SIX
Elizabeth watched quietly as Maxwell stepped inside, hardly even announcing himself before he did so. He glanced around, and Elizabeth suspected he would have lingered for conversation if not for the fact that Yusuke was in the room, and he absentmindedly gestured the wolf towards the basement. Maxwell paused for only a moment after that before he headed for the basement door and disappeared down the stairs.
It was sort of uncomfortable, just how often Maxwell wound up at Ambrose’s house. True enough, it would have been less uncomfortable if he left Elizabeth alone or if she had seen it coming, but he didn’t, and she hadn’t. The fact of the matter was that Elizabeth hadn’t actually expected him to be around much at all.
As it turned out, Elizabeth had been very mistaken about just how often Ambrose’s clients had to show up for him to do his job for them. She had assumed it was a one-time thing. They arrived, Ambrose made a note of the relevant information, gave them a helpful folder of papers, and sent them on their way again, and that would be that. She could acknowledge, in retrospect, that it had been a very simplistic, naive line of thought, considering just how long it could take to get a completely legal passport or driver’s license.
It was much more drawn out than she had initially assumed it to be, especially when information was being manufactured completely, which meant Maxwell had to show up a lot. He didn’t seem particularly bothered by it, and nor did he seem particularly put out. If he had been living as a wolf for so long, then Elizabeth wasn’t sure where he was staying at that point, but he was always groomed and dressed in clean clothes whenever he showed up. She supposed that should have been a good thing, but something about it still sort of bothered her, even if she couldn’t quite put her finger on why. Maybe it just made it seem like he was being disingenuous about his circumstances.
Even considering that, though, she couldn’t say she would have much to complain about when it came to Maxwell, if not for the fact that he was very…personable. Ordinarily, Elizabeth would have considered that to be a good thing, but not when it meant he was constantly lurking near her like he was waiting for something to happen.
Maybe if he had seemed like more of an ordinary man, Elizabeth wouldn’t have minded as much, but after being divorced from his humanity for so long, spending any amount of time around Maxwell felt like she was dangling herself over a pit with a hungry dog in it, waiting for it to decide whether it was going to leap at her or wait for an easier, more opportune meal. It wasn’t a great feeling and always left her a little unnerved, as if she needed to look over her shoulder at every noise for hours afterwards.
She mentioned it to Ambrose, and if nothing else, she was gratified to find that he didn’t especially like Maxwell either. Considering Ambrose could turn into a bear the size of a truck, Elizabeth found it oddly impressive that Maxwell even managed to give him the creeps to some extent.
(Was that vindictive? Probably not. Or at least she was going to tell herself it probably wasn’t vindictive.)
*
Elizabeth had never quite been sure what it meant when someone said it felt like they were being watched. No one had ever been interested enough in her for that to become a trend.
One day, though, she learned. And frankly, she had been happier not knowing what it felt like. To know that someone was trying to burn holes in the side of her head with their eyes alone, as if staring at her was the way to absorb every detail about her, made the hair on her arms and the back of her neck stand up. It left her feeling like her skin was crawling, like she was going to need to shed her skin and crawl away from it like a snake before the feeling stopped.
Slowly, she peered over her shoulder, and she couldn’t even be surprised when she found Maxwell watching her intently. Though the smile on his face as he lifted a hand to wave at her was placidly pleasant, the look in his eyes made it seem like he was planning something, and she wanted to throw a glass of water at him just to force him to leave for a few minutes to dry off. Not an entirely rational feeling, perhaps—or at least not the most efficient way of getting rid of an unwanted guest—but there it was regardless.
She made a show of checking the time on her phone before she got up from her seat and headed up the stairs to the guest room, where she made sure to close the door. At least that way Maxwell had to leave her alone or else he would be making it abundantly clear that he was up to something.
He would be gone by that evening, she told herself. She could have some peace and quiet then. Until then, she could keep herself busy in the guest room.
*
She had been under the assumption she was alone on the porch. Mara and Yusuke weren’t at the house. Ambrose was inside, and she hadn’t heard the door open. She didn’t hear the footsteps that approached across the grass, but then again, that wasn’t much of a surprise. She did, however, hear it when someone actually spoke to her out of nowhere.
“What are you doing?”
Elizabeth nearly leapt out of her skin at the question, simple though it was. Slowly, she turned to peer over her shoulder, her expression scrunching up slightly when she found Maxwell watching her like he was waiting for her to perform some sort of trick.
