice already, just a shade. He shoves more food in his mouth to buy time.

"Never mind. What matters is what you did, not why you did it."

"You didn't deserve what they were going to do to you."

"Did you?"

It's a strange, sharp question, in a too perceptive tone. He doesn't like it and a dozen deflections come to mind. She doesn't know him. She may have caught a glimpse of what he is, but she doesn't know about the worst things he's done. Right now, he's pretty sure she's casting him as a hero. Her hero. "It's not like it stuck," he says finally.

"Did it hurt?"

"Did it look like it hurt?"

"It looked like they were killing you."

"They tried. They failed. It's over with."

"Just like that." She shakes her head, amazed, but with a note of disbelief.

It still hurts. He isn't about to share that. Inside he's knit back together, but wounds that deep will ache for the rest of the day. He'll be ravenous until tomorrow too. He'll have cravings--red meat of course, and a safe-smelling hole to crawl in and sleep it off. The company of his pack. And once his body builds back, stronger than it was before, he'll crave sex. That's a craving he won't sate, not with anyone else at least. He hasn't since he returned to Beacon Hills.

She picks at her food as he shovels his down, methodically clearing his plate before she's half done with hers. The moment he's finished, he carries his plate to the sink. He should leave now, he thinks, but it occurs to him that if he heads straight to his loft, he'll leave a scent trail that the alphas could backtrack here if--when, if he's honest--they discover his home. His shifted form may have the advantage of maneuverability, speed, and stealth. But cars smell, for the most part, like other cars and are harder to track, especially along well traveled roads. Perhaps he's being over cautious. Perhaps he's just afraid of what he'll face when he leaves here and learns whether his sister's dead or alive.

He rinses his plate then sighs heavily, leaning with both hands braced on the counter's edge. He feels her approach, but it's still a surprise when her hand comes to rest between his shoulder blades. It's soothing, and then she pushes up to his neck and rubs at him just below his collar, stopping just before her skin touches his. He drops his head and steadies his breath as she rubs there with her, thumb circling deeper until it triggers a shivering little release of tension.

"You look exhausted," she says gently. This close, her scent washes over him, not just the identifiable traces left on her by her environment, but her personal aroma. He wonders what she would do, really, if he just backed her against the refrigerator and buried his nose in her armpit. "I'll tell you what. The bedroom's at the end of the hall. How about you crash for a few hours, then I'll drive you home."

"I can get a ride," he says. The sod-smeared-leather, candy/soda/gum and teen-boy funk of Stiles's Jeep comes instantly to mind and while he could call Peter...that's someone he definitely doesn't want led to this doorstep. "But they can't come until 2:45."

"2:45, huh. That's a pretty particular time."

Shit. Right. A teacher. He looks over his shoulder at her. By now, her hand has drifted to that shoulder. His chin brushes her fingers.

"I'm not asking a question, I'm just letting you know I saw Scott McCall in the basement. He's a student of mine. I assume he's a friend of yours."

"That sounds an awful lot like a question. And the answer is, it's complicated."

She squeezes his shoulder then lets go slowly, trailing her hand down his arm several inches before pulling it away abruptly, like she realizes what she's doing. He can't help but lift his eyebrows at her.

"Sorry. It's just, I swear I saw bone here." She presses a few tentative fingers to his triceps. Then presses harder. "Are you flexing?"

"No. Why would I--"

She drops her hand. "No, of course. You're just--right. Forget I said anything." She's flustered now. Gentle waves of her arousal lap at him with every inhalation.

He turns his back to the sink and crosses his arms over his chest, facing her. In his best stern Alpha voice, he says, "Look, it's normal after something like that to feel like you owe me something. You don't."

"I owe you my life."

"I don't expect you to," he splays a few fingers in an aborted gesture, then grips his biceps again, "do anything for me in exchange."

She looks at him evenly, with an expression that he guesses she's used on many an unruly student. "What is it, exactly, that you don't expect me to do. For you." She narrows her eyes at him a few moments, then her face softens. "I'm teasing. I do owe you a debt, but even if I was going to offer that kind of a thank you," she yawns long and hard, covering her mouth. "I'd be too tired to enjoy it." She adds with a smile, "And I'm not sure you're in a position to give informed consent."

