Taming the Werewolf - 11
#11 of Taming the Werewolf
Jacob and Amanda didn't talk much after that last full moon when she transformed, when all of their efforts to control her lycanthropy were undone by her unexpressed desire to unleash the monster within her. He was upset, but not at her or anything in particular. Part of it was the hassle of fixing up their patio thanks to her, part of it was the fear she'd be discovered or worse, but the biggest part was the disappointment that she would hide anything from him. He defined her secret in terms of how long she hid it from him, as long as the time between full moons at most. Being strapped into the dialysis machine, then unplugging it when he wasn't looking, then plugging herself back in for a nominal amount of time when he came back downstairs to turn it off. All of that to risk hurting him and others to let the wolf out.
Of course they didn't talk much after that. He found her in the forest and she collapsed onto him, sobbing profusely, her tears and the blood of whatever she had attacked wiped away against his shirt. It was the sort of scene they had spent all this time trying to avoid. Jacob took Amanda home that morning so she could clean up, but it was clear it would no doubt happen again. Maybe she would go back onto the machine - she seemed guilty enough and fearful enough that she dreaded the beast again for a time - but the werewolf's curse was too strong. Amanda would once again crave the transformation in time, and would need to sate her hungers somehow. He could force her, but somehow, chaining a human being to the dialysis machine three times a week for hours at a time seemed cruel, even if it meant keeping her lycanthropy a secret. She was his wife, after all.
He went back into his work. His clients needed his attention, and the time spent tending to their needs felt more productive than scolding Amanda into compliance. It turned out he was right on both fronts. When it came to the dialysis, she barely put up a fight in the days when the moon waned. She remarked one morning that looking at his face, despondent and hopeless, compelled her to "do the right thing."
But the werewolf lurked nonetheless, and Jacob knew it. The dialysis left her drained and weak, and the agony of not transforming would leave her miserable and unfulfilled. And she would grow to resent him as a result, and he hated that prospect the most.
It was two weeks after that last full moon, when Jacob walked Amanda down to the basement for what was supposed to be her dialysis treatment. Her descent toward the machine was as slow as a crawl, as she once again dreaded being plugged in, to have the lycanthropy filtered out of her blood. Her face was so sad, even as she appeared brave for her husband. She wanted to make him happy, so she was going to suffer for her.
Amanda gasped on the way down, making Jacob turned her head. She looked away from him, but he could have sworn he saw a tear in her eye.
He bit his lip. That was enough.
"The suitcase is just under the stairs here," he whispered, "Could you go get it?"
It was entirely unconvincing as a reason for guiding her downstairs, but Amanda played along with the pretense. There was a bit of confusion at first, but the mere mention of the day trip up the coast they had been meaning to take for the longest time put a smile back on her face. A couple of calls while she packed, first to his clients to push their meetings back a few days, then to a bed and breakfast found in a hasty search on his smartphone, and the trip was all set.
They didn't mention her curse once on their day and a half up the coast for antiquing during the day and candlelight dinner at a little known seafood place at night. For sure, the werewolf's essence was building back up in her blood, bit by bit, but so was her energy and vitality. She was more herself by nightfall that their passionate lovemaking in their cozy room at the B&B was noticeably different than recent experiences at home.
Jacob wanted his wife back, and there she was. The werewolf was certainly there, getting stronger without dialysis, and that was something he and Amanda would have to deal with. They made plans when they got home. The animal couldn't be allowed to be fully unleashed, of course. That was too dangerous to him and to others, and also to herself. But her needs were too strong to keep them bottled up in misery. A compromise would have to be found.
And so they decided. Not three days of dialysis a week, but two.
"Don't," Amanda said on the night of the next full moon, as Jacob reached into a drawer for a key, "Don't put me in those chains tonight, please."
The basement restraints had always been there since shortly after she became a werewolf. They were meant to keep her in place during full moons when she transformed, and that was before the dialysis treatment. They were effective, but the look in her eyes expressed to Jacob how painful they were.
"We talked about this," Jacob said.