“My boots are a mess,” she stated flatly before turning away again. When he didn’t seem to get the hint, she added impatiently, “I don’t want to be tracking literal shit all over the place whenever I get home from work, and that’s easier to deal with if I clean them every day to keep it from becoming a problem instead of letting the mess build up all over them until it is a problem.”
“But why do you work with shit?” Maxwell wondered, and he sounded strangely amused as he asked it.
“I work at a farm,” she answered tersely, focusing on the sole of her boot with an intensity that likely could have melted a hole straight through the rubber, the dishrag in her hand wrinkling as her grip on it tightened. “I’m a Jack-of-all-trades. That includes cleaning out stalls, where the horses poop, and sometimes attempting to round up errant creatures, who like to spend time around poop. It’s sort of a function of nature and biology, regrettably.” So maybe she was being a bit rougher than was completely necessary, but she couldn’t really help it. She didn’t really want to spend time with him regardless, and she certainly didn’t want him lurking over her shoulder like some sort of overly inquisitive parrot.
He made a sort of disapproving noise, clicking his tongue. “It seems to me,” he began after a moment, despite the fact that she had not even remotely asked him for his opinion on her life or her life choices, “that a woman like you should be doing something more…genteel.”
“A woman like me,” Elizabeth repeatedly flatly, looking over her shoulder at him once again. “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”
“It’s not an insult,” he hurried to assure her, holding a hand up as if to ward off some sort of attack. “I just mean that someone as lovely as you should have a job that’s equally as lovely.”
Elizabeth turned her attention back to her boot before he could see her rolling her eyes at him. “Yeah, well. Welcome back to the human world, where you take whatever job you can get your hands on while you still have a chance to. My options were ‘farm animals’ or ‘homeless.’ I took the more glamorous option.”
“I feel like I’ve offended you,” he stated carefully, and she could hear him taking a step closer to her. Her shoulders bunched before she could help it and his steps halted, though he was still closer than she wanted him.
He had offended her, truthfully. By not minding his own business or staying in his own personal space bubble. Elizabeth didn’t want anything to do with him, and she couldn’t even figure out why he seemed so fascinated. And frankly, being called lovely by a stranger was sort of uncomfortable.
But he was Ambrose’s client, and Elizabeth wouldn’t be doing anyone any favors if she made things hostile. So, she sighed out a slow breath, her shoulders loosening as she did so.
“No,” she replied, and even if her voice sounded a bit too blank for it to really be convincing, at least she didn’t sound like she was half a step away from starting to growl at him. “I just haven’t had a great day, and everything has been sort of weird lately.” Before he could ask what was wrong, she hurried to add, “I don’t want to get into it.”
He nodded slowly and backed up a few paces, before he turned away and finally made his way into the house, officially becoming Ambrose’s problem for most of the rest of the afternoon. Elizabeth’s shoulders sagged in relief as she heaved a sigh, and she focused her attention even more intently on cleaning everything out of the grooves of the soles of her boots. A gross distraction was better than no distraction, after all, so she wouldn’t complain.
And at least she had some privacy again.
*
Maxwell was learning to press his luck. It probably made sense. He was taller than Elizabeth, broader than her, stronger than her, just larger than her in every way. On top of that, he could literally turn into an animal. Elizabeth didn’t offer much to deter him that he would take seriously, considering he didn’t seem to think her opinion on things meant that much.
It had been tolerable when he just watched or stood too close while making unsolicited conversation. Elizabeth could put up with things like that; she had been putting up with that sort of thing since she was thirteen. He wasn’t the first man who had crowded into her space when she didn’t want him to.
But then he decided that wasn’t quite enough; he decided he just wasn’t being handsy enough.
It was small at first: a hand on her shoulder, a hand on her back, brushing her fingers or her knuckles. Grabbing her by the arm or around the middle to bodily move her out of the way occasionally, or at least to move her somewhere else if he decided she needed to see something or if her input in a conversation was absolutely necessary.
Always briefly, and never near her breasts or her ass, but always too familiar for her liking, as if being in her personal space was just a fact of his life to take for granted. As if he belonged there, regardless of the fact that Elizabeth always retreated out of arm’s reach as quickly as she could.
And it never happened when anyone else was in the room. Even if he was pulling her towards a conversation, he always let her go before anyone else would notice. That was the most damning detail of all. He wasn’t being awkward or socially inept. He wasn't just adjusting to being around people again. He knew he wasn’t supposed to be touching her, and rather than just respecting that and keeping his hands to himself, instead he tried to hide it.
Considering that, she supposed she could have just stayed around one of the others as much as she could, but she wasn’t exactly excited about the idea of needing a guard. Briefly, she contemplated keeping a hammer on hand to ward him off, but ultimately, she decided that assault was a bit further than she really wanted to take things.