That tenses him back up. He doesn't know why, exactly, and it pisses him off. "What makes you say that?"

She shrugs. "A hunch. Anyway, do what you like, and unless you need anything else, I'm calling in sick and taking a nap. The offer stands. Or you're welcome to the couch." The couch in her living room area is more of a love seat, with three well-loved and second hand looking easy chairs surrounding it. When he turns back from them to her, she's gone up on her toes, and he's pretty sure she was aiming for a kiss on his cheek. It lands on the corner of his mouth, a warm, soft, brief press of flesh to flesh.

He freezes. He remembers vividly the way Kate had a few inches on him back then, in those high heeled boots she always wore. The way she stripped him down in her kitchen until he was only wearing his undershirt and briefs, both of them white and wet, clinging to his body, revealing everything, including the way his eager young dick responded to her supposedly innocent attention, tenting awkwardly against the cold, damp cotton. He remembers the humiliation as if it happened yesterday. He remembers the way she tilted his chin up, thumbed his bottom lip until he opened for her, then slid her tongue into his mouth like a slippery, hot snake.

After a few awkward moments, Jennifer drops back down and looks chagrined. "Sorry. Here I am talking about how I'm not going to take advantage of you..."

He catches her hand as she turns away and gently tugs her back. When he lifts her knuckles to his lips and presses her against his mouth, she gasps softly. As he holds her there, eyes closed, she sighs, then she's stepping close. One of her bare feet brush his. Her free hand just barely grazes his stomach, splashing a ripple of tension through it, like a pebble on a lake.

"Come on," she half-whispers. She catches the hem of his shirt and tugs it as she turns, leading him to the closed door at the far end of her apartment. "Just sleep," she says without turning around.

"Just sleep," he echoes.

Often, when a person says, "Just sleep," all it serves to do is highlight the fact that an alternative exists. Presently. The meaning of "just sleep" depends on whether it's a request or a promise.

Once in her room, he's all but staggered by the scent of her, thick, soft waves of it from her unmade bed as she straightens and fluffs out the sheets, throws back the covers. A fragrant knee-high laundry bag sags against the wall just inside and to the left of her door, full to spilling, including a polka dotted pair of panties, twisted, crotch up, on the very top. She doesn't seem to notice them.

She starts to unbutton her blouse and turns away from him. The early morning light filters in through the gauzy curtains and around her curves and it takes him a few moments to look away. He lies down atop her comforter on his back, hands folded on his stomach, and as he listens to the slip of fabric from her body to the floor, he enjoys the sharp bubble of her scent the pillow offers. He gives in and turns his head, nuzzling once against it and taking a deep breath before facing the ceiling.

The covers shift as she slips in beneath them, beside him. As her heartbeat finally slows, he ventures a glance and finds her on her side, facing him, eyes open and fixed on his face. "What?"

"What?"

"I thought you were tired."

A smile tugs at the corner of her mouth. "I am."

"Then why aren't your eyes closed."

"It's hard to stop looking at you."

He snorts. "If you were a guy, I'd think that was a line. A bad one."

"It wasn't a line." She sounds amused. "I was just wondering. Where do your eyebrows go?" He must make a face, because she says, "See," and reaches out to point at his forehead. "Those are some bold, expressive eyebrows. But when you were," she growls, "They disappeared."

"You were paying attention to my eyebrows."

"Better than watching what was going on down here." She lays a hand on his belly, just below his folded hands. He's pretty sure the place she's covering is where Boyd breached his abdominal wall, exposing coils of intestine. If it'd gone on much longer, they would have spilled from him like so much wet, pink ribbon in some gory magician's trick. He clenches beneath her fingers and she instantly pulls her hand away. "Sorry, sorry," she says nervously.

He catches her hand and presses it back down against his belly, covering it with his. "You don't have to be afraid to touch me."

"I'm not afraid to touch you. I just get the feeling you don't want me to."

He twists his head to look over at her and she stares back from the next pillow. "What makes you say that?"

