Victory turns out to be a nightclub three blocks away. What anyone would be doing here at noon on a weekday is beyond me. I shake the rain off of my shoulders and my head, shove past a big metal door, and walk down a long dark hallway. I emerge into a red-lit barroom roadhouse, straight out of any biker movie you’ve ever seen. The place is quiet, except for a few straggling old men at the pool tables and the big bald bastard behind the bar. He is a mountain of a man, with a ripped up Dead Kennedy’s t-shirt under a well-worn leather vest that reeks of beer, sweat, and weed. He has a long, wide scar running over his bald head and down across the left side of his face.
I order a beer and climb onto a stool, swinging around on my seat to get a better look at the place.
Every wall, every table, every open space is made out of logs, but anathema to the false kitsch of the Jumpin’ Jesus coffee shop. This place seems hewn out of the forest itself, so comfortable that it has its own musk—a weird combination of beer and whiskey and wood shavings, man-sweat and oil and something animal. Something wild. There’s a stage across the back end of the place, two metal bars propped up at equal space in the middle of it, and a scattering of instruments leaned against the far wall.
The big biker returns with my beer, eclipsed in his giant fist, and pops the cap against the counter, setting it down firm on the scarred oak of the bar.
“I’m looking for Jules,” I say.
He smirks, just on one side of his face, the opposite side of the scar, and he nods behind me as the lights dim and guitar fuzz, backed by a solid heartbeat of drums, comes from the big speakers either side of the stage. I recognize AC/DC from the guitar, but can’t place the song until Bon Scott starts his plaintive wail.
She said she’d never been…
Never been touched before…
The girl that creeps out of the darkness is thin and blonde. Athletic. Familiar. That she is attractive goes without saying, but the way she moves is hypnotic, every muscle under her absolute control. Men begin floating toward the stage as if under a spell. By the time the chorus hits, there are a dozen of them, wandered in from the street, standing rapt at the edge of the stage, nodding in unison while she twists and spins, flinging herself around the pole, sliding and swirling around the stage like an acrobat, but so natural, so free, that it becomes less a dance and more a primal call.
The taut muscles of her legs flex and stretch with the beat, as her arms move with the guitar rhythm. Moving faster, smoother, tight ass shaking. Her firm breasts and tight stomach all move in perfect sync with the music. She has a tattoo on her hip—a vintage style portrait of a woman in a headdress, but the headdress is a wolf hide. I can’t catch a good look at her face, enshrouded with a mane of thick honey-blonde hair, until she sweeps it aside with a flip of her head and looks directly at me, brilliant emerald eyes gleaming in the dark. I’m as entranced as the men at the stage, one more deer caught in her headlights, swaying like a zombie under her spell.
The song comes to a screeching close, and she is neither out-of-breath nor showing a single bead of sweat. The men at her feet, on the other hand, mop their brows and stand breathless as she scoops up the mountain of ten dollar bills—no coins, no fives. We all watch in quiet awe as she moves off of the stage as mysteriously and suddenly as she appeared.
The men slowly come to their senses, some of them seeming puzzled as to how they ended up in the strip club in the first place. I’m kind of wondering myself.
A phone rings behind me, and the bartender grunts his compliance before hanging up. He checks me out under half-closed lids, measures me up.
“You Finn?”
I nod. It takes me a second to be sure. That is at least a part of my name.
“Jules says go on back. Door to the right of the stage.”
His eyes are already back on the glass he’s quite literally spit-shining with his filthy rag.
I’m halfway across the floor on shaky knees at the thought of this woman when he shouts after me.
“I wouldn’t be fucking around if you know what’s good for you. She’ll tear you to bits, man.”
I think he’s smiling at me again, just not with the side of his face that he’s pointing to. As if my teenage cousin ripped half of his face off.
I wave him off and step to the door, knocking quietly.

“Hello?” I murmur, stepping into the dark.
