Werewolf fairytales

What she wants

*Margaret*

Generally speaking, I eat my meals with the children. I see no point in dining by myself, and it is much more congenial… if sometimes wearing, given Nanny McGillycuddy’s conversational style… to listen to the children’s chatter. I’ve had enough solitary dining in the first seven years of my marriage.

But Fenrir had said he is returning home for supper. I will have a grown-up seated across from me at the dining room table, a rather fascinating idea.

I plan a menu with the cook… three courses instead of my usual two… and instruct the downstairs housemaid to set the table in the dining room. Then I order a bath and sit in it for a good forty minutes, trying to calm my mind.

And not succeeding.

Fenrir is my mate, and he doesn’t want to break off the marriage. I can already tell that what Beta Fenrir Garou doesn’t want to do, he doesn’t do. I can see it in every lineament of his body, in the set of his jaw.

I raise my knee in the bath and watch water roll off my knee and down my leg. It had been one thing to face my wedding night when I was twenty, with the confidence of feeling both delectable and young. I had been utterly certain that my young husband would find me enticing.

There was something smoldering in Fenrir’s eyes that tells me he still feels that way, but I am no longer so assured.

I soap my knee for the fourth time. Two thoughts keep chasing themselves around my head: the first is a memory of my mother talking of tearing pain. That doesn’t sound any better now than it had fourteen years ago. And the second and more important is that I am old. Practically wizened. Dried up. Over thirty.

It makes the blood roar in my ears to even think about that number. On my marriage night my breasts and my waist had been perfect. Now my hips are rounder, and my bosom is larger. My breasts haven’t kept the teacup shape they’d had at seventeen

Fenrir, on the other hand, has only improved over the years. He is everything a she-wolf ever dreamed of in the privacy of her own bed. His eyes, shoulders, even thighs, even… I have seen what he looks like from behind.

Now he is the delectable one.

I swallow hard.

“Are you ready for me to wash your hair?” my maid asks, jolting me out of that train of thought.

“Yes,” I murmur.

“An exciting day,” May says, as she pours jasmine soap onto her hands and then begins massaging it into my hair.

“Yes.”

“If you don’t mind the presumption, my lady, Beta Fenrir is as handsome… well, as handsome as ever a man was! Even Nanny said how he was fine looking.”

“Nanny? Really?”

May laughs. “She said a man with those thighs could father ten children and we’d have to teach you how to plead a sick headache.”

“Hush,” I say, and May quiets, which just means that I go back to worrying.

By the time my maid is rinsing my hair, I have reconciled myself to the fact that my marriage is going to be consummated this very night.

For all Fenrir has promised to wait, I’m not stupid. Everything about him is strung tight. I am a challenge that he means to conquer, his feelings all the more acute for the debacle of our wedding night. There was something hungry in his eyes that sends a thrill right down my legs. He craves me.

I feel as if my blood is overheating. I stand up, determined to put on clothes before May notices that I am trembling slightly.

Then it strikes me that I don’t have any seductive clothes, gowns designed for a man’s appreciation. All of my clothes are retiring, costumes that inform the world that I am not a debauched she-wolf, even though I have no husband.

May hands me a length of toweling and then turns to the wardrobe. “The blue gown will be just right. I’ll remove the fichu that tucks into the bodice.” Her smile is naughty, which makes me wonder.

My maid is not married. I have never seen her smile like that.

The blue gown is made of the lightest of lightweight cottons, so thin as to be transparent, although of course it has an underskirt.

It had an underskirt, because even as I watch, May begins ripping the lining away. Too busy pulling out the small stitches, May doesn’t even look up at my gasp.

“He’s a pirate, my lady. A pirate. You have to make him stay in England. We need a man about the house. You can’t keep a pirate at home by wearing a little cap on your head and pretending you’re as bloodless as a Quaker.

Anxiety spills into my stomach again. Even my household doesn’t think much of my chances of keeping Fenrir interested. Not given that I am an old she-wolf of thirty-four, likely infertile, probably wrinkled in places I have never thought about

With a silent groan, I straighten my shoulders. If only he’d come home five years ago. Or even four years ago, when I was thirty. Thirty seemed better. Vastly younger than thirty-four.

“No corset,” May says, “and no chemise, either.

I have never dreamed of such a scandalous way of dressing. I open my mouth to refuse… and pause. What do I know of these matters? Nothing. Maybe wives seduce their husbands nightly by leaving off their chemises.

