His Absolute Assignment - Elise's Love Story: The Billionaire's Continuum (#1) (A Contemporary Romance Novel) (24 page)

Also, her father walked in just then, carrying a bag of useless trinkets.  He set them down on the shop counter, greeting her and Michael with a friendly hello, then began rummaging through his worthless crap.

"What did you get today, daddy?" she asked, feigning interest.  By the looks of it, nothing good.  She hoped he hadn't spent a lot on it, because they'd be hard-pressed to sell any of this.

Michael left quickly after that.

Later that night, after they sat down to a family dinner, Danya heard a crash in the alleyway beside their home.  Her father looked up, then shrugged.

"A cat," he said.

"Is it a cat?" her youngest sister, Felice, asked.

"I bet it's an elephant," Alena said.  "A big, yellow elephant."

Danya rolled her eyes at her little sisters.  They were sixteen and eighteen respectively, and a little daft.  She thought they took after her father more than their mother (whereas Danya always imagined herself being like her mother), except—well, she was still here, taking care of her father so perhaps she was a little daft, too.  Her mother had left years ago, leaving the three sisters to mostly fend for themselves.  It hurt at first, but she could hardly blame her; if Danya could leave right now, she thought she would.

"I don't think it's a cat," Danya said, and with a silly glare towards Alena she added, "or an elephant."

"It could be!" Alena squeaked.

"I do so wish it were a cat," Felice said, wistful.  "I'd like a cat."

"I'm going to check."  Danya scooted her chair out from the table and stood.  "Whatever it is, I think it's rummaging through our trash.  I don't want to have to explain to anyone why we have garbage lining the side of our house."

Her father grunted, then shrugged and went back to dinner.  Both of her sisters began discussing whether it would be a cat or an elephant, if it were either, if Danya hadn't said it was neither.  Danya sighed and left them to their silly argument.

She left the house through the back entrance where they grew a small garden, instead of the front through the shop and to the streets.  Rumors already made their way through the small city and she didn't want to cater to more by having people see her head into the alleyway alongside their house in a flimsy nightgown for no apparent reason.  The garden was nice this time of year, too.  The light from her neighbor's windows shone dimly on the flowers, leaving a sort of ghostly feel to the area, as if it both existed and didn't exist all at once.

Danya snuck through the gardens towards the little fence door leading to the alley.  Unlatching it, she quietly stepped through and shut it behind her.  The alley was dark this time of night, but she could see faint impressions of images through the shadows.  All their trash was scattered on the ground, with the trash baskets knocked over amidst the junk.  More odd than that, someone had moved them from their usual place to a spot right below her window.  Her window—which she distinctly remembered closing—was open, the drapes fluttering in the slight evening breeze.

There was someone in the house.  They'd come in through her window and were going to rob them.  Perhaps murder her whole family, or wait until they slept and torture them until morning, and, and...!

Danya scrambled back to the garden.  She tried to fling open the fence door, but she forgot she'd re-latched it and it wouldn't budge at first.  Her fingernails dug into the wood, pulling with all her might, before she calmed enough to carefully undo the latch and gain entrance to the yard.  Running in her silken nightgown through the small garden, she dashed past the back door and into her house.

Her family was fine, her father and Alena and Felice still eating dinner and chatting amongst themselves.  She wanted to scream and yell at them to get out of the house, but maybe that would alert the intruder and he'd catch them before they could escape, then kill them in a minute's notice.  With screaming out of the question, at least for now, she had only one other option in her mind.

She would go upstairs and confront the intruder by herself, and if it came to it she would scream and her family would hopefully run from the building while she distracted the burglar.

The stairs by the backdoor creaked beneath her feet and seemed loud beyond belief.  Danya crept up them as quietly as she could, but each creak sounded louder than the first and then she could hear the thumping of her heart, pounding in her chest.  The man who'd broken in must be able to hear her, could hear everything.  Even her thoughts seemed too loud and she feared he might know her intentions and thwart them by going back out the window and running into the house through the back door to attack her father and sisters.

