Havermouth, Present TimeAislen was not surprised when Cameron appeared by her gate later that afternoon. She had just paused for a drink, leaning on the porch, and admiring the over-half full skip bin. She lifted her eyebrows when he ran to the fence and came to a stop. “Are you going to run by this house every day that I am here?” She asked him with a sigh.“I run every day,” he replied letting himself in the gate. “Sometimes several times a day.”“Yeah, perhaps, but I guarantee you only started running by here…” She started and then broke off. The sentence was dangerous, she thought to herself, as it implied something she wasn’t sure she wanted to face. “You still prefer Rhett,” he scraped his sweat-damp hair back from his face. She raised her eyebrows. “He was the only one of the three of you who was nice to me…” She broke off again because she had realized that wasn’t true. Rhett’s niceness had been part of their plan, a honeytrap to lure her in, and it was working again, damn
Havermouth, River House, Five Years BeforeSix cars arrived, spilling out a good portion of the football and cheerleading teams. They began to build a fire in a firepit set to the side of the house and set out supplies that indicated they intended to be there for a while. Several stripped down into their underwear and picked their way down the riverbank to swim in the water, their shrieks and the sounds of their splashing carrying up to where Aislen continued to work on her sketch. Rhett had stepped inside of the house with Cameron and Heath, and the three were engaged in an intense, hushed conversation involving many glances out the filthy windows to Aislen. Cameron came out and stripped off his clothing next to her. “You are good,” he said, leaning over her in just his boxer shorts. She could smell animals and hay tangled up in the scent of his deodorant, sweat and skin – a combination that shouldn’t have been as sexy as it was, she admitted ruefully. She was still aroused from Rh
Havermouth, Present TimeShe finished the final room as dusk turned the sky into a painted display of glory and ate her oven-baked frozen meal standing at the kitchen bench, followed by a long, hot soak in the shower. She took time doing her face and hair and selected carefully from the small range of underwear that she had brought with her for the trip.As she finished dressing, she admitted to herself that her heart was racing. She was excited, in a breathless, anticipatory way. She wanted to know if the attraction between her and Talen the night before had been alcohol, magic and abstinence fuelled… Or if it had truly been as incredible as she had thought it to be. And there was only one way to test that out – through a repeat performance. She wasn’t entirely sure if moving from a trio of alpha werewolves to a vampire was an emotionally and mentally healthy evolution, or whether it was a regression, but it was the first time since the Triquetra that she’d had a sexual interest, an
Havermouth High School, Five Years BeforeRhett’s body in and over hers held Aislen pinned when she would have jumped at the sudden, unexpected, and unwelcome intrusion of the other two members of the Triquetra, and she gripped Rhett to her instead, using him as a shield. “Rhett!” She pleaded, but he pulled back against her grasp, and Heath and Cameron slid into the bed around her, Cameron laughing and using his body to pin her down when she tried to slither away.“Oh, no you don’t,” he laughed, and she gasped as his c-ck nudged against her entrance, her mind filling with images of the four of them in a multitude of positions, many of which she had never imagined possible... “You’ve been teasing and taunting us for weeks, playing virginal princess in front of everyone else and then the town bike when we’re alone…”“Rhett!” She cried out as Cameron’s c-ck penetrated and he groaned. She sobbed in a breath as his hand cupped her jaw and he kissed her, his tongue stroking against hers as
Havermouth, Present TimeThe night was still young when she saw Talen to the door, and she stood, wrapped in her satin dressing gown, waving him goodbye as he reversed the expensive Ute out of her driveway, feeling very much like the domesticated housewife waving her husband off to work.Talen’s headlights caught in the iridescent light of a wolf’s eyes, and Aislen sighed heavily. The giant white and grey wolf sat in the hedges next to the driveway. As she watched, the wolf shifted until Heath crouched on one knee and lifted his head before slowly rising to his feet.“Well, I guess you had better come in,” she sighed. “Before one of the neighbors see you.”He walked, a silky shift of muscle under the moonlight, avoiding the gravel, climbing over the veranda fence with athletic ease and walking to stand before her, looking down. She lifted her eyebrows and stepped back, so that he could enter the house, closing the door behind him.It was a test, she thought as she led the way down the
Havermouth High School, Five Years BeforeIt was just before dawn when Rhett pulled up out front of Aislen’s house and turned down the stereo. He turned off the engine and got out the car, rounding the bonnet in order to open her door and leaning over her to release her seatbelt, nuzzling and kissing her cheek as he did so. He was effervescently happy, whilst she was stunned numb.He retrieved her art supplies from the back and put his arm around her, walking her to the door, before capturing her face between his hands and kissing her enthusiastically. “One of us will pick you up Monday morning at eight, okay?” She could feel his overflowing joy through the contact, and the contrast to how she was feeling was painfully stark.“Okay,” she repeated.“Okay. Aislen…” He stroked her hair back from her face. She saw adult faces that she did not know, and their concerned disapproval. “Don’t worry. It will be alright. Just give us time… and it will work out, okay?”“Okay.” Give them time… to
Havermouth, Present TimeDaylight was glaring. The beginning of the end, she thought as she showered and dressed. She ate in the kitchen, looking out onto the uncompromising dessert of the back garden, and remembering how it had looked when she had last stood in the same position.Her mother had always had a penchant to greenery. There had always been some new exotic plant being coaxed into reluctant life under a palace of plastic-wrap and wire, watered precisely on the hour, to a measure – no more and no less.If Tiffany had paid as much attention to her marriage or her daughter, Aislen thought, and then pushed it aside, identifying it as internalized misogyny. Tiffany’s marriage breakdown was in equal measure the responsibility, if not more so, of Patrick, who had been the carbon copy of his era…“I have never…” His glower bore down on Aislen. He had been wearing the shirt that Aislen had zip locked in her suitcase. “Never been as ashamed to show my face around town, as I am in this
Havermouth High School, Five Years BeforeThe sky was heavy and overcast, the rain a fine mist that was absolutely inescapable, chilling the air and soaking through Aislen’s jacket, beading in the fur trim of her hood. The school yard was empty, students choosing to huddle in the hallways, sheltered corners, and the cafeteria rather than get wet. Rhett had come by the house that morning in order to pick her up, despite their argument the day before, but she had refused to answer the door. It had made her late to first class and earned her a reprimand by the teacher. She had already been the focus of sniggering and behind the hands murmuring as she’d entered the class, therefore she had endured the reprimand without flinching as the lesser torture.Her first four classes had been Triquetra free, and she had hidden in the nurse’s office at recess. She had chosen the library for lunch, thinking that the Triquetra were more likely to be in the music rooms, and that the library’s shelves