Tuesday, November 29, 2011

The Timber Wolf and the Black Cougar, Calendar Cowboys

Tuesday howls and yowls, shapeshifter lovers.

The new crescent moon was particularly gorgeous in the teal night sky after twilight. Here’s wishing you a wonderful upcoming holiday season.

Next week I hope to bring you good news about a short shapeshifter Christmas story I’ve written, titled: SANTA BABY, SEVERAL STARS AWAY.

In the meantime, here’s a flash scene that could be part of another short shapeshifter story I’m penning around a New Year’s theme. No, sorry to disappoint some of you, it’s ‘not’ a manlove erotic romance. However, it is a menage.
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The Timber Wolf and the Black Cougar, Calendar Cowboys

“Dante’s calendar shoot this year was a real howl and hoot.” After a long and guttural laugh, Zance threw back his head and howled. To his satisfaction the sound reverberated throughout their four-seater pickup truck.

Dontoya yowled a drawn out chuckle, but still kept an iron hand on the steering wheel. Zance always envied the sound of his longtime ranch partner’s laugh because the women would crowd around him, their tongues nearly hanging out with lust.

“Yep, pard,” Dontoya drawled, “the shoot was a dang party without pants. Instead of in my pants. You know -- how we both get hard-ons from hell whenever Sherilyn is around.”

“Yeah, just thinking about our little spitfire...” Zance resettled himself so his cock wasn’t challenging his zipper quite as much.

Dontoya slowed the pickup turning onto the back road, the one that went past Sherilyn’s modest ranch, and along one side of her land. Whenever they could, they always took the long way home just to drive by, and maybe catch her scent, or a glimpse of their sexy, very elusive prey if she was checking the fence for breaks.

Despite her over-large man’s clothing, Sherilyn failed at hiding her voluptuous-in-all-the-right-places body. At least to his keen hunter’s eye. Zance kept his gaze fastened now, appreciating the new fallen snow -- about a foot of the heavy wet stuff.

“Spitfire is damn sure right.” Dontoya touched the brakes, then downshifted so they moved at a slower speed over the snow-packed slippery road. “No matter which one of us approaches her, she does a mighty fine job of bitin’ our heads off.”

“Yeah, without fangs,” Zance muttered. “This time I’m sending a calendar anonymously to our prickly human-she, who doesn’t know she belongs to us. Think she’ll like my bare-ass pose?”

“Who are you kidding, wolf boy? She’ll like my taut, bronze bare ass much better than your pale, moon-reflectin’ butt.”

“Ain’t that pale, cat boy.” Zance exaggerated his twang on purpose because it annoyed Dontoya.

Most of the time, they were best buds, and worked their ranch together without so much as a sour word. Now and again, though, they would go at each other like cats and dogs. Or what they were, a timber wolf and a black cougar. Then, their fists would fly and they’d shift, the fur flying until they exhausted themselves.

The last time they’d fang and claw battled, it’d been over which one of them was going to talk to Sherilyn first, since they’d seen her at the same time. She’d been buying feed for her horses at Talbot Peak’s Livestock Center, the store where they regularly purchased products for their cattle and horses.

By the time their discreet shoving match stopped a couple of aisles away, she’d been walking out the door. Like love-struck fools they’d rushed after her, only to be halted by Mary Lou’s all-knowing, singsong words, “Confided in me she’s been celibate for years, and don’t want no man.”

When he and Dontoya pivoted around to look at the store’s owner, Mary Lou gave them her big horsey grin, and neighed in her human voice, saying, “I showed her Dante’s charity calendar figuring she’d want one. Barely gave it a glance and just bought it ‘cause it was for charity.”

“Who’d have believed a pair like us would fall head over paws for a human-she?” Dontoya interrupted Zance’s remembrance of how the two of them had pried every last little bit about Sherilyn out of Mary Lou by buying twice their normal load of grain.

“We both know there’s more to her, even if it ain’t being a shapeshifter.” Zance spared a glance for his partner, who was sniffing for Sherilyn’s scent.

“With a stare that can freeze you in your tracks like gettin’ caught in a sub-zero blizzard, yeah, pard, there is. If we could solve that mystery, we might have an ‘in’ with her. But, since she’s always prickly as a teddy bear cholla cactus--”

Dontoya’s words were lost as another large pickup gunned past them, spraying snow that covered their windshield.

“Fucker,” Dontoya snarled as he eased the truck to a crawl, and flipped on the wipers.

“The Brady brothers. All four of ‘em. Caught their ape stink.” Zance curled his lips, baring his teeth.

“Hell. Dante banned them from his biker bar just last week.”