"Am I wrong?" She sounds very gentle. And a little hopeful."Do you want me to touch you?"

"I wouldn't say no."

"Not the same thing."

It isn't. He knows that. But he can't bring himself to admit to or ask for anything more than that. What he can do is lace their fingers together and slowly turn away from her, to his side, pulling her arm around him. She gets the idea and scoots close, spooning up behind him and squeezing him once as he guides her hand up and presses it to his chest. She nuzzles the back of his neck as she settles, and the urge to arch back against her almost overwhelms him. He keeps himself in check, just squeezes her hand and forces himself to relax, muscle by muscle.

*

When he snaps awake, the light in the room has shifted to early afternoon. They're in the same position except that now her palm's pressed flat to his chest and her thumb's tracing lazily back and forth, just a few inches below one of his nipples. And he's hard. The kind of aching, straining tension that feels like it starts at the small of his back. The kind where he could roll over and grind against the mattress and find release in less than a minute, if he had a mind. Especially with the way their scents have mingled in the bedding after only a few hour's sleep. Jesus. It's only the fact that she's pressed firmly all along his back that keeps his hips in check. Otherwise, he'd already be humping the air.

"You up?" she whispers.

He fits his hand over hers and traces the tip of his thumb along the top of hers. It stops moving. He can tell without looking that she's above the covers now, nestled right up against his back. His own arousal is thick in the air and he can feel his precome smeared against the scratchy inside of these sweatpants. It's torture against the swollen, sensitive head of his cock.

"How are you feeling?"

"Better," he says. He's hoarse with sleep. Yeah. That's it. Sleep.

Slowly, her thumb slides up until it bumps the stiff peak of a nipple. With deliberate slowness, she brushes tip across tip, back and forth and back, very lightly. Then one last pass, dragging across it and gently catching her thumbnail against it for a second before flicking past. That sparks an unsteady inhalation and his stomach shudders so hard, the curl of it drags his hips forward.

Her hips follow, then she's slipping away, letting cool air rush in between their bodies, and just as he's about to turn to her, seeking that warmth, she cups his hip and nudges him to his back. Automatically, he draws up one leg, bending the knee closest to her in a half-hearted attempt to...if not hide his erection then at least not show it off. She props herself up on an elbow and looks down at him. She's wearing a pale blue camisole and no bra. He spreads his hands out flat, palms pressed firmly against the mattress in an attempt to keep from dragging her on top of him, wrapping his legs around her and burying his face against her, rutting up until he spills between their stomachs.

He waits for her to touch him, grab him, kiss him, climb on and use his body. It *is* something he wants. But what she does instead is take his closest hand and lift it to her lips.

She kisses his knuckles, then down the underside of his fingers until her mouth presses to his palm. Opens against it. Her tongue, warm and wet, obscenely so. Then, he's pretty sure she spits and he's just about to ask what she's doing when she guides his hand down past his chest, hovering above his belly. Then a brief, suggestive nudge southward.

He pushes his hand beneath his waistband and groans with relief as he gets a firm grip and allows himself a few slow tugs to take the edge off. When he opens his lids a crack, he finds her watching the movement of his fist beneath the sweatpants. Her hand hovers above the waistband. "May I?"

"What?" He strokes, turning, craning his neck until he's nuzzling against her upper chest where it meets her shoulder. Yielding to temptation, he buries his nose in the crook beneath her arm and breathes deeply. His slow strokes become faster ones as he soaks her in. She chuckles, and he searches blindly until he finds a nipple and sucks at it through her t-shirt. That earns a gasp.

It earns a few questing fingers too, slipping beneath his waistband, nails dragging lightly over his hip. She tugs up on the elastic, lifting it away from his waist but not down and whispers, "May I watch?"

"Yeah. Fuck. Please." He lifts his hips, but she only slides his sweatpants down a few inches, just past his ass. They're still high on his thighs and the unfamiliar, pilly scratch of them against his skin is too much, so he shoves them down himself, drawing up his knees and getting them past his ankles, then kicking them off with conviction. After a second's thought he sits up and shucks the t-shirt as well, ridding himself of those faint traces of another man's scent. He knows if he so much as turns around and looks at her, he won't be able to resist crawling up her body, marking her with his mouth and begging her to spread her legs. Now there's a place he could plant his face for hours.