"No, we talked about it the first time. But not lately. I don't want to be chained up."
Jacob bit down the hint of bitterness he felt from another secret Amanda hid from her. She had meant to spring this surprise on him right before her transformation, when he had little time to decide.
She walked up to him, leaning him against the bedroom window. She was getting warmer, and as she looked behind him, up into the sky where the full moon hid behind the clouds, a hypnotic look in her eyes was all he could see. "I promise," she said, gripping his arms tighter, "I won't hurt you. I didn't hurt you last time, and I won't tonight."
With the changes just mere moments away, Jacob found it more useless to argue with her. Without a choice, he nodded almost involuntarily.
"It's about to begin. H-help me with these c-clothes," she said with a bit of stutter. Jacob looked down and watched her hands begin to tremble as she undid her shirt. By now, she would be convulsing violently and vocalizing her agony, but only a little bit of the werewolf would be freed tonight, and a partial transformation was what Jacob had agreed to.
Jacob lifted her shirt off her body, exposing her chest to him. A strip of hair had already grown on the center of her chest, spreading upward as the familiar infection traveled along her skin. Fur began to bloom, but her coat wouldn't grow to its full length, exposing large patches of skin and leaving them uncovered. The absence of fur only accentuated how taut her skin became against her werewolf frame. Her abdomen had become chiseled as her growing muscles provided her body with detail.
Amanda cupped her bra with her hands in frustration, seeming to have forgotten how to unclasp her bra. Jacob wrapped around growing upper body and undid it for her, freeing her breasts, slightly furred but also filling up in front of him.
"D-do you like wrr-what you see?" she said uncharacteristically. She rarely, if ever, talked dirty, only letting their lovemaking do the talking, but the full moon, it seemed, brought out desires she had never experienced before.
"I don't know," was all Jacob could say, drawing a frown from Amanda.
"Please," she began to beg, "Please t-tell me you like what you see." She took his hands and guided them onto her breasts. The short grain of fur still creeping out of her skin felt smooth and downy and thus awkward. It felt wrong to Jacob, but all he had to know was that he was touching his wife's breasts.
"Yes, I do," he finally said.
Amanda grinned in relief for a moment before a wave of changes seemed to overpower her. She gripped her temples with her now-padded hands. "It hurts!" she cried.
Jacob pulled her jeans and panties down before they strained against her werewolf body. Her legs had become dark and furry, but they kept their human proportions even with the pull of the full moon. He looked up to see his wife lost, gazing at the full moon with yellow, feral eyes, mouth agape as canines sharpened and crept out from underneath her darkening lips, nose blackening and contorting outward into a snout.
She was hairy throughout most of her body now, but her fur had thinned out in noticeable places across her chest, legs and face. Amanda ran her clawed hands across the parts of her skin that almost seemed bare and human, as if the werewolf within her was confused at the humanity some of her features retained.
"I need to--I need to," she struggled to say as she stumbled over to the bed to the let the rest of the changes take hold. She sprawled out against the comforter, and her feet dangled over the edge of a bed that just barely wouldn't be able to fit her growing height. Her eyes shut, her hands involuntarily moved up to the sensitive area between her legs, the furriest part of her body, covering it up with a sense of human modesty that had yet to be swept away by the full moon, even as the transformation went as far as it would go.
"AaaaaarrrrroooOOOOOO!"
Amanda's howl reverberated against the walls of their bedroom, and she fell into a sudden unconsciousness, spent from the changes of the werewolf. Jacob looked over her furred body, still human but not really, werewolf unleashed but not quite. Besides that first full moon after the start of dialysis all those months ago, he had seen what a fully transformed werewolf looked like. But his wife was some half-shewolf now, and it was resting momentarily on his bed. Her next waking moment would surely be accompanied by the hungers of the beast, and what that entailed for him, despite her promise not to hurt him, he didn't know.
He leaned in closer, gazing at his wife's face. It was furred and contorted and peaceful, but only until her glowing yellow eyes fixed on him.
"J-Jacob."