Chapter Ninety-One

Havermouth, Five Years Before

Aislen woke, sandwiched between Cameron and Heath, with their limbs tangled over her. Rhett lay on the other side of Cameron, in possession of more than three quarters of the mattress space. Heath’s cock nudged against her from behind and his hand cupped her breast before sliding down, over her stomach, to pinch her clit between his fingers. She moaned as he began to massage it between his knuckles, the sensation intense.

He kissed the back of her shoulder blade. (Just relax, Aislen… Let me give you…)

Cameron stirred, his eyes meeting hers as he opened them, the blue brilliant as his pupils contracted. He smiled sleepily at her, reaching up to stroke her cheek. “Morning.”

“Morning,” she smiled back.

His eyes dropped to Heath’s hand between her thighs. “That does look like a good morning.”

“Mhm,” she agreed.

Heath slid his knee between her legs, his cock pressing against her cunt. “Want to join?” He invited Cameron over his shoulder.

“Would be a waste of a morning stiffy if I didn’t,” Cameron replied, shuffling forward until her face was pressed to his chest, his skin warm and salty against her lips. Cameron lifted her leg to his hip and Aislen moaned as they pressed into her, the stretch familiar, her body giving more easily to it now that her nerves did not cause her to tense.

Heath’s groan was gritty. “Fuck,” he sighed out against her back.

“Hmm,” Cameron’s chin rested on the top of her head as he reached around her so that his hand rested on Heath, connecting them as they fucked her. Their thoughts centered on their pleasure, creating an overlapping experience in Aislen’s mind, a tangle of lust and love that somehow involved her, but also didn’t.

She came, and felt them follow, but the warm enjoyment had disappeared, and she was left with an empty envy.

“Coffee, then up to the roof. Rhett can cook this morning,” Cameron rolled over to where Rhett lay with his back to them, nudging him.

“Why is the concept of sleeping in so beyond you?” Rhett complained.

“You’re always such a bitch in the morning, until you get your coffee,” Cameron laughed good-naturedly. “I’ll tell you what, I’ll go put the kettle on, whilst you get your sleep in.”

“Hmm,” Rhett rolled onto his back. “In that case, I’ll blow you later.”

“Promises, promises,” Cameron rolled to his feet and searched through the items against the wall for his jeans.

“Here,” Heath handed them to him, holding his own in the other hand.

Aislen started to get up when Rhett rolled and pulled her against him. “I am angry with you,” he said into her hair.

“I know,” she admitted, although his thoughts were more despairing than angry.

“You are fucking this up, Aislen,” he told her grimly.

“I am not trying to,” she whispered, saddened by his worry. “I am trying to make this work.”

“Try harder.” (It’s important… Please see that…)

She nodded.

“It’s important,” his tone softened as he spoke the words he had thought so emphatically, and he kissed the back of her shoulder. His cock was hard and he pushed it into the v of her thighs, rubbing against her without penetrating. She moaned. His cock was slickened by the leak of cum from her and pressed against her clit just enough to tease. His thoughts shifted to the pleasure of their bodies together. “Fuck, you’re soaking.”

She knew that the comment was not made in disgust, but rather desire. “Heath and Cameron both came in me,” she said experimentally, toying with his self-proclaimed fetish for cum, and felt his flare of lust.

“Well, I’ll have to add to it,” he palmed her breast, taking the weight of it in his hand before clenching his fingers to squeeze it. “Use your fingers on your clit, Aislen, I want to feel you come.” He changed angle, stroking into her, and she moaned, reaching her hand down to press against her clit, the slick of cum as a lubricant.

He grunted through clenched teeth as he thrusted. “Fuck,” he ground out. “Roll onto your stomach.” He rolled with her, placing his weight over her back, and increased his pace and force. “I’m not going to last long,” he told her. “Make yourself come, Aislen.”

His thrusts pressed her clit against her fingers, so she didn’t need to work hard, and his orgasm flooded her mind, making her come with him, and he flopped over her heavily, panting. She lay still beneath him, feeling his heart hammering against her back.

“That thing that you know about us,” he said softly. (That we are werewolves…)

“Yes.”

“You can’t speak about that ever to anyone, Aislen. Not even to us, not even when you think that it’s safe to do so, not even to me again.”

“Why?”

“It’s not safe.” (They will kill you.)

“They’ll kill me?” She felt a flutter of alarm.

“Mmm,” he didn’t want to say it out aloud. “Just… don’t be stupid. Do what Heath says. We’ll all just… get along better if you do.”

“Okay,” she barely breathed the words. “I’ll try.”

“Okay,” he repeated, and lifted from her. “Let’s go get coffee.”

“Why do you like cum so much?” She asked, as she sat up and gravity took effect. She pulled a face. “It’s messy and slimy, and I seem to constantly be leaking it when I’m around you three.”

“That’s what is so hot about it,” he handed her clothes to her. “It’s… Well, when it’s with the right people, it’s evidence of desire, trust, and love, and it marks them yours in an intimate and unique way. It’s like a biological tattoo, in a way.” He blushed and shrugged. “I don’t like going bare-back with people I don’t… value.”

“Did you…” She hesitated and then plunged on. “Fuck her bare-back.”

He looked away and swallowed hard. “No, we used condoms.” His shoulders set and he pulled on his clothes. “I need coffee.” He left the room, and she looked after him, startled by the abrupt departure.

She went to the bathroom and mopped up as much of the cum that Rhett found so appealing before dressing.

When she came out, there was a ladder against the side of the house and Cameron and Heath strolled across the roof barefoot and shirtless with casual disdain of the drop to the ground.

“Oh, fuck,” she said, as Cameron squatted and scooped a handful of leaf matter out of the gutters, tossing it casually over the edge of the roof to splatter on the ground.