What can’t be avoided must be endured.

I allow May to dress me in the remains of a perfectly good gown, without a scrap of underclothing, which makes me feel the veriest trollop. And reminds me that I have to inform Fenrir about the children’s parentage immediately. The moment he comes in the door.

May piles my hair on the top of my head in a disheveled bun, leaving strands to curl around my ears. Then she produces a little box.

“What’s that?” I ask suspiciously.

“Kohl,” May says. “We’ll brush it on your eyelashes.”

“No.”

“But my lady… look, I have some lip color as well.”

“No.” There is no question in my mind about this. I won’t disguise what I am, and who I am.

Obviously, Fenrir intends to sleep with me. But if I don’t quicken with child after six months, he might well leave. Meanwhile, I’m not going to pretend to a youth I no longer possess.

But at least I will have him first. For a time. Under my anxiety is a kind of brewing excitement. After all, I’ve been alone for years. When male eyes meet mine on the street, I turn my head instantly. Part of the reason I avoid society is because men, even gentlemen, tend to assume things about a she-wolf whose husband lives overseas. Or, in this case, on the sea.

They assume I am lustful and lonely, and desperate for marital pleasures. I have never been such, and have received any such advances with disdain.

But now… slowly… I am realizing that no matter the reason that Fenrir wants to consummate the marriage, it means that I can try those things. Perhaps I will have a child of my own. Perhaps it isn’t too late.

May adjusts my necklace and steps back. Without a fichu tucked into the bodice, my gown barely skims my n*****s. If I push my knee forward, I can clearly see the shape of my thigh.

I begin to shake my head, but May overrides me. “This is what you’re wearing, my lady.

I frown. Have I really lost control of my household to the extent that not only Nanny but also May feel free to order me about.

“You look beautiful,” my maid says. “Just look at yourself, my lady. Really look.”

I really look.

I am beautiful. That is, still beautiful. I have grown up with my father’s confident belief that he could barter my face and dowry against a title. But my mother had never fostered vanity. “The tilt of your nose is nothing to be proud of,” she would say. I have grown accustomed to ignoring my appearance.

Looking critically at the glass, I can see that while my air of dewy youth has evaporated, there is a kind of sensuality to my lips and my breasts and even the curve of my hip that make up for it.

“Yes,” May says. “There you are.” She sounds as smug as a preacher on Sunday afternoon. “You’ll do. That pirate’s a lucky man, and he knows it.”

I need to go downstairs and check with Cook, see if the table has been set properly, make sure the children are tucked into bed. But I turn at the door and take a final look at the mirror.

My father bought Fenrir the first time, but it is up to me this time. I am not bartering myself for a title.

I want the body behind the title.

I want Fenrir at my side, for as long as I can keep him. I want a man… Fenrir… to look at me with bold hunger, even if he tosses me on the bed, for all the world as if I am a possession rather than a she-wolf of my own merit.

The air I draw into my lungs feels overheated, bringing with it a swell of agonized longing.

To belong to him. To own him. To caress and explore him.

I have never looked at men’s bodies closely, but somehow I have done so to Fenrir. After only an hour or two in his company, I could trace the shape of his chest in my mind, the way it swelled from a narrow waist. The shape of his arse, muscled and powerful and altogether male.

Sensual images shoot through my mind. It is as if a dam broke somewhere deep inside and a flood of erotic longings broke free. I can imagine myself caressing all that golden skin. Kissing it. Putting a hand between his legs, where no good she-wolf ever even glanced.

Kneeling before him . . .

I hurry from the room so that May won’t see my face.

All this wild energy can’t be normal. Men and she-wolves can’t walk about feeling this madness racing up their legs.

Now my imagination has broken free; it is offering me image after image. I see myself running to greet Fenrir at the front door. He snatches me into a kiss so fierce that my head bends back against his arm. Our desire is so heady that we sink down in the entry, right there, on the floor, and I pull him on top of me, shameless and joyful.

I am tempted to slap my own cheek. This is lunacy. As if something like that could happen. What about the children? The servants?

Have I lost my mind? I feel like one of those widows whom the ballads make fun of, the ones who walks about ogling young men.

Yet I don’t want to ogle young men.

I only want one man, one pirate with a tattoo and a limp.

My husband, my mate.