Free Moon Mates (Shameless Shifters) by Sable Drake Page A

have."
    "That's
different. Haven't you ever wanted a wild man, Mare?"
    "Um…
no."
    Jaylee
sighed. "The first guy I slept with, my senior year of high school, he was
a wild man. No matter what time of day it was, he had this scruff, this
five-o'clock shadow. And chest hair, and that line of hair going down the belly…
and this enormous stiff cock sticking up out of a dense curly bush of
pubes."
    "I'm
with you on the enormous stiff cock part," Marion said. "But the rest…
I shudder to think what the shower drain must have looked like. Probably a wad
of hair big as a drowned mouse. Blech. Did he have a hairy ass, too?"
    "Yeah,"
Jaylee said, her eyes nearly glazing over with nostalgia. "And muscular,
hairy legs, too… from the waist down, he was almost like one of those goat-guys
from Greek mythology. Satyrs."
    Marion 's nose was wrinkled more than ever, so that her
entire face was scrunched up in a kind of dubious horror. "I never knew
you went for that. All these years, and I thought you were normal."
    "It's normal ! Quit eyeballing me like I just told you I was into guys who
wanted to be diapered or peed on... or something."
    "What
about spanked?" Before Jaylee could answer, Marion held up her hands in a
time-out signal. "Forget it… I just had a vision of you paddling some
guy's hairy ass, and I really don't want to go there."
    "Why
are we even talking about this?" Jaylee tossed the catalog aside. "I
was telling you about my new job."
    "One
incomprehensible revelation leads to another. And now that I know what turns
you on, I'm kind of worried about you going out and taking pictures of
gorillas."
    "Gee,
thanks. Because you know it just must be a short step from liking some chest
hair to bestiality."
    "Isn't
it?" Marion grinned.
    "So
sue me if I'm one of those women who has a deep-down primal urge to be ravished
by a big, powerful barbarian. Maybe I was captured by Vikings in a past
life."
    "Or
cavemen. You want they should club you on the head and drag you around by the
hair? Or, hey, here's a thought… what about that guy down at the pizza place,
the one who wears the bear costume and plays the accordion? Or we could go to Disneyland, and I'll cover for you while you drag B'rer Fox into the briar patch."
    "Enough
already!" Jaylee cried. "Give me a break, huh? How many times did you
make me go see The Last Samurai ? Did I say a word?"
    "Right.
Okay. So, tell me about the new job. I still can’t believe it, but tell me
anyway. I thought you hated outdoorsy stuff. Somehow, it's hard to see you
crouching in a duck blind, waiting for a moose to walk by."
    * * * *
    Ten
days later, Jaylee was on her way to do almost exactly that very thing. Not
moose, but deer… except that she was really hoping to get some good shots of
predators. That was where the money was.
    Lynxes
sold better than rabbits. Hawks sold better than swans. Wolves sold better than
elk. Part of it was the challenge–predators, being quick and sly, were harder
to capture on film than their more placid prey. Part of it was the risk.
    But
the main thing was the coolness factor. Even kindergartners knew it. Ask a
group of kids to name their favorite dinosaur, most of them would instantly say
T-Rex. Ask people going to the circus what they most hoped to see, and it'd be
the tigers. At the zoo, crowds gathered more around the big cats than the
zebras. Audiences were always more impressed when a magician disappeared a
panther, rather than a sheep.
    Her
camera bag was in the passenger seat, strapped in with the seat belt. The last
thing she wanted was some sudden stop to tumble it into the footwell. Her cell
phone sat in its recharging holster, plugged in, and for once, quiet. No
panicked calls from magazine editors to drop everything and rush over to
re-shoot some guy's package. The back seat was taken up with her suitcases and
a cooler. Classic rock throbbed from the speakers.
    She
had the windows down and the sunroof open to take full advantage of the clean
green