Erotic Short: Blood Moon
We've been busy over at Adventurotica, both onstage and behind the scenes.
Big news: we're releasing Sky Pirates of the Rio Grande on Thursday! More on that as it becomes relevant, but I wanted to let you know so you can limber up that clicking finger and get ready to buy it.
Today I wanted to alert you that we also recently posted a couple of shorts. I meant to tell you as they went up, but things around here have been kind of rough, and it slipped off the plate. So I'm doing it now!
The first is Blood Moon, a thousand-word werewolfish short I've never published anywhere else. I'm putting it up here for y'all to enjoy because I love you. If you like it, link it. And maybe kick some cash into the tip jar.
Blood Moon
by Amanda Gannon, for Adventurotica
It was that time of the month.
Her lover wanted to know how it felt.
She couldn't explain it. It was like fever, she thought. Everything was hard and bright and strange. Like feeling you're going to burst out of your skin. Like the delirium of not knowing who you are, or what is inside you. There was pain, but there was glory, too.
How to explain something so fundamental that you don't even question it anymore?
The first time it caught her, she'd thought it was a punishment. Thirteen, alone in her bed, face crushed hard against her pillow, her fingers buried between her sticky thighs. She was stuck in an endless loop of fantasy, one where she and her heartthrob of the day tumbled over and over one another, one dreamy cascade of hands and lips and the imagined heat of another body. It wouldn't end, she couldn't finish it, couldn't finish herself. She didn't know what she sought, only that she was seeking. Always before, she'd grow tired, confused, she'd break it off. I'm stupid. I'm doing it wrong. This isn't working.
This time she was determined. He'd touched her that day, brushed against her in the hallway, and in that moment she'd known that it didn't matter whether he knew she was there or not. She was. She existed. And that was enough for her. She wouldn't deny herself until he noticed her. That would be like not noticing herself. Silly, really.
This time was different. That awful, twisting tension, so cruelly sweet, like his teasing laugh, the way it always made her feel, deep in her belly . . . now it doubled like a folding knife in her hands, cut her deeply. So deep, deeper than her fingers went in. She could feel herself squeezing, trembling within, warm and hot and alive, touching her own insides, the very core of herself, and then she spilled over, like waves pounding her, and she was lost in it, carried away.
Moonlight streaked in through the shutters. She lay there with it pouring like water over her. It struck her eyes, like a mirror's flash, and she had a moment, just a moment, to feel its peace, cool as a new sheet. She closed her eyes, opened her mouth to it, breathed it in, and in the next moment, agony doubled her over, shooting through every nerve and bone, and when she pulled her hands up, they were red, all over red, and she was suddenly, fiercely overcome.
She had scrambled up, then, terrified. She should have gone to someone, her father or her mother, someone who knew, who could have helped her through it this first, this wildest time. No, she fled the house, out through the garage and into the side yard that smelled overpoweringly of mint and nightshade. She made it as far as the side of the pool before she fell into the dew-wet grass and lay there, blood on her fingers, her thighs, her hands twisted into the dirt as though she feared she would roll right off the surface of the world. And when she looked down at the moon - that's how it felt looking into the sky, like looking down, down, down - she feared she very well might. She smelled the earth when she tore it with her nails, smelled her own blood, smelled the thousand aromas of the night in a cascade that overwhelmed her.
The cramps were bone-breaking, terrifying. She wanted to scream her throat bloody, but all that came were whimpers. She thrashed and jerked, and curled tight into a ball. Never again, she promised. Is this what it's like? Oh, God, if this happens every time, whatever I did, I'll never do it again, I promise.
But later, it was all right. It quit hurting. The moonlight warmed her like the sun. Her bones were long as rays of starlight. Her gait was smooth as water. And when she returned it was muddy earth on her hands and feet, and not blood. She kept it a secret for three whole months until her mother found out and was overjoyed for her. After that there was no keeping the family out of it. But for those three months, it was hers, and hers alone.
