Sterling Inn

Falling Into Like

"And that upsets you? Aren't you two friends?"

"I'm sick of his..." Insecurity? The fact we were so similarly different? Does that even make sense? "It makes feel...unworthy."

"Unworthy?" Josh kissed my forehead and I grimaced into his neck at the tenderness of it. "You've had plenty of gentleman callers--you must be worthy."

"Or just easy." I countered weakly. "Doesn't it bother you?"

Josh leaned up a bit, withdrawing almost completely. My lips pressed together as I wondered if I'd completely ruined the moment. No sooner had the thought crossed my mind then he bottomed out leaving me breathless. "I can't say I love it." His mouth was back at my neck. "But it's your body. I don't own you."

"You says it's my body like you're trying to scold me. Like I'm a rebellious teen who got a tattoo." My eyes were drifting toward the buck. Josh caught my face and looked meaningfully into my eyes. His eyes were like coffee mixed with fresh cream. It was like I was nineteen again with a friendly regular who's name always escaped me until he reminded me of it.

"No but I feel like you do it to punish yourself. And that hurts me."

"Punish myself? Can't I simply enjoy sex?" I was getting tired of this position. I wasn't a limber nineteen year old anymore. My back was starting to hurt. "Can we do this the easy way?"

"What you don't like the intimacy?" He withdrew completely and I rolled over groaning as my vertebrae cracked. "Or maybe you're just getting old."

"C." I countered weakly. "All of the above."

"Do you want to finish?"

"After all of that you bet your ass I do." I pressed against him. "It's rude to leave your guests high and dry."

***

There was something so wonderful about walking through town in the dead of the night.

The shops were all closed with low lights hardly illuminating their items. It was quiet and cool, the chattering of crickets was the only sound save for the gentle crunch of my feet over the well beaten dirt path. I had grown up here and it had changed and developed so much.

Long gone were the days where homemade goods were the only item to come across save for the one fancy store stocked with human commodities. Now it was the opposite. The ease of ordering online made cheap merchandise attainable and popular. And what you couldn't find in town was found on Amazon and shipped to your door in two days.

A Regional Officer shifted out of the shadows some. The low glow of his cellphone lit up his features as he assessed me. "Pretty late for you to be out and about." There weren't curfews imposed but it was obvious most people would be asleep by this hour. "Hope you're heading home?"

"That's the plan."

The uniforms had also changed with time. They had once been stiff black fabric separated only by a belt with a walkie, baton, taser, and gun. Now the uniforms had shifted to a more friendly maroon and black color scheme--not that it softened their look much. "Go on then." He decided after a moment.

It was rumored of a large spread prejudice against Rouges but I'd never seen that side. Perhaps it was that Red demanded their respect; maybe it was the fact that they enjoyed spending their breaks tickling the throat of a whore for a casual twenty dinj. Either way I had never been bothered by their presence. If anything I comforted there were officers stationed around. And there almost always was.

What was the Councils promise? An Officer in every quadrant within a hundred yards of each other. Or something like that. Seeing as I wasn't a pack member and an omega, I was never permitted to vote for our officials so I never could care much about politics. Red had a vote though--he had ranted about someone named Guiles and raved about another official named Smith. Smith had taken the open position, clearly, because Red had been unusually pleased. Our Council members, from what I'd seen on the TV or in the local paper, were a collection of Alphas, retired Head Warriors, and various individuals of particular wealth and influence. There had been one woman elected on it and Red had bitched about it for months. She was later voted off the Council by the rest of members after an impulsive decision I hadn't learned much about.