A little anyway. Her instincts had done a lot of the talking and the walking during that whole ordeal. It may have been objectively stupid to listen to the ones telling her to go back and check on Russel and then stand up to his werewolf form as it charged directly at her but the results couldn’t be argued with.

She had stopped him.

And now he was himself again.

Was it all thanks to her? Probably not, but she knew she had a little bit of a helping hand.

“...can’t believe you,” Russel went on, continuing his tirade without needing air it seemed. “Do you have a death wish or something?”

He gestured at himself and the blood-splattered, gore-flecked state he was in.

“Look at me,” he said. “This blood could have been yours and trust me, Lola, I was close. A lot closer than you might think.”

She thought he might be close to being done with all his yelling. She didn’t want to interrupt him and didn’t want to cut him off if he still had some words left inside he needed to get out.

“Don’t you have anything to say?” he asked, the anger starting to dissolve from his face. His eyes softened dramatically and actually looked concerned now.

Did I overstep? Is she mad at me for the yelling? Was I being too hard on her?

He felt somewhat foolish now, standing there in the middle of the night on a rocky hilltop shouting at the woman he had just fought so hard to protect. He started feeling bad and thought maybe he had overstepped and took things too far. Of course, he wouldn’t have needed to feel any sort of way like that if she had just listened to him in the first place. She was fucking lucky when he was lost to the wolf, it had focused more on the ghouls and oni than her. The wolf had known the whole time she was there of course. He’d heard her heart beating. Smelled that vaguely floral scent mixed with the sharp, almost metallic, scent of fear. It had even spied her watching from her vantage point on numerous occasions.

It would have killed her without hesitation if the ghouls and oni hadn’t been so damn entertaining for it. He despised how that came across to him inside his own head. He cherished the rich and long history of his kingdom and being a werewolf but there were times when he thought it would have been much simpler of a life being just human.

Like Lola.

“Well?” he asked when he realized she hadn’t answered his previous question. There was still a sharp bite to his words but they had grown a lot softer now. “Do you?”

Lola didn’t say anything. She didn’t need to. Words didn’t matter anymore. She took a step closer to him, then another. When she got close enough, she hurled herself at him and wrapped both arms around his neck.

Then she kissed him.

Deeply.

At first, he was so shocked, he didn’t respond back. Or rather, his body didn’t respond back. Her arms tightened around him but not in a painful way. It was decidedly pleasant. Comforting even. Then his body started to react to hers. He kissed her back, their lips pressing together in a dizzying sensation of pure bliss. He felt her tongue slide into his mouth and glide over his. He felt her body seem to mold itself perfectly to him, like she just fit with him.

His hands slid down her smooth, firm back and started to rip at the fabric of her shirt, looking for purchase. Once he had it, he ripped her shirt off, too impatient to mess with pulling the damn thing over her head. She gasped softly, her lips pulling away from him in that moment of ecstasy.

He turned her around so that the soft but firm cheeks of her ass grinded into him. He pulled off her shirt then, baring her breasts in the moonlight. He slid a hand upward and cupped one of them, feeling the hard roundness of her nipple against his palm. She moved and writhed with him, soft moans escaping from her every few seconds.

Russel couldn’t help but lose himself to yet another base impulse but this one, he realized with pleased contentment, was much stronger. And a hell of a lot more fun.

His head dipped down toward her neck and he kissed the skin there. After he pulled away, he licked her earlobe and whispered to her.

“I love you too.”