It was cathartic to think about, though. It let her sleep a little better at night.
*
Elizabeth was in the kitchen, her back to the basement door. She stood beside the table, flipping through a magazine. There was a chair right next to her, and while she had initially intended to sit down, she had gotten distracted midway through the process and so she simply stood by the edge of the table. Every so often, she could hear Ambrose’s or Maxwell’s voices drifting up the stairs, but with the door closed, she couldn’t actually make out any of the words, so she paid them no real attention, and the bulk of her focus was on the pages in front of her.
So, she didn’t notice them coming back up the stairs until the door opened. She didn’t even get a chance to look over her shoulder before there was someone beside her, and then fingers were brushing her cheek to push a few curls of her hair behind her ear. They were not Ambrose’s fingers, and they had no business being that close to her face. Elizabeth tensed, and she heard Ambrose make a low noise like an aggravated bull.
Maxwell had the audacity to sound wryly amused as he offered, “It seems like such a pity to hide a face like yours,” as his only explanation, as if his desire to see her face gave him any right to touch her when she wasn’t expecting it and when she hadn’t told him that he could.
For a moment, Elizabeth couldn’t move, save for the way her muscles kept getting tenser and tenser. Her jaw worked soundlessly for a moment, though no words came out, and she stopped trying soon enough.
As if to add insult to injury, Maxwell was still standing right next to her, close enough that she could feel his breath against her cheek, and his hand was still on her shoulder. She knew she had never given him any indication that she actually wanted any of the attention he seemed so set on lavishing her with, and yet he kept at it. Elizabeth could almost swear she heard an audible snap as the last, fraying strands of her patience gave out.
Her hands slammed down against the table, and Maxwell wrenched his hand back, recoiling as if he had been slapped. He stared at her in open bemusement as she scowled down at the table, before she turned and began to storm towards the door.
“Elizabeth—”
Ignoring whatever Ambrose planned on saying, Elizabeth threw the door open and stalked outside. As soon as she was at the bottom of the porch steps, she broke into a jog, right for the trees.
Initially, she wasn’t sure where she was going, but she wasn’t particularly concerned with that detail. She just needed to get away from the house, until she was as far away from Maxwell as she could get.
As the moment continued to race through her thoughts, she sped from a jog to a run. She wasn’t dressed properly to be in the woods, and sticks and thorns scratched at her legs and tugged at her socks and the laces of her sneakers, but she ignored it. None of that was important just then. The only thing that was important was putting more distance between her and the house.
It was only when the lights of the house were invisible as Elizabeth looked over her shoulder that she finally began to slow from a run to a jog and finally to a walk. Even so, she kept moving.
Running off like that probably hadn’t been Elizabeth’s best idea. They already knew there was at least one wolf still lingering in the area even without Maxwell there, and if that wolf was focused on Elizabeth, then running off on her own probably wasn’t a great idea.
And yet, as her footsteps carried her farther and farther into the trees, she couldn’t actually bring herself to feel badly about it. By that point, she was maybe even willing to risk getting eaten if it got her away from Maxwell’s cloying, claustrophobic company.
(Well, alright. Not really. Being eaten sounded like probably the very last thing she would ever ask to happen. But her desire to be away from the house, at least, was greater than her fear of maybe being eaten.)
Despite only visiting it once before, she remembered the path after only a few missteps, and it didn’t take long before the lights of the tree house came into view, twinkling like stars caught in the trees. Her speed picked up as soon as the lights came into view, and she broke into a run. She cleared the last of the distance to the nearest staircase with a small leap, landing on the second step with a thump. The step creaked beneath her.
One hand curling around the railing, Elizabeth climbed the stairs into the tree house, and everything felt a little less cloying after that. Maxwell had no idea the tree house existed, after all, and he certainly didn’t know where it was. She could sit down and just breathe for a while, and she didn’t need to worry about finding him lurking over her shoulder or around the next corner.
The largest room, in as much as the tree house had distinctive rooms, was the one wrapped around the largest tree, with a staircase leading up to it. It was the only room with real walls, and only along one of the six sides, largely just to have shelves. It was towards those shelves that Elizabeth walked, pushing away the tarp tacked over them and pulling a blanket off of the shelf. She gave it a vigorous shake to rid it of any grass, leaves, and bugs that had accumulated on it despite the tarp, and she carried it over to one of the ramps leading to a different tree. She threw the blanket down on the ramp, sat down, and then tumbled down onto her back. The lack of a roof over any of the ramps meant she had a view of the sky, the stars twinkling against the fragments of the sky visible through the leaves like diamond dust scattered over a black and green blanket.
