Avery swayed a little as she wandered through the busy crowd at Tequila O’Rileys. It was the only jointly Mexican and Irish bar in the city – owned by a husband from Ireland and a wife from Mexico. It was eclectic and crazy and always popular. Right now they were celebrating Cinco de Mayo. Which for the bar meant festive streamers, mini Mexican flags, lots of tequila, green beer – probably left over from St. Patrick’s Day - and strings of beads for any female willing to flash her boobs. To be fair, that was how they celebrated nearly every holiday.
The lioness shifter smiled and waved as she recognized a few other agents from the Supernatural Enforcers Agency. A few random males gave her appreciative glances, and she had numerous offers to show them her chest in exchange for the plastic beads. She told them her breasts were worth way more. A group of bachelors clubbed together and offered her all the money in their wallets, but it wasn't enough to persuade her.
“Bathroom, bathroom, bathroom,” she muttered, trying to push her way through the heaving crowd.
She hadn’t intended on coming out, but when the alternative was going home and listening to her roommate have noisy sex with her sleazy boyfriend, getting drunk was much more enticing. But maybe that had been a mistake. Just five feet away was her ex-boyfriend - the boyfriend who had proposed, sworn undying love and then made out with her college roommate, Christina all within the space of a week. Even worse, he was there with Christina and they were married. Assholes.
Ricky started to turn in her direction and rather than whip out her claws – which her lion was pushing for – she dropped to the ground and started crawling along the ground like a big, freaking coward. Her lioness taunted her, but Avery wasn’t exactly in the mood to explain to one of her fellow SEA agents why she had her drunken paws around Ricky’s neck when they were arresting her for assault. It was best that she slink away from temptation.
She managed to negotiate her way around numerous pairs of legs, ignoring the perv who offered her the opportunity to give him a blow job while she was down there, and actually made it to the bathroom just as Ricky decided to go into the men's room. Fricking perfect.
“Avery?”
“Yep, oh, oh, there’s my contact.”
She made a show of pretending she was popping it back into her eye before she stood up, which in her heels brought her line of sight up to the top of his head. Short ass. She looked down to see Ricky smiling at her.
“Avery, you look great,” he told her, just a tad too flirtily.
She didn’t. Or at least, in her opinion she didn’t. She hadn’t changed since work; her make-up was bleary and her hair frizzy. She felt sweaty and dowdy.
Avery waved away the compliment in irritation. “Please.”
“No, you do, you’re always the most beautiful woman in the room.”
Yep, Ricky was never short on the compliments. Her lioness sneered at the male. Really? Was he really hitting on her while the woman he dumped her for – now his wife – was like a glass of wine throw away?
“Thanks, nice to see you again, excuse me,” she blurted in a rush and escaped into the ladies.’
Dickhead. Her beast curled her lip in agreement.
She took her time doing her business, reapplying her make-up, reading her e-mails on her phone… She was sure Rick the dick had to have finished by that point and made her way outside. She caught the sound of Christina’s braying laugh and moved in the opposite direction, using the back exit and pushing her way out into the alley. The cool air felt nice against her heated skin, and the fuzziness in her head abated a little. Pulling out her phone, she scrolled through the numbers, searching for a cab company.
“Avery!”
She snarled as Ricky came out of the bar.
“What?”
“You really do look good.”
“Aha.” She ignored him and concentrated on her phone.
“You know, I’ve missed you.”
Avery scowled as her lion huffed. “I don’t care.”
“I’m sorry about the ways things turned out. I never meant to hurt you.”
“Sure, because sticking your dick into my best friend was supposed to make me jump for joy?”
“It was all her – she seduced me. She was always jealous of you. She made me do it.”
Avery gave him a withering glare. “Right, of course, you had no say in the matter.”
“Her family’s rich. My dad and my brother needed jobs. Her father gave them jobs and houses. She just kept pushing me with her generosity until I couldn’t say no.”
She sighed. “You can always say no. You didn’t have to sleep with her. You didn’t have to marry her.”
“I’m planning on divorcing her; she cheats on me like crazy.”