She only let it take her by surprise one other time. She hadn't known that some things bring it on early. The first time she let a boy go all the way inside her, she was still two days from the full, and she thought she was safe. When he pulled out, covered with blood, she snarled at his horrified exclamation. What right did he have to condemn her body? He wouldn't finish with her, or help her finish. She recognized the moment when her anger turned into that driving, bestial rage. She caught it in time.
The cramps slammed like a hammerblow into her gut and she fled - stupid fucking party anyway - clawing her way into a bathroom, locking the door, and hearing his fists pounding as he tried to make her hear his apology. She had the sense to open the window while she still had hands, and left it ajar for herself.
By the time he got into the bathroom, she was gone, tail wagging. It hadn't been wonderful, but the moon had saved her, and there would be other first times.
It was years before she found a man she liked. Years in which she learned to love the blood and the moonlight and the running, learned to love her time apart, when she felt her soul suspended and revolving between the earth's rich gravity and the moon's wild pull.
She loved him at once, the smell of him like sweat and leather and a chaser of engine grease from the auto shop where he worked days, a smell always so thick with the promise of sex. He sang with his band evenings and weekends. His voice lifted above the smoke and the pressing bodies aroused her wildest heart, and she sometimes could not keep herself from singing along, notes blending to one keening, dissonant wail. She sang off-key so anyone listening would hear and know that they were two. Together.
It was like that when he loved her, holding her to the bed with scarred arms, braving her fury to thrust deeper, ever deeper, trying to reach the core of her, trying to part the mystery. Her eyes locked with his, a challenge, and she wondered if he knew how often the beast surged just under her skin, how often she took his scruffy blonde pelt in hand as he devoured her, face between her thighs, and imagined devouring him.
Before she'd left that night for her running, he'd held her near, still inside her, one hand on her breasts and the other cupping the swell of her belly. "What's it like?" he'd asked, wanting to be just that much more inside her. "To be what you are?"
Someday, someday she'd have to tell him.
But not today, she thought, and changed again.
X-posted from Dreamwidth. Comment count:
Big news: we're releasing Sky Pirates of the Rio Grande on Thursday! More on that as it becomes relevant, but I wanted to let you know so you can limber up that clicking finger and get ready to buy it.
Today I wanted to alert you that we also recently posted a couple of shorts. I meant to tell you as they went up, but things around here have been kind of rough, and it slipped off the plate. So I'm doing it now!
The first is Blood Moon, a thousand-word werewolfish short I've never published anywhere else. I'm putting it up here for y'all to enjoy because I love you. If you like it, link it. And maybe kick some cash into the tip jar.
Blood Moon
by Amanda Gannon, for Adventurotica
It was that time of the month.
Her lover wanted to know how it felt.
She couldn't explain it. It was like fever, she thought. Everything was hard and bright and strange. Like feeling you're going to burst out of your skin. Like the delirium of not knowing who you are, or what is inside you. There was pain, but there was glory, too.
How to explain something so fundamental that you don't even question it anymore?
The first time it caught her, she'd thought it was a punishment. Thirteen, alone in her bed, face crushed hard against her pillow, her fingers buried between her sticky thighs. She was stuck in an endless loop of fantasy, one where she and her heartthrob of the day tumbled over and over one another, one dreamy cascade of hands and lips and the imagined heat of another body. It wouldn't end, she couldn't finish it, couldn't finish herself. She didn't know what she sought, only that she was seeking. Always before, she'd grow tired, confused, she'd break it off. I'm stupid. I'm doing it wrong. This isn't working.
This time she was determined. He'd touched her that day, brushed against her in the hallway, and in that moment she'd known that it didn't matter whether he knew she was there or not. She was. She existed. And that was enough for her. She wouldn't deny herself until he noticed her. That would be like not noticing herself. Silly, really.
