No one speaks. Which is weird.
Finally, Earl makes eye contact with each of the men in turn. It’s almost as if they are having one of those intense eye-contact-only conversations that best friends or twins do. It’s kind of freaky.
I’m about to ask, when Earl stands and starts unbuttoning his shirt with a long-suffering sigh.
Distraction? One Point to Earl.
“Uhh. I mean, you’re a good looking guy, Earl. Really. But we can keep our clothes on for this meeting, can’t we?” I look around the room and try to catch the eye of any of the others but they refuse to meet my gaze.
I turn back to Earl right as his shirt hits the floor. I have to suck in a quick breath while I look him up and down. Hello, Earl.
He’s a good-looking man, strong without being super-jacked. I love men who are that in-between stage of squish and stacked. Earl is perfection. I could nap on him. His chest is covered in a sprinkling of tawny brown hair and he has the Club crest logo tattooed on one muscular pec. Curiously, one nipple is pierced with what looks like a fish hook. Unexpected. I bet there’s a story there!
His sweatpants hit the ground next and I get an eyeful of Other Earl.
Well, ok then. This time I don’t hide the fact that I am ogling. He’s the one who decided to strip, I might as well judge the quality.
I am two for two on the dicks I’ve seen around here. They are...exceptional. 10/10 am interested in reviewing. Am willing to give a Yelp review. Come. To. Ronnie.
Before I can ogle him any more, his body starts doing a weird shaking thing and I spring backward. “Is he having a seizure? Should I call someone?”
His body starts to shimmer as if it’s moving too fast to be seen and I feel a little dizzy watching him. As I fall back into the chair, my eyes almost pop out of my head. An extremely large, light brown sea lion is standing in front of me. He has a small fish hook embedded in his chest.
“What the— No. That’s not possible.”
Earl-the-sea-lion barks at me and I jump back, kicking my feet out towards him in my haste to get away. They drugged you. That’s the only explanation. This is not real.
“One of you assholes better start talking and talking fast,” I mutter, edging further away from the sea lion formerly known as Earl.
Bryan and Darren trade looks before Bryan comes over to stand next to Earl.
“Do you believe in the supernatural at all, Ronnie?” Bryan asks gently.
“Uh, I didn’t when I woke up this morning but if that,” I point at what used to be Earl, “is real and not a hallucination, I had probably better start.”
He nods encouragingly.
“No one drugged you. You’re not drunk. You’re not crazy. This is real. If you want, you can touch him. I swear he won’t hurt you. Sometimes having a tactile interaction can help you process what’s happening more easily.”
The absolute last thing I want to do is touch a sea lion. Particularly not a sea lion that was, up until a few minutes ago, the grumpy asshole that I was having strange fantasies about. But I take a deep breath and reach my hand out cautiously.
“If you bite me, I swear to God, I’ll kick you in the face, Flipper.” I warn him and am rewarded with what I can only assume is the sea lion version of an eye roll.
My hand hovers over him and then a wet nose hits my outstretched palm. It’s like petting a very large, very slippery, dog. I tentatively pat the tip of his nose and then slide my hand along his snout to scratch the back of his head.
“Ok. Ok. So that’s a real sea lion. OK. That’s.... That’s too much.” I mutter, looking back up at Bryan expectantly before standing and backing away.
Earl waddles forward and barks at me and I cross my arms to stare him down. “I said, WATCH IT, FLIPPER.” I yell crossly, sitting back down in a huff. Earl backs off and flops down on the ground at my feet.
This is so weird.
“Yes. So, Earl and the rest of us are shifters,” Bryan begins, “Earl, Darren, Trevor and I are sea lions and we form a pod together. We are also the officers of the Sea Lion MC. On a Club level, we have two prospects that work with us that are outside our pod. Chuck, who you’ve met, and Preston who is taking care of some off-site business.”
I blink. My brain is trying really hard to keep up with these new developments but it’s a lot.
“OK. So, let me just...” I pinch the bridge of my nose and inhale deeply. “You’re a pod of sea lions. Like the ones on the wharf? That’s what you do in your off time? You spend your days working and riding motorcycles but you spend your weekends laying in the sun and barking your damn-fool heads off? But only four of you are sea lions? And what about you Chuck? You aren’t a sea lion, what are you? An orca?”
A lot of movement happens at once. So much so, it actually stuns me.
Earl changes back into his human form and looms over me in all his extremely naked glory. I can’t help my wandering eyes again. The man is #blessed. Looking up, I see that Bryan looks pissed. Chuck looks frankly terrified. Trevor and Darren are doing the shaking thing that Earl did right before he... did whatever he did. Something is... not right.
“Veronica. Let me make this abundantly clear to you,” Earl’s voice is full fledged Alpha or whatever the fuck the sea lion verison is. It speaks directly to my pussy and I get annoyingly turned on by it, “We don't make jokes about Orcas in this Clubhouse or in this Pod. Orcas are one