He lies back down beside her, right where he was and waits expectantly. But she's just taking her time, looking him over from the slow shuffle of his fist to the muscles of his arm, down his chest and lingering on his belly. *Please don't*, he thinks. *Please don't put your mouth there, anywhere but there.* His erection softens, ever so slightly, and before he loses it further he pauses and just holds himself. He knows that if he tries to chase it now, it'll spin out and unravel into a limp tangle of regret and nausea, shame and grief. Normally, he'd just capture her hands and playfully trap them above her head, kiss her until she lost the will to do anything but wrap her body around his and ride up against him. But it would be out of place here. And it's not what he wants.

That's when she brings a couple fingers to his face and touches not his lips or his jaw but his forehead, right between his eyebrows. She massages in little circles until the tension dissipates. As he breathes out, he feels the shudders of revulsion pass, and on the inhale, he gets a hit of her, tangy and salty and musky and slick. She must be so slick to smell like that. Not quite believing the words even as they pass his lips, he says, "Give me your underwear," quickly adding, "please," to soften the gruff command.

But she's already shimmying them off and dangling them above his stomach.

He snatches them with his free hand and holds the sticky, scent-drenched fabric to his nose and mouth. He's already almost there, so close he actually whimpers when she pulls her gift away from him. But her mouth replaces it, opening against his, kissing him with lazy intent. The scrap of cotton falls from his hand as he grips the back of her head and pulls her in closer, his other hand going fast and light, thumb barely skimming the slick head every few strokes. The moment her hand closes around his, around *him* and squeezes, that's it. He's gone, pumping slick and hot, arching off the bed as their tangle of fingers grows wet and messy. Even after the last spurt, he's still shaking.

*You're still shaking, aw, sweet boy, You're not gonna cry for me, are you? You're obviously a virgin, but you weren't that bad. You should know, for future reference, that normal girls find tears a real turn off. Why are you still crying? If you're gonna turn over like that and ignore me, I'll just have to punish you. Hold still, you'll like it. I said hold still.*

He did as she said. He had liked it. He hadn't stopped crying the whole time, and that made him feel like more of a freak than even the shimmering urge to shift had, that first time. But he is not that boy, he's a grown man. When the emotion and exhaustion and hormones flood through him, burning up into his eyes, he squeezes them shut tight. He pulls his wet hand from hers, wipes it on his stomach, then throws his arm across his face, just to be safe.

For a minute or so, during which she is obviously figuring out what a freak she invited into her bed, she says nothing. She just holds on as his cock goes small in the palm of her hand. If she were Kate, she'd already be tugging roughly at him, forcing him to attention once more, but she's not Kate and what the *fuck* is wrong with him today? Finally, he slips limply from her grip and she smears her hand along the top of his thigh once, then, as far as he can hear, a few times on her sheets. When she lifts his arm from his face, he doesn't resist, but he doesn't open his eyes either.

Her breath puffs against his temple a few times before she presses a kiss to the outer corner of his eye. Her lips skim his damp eyelashes, then she kisses his cheek, just below his jaw. On the next breath in, her arousal hits him, even sharper than before. When he twists up, reaching for her hips, he makes sure to go slowly enough for her to protest or pull away, but she does neither, just lets him guide her up until she's kneeling astride his face.

The slick, furry cleft between her legs looms just inches from his nose and tongue, but he waits, head pressed back against the pillow until she sinks down onto his mouth with a moan and yes.

This.

He spreads her lips with his thumbs and opens his mouth against her, around her, swimming in the waves of renewed wetness, the jumps in her heart rate as she rides his face, first with tentative little rocking hitches, then increasingly aggressive grinding as she gets close. But just as she gets to the edge she stops abruptly and climbs off.

His face feels cool and damp and when he lifts his head from the pillow, he finds her on her hands and knees, ass swaying in his direction as she reaches into a nightstand. A growl of appreciation escapes his throat and she freezes. "Sorry," he says, squeezing the base of his cock viciously because *how* is he already hard enough to ache?

