The Clothing Difficulty

As a writer, one of the annoying continuity issues I often have with werewolf and shifter stories, is what to do about clothes. Your shifter changes, either exploding out of his clothes, or removing them prior to the change. Which is fine until he changes back. If your shifters live in a wider society, he just can't run about in the scud. So do you bring him back to the place he left his pants when he changed? Do you have him carry a little bag in his wicked jaws as he runs amok? Or have him shift back next to a handy rack of clothing, cleverly introduced to the story beforehand?

Or do you have him arrested for indecent exposure?

It was playing around with those knotty problems that brought the idea for the Wolf Hunt stories into my head. Because it struck me that in ordinary society, a naked person is not just perceived as a threat, but must feel extraordinarily vulnerable among his clothed fellows. If you add the panic of not being able to remember why you're naked, or how you got to where you are, or even what your own name is, then how would even the most capable hero cope?

So the opening scene of Urban Wolf was born, and led to a trilogy of futuristic novellas and a short story, now all together in one ebook collection from Changeling Press. Here's that naked snippet :)


WOLF HUNT - E-book collection
by MARIE TREANOR
Available Now from Changeling Press

Only sex can restore the damaged wolves. Will love destroy their vital mission, or save the world?

Who’s hunting whom?

A man wakes up naked and alone in a city doorway -- with no memory of how he got there or who he is. For journalist Rose Winter, a wolf story begins to converge with the sexy naked man she’s trying to help. And a chain of events is set in motion that may change Earth’s future…

Human-wolf hybrids, created by a top secret government project, have been released into the world to find and destroy alien infiltrators. But once these soldiers begin to think for themselves, their missions are complicated by attraction, sex and divided loyalties.

This collection contains the previously released novellas Urban Wolf, Forest Wolf, Cry for the Moon, and Galactic Wolf.

****

"Hey, what's going on?"

The female voice seemed to cut through his skin. Clear, brisk, curious, with a warm pitch that spoke straight to his cock. Or would have, had that organ not been so shrivelled with rain and cold. A ripple moved through the hostile crowd. Voices muttered and he had to strain to catch the words.

"I know her. I'm sure I do."

"Who is she?"

"She's that girl on the newscreens. Shit, she's probably got a camera. I'm off..."

Threatening arms in the crowd lowered. Stones dropped casually on the ground with a scattering of dull thuds and several people drifted away.

A young woman emerged from the dispersing crowd, pushing down a rain hood to reveal luxuriant long hair of a bright and rare shade of amber, falling around a face that he supposed was beautiful. Certainly, her bone structure was exquisite, her lips full and tempting, her eyes large and brown...

But it wasn't her beauty or her melting eyes that truly caught his attention. It was her smell. Frowning, he tried to place it. Did he know her? Surely that scent was familiar... Something about it filled his mind with visions of naked, sweating bodies, mainly his own and hers.

She came to an abrupt halt and stared at him. Oh yes, she was highly fuckable, and yet, stronger than his upsurge of unexpected and inconvenient lust was the desire to put his hands around her elegant, swan-like neck and strangle her.

He flexed his fingers.

The older woman was explaining. "Art found him asleep in his doorway when he came home from night shift. Must be a drunk or a down-and-out, some kind of pervert too. Look at him!"

After her first flickering glance, the newcomer seemed to be rather determinedly focusing on his face. "He must be freezing," she said unexpectedly. In an instant, she'd stripped off her raincoat, revealing an orange bodysuit that seemed to match her hair, and bright, chunky beads around her throat. She advanced upon him.

He fell back, giving ground before her as he hadn't before the stone-throwing mob.

She paused. "I won't hurt you. What's your name?"

His throat closed up. Panic threatened to resurface. Her eyes searched his. Every hair on his body stood up in alarm. Though he'd no idea who she was, either, his every instinct was against trusting her.

"Where does he live?" she flung over her shoulder.

Silence and a few shrugs. "Why's he scared of her?" someone muttered.

Scared? Was he? Forcing himself, he stayed still when she took another step nearer to him. Maybe. But it felt like a powerful tug of lust. Mixed with an equally strong urge to exterminate her.

"He's not scared of her," answered another voice with a definite snigger. "He likes her."

She heard them. He could see it in the color soaring into her neck and face. He even admired the way she deliberately didn't so much as glance at his growing erection. And yet it didn't embarrass him. Perhaps he was an exhibitionist after all.


:) Marie