Rhett stood by the base of the ladder holding it in one hand and a coffee in the other. “Coffee on the stump over there,” he nodded his head in the direction. She claimed her cup and stood, looking up in consternation. “Don’t worry,” he assured her with a grin. “They’ve got this. They won’t fall.”

“Rhett’s a wuss,” Cameron called down. “Gets faint two ladder rungs from the ground.”

“It’s true,” Rhett shrugged ruefully, embarrassed. “I can shove a pin through my own skin to pierce it, but two rungs from the ground, and I feel like I’m going to vomit. So, they get all the roof work, and I hold the ladder.”

“Like a good bitch,” Heath smirked.

“Yeah, like a good bitch,” Rhett wrinkled his nose up at them with good humour, teasing them back.

For a moment, Aislen felt the slide of reality around her as she wondered – how much of the insults and bullying that she had experienced from the Triquetra had been this strange form of insulting bonding that they were exchanging between them? Had she misunderstood, and taken insult, when the words might not have been meant that way?

How many of their encounters, the Triquetra’s anger at her, her hurt pride, could be accounted for if she viewed them through a different lens?

It was disconcerting, and she wasn’t sure what to make of it, so she pushed the thought away.

“Pass the sheets up,” Heath hung over the edge of the roof, reaching down, and Rhett passed his coffee to Aislen so he could pass up newer strips of wavey galvanized iron to him. Cameron, who wore a tool belt that sagged his jeans deliciously low on his hips, showing off the v of muscle that framed his abs, positioned and secured the sheets into place.

Of the three, Cameron was the one that knew what he was doing. Heath provided the muscle, and Rhett was the apprentice handing up tools and equipment with his feet solidly on the ground. Aislen wasn’t sure what role she performed, until she gasped and clapped as they set the final sheet into place – she’d become the cheerleader, she realized, with rueful surprise.

Heath and Cameron descended, laughing and congratulating each other and sweeping her and Rhett into a group hug that contained a lot of bare, hot, sweat-salted masculine skin.

“I could kill a beer,” Cameron declared.

“I’m suddenly horny,” Rhett replied. “How about whilst you and Heath crack a beer, Aislen and I…?”

“Like we’re going to say no to that,” Heath laughed, and then his expression sagged. “Fuck me, what now?” He looked along the driveway as a white 4-Wheel-Drive bounced down towards them. “It’s fucking Rohan,” he added.

“And he’s not alone,” Cameron sighed, as a blue sedan followed, starting a convoy of cars towards them.

“Hey,” Rohan hung out of the driver’s side of his car after parking. “We thought we’d all meet here, get some booze under our belts, before the thing tonight.”

“Great,” Rhett said dryly. “That sounds fantastic.” As he turned, he rolled his eyes at Aislen with a grimace. “Fucking sporting wood,” he muttered under his breath, as he slung his arm over her shoulders and turned them towards the house. “Was hoping to get off. Fuck it, let’s get booze.”

They went to the bedroom and passed wine and cooled beer through to Heath and Cameron on the other side.

“Ah, fuck,” Rhett sighed under his breath, as a car spilled out the Debutantes.

“Why are they always around?” Aislen complained.

“Jealous?” Rhett asked, his tone teasing, but, as his shoulder leaned against hers as he passed another six pack out the window to Heath, she knew that it was only half so.

“Yes,” she said, honestly. “It’s like… They were brought in to entice you three away from me.”

Rhett turned his head to look at her, his expression solemn and his eyes wary. “Sometimes, you are too insightful,” he said slowly. “At other times, you’re as thick as two planks.”

“Gee, thanks,” she muttered.

“Cam calls them the Debutantes because that’s what they are,” Rhett replied. “Erica, Patience, and Helena. They’re from Dawson. They’ve been sent here because…” He trailed off.

“They’re hoping to snag a husband in their senior year of high school,” she realized, following his thoughts. “Is that still a thing?”

“Yeah, it is,” he replied. “It really is, around here. It seems… archaic. But over half of the graduating year will be married within a few months of leaving Havermouth High,” he said. (Werewolves mostly) his thoughts added. “We’re mostly going to be over eighteen at graduation, after all. The majority will be nineteen and twenty. That’s not so young, really, to get married.”

“It fucking is,” she protested. “It really fucking is.”

“How old were your parents?” He pointed out reasonably.

“Nineteen and twenty-two,” she muttered. “But that doesn’t mean anything.”

“Mhm,” he raised his eyebrows. “You’re not thinking about what you will do when the school year finishes in a month? Are you applying to universities? Jobs?”

“Not really,” she cracked a beer and grimaced, as she took a swallow. “I don’t know what to do with myself to be honest. Heath was asking me yesterday. And I…” She shrugged. “I’m not like you. I don’t know what I want to do. The only thing that I have any skill in is my art… and I’m not sure how to make that into a career…”

“Well, start thinking,” he suggested. “And start applying. Don’t limit yourself by what you think you can achieve and where you think you can afford to go. Think bigger. What’s the worst that can happen? Maybe you’ll get an offer you’re not expecting?”

“Mr. Graynor wanted me to apply for a scholarship in Rideten.”

Rhett flinched. “Not that,” he said softly. “Not Rideten, Aislen. Stay local.”

“Well, that’s not exactly thinking bigger, is it?” She pointed out. “That’s thinking geographically small.”

“Yeah, but…” He trailed off, his eyes going out the window. “We should join the party and I should help cook us something to eat. By the time we've eaten it will only be a couple of hours until sunset, and then we’ll have to head to town.”

“Yeah,” Aislen sighed. “I guess.”

“It will be okay,” he said meeting her eyes. “We’ll be there with you.”