"It's okay, it's just, I just," she turns to face him and sits back on her heels, holding up a condom. "If you want."

"Yes," he says, snatching it from her and getting to work. If he's going to have this moment, he's going to *have* it, all of it, all of her, if that's what she's offering up. "I want."

She strips off her camisole and asks, "How do you...on my hands and knees, maybe? Or me on top, or..."

Not on her on top. Not right now. That had been Kate's favorite, followed closely by doggie. *You like it like that, don't you, puppy,* she'd said, smacking her ass and looking over her shoulder at him. *Good boy, up, come on.* She'd whistled at him. *Come on, there's a good boy.*

He shoves the memory of that and other, more fucked up, role play out of his head and scoops an arm beneath Jennifer. He deposits her on her back, right where he wants her on the bed, nudging her knees apart with his own. "This okay?" he asks, his sheathed cock dragging against her soft inner thigh.

She answers by winding a leg around his waist and lifting her head up to kiss him on the lips. Between them, she takes hold of his shaft and guides him until he's right there, then she relaxes her grip with her hand and her leg. And, not pulling, just open to him, she sucks on his tongue until he moans and sinks right into her with one slick, steady push. When he nears bottoming out, her thighs clench suddenly and sharply around him. He pauses.

"Just," she hisses. "Just hold on. No, don't. Just stay there. I'm good. It's just been," she exhales. She shifts her hips and squirms beneath him, and he only means to shift with her, maybe withdraw an inch or two, but then she's clenching down hard, clamping so tight it nearly hurts. When the tension in her body shifts to one of pain, followed quickly by the scent of it, he tries to pull out. But she digs her nails into his shoulders and says, "Stay still."

"I'm hurting you." He's dying to get out of her, but he obeys and he freezes.

"I'm fine."

"You're in pain."

"I know. It'll pass."

He widens his eyes at her. "Your not, this isn't your first..."

"Oh my God." Her reaction starts with shuddering little waves in her belly, then it rolls through her body until the laughter erupts from her lips. She turns her head and half covers her mouth as her amusement trails off into giggles. "No, sorry. Oh, no, I'm not laughing at you. It's just...definitely not a virgin."

Inside, she's unclenched some, and he wants to rock his hips to test her, but he's still freezing. "Okay..."

She shifts her hips experimentally and then, heels dug into the sheets beside his knees, she lifts against him, offering up blessed friction and depth and yeah, he groans, but he still doesn't move. "You can go now," she says. "Just slow, at first, okay?"

"Okay."

"It's just," she says as he presses into her, barely rolling his hips, "this thing I do. Not on purpose. Just," she sighs. He pauses right there, enjoying the way she moves up against him, palms dragging up his chest, around his neck, pulling him down into a kiss. "I take a minute to warm up when it's been a while, or if I rush or if I'm--"

"Scared." He says, easing all the way out and sliding wetly against the crease of her thigh.

She guides him back with a firmer grip than before, shifting against him until she's got him inside. This time, when he sinks the rest of the way, it feels less like a violation and more like an easy, soft embrace. Like he's welcome. When he settles against her, she wraps her legs around him and says, "I'm not scared of you."

"You should be." Immediately he wants to smack himself because now is not the time, now is really not the time. This is the time Kate loved fucking with him most, when they were tangled together. Even though she was the one letting him inside, he always felt like he was the one exposed, penetrated, at her mercy.

But when he reminds Jennifer that she should be scared, there's no corresponding spike in her heart rate. She just asks, "Should I be scared of you right now?"

He shakes his head.

"We don't have to keep going. If you're--"

"Why do you keep..." he grits his teeth and grinds a growl back down into his throat, swallowing hard. He rests his weight on his knees and elbows, head hanging down until his forehead brushes her shoulder. "Why do you keep acting like I need you to be gentle? You know I don't need you to be gentle, okay?"

She holds her breath a few moments, then lets it out through pursed lips on the top of his head, a strange little burst of heat against his scalp. "I *don't* know you," she says, finally. "I don't even know your last name."