She knew she couldn’t stay there for too long—eventually, she was going to have to head back to the house, for her own protection if for no other reason—but for the moment, at least, she was content.
She hardly stirred when she eventually heard footsteps and the rustling of the underbrush. She heard four feet, and whoever it was, they were too large to be Mara or Yusuke, and she knew Maxwell wouldn’t have been allowed to follow her, meaning Ambrose was the only option.
Slowly, she rolled onto her side, so she could look down at him over the edge of the ramp. He was still shaped like a bear as he looked up at her, his head cocked to one side and his ears angled towards her.
“Did he finally leave?” she wondered after a moment, rolling onto her stomach so one arm hung down over the edge of the ramp and her cheek was leaning on her other arm. Ambrose’s head dipped once as he nodded, and with a low hum of acknowledgement, Elizabeth sighed, “Good,” before she rolled onto her back once again, her attention returning to the sky above her.
She wasn’t surprised when she heard two feet on their way up the stairs, and she didn’t protest his company once Ambrose was in the tree house. After all, isolation hadn’t been her goal. She had just wanted to be away from Maxwell.
When he sat down on the blanket, she sat up slowly to lean against his shoulder, and he seemed content to stay like that. It was Elizabeth who turned and scooted closer to him, reaching up to cup his cheek to turn his face towards her. She kissed him slowly, one hand still on his cheek and the other splayed across his chest, until it began to wander across the bare skin. He returned the kiss eagerly, his hands on her hips tugging her into his lap, and she didn’t protest.
She stayed right there as their hands began to explore more hurriedly and their kissing began to get more heated, until she could feel his cock hardening, and soon enough she could feel his erection pressing against her through her clothes.
Finally, she pulled herself away from him, so she could sit up on her knees and pull her shirt over her head. She tossed it aside, her gaze following it only briefly to make sure it actually landed in the tree house, before she reached behind her back to unclip her bra and let it slide down her arms.
She tossed her bra towards where her shirt landed, only to stare at it as it missed and fell down to the ground below. She blinked at where it should have landed, before slowly looking down, over the edge of the railing, where she could easily pick out the white fabric against the leaves and grass and dirt below. She stared for a moment before a reluctant laugh escaped her.
Her shoes, pants, and panties at least landed where they were supposed to land. Of course it was the one article of clothing that would be the most uncomfortable if it got dirt stuck in it that landed on the ground. Of course. She couldn’t even be surprised.
She let it slip from her mind for the time being, instead crawling back into Ambrose’s lap, both hands cupping his face as she kissed him again. It was heated and damp, but brief that time, before he wrapped both hands around her hips and picked her up, so he could instead lay her back on the blanket on the ramp. He paused for a moment, letting her shift around to get comfortable before he crawled closer to her on all fours, until his form hid the sky and the canopy from view.
Had the gaps in the railing been just a little wider, Elizabeth might have been worried about falling through, but as it was, she felt perfectly safe. Besides, as Ambrose knelt over her, she knew he would never let anything happen to her.
Carefully, he rearranged her and lay down, so he was spooned up behind her with his cock pressing against her backside. His hands wrapped around her hips and shifted her upwards, until his cock was instead resting against the minute gap between her thighs. He curled a hand around her knee, lifting her leg, and Elizabeth reached down to wrap a hand around her thigh and pull it towards her chest, baring her sex. Ambrose trailed a hand along the inside of her thigh that was still stretched out, fingers only just barely brushing against the lips of her sex, before he finally pushed two between the folds and pressed at her entrance.
She sighed out a breath as two fingers breached her, and she shifted to get comfortable as they began thrusting slowly.
But the night was late, and they were far in the middle of the woods, where basically anything could have happened. It was for the best not to linger, and so it was only for a few moments that Ambrose’s fingers worked in and out of her before he slipped them out of her once again. He rubbed between the lips of her sex for a moment, making sure to press against her clit each time his fingers passed it, before he took hold of his erection and lined the head of it up with her entrance.
When he thrust in, it was not a slow movement. He thrust in all at once, the head of his cock breaching her and then the rest of it following in short order, until he was sheathed to the hilt. Elizabeth gasped, and the sound trailed off into a dwindling moan. She rolled her hips, pressing back against him, trying to draw him in impossibly deeper.