“Hell, yeah. They were about to get the ape stank beat right off, and the devil beat out of ‘em.”

“Soundin’ like a real good plan right now.” Dontoya growled menacingly as he picked up speed.

In the next instant, the Brady bunch was forgotten because Sherilyn’s ripe-as-summer-strawberries fragrance filled Zance’s nostrils. “Dibs,” he barked, a mere second before his partner’s echoing ‘dibs’.

After a fierce ‘grrrrr’, Dontoya smacked the steering wheel with his fist. “You better sweet talk her, wolf boy, into New Year’s --”

Sherilyn’s horrified scream pierced Zance’s ears, and he knew Dontoya heard also because he stomped on the accelerator. Heedless of the dangerous conditions, Dontoya sped the pickup toward her.

What Zance saw next chilled his blood and also enraged him so that his wolf threatened to break free. But, he had to stay in control. He watched as the Brady brother at the wheel churned their pickup’s tires backing away from Sherilyn’s much smaller truck.

“Grab my tail, pard. Or I’m gonna rip them limb from fucking limb,” Dontoya viciously snarled as he slammed their pickup to a sliding halt.

“Limb from fucking limb,” Zance echoed in a growl, even as he threw open the door, and bolted outside.

He hit the ground at a dead run. Leaping over the ditch, Zance sprinted toward Sherilyn’s truck, knocked off the road, and sitting askew. Some part of him knew what he would find before he caught sight of her lifeless looking body -- so small and still in the white field of deep snow where she’d been flung by the impact.

No! Zance shouted inside, railing against fate, railing against the terrible scene he witnessed. He had never felt so strangely empty, so surreal. And, even through Zance pumped his legs harder, faster, it seemed like an eternity before he reached Sherilyn -- before he was kneeling beside her and sniffing for her life essence.

An instant later, Dontoya dropped to his knees on the other side of Sherilyn. “She’s bleeding internally. Bad. I smell it.”

“We only got one way to save her.”

“Do it fast.” Dontoya moved to hold Sherilyn’s head steady.

Zance unzipped her parka only enough to rip away the part of her flannel shirt that covered her shoulder. Leaning down, he sank the tip of his elongating fangs into her shoulder muscle until his saliva flowed into Sherilyn’s bloodstream. She could hate him later.

“She’s coming home with us.” Dontoya gently cradled her head in his palms. “She’ll need us to take care of her now.”
~~~~~~

Have a Magickal and Shapeshifting Holiday Season...

Savanna

Savanna Kougar ~ Run on the Wild Side of Romance ~
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6 comments:

Serena Shay said...

Ooh, between her Sherilyn's mysterious background and now a wolf bite, well I wonder what she will be when she awakes?

Nice start, Savanna! I hope you have time to get it all ready and on sale by the new year! :)

Savanna Kougar said...

Serena, thanks. We'll see if time and my energy cooperates. I never know these days.

Pat C. said...

Dammit. I'm at the point where I want one of those calendars. All those hot shifter boys!

And dammit again. Just the other day I got an idea involving a wolf-and-cougar duo and the woman they're both interested in. Must be something in the air. Mine aren't cowboys, though. I'm blogging about it on Title Magic on Thursday, so we'll be able to see if there's any plot overlap.

Savanna Kougar said...

Oooh, so too bad we can't create that calendar because of time, energy, money, etc. Likely it would sell! And then, I could have fabulous visuals of our heroes.

Hey, Pat, must be something in the air. I had no clue who my heroes would be when I began the flash, until Zance and Dontoya showed up. But, in Talbot's Peak all is possible. Unless, your setting isn't in the Peak.

Since they're not cowboys, I doubt there'd be a whole lot of overlap. Now, I can't wait for your Title Magic post.

Pat C. said...

Mine's still embryonic at this stage. It may or may not amount to anything. I don't think it happens in the Peak. If it did, Shere Khan would be after the heroine. It was just one of those coinkidinks.

Anyway, my cougar's not black. His name's Cliff and he's kind of a dusty-blond with a moustache.

Savanna Kougar said...

Hmmm... Shere Khan after the heroine... must mean she's extra special. Even if she's not in Talbot's Peak.

Yeah, Dontoya, being a black cougar species from the southwest originally, is one of those big black cats that gets photographed, sighted by hunters and game wardens, but the media says doesn't exist. Heck, I know a hunter who's seen them. And he knows other hunters who have spotted them. They ain't extra large black domestic kitty cats on the loose. Why they are still labeled a mystery and there's this big push to say they don't exist... well, I can't explain it.

Cliff sounds big-cat yummy.