"You know what you saw. You know you can't hurt me." He's softening inside her, and he can't stop it. He's this close to climbing off and getting away as fast as his legs can carry him.

"Do you want me to hurt you?"

"No! I mean, if you want to. I don't mind."

"Do you want to stop?"

*Yes* He thinks. And *No*. "I don't know."

"Let's stop." She nudges gently at him and he yields, letting himself be pushed out of her and onto his back. She sits beside him, hugging her knees to her chest and studying him. "I'm sorry," she says.

He laughs bitterly and covers his face with his hands. "Why?" He's the one who's fucked up. The one with a ghost in his head, in his bed, every time. Not always this bad. If he can shut up and take charge, something careless, anonymous, and in the dark, she's hardly there at all.

"The vagina panic attacks, and believe me, it really is a not you it's me thing," she tucks an errant strand of hair behind her hair and ducks her head, embarrassed. "It happens with guys a fly wouldn't be scared of. I mean, it's a case where size matters. So it is a little you I guess, but you shouldn't--"

"That isn't it," he says into his palms. "It's not about you."

"Oh God. Oh *God*, it's a girlfriend, isn't it. You have a girlfriend, and here I am throwing myself at you and--"

"No. No girlfriend, I'm not seeing anyone."

"--and you don't need a reason to not want to, with me."

"I want to!" he shouts, eyes flaring red. "Sorry. Fuck, sorry."

"Well so do I!"

"Well okay."

"But?"

"But what?" he asks, pretty sure he just lost the thread of the conversation or argument, or whatever the hell is happening right now. Naked.

She prompts, "I want to fuck you, Jennifer, but..."

"I want to fuck you, Jennifer, *and*..." How to put this. How to put this if he, for some reckless reason, decides to tell her the truth. He finally goes with, "I have a little baggage."

That elicits a smile. But it's a gentle one. "Apart from being a werewolf?"

"Apart from that."

"Okay," she says. "Wanna make out?"

"Wait, what?"

"Unless you want to talk about your baggage." She shifts to sit cross-legged, hands folded in her lap, barely covering her groin, doing nothing at all to soften the sucker punch of scent.

"Not really. Not right now, anyway." He takes a deep breath. "Making out?"

"All the cool kids are doing it, apparently."

When an echo of Kate trails after those words, he allows it to pass through him and chill him, but he lets it go. He focuses on the woman in front of him. "I would," he says hesitantly. "But..."

"But?"

He smooths the condom down his renewed erection, then grips it at the base and wiggles it. "Seems like a waste of a perfectly good condom."

"Agreed," she says, flopping to her back and then propping herself up on her elbows. She turns one hand palm up and beckons him with a finger, and before he crawls on top of her, he takes a detour between her legs, licking through the bitter rubber until he finds her taste again, working her with his tongue until she's juicy for him. He fingers her, easing her open until she takes three with ease. "Now, please," she says. "Please."

This time, getting in is easy. She urges him on and he barely has time to find a rhythm when she clutches up against him, bucking beneath him, demanding, "More, more, yes, that, fuck." It is the teeth that do him in, the teeth grazing his throat and the silent, shuddering waves of her climax passing over her, surrounding him, that send him careening over the edge.

The wolf in him snarls with the need to sink his teeth into her neck, claim her, other darker desires too, but he is a grown man now. The snarls are no longer a frightening surprise. He knows they're coming. He knows that he can keep them leashed and he trusts that he will.

When the white noise and starbursts fade, she's gone limp beneath him, save for the occasional shiver and the trail she's tracing up and down the back of his shoulder. He listens to both their heart rates slow, and eventually, when he's relatively sure of his balance, he slides out of her. Carefully, he sits back on his heels and strips off the condom. A quick knot, then he's tossing it across the room into a wastebasket.

"Don't--" she says, after it's already left his hand. She sees it land squarely in the trash, nothing but net, and gives him a look. "You have hidden talents."

"I can juggle."

"Prove it."

He scoffs and drops back to the mattress beside her, bouncing once. "Not right now."