This time was different. That awful, twisting tension, so cruelly sweet, like his teasing laugh, the way it always made her feel, deep in her belly . . . now it doubled like a folding knife in her hands, cut her deeply. So deep, deeper than her fingers went in. She could feel herself squeezing, trembling within, warm and hot and alive, touching her own insides, the very core of herself, and then she spilled over, like waves pounding her, and she was lost in it, carried away.
Moonlight streaked in through the shutters. She lay there with it pouring like water over her. It struck her eyes, like a mirror's flash, and she had a moment, just a moment, to feel its peace, cool as a new sheet. She closed her eyes, opened her mouth to it, breathed it in, and in the next moment, agony doubled her over, shooting through every nerve and bone, and when she pulled her hands up, they were red, all over red, and she was suddenly, fiercely overcome.
She had scrambled up, then, terrified. She should have gone to someone, her father or her mother, someone who knew, who could have helped her through it this first, this wildest time. No, she fled the house, out through the garage and into the side yard that smelled overpoweringly of mint and nightshade. She made it as far as the side of the pool before she fell into the dew-wet grass and lay there, blood on her fingers, her thighs, her hands twisted into the dirt as though she feared she would roll right off the surface of the world. And when she looked down at the moon - that's how it felt looking into the sky, like looking down, down, down - she feared she very well might. She smelled the earth when she tore it with her nails, smelled her own blood, smelled the thousand aromas of the night in a cascade that overwhelmed her.
The cramps were bone-breaking, terrifying. She wanted to scream her throat bloody, but all that came were whimpers. She thrashed and jerked, and curled tight into a ball. Never again, she promised. Is this what it's like? Oh, God, if this happens every time, whatever I did, I'll never do it again, I promise.
But later, it was all right. It quit hurting. The moonlight warmed her like the sun. Her bones were long as rays of starlight. Her gait was smooth as water. And when she returned it was muddy earth on her hands and feet, and not blood. She kept it a secret for three whole months until her mother found out and was overjoyed for her. After that there was no keeping the family out of it. But for those three months, it was hers, and hers alone.
She only let it take her by surprise one other time. She hadn't known that some things bring it on early. The first time she let a boy go all the way inside her, she was still two days from the full, and she thought she was safe. When he pulled out, covered with blood, she snarled at his horrified exclamation. What right did he have to condemn her body? He wouldn't finish with her, or help her finish. She recognized the moment when her anger turned into that driving, bestial rage. She caught it in time.
The cramps slammed like a hammerblow into her gut and she fled - stupid fucking party anyway - clawing her way into a bathroom, locking the door, and hearing his fists pounding as he tried to make her hear his apology. She had the sense to open the window while she still had hands, and left it ajar for herself.
By the time he got into the bathroom, she was gone, tail wagging. It hadn't been wonderful, but the moon had saved her, and there would be other first times.
It was years before she found a man she liked. Years in which she learned to love the blood and the moonlight and the running, learned to love her time apart, when she felt her soul suspended and revolving between the earth's rich gravity and the moon's wild pull.
She loved him at once, the smell of him like sweat and leather and a chaser of engine grease from the auto shop where he worked days, a smell always so thick with the promise of sex. He sang with his band evenings and weekends. His voice lifted above the smoke and the pressing bodies aroused her wildest heart, and she sometimes could not keep herself from singing along, notes blending to one keening, dissonant wail. She sang off-key so anyone listening would hear and know that they were two. Together.
It was like that when he loved her, holding her to the bed with scarred arms, braving her fury to thrust deeper, ever deeper, trying to reach the core of her, trying to part the mystery. Her eyes locked with his, a challenge, and she wondered if he knew how often the beast surged just under her skin, how often she took his scruffy blonde pelt in hand as he devoured her, face between her thighs, and imagined devouring him.
Before she'd left that night for her running, he'd held her near, still inside her, one hand on her breasts and the other cupping the swell of her belly. "What's it like?" he'd asked, wanting to be just that much more inside her. "To be what you are?"
Someday, someday she'd have to tell him.
But not today, she thought, and changed again.
X-posted from Dreamwidth. Comment count: