Page 3 of Shared By the Werebears
I looked up to see a burly Minotaur and a muscular centaur clip-clopping through the door. I directed them to one of my standing booths—it’s much too difficult for Centaurs to get up and down, so they prefer to eat standing up—and took their orders. Both of them wanted my hay pancakes—the extra, extra, extra-large Creature-sized ones which are about as big around as a hubcap—as well as a dozen eggs scrambled with plenty of hot peppers and a few handfuls of fresh grass.
I hustled back to the kitchen and had barely gotten my stove and griddle going, (both are magic and spelled to make the recipes I developed myself,) before I heard the door again.
From then on it was busy pretty much all the time. The breakfast rush had begun and it barely slacked off before the lunch crowd came in.
I don’t like to complain—having so many customers is agoodthing—but I was getting run off my feet. Even with my magical appliances that made all the food for me exactly to the specifications I wrote on my magic order pad, I was thinking that I really needed to hire more help. I would definitely have to once the new section of the diner I was growing finished ripening.
Yes, I actuallygrewmy diner from a special building seed. I had to go through a lot of trouble and travel to meet Baba Yaga, the most powerful witch in the world, to get it, but it was totally worth the hassle.
Because I grew the diner from my own seed, the building belongs to me—unlike the other buildings on Main Street, which are almost all town property held in trust by the Town Council. (The one exception is The Red Lion Inn, which is owned and operated by Goody Albright, our resident wise woman.)
It took the diner almost six months to grow—you can’t just grow a building overnight, even with magic—but I had never regretted waitingto have a place of my own. Also, I can encourage it to grow some more—which was what I was currently doing. With so many people moving in to Hidden Hollow lately, I had been actively urging the diner to grow a new room and some new booths in the back to accommodate more customers at a time.
Of course, I could have just used an expansion spell like I did the night I hosted Celia’s birthday party, but those only last a few hours—a day at most. Slow and steady is the rule in magical building growth. So I was taking my time.
I had the new space curtained off with a sheet of plastic for now—the new floor and ceiling and walls were fully developed but the booths I had encouraged the diner to grow were still too soft to sit in and the tables weren’t quite firm enough to hold plates of food yet.
But they would be ready soon—every night before I went to bed in my private living quarters, I spent some time channeling nourishing magic and talking to that section of the diner, urging it to grow and finish ripening. It was working wonderfully and the new section would be open for business before I knew it.
By which time I needed to hire some help, I reminded myself again as a new crowd of people and Creatures came in.
Willow came a little after one o’clock and dropped off the sachet of tea along with instructions and the cantrip I was supposed to recite when I brewed it. I put it to one side because I was too busy to deal with it. I didn’t have a chance to look at it again until long after seven that night and by then I was nearly dead on my feet and feeling completely drained.
Most people would drink some coffee to wake up but I knew what I needed and itwasn’tcaffeine.
“I need sex!” I muttered to myself as I slipped into the kitchen to catch a breather. My nipples were tight and my pussy was wet and needy—I was starving for some good loving, though with my luck, mediocre sex was probably what I’d get instead.
See, that’s another problem with human men—none of them areinto foreplay anymore. Most of them just want to roll on top, pump a few times, and roll back off again. That kind of quick, selfish sex doesn’t really satisfy my cravings because it doesn’t give me time to build sexual energy or draw sensual power from my partner. It leaves me feelingbarelysatisfied—like eating a few olives and a slice of toast when what you’re craving is a three-course steak dinner with all the trimmings.
Luckily, everyone seemed to be taking an early night—and I decided I would take one too. I promised myself that as soon as the last customer—Liam, the town’s resident Kraken, who was dawdling over his fish and chips—left, I was going to put out the “closed” sign and lock up for the night.
Then I would try that tea Willow had sent me. In fact, I decided, I would go ahead and get it steeping right now.
I put the little triangular sachet she’d given me, which was full of dried herbs, into a mug and poured some hot water over it. Then I left it sitting on the counter and went out to see if Liam was almost finished.
He was in full human form tonight and he looked like a tall man with thick, dark blonde hair and eyes the color of a stormy sea. No one would know he was a Creature to look at him as he was now—though they might think he was uncommonly big and muscular. He was seven feet tall at least and really ripped.
I knew better than to judge a book by its cover. Not many in town have seen his half Kraken form where the bottom half of him is all tentacles, like an octopus—or hisfullKraken form where his top half grows tentacles too and he looks like Cthulhu.
But for now there wasn’t a tentacle in sight, just a big guy with a melancholy look on his face.
“Hey, you all right?” I asked, poking him in one broad shoulder. Some people are afraid of Liam because of the way he can transform into a huge tentacle monster, and because he’s often pretty grumpy, but I don’t scare easy.
“Fine. Can I eat in peace?” he demanded, glaring at me.
“You’ve been ‘eating in peace’ for the past hour,” I pointed out. “Everyone else is gone and I’m going to close up early. You want a box to take that home?”
Liam huffed but finally nodded.
“I’ll take a to-go box if you’ve got places to be,” he growled.
“Where I mainly want to be is off my feet,” I told him. Preferably on my back with some willing man between my thighs servicing me, but I chose not to say that out loud.
Liam knows I’m half Succubus—most everyone in town does, it’s not like I try to hide it. But that doesn’t mean I flaunt it either. If I started flirting and sleeping with the men and male Creatures in Hidden Hollow, I wouldn’t be welcome here for long. (That’s because most of the members of the Town Council are well past ninety and absolute prudes.)
So I got Liam a to-go box and saw him on his way. It wasn’t until I turned the sign over to “closed” and pulled down the shade, that I remembered the Lust Tea that was still steeping on the counter and decided it was time to take it.
I just hoped that it worked!