She leans in and gives him what feels like an impulsive kiss, then she's climbing off the bed. He hears the bathroom door shut around the time his phone buzzes in his pants and just manages to catch it before it goes to voice mail. "What do you want?" he says.

"Good afternoon to you too," snips Stiles. "Where the hell are you?"

"How's Cora?"

"Fine. Well, alive, and becoming fine, in the creepy werewolf time lapse healing sense of the word. Scott me told what you did. Scott told me what *they* did. Are you all right?"

She's alive. Something he hadn't even known was there inside him snaps, and even though he squeezes his eyes shut, he's not sure he'll be able to stop the tears from burning their way out. "I'll live," he says, hoarse. "I'll call you back."

"Wait! You gotta--"

"Is anyone in danger of dying *right this second* Stiles?"

"Well, I mean if you look at the big picture, we're all--"

"I'll call you back, Stiles." He stabs at the 'end call' button and looks up to see Jennifer leaning in the doorway.

She's still gloriously naked, but with a dangerously curious look on her face. "Stiles? As in Stilinsky? The sherriff's boy."

"...no?"

She tilts her head at him. "So. I was going to ask if this was the sort of thing where we exchange numbers and never call, or the sort of thing where we don't bother, or...something else."

"But?"

"But then," she says, holding out a Sharpie he hadn't noticed, "I figured I'd just do this." She climbs across the bed, turns his hand palm up and, in very neat handwriting, inks ten digits on his skin from his wrist to halfway up his forearm. "And I'd tell you I'm not going to talk to anybody about what I saw. This--well, not this, but last night--may be the strangest thing I've seen so far since coming to Beacon Hills, but it wasn't the first strangeness and something tells me it won't be the last. And at least two of my students seem to be involved."

"Against my wishes, most of the time."

"So if you need to get in touch." She caps the Sharpie and sticks it behind her ear in what looks like an automatic gesture. "Plus, I like you, for whatever that's worth."

He's not sure it's worth anything, but he likes the sound of it. He can't pretend he doesn't. "Can you do me a favor?" he asks.

"Sure."

He plucks the marker from behind her ear and uncaps it, starts writing his number up her inner arm. "If something you can't explain happens, or if someone you don't know starts asking around about me, or Scott." He hesitates, then adds, "Or Stiles or Isaac Lahey, would you call me?"

She nods.

When he finishes, he gives into the urge and writes his name on her arm too, first and last. The thrill of seeing his mark on her, his name on her is stupid and primal and completely irrational, but it's there. And he enjoys it. He enjoys her. He likes her, for what it's worth. He tries to say something smooth, but it comes out, "Or if...you like coffee."

She traces just under where he's inked his name, then she looks up at him and smiles.

*

The minute he keys into his lock, Peter's pacing toward him. "About time you showed up, there's been a--" He stops in his tracks and sways back. "Whoa." Then, because he's a dick, he waves his hand in front of his nose. "I can't say you of all people couldn't use the stress relief, but there is this marvelous modern invention called the shower. You might have heard of it."

"Derek!" Scott calls, bounding around the corner from the guest bedroom. "Finally, I think Boyd's gonna." He stops in his tracks too, nostrils flaring. He takes a full step back. "Dude. Dude!"

"Dude what?" Stiles asks, strolling up, netbook in one hand, can of Sunkist in another. "Dude what?" he asks, looking from Peter and Scott to Derek and back again. "What'd I miss?"

Scott ignores him. "I mean, she seems kind of cool, but she's a teacher. That's just like...thinking of your parents having sex." He shudders.

"Speaking of which," Peter says, turning to Scott, "Is your mother still single?"

Scott's eyes flare, but Peter just laughs and walks away, Scott trailing behind, demanding that he never speak of Melissa again.

"The what with the who now?" Stiles asks.

Derek just walks past him and heads for the bathroom. He can smell Cora from out here, but if she does wake up, he doesn't want the first thing she smells to be a stranger all over him. Before he steps under the spray, though, he carefully types the number into his phone, syncs his phone book. Then, before cowardice can worm its way back into his heart, he sends Jennifer a text reading, "Thank you for being gentle with me."