Frantic, wild thoughts roamed through her mind.  She had no lantern up here, but they kept spare candles in holders at the top of the stares for emergencies.  Grabbing one, she lit it with a match from a matchbox next to the candles and held it aloft.  The flames danced, sending shadows through the sleeping quarters of the house.

All of the doors were closed, so she hoped the infiltrator was still in her room.  If only she had a lock on her door she could lock him in and then run away, but she didn't.  Cautious, scared, and witless, she touched the doorknob to her room and turned it.  The door opened without a sound, hinges oiled, but it was a small concession compared to the cacophony of her trek upstairs.

Her room was a mess, and not at all like she left it.  The window was open, drapes waving about.  The linens on her bed were a mess and scattered this way and that, some thrown to the floor and others twisted into knots.  The intruder had thrown open her dresser drawers and tossed all of her neatly folded laundry to the floor.  Or, she noted, not all of it, but mainly the lingerie and undergarments.

Most of which, she now noticed, were laying in a trail towards her closet door.  The thief, who apparently had a penchant for woman's delicates, must have sought refuge in her closet when he heard her on the steps.  She walked closer, scared, unsure why she would continue moving towards imminent demise but unable to stop herself.  Her hand reached for the doorknob on the closet and her mind screamed for her to pull her arm back and run away, but her body didn't listen.

The door swung open.  An animal hulk of a man was sitting on her closet floor, his form shrouded in the darkness.  The candlelight from her candle illuminated him slightly and she saw a heavy beard growing on his rugged jaw.  Except beards only covered parts of a man's face, and this one seemed to engulf all of his.  A flash of yellow lit up his eyes as the candle's light found them, and he bared his teeth and snarled.  He looked for all the world like a wolf trapped in a man's body.  Clutched in clawed hands, he held bunches of her panties and a few flimsy negligees, sniffing at them.

Danya screamed bloody murder.  The wolfman leaped into the room and clasped a hand to her mouth.  He jumped so hard and fast that the next thing she knew she was laying on the bed with him atop her.  His eyes contained something akin to curiosity and he stared at her intently.

Still holding his hand over her mouth, keeping her pinned to the bed, he moved his head lower.  He sniffed at her nightgown, down to her stomach, then to her crotch.  She felt a heady rush of self-awareness when his moist, hot breath blew across her cloth-covered core.  The beastman sniffed long and hard, but never touched her except to hold her down and keep her quiet.

Her father shouted something upstairs.  "I heard you scream.  Danya?  Are you alright?"

The beastman jolted up, surprised.  He stopped sniffing at her and jumped away and off the bed.  She watched him flee out the window, entranced by his grace as he leaped, landing in the alleyway without a sound.

"I'm fine, daddy!" she yelled downstairs.  Her heart pounded hard and heavy still, but she managed to talk without giving her fear away, or so she hoped.  "I'll be down in a moment."

"Alright, darling.  Just checking."

Danya ran to the door and shut it tight.  She took the chair from her desk and propped it up against the door so no one could enter.  The window remained open, a light breeze fluttering the curtains around like before.  Scrambling to her bed, she jumped onto it and yanked her nightgown above her waist.

She imagined the beast breathing on her again, his almost-human nose sniffing at her crotch.  She imagined him thrusting it against her, smelling her up close and personally.  Jamming her fingers against her clit, she rubbed it hard and pretended it was the beastman and his nose.

His other hand, in her mind, left her mouth, and she gasped out loud.  He traced his claws against the nightgown, teasing her skin beneath the thin fabric, then clutched her breast.  To imitate this, she grabbed her breast hard and pinched her nipple between her nails.  It hurt, but he would be rough with her, wouldn't he?

Her hips gyrated, needing something to grind against, except her imagination provided a much better possibility than what actually existed.  To make up for this, she snatched a pillow from behind her and flung it between her legs, then flipped over fast and ground the center of her body against it, hard.  She pretended the wolfman was pressing her against the bed, watching her squirm in delight as he toyed with her.

She came hard then, her orgasm bursting through her body and arousal soaking the pillow beneath her.  Flailing, grinding against the pillow with everything she had, she rode her pleasure, wanting to extend it, until she lay exhausted on her bed.