He hardly gave her a moment to adjust or get used to the sensation before he began to thrust, one hand pressed between her and the blanket to hold her hip, and the other curling around her leg to hold it up and out of the way for her, especially once her grip began to shake more and more with each thrust until she was forced to let go. Her hand tumbled down to the blanket, fingers clenching in the fabric and pulling at it, and her other hand tangled in her hair, thoroughly mussing it as she began to toss her head.
She could feel herself getting closer and closer to the edge, and she began grinding back against him even more quickly, making it rather apparent that she was close. Using that information, Ambrose abruptly slowed down. He didn’t stop, of course. But the rapid pace he had been maintaining slowed to a crawl, and Elizabeth whined. She could feel each inch of his cock as he withdrew with painstaking slowness, and each inch as he pressed back in just as slowly. She whimpered with each thrust, trying to urge him onwards. She knew that he was aware of what she was getting at, but he kept going at his slowed pace all the same.
Even going so slowly, though, the inevitable could only be delayed for so long. Gradually, Elizabeth’s whimpers rose back to moans and breathy gasps, and she had to hold her leg out of the way herself again as Ambrose had to hold her hips in place to keep her from grinding herself back to reach completion in a timelier fashion. But even so, she steadily approached the edge, until eventually she tumbled over it, and she breathed out a moan and every muscle went taut and shivering as she came. Her fingers clenched and unclenched, digging little crescent moons into the skin of her leg.
Ambrose’s slow rhythm stuttered briefly as she tightened around him, and it was only once she began to go limp that he picked up the pace, thrusting with renewed vigor towards his own completion as Elizabeth breathed encouragement for him. It didn’t take long before he came as well, managing only a few more faltering thrusts as he milked himself dry.
Slowly, he came to a halt, resting his forehead against the back of her neck. He let his cock slip free and smoothed a hand up her side as she finally let her leg come to a rest. She was pretty sure her hip was going to be sore in the morning, but it would be worth it.
They stayed right where they were for a few moments, chests heaving as they caught their breath and sweat drying on their skin. A gentle breeze blew, and a shiver chased itself down Elizabeth’s back until Ambrose pulled her closer to his chest. Warmth radiated from him like a furnace, and Elizabeth’s eyes drifted halfway shut as she took advantage of his heat, even if she was in no danger of falling asleep there.
Eventually, though, they had to disentangle themselves from each other. With something like reluctance, Ambrose pulled away and sat up, heaving a contented sigh as he leaned back against the railing along the side of the ramp. Elizabeth flopped over onto her back, her hands draped loosely over her stomach.
For a moment, neither of them moved or spoke, and the stillness was broken only by the skittering sounds of the breeze chasing leaves across the floor, by birds in the trees, and by crickets in the underbrush.
It was nice. Soothing, in a way.
“I can call the deal off,” Ambrose offered eventually, still leaning against the railing and watching the sky. “I can toss him out permanently; I won’t mind.”
Elizabeth was touched, for a moment. After all, she had to imagine that doing something like that wouldn’t exactly be convenient for Ambrose, and to say that she was unaccustomed to being allowed to inconvenience the people around her was a bit of an understatement. So, for Ambrose to just offer the choice, just like that… Well, it meant more than he probably knew.
But Elizabeth already knew she couldn’t accept the offer. Besides, his willingness to let her be an inconvenience every so often just made it so she wanted to inconvenience him even less than ever before.
“You don’t need to do that,” she assured him, her voice low. “I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t go over very well.”
Who was to say Maxwell would react well to being denied? After all, he seemed nearly feral half the time. Besides, what would it do to Ambrose’s side business if he picked up a reputation for turning people away when they became inconvenient? After all, considering what his side business was, no one was really convenient.
On the whole, she could imagine it doing far more harm than good to turn Maxwell away. It would likely be less trouble to simply deal with him and send him on his way, and it would leave him with no valid reasons to linger afterwards.
“You’re sure?” Ambrose wondered, sounding slightly skeptical. She couldn’t blame him.
With a slow sigh, she sat up and reached over to cup his chin with one hand. “Perfectly sure,” she replied, nodding once. She tapped his lower lip playfully with her thumb before letting his chin go once again, and she began getting to her feet. “If he’s gone, then we may as well head back,” she sighed. “There’s no real reason to loiter around out here with the bugs.”
Ambrose simply watched her for a moment as she started pulling her panties and her pants back on, before he slowly got to his feet to head back down to the ground and transform. Even if she was pretty sure he still didn’t quite believe her, he didn’t argue, and Elizabeth appreciated that.
The walk back to the house was quiet, as Elizabeth’s thoughts roamed far and wide, far too busy to entertain a one-sided conversation. But it was comfortable nonetheless.