Avery went back to her phone, even if her lion was strutting around smugly. “Huh, imagine that.”
“Maybe you and I…”
“Ah gee, let me think – no!”
The nerve of this bastard! As if she would take him back after what he did.
“C’mon, Avery. I never stopped loving you; you’ve always been the most beautiful woman in the world to me.”
A ripping retort was on the tip of her tongue, and she was about to let it rip, were it not for the three gator shifters emerging from the shadows. Their unwashed scents almost made her gag. All her senses went on the alert as her eyes narrowed and her claws pushed forward.
“Give us your purse, your phones, and your wallet,” hissed one of them. He looked down at Ricky’s feet. “And those fancy shoes.”
“They’re custom made to fit my feet,” said Ricky in a tremulous voice.
The gators laughed. “How nice for you, sugar. Hand them over,” chuckled the second.
“Leave now,” growled Avery, “and I won’t involve the authorities.” She was lying about that, but she didn’t really like her odds against three huge gators at the same time. Not while she was drunk anyway.
“I fucking hate the SEA,” drawled the third gator. “If any of those shits were here now, I’d snap their fucking legs off.”
The lioness rolled her eyes as Ricky – clearly the world’s wimpiest fox shifter – tried to hide behind her and then figuratively threw her to the gators.
“She’s SEA, deal with her.”
“Thanks, Ricky,” she muttered.
So much for chivalry.
The gators trained matching feral scowls on her. Avery supposed she could scream for help, but with the loud music, rowdy shouting and constant fireworks, who would hear her? No, three gators wanted to attack her, and she was on her own. Maybe Ricky would run for help? Or more likely just run and keep on running until he made it to the next county.
Avery was vaguely aware of Ricky’s retreating footsteps as she snarled and shifted into her lioness. But, she barely had her jaw around the leg of the first gator when the growl echoed through the alley. All four of them looked up to see a superhero – seriously a black-clad superhero - pounding towards them.
“Stay away from her, you dicks!” howled the man in black.
The lioness froze in mid-bite, wondering if she had perhaps imbibed just a bit too much. The gators were quicker to recover. Their interest diverted from the lioness, and they started attacking the superhero. One shifted and tried to snap at his ankles. But for all their bulk, their teeth and the fact that they outnumbered him, they couldn’t seem to land a punch. The superhero had a pretty fine set of teeth, and he knew how to use them. Gator number two soon found that out, and Avery soon discovered that he had a squeal like a twelve-year-old girl at her first pop concert. The gators tried to pummel him with their fists, but in true Batman fashion, the man in black had a plethora of gadgets. He had a baton, a taser, and did he just use a mini smoke bomb?
The lioness, howling in approval, bounded into the fray, clawing and snapping for all she was worth. The fight must have only lasted less than a minute, yet as the lioness and the superhero danced around, fighting in tandem, it felt like so much more. It felt so perfect, so right! To Avery – who had always outshined and outfought every man she ever dated – it was exhilarating, and she bounced and batted at her opponents like a kitten.
As the last gator fell, groaning to the ground, Avery pushed her shift and turned human.
“Who are you?” she breathed.
The man gaped at her, openmouthed. His eyes fixed on her lean, naked form, perhaps spending a little too long on her heaving naked chest, but at that moment, Avery didn’t care to yell at him. No, she was in awe of him.
“Oh, I, uh, ah…”
He gulped, visibly startled as Avery placed her hands on his shoulders and pulled him down for a kiss. His lips, hesitant at first, soon surrendered to her, and he caressed her naked back. She didn’t know what drove her to kiss a strange man while she was naked in an alley and a trio of gators moaned at her feet, but it was altogether a strange kind of night, and what she was doing felt so right.
As the kiss ended, it seemed to have had the right effect on the superhero.
“I am Wolfman,” he told her, decisively. “And I promise, we shall meet again, pretty kitty.”
Wolfman pressed a smooch to her hand and in a flash he was running away. Avery traced her fingers over her lips as her lioness roared in satisfaction.
“Yes, we shall.”