What was that?  She didn't know.  She tried to figure it out, but couldn't.  Some strange, primal lust had overcome her.  She was so scared at first, but then what?  For some reason she didn't think the beastman would hurt her.  She didn't know why, but she didn't think he would.

Before heading back to dinner, she fixed the sheets and blankets on her bed and refolded her undergarments.  She briefly considered keeping the window open, but it was getting colder so she closed it, but not before looking outside for a moment to see if anyone was there.

The alley below her, the small backyard garden to the left, and the streets to the right, were all empty.  Only piles of upturned trash remained.

During the next week Danya received multiple strange notes.  They all appeared at random spots in her house, though mainly the areas she frequented often, with no rhyme or reason as to how they got there.  The first contained handwriting she couldn't read and was signed with an "E."  The next was slightly more legible and came with a flower.  Not a normal flower from a florist, though.  It was a wildflower that only grew in the mountains nearby and wouldn't take well in the soft soil that the city florist preferred using.  Also, said the florist when she asked him about it, it was a crude flower and nothing like the wonderful roses or tulips he carried.

Danya thought it was a beautiful flower.  Petite, and she could fit it easily in the palm of her hand.  Only one, so she couldn't put it in a vase, but for the rest of that day she wore it in her hair behind her ear.

Then another note arrived, and she made out a few words of it.  Lake, it said somewhere, and come.  The person wanted her to go to the lake.

By the time another week passed, and she'd received notes on each day, she managed to understand the gist of them.  Many of the words were misspelled, but this was what it said:

"I need to see you again.  I have an urge.  You are the only one to fix it.  Come to the mansion in the woods by the lake.  I will see you.  I watch you always.  Go tomorrow.  E."

Danya didn't now what to make of that.  Alena snatched the letter out of her hands and read it aloud while running around the shop to escape Danya's wrath.

"Well, you can't go there," Alena said, matter-of-factly.  "That's where the beast lives."

"What beast are you talking about?" Danya asked, snatching the note from her sister.

"The
Beast
!  The one in the story.  A man who angered a witch and she cursed him to look like a beast.  I think the story's not true, though.  I've been by there once with school friends and it's all just wrecked and ruined looking.  We were going to go inside but there's a tall iron fence with spikes at the top and the gate is locked.  The lake is nice to swim in, though, but I wouldn't go at night.  Cre~ee~py!"

"I doubt it's the same place," Danya said.

"Probably not."  Then Alena grinned.  "Or it is and you've got a date with the beast!"

"It's not the beast, you twit."  Danya stuck out her tongue.  "If it were, he'd have signed the note with a 'B' and not an 'E,' don't you think?"

"He can't spell half the other words, so I don't expect he knows how to spell 'beast,' either."  Alena laughed and ran out of the shop, presumably to tell her friends that her sister had a date with the beast.

Danya didn't go to the mansion by the lake the next day like the letter asked.  First off, she couldn't because she needed to tend to her father's shop by herself that day, and second, she doubted the authenticity of the note in the first place.  Could it be the beast?  The beast was a story and didn't exist.

Except what was that wolf-like man she saw in her closet?  A daydream, probably.  Some rabid fantasy she'd dreamed up in a strange fit of whimsy.  A bit of imagery to suit her aroused state, and she'd made it all up.

And, yes, maybe she imagined it, but that didn't stop her from becoming further aroused by the notion.

The delivery boy arrived and she had money to pay him, but she coaxed him into the backroom instead.  He shuddered under her ministrations as she knelt in front of him and took the entirety of his cock in her mouth.  When he came, his cockhead throbbing between her lips, she swallowed all his cum and licked her lips afterwards.

He delivered the items for free.

That wasn't enough for her, though.  A customer came in next, an older man near to her father's age, though maybe a little younger.  She told him she had some wonderful items in the back, and would he like to go look at them?  Unwittingly, he followed her.  When she showed him a piece of trash that her father thought they could sell and asked him if he would like to purchase it for a few coins, he scoffed at her.