Strong hands grab me and spin me around the door and pin me back against it, slamming it hard enough to shake the hinges. She’s pressed against me, naked and soft, the heat of her flesh going right through my clothes and into my own skin. Her mouth is on mine, hard, rough kisses. More passion than I’ve ever felt in my life, her pulling at my hair, nipping at my neck, forcing her tongue into my mouth. Her hand is in my pants, and I’m hard as rock, my cock trembling against her fingers, pulsing with life, ready to explode. I want to let her take me, in absolutely any way she wants.
“Oh god, Finn,” she moans. “I’ve been waiting for you.”
“Whoa!” I say, pulling back as far as the door will allow, putting my hands on her shoulders and forcing a space between us. Part of me screaming out in agony. However much I want to taste her, feel her, bury myself in her. I have questions. Questions I’ve waited my whole life to answer.
“Hang on,” I manage, as she continues to force her way back into my mouth, hands pulling and tearing at my clothes. “Hang on!”
She stops, steps back, her naked body barely framed by the edges of a silk kimono. Her eyes are ablaze, and her lips are hungry. I have never been with a woman like this. My experience is all drunken fumbling and shy girls in dark rooms, buried under comforters and duvets. This was like some kind of Penthouse letter. So I met my cousin for the first time… Cousin.
“Wait,” I say, hands out. “You are Jules, right? My cousin?”
“We share a grandfather, if that’s what you mean…”
Her voice is deep and seductive, “Don’t you want me, Finn?”
God, yes. Can I just say yes? Deal with… whatever, later?
But there’s this monkey on my back, this wolf. Lurking there in my shadow.
I take a ragged breath and keep my hands in front of me.
Damn she smells good. Familiar. Welcoming. Wet.
“I uh, well I mean. I just got here. We’re cousins? Isn’t that kind of…”
“Maybe out there in the city.” She purrs. “Around here, with our family, it’s survival.”
I side-step her and open up some space between us.
“Don’t get me wrong, Jules. I really am happy to meet you,” I stammer, “and you are… very very attractive.”
She’s circling me, ready to pounce.
“Don’t you know how this works, Finn? We’re mated.”
Mated? “I don’t know what that means.”
She slides up closer, sniffs at me. Closer. Runs her nose up the length of me, breathing deep. She pauses. Steps back. She gives me a sideways look of concern.
“You don’t smell right.”
“What do you mean, I don’t smell right?”
She sniffs at me again. Backs up again.
“He said you’d be ready. That you’d know.”
She’s circling me again, and it’s ceased to be sexy. There’s a panic in her voice, in her steps. She pulls the kimono around her and clings to it. She doesn’t smell right either. Bye-bye fantasy, hello fury. She smells dangerous. Hairs all over me prickle against the skin and stand at attention, ready to run.
“Do you even know what you are? You’re not him, are you? You’re not him!”
“I’m sorry, I don’t…” She keeps circling me. Watching. Curling herself up, more and more, coiled like a snake.
“That lying sack of shit!”
She turns on me, muscles tightening up, her fists balled at her chest.
“Just get the fuck out!” she growls at me, green eyes gleaming with fury.
“Can we…”
“Get the fuck out!” she screams. Her teeth are huge and jagged like knives behind her red lips.
She’s still screaming as I hightail it out the door. Something heavy crashes into the wall behind me, and it sounds as if she’s tearing the place apart. Better the room than me. The big bartender stops me on the way out.
“You didn’t pay for the beer.”
I know I’d left a ten on the bar when he brought it to me, but I just want a quick exit. I drop another one in front of him with an awkward grin, “Keep the change.”
“You’d better fuck off before she finds her way out here, pal.” He gives me the lopsided grin.
I glance at the door, fighting a strong urge to go back and give her what she wanted. I feel her hot skin against me, her hands groping, and her mouth pressed against mine. The wall shudders again as something else smashes against it. I remember the fury in her eyes, the white teeth behind blood red lips.

*The preceding is an excerpt from the novel
FURR by Axel Howerton.
All rights are reserved and © Axel Howerton 2015.
Any reproduction or distribution beyond this page is
strictly prohibited by the author.