Reluctant Mates - 21 Paranormal Romance Stories (Werewolf, Vampire, Minotaur and Monster collection) (37 page)

Not a problem, I think, just keep going. Don’t look back.

Suddenly, I think of wolves. I heard when I was little that there are wolves in the woods around here – all over the bayou forests, really – but it’s too early still for them to be out. Won’t be dark for an hour, maybe two. I chide myself for being ridiculous. It can’t be wolves, anyway, because all the wolf talk was just a way to get curious girls to stay out of the swamps. The last
real
wolves out here were hunted to extinction a hundred years ago.

Then I hear the feet again. They’re closer this time, much closer. Fifty yards back on the outside. A list of every animal I’ve ever seen runs through my mind, from lost armadillos to alligators. Alligators wouldn’t be following me. I start hoping that it’s a wild pack of armadillos, but something tells me it isn’t.

Foxes. They’re cowardly creatures, but cute and curious. Could be foxes. It’s foxes. Has to be foxes.

I hear a twig break, but it isn’t a twig. A cracking sound big enough to be a tree branch hits me. “Maybe very big foxes? If it’s foxes big enough to make that sound, I’m not sure that’s any better than wolves.”

Another earsplitting crack, this one closer still.

My head starts to pound – temples on fire, it’s hard to think. I can’t do anything but stumble forward and clutch my face in my hand, squeezing the bridge of my nose. And then a presence, a thought, a vision fills my mind.

“Stop running,” it says. “There’s no reason to be afraid.”

“Wh – what is...who are you?” I say without words, answering the voice in my head.

More crashing behind me, and I realize there’s more than four. Many more. Whatever it is, must be a whole pack.

“Someone who knows you. You won’t get away. Stop running.”

I stop in my tracks, look around. Somehow, the forest seems to have turned grey. Silver, mercurial light spreads out in front of me. The wind seems to stop. My thoughts seem to be far away, almost like someone else is thinking them.

“Get a grip, Jaz, get a grip.” I say out loud, just to hear a real voice.

The silver light overtakes me and I fall to my knees, leaves crunching underneath.

“Good,” the voice says, smooth and calm and so real that it must have been spoken and not thought.

“Who are you? Why won’t you leave me alone?”

“I brought you here, Jasmine. I know who you are. Although it seems like you don’t know me.”

From my knees I fall to my back. The silver light is so bright, so powerful, that I can’t see anymore. Can’t see anything, or feel anything, but the warm glow filling my mind. The world fades from focus.

Another crash.

More footsteps.

A howl.

My eyes open again and I realize they’ve been closed. The night is full dark now, and I can hardly breathe for the fright, but somehow that voice in my mind relaxes me, like a kind of magic spell.

Footsteps.

Crunching leaves.

I close my eyes and focus again, my mind clears and the throbbing in my head stops. I breathe the smell of earth, and leaves, and moss. I feel something brush against my arm and look to the left and to the right.

Eyes.

Three sets of yellow eyes and one set as pale as the moon above.

The moon? The moon isn’t out, or it wasn’t. How long have I been here?

I feel breath, warm and seductive, caress the skin on my neck, and something tugs at my clothes, tearing the first three inches of my shirt.

“Not here,” a voice – the one from my mind – says, but there are no people around. Only the wolves. Three black wolves, with yellow eyes. The biggest is silver, and his quicksilver eyes seem almost human. “But she’s the one. She’s the one.”

I feel myself tugged off the ground, I feel teeth.

The last thing I see before the last shred of consciousness fades is the moon, bright and round.

“It’s full,” I say, my voice faltering. “When did that happen?”

***

T
he world is terribly, painfully bright when I open my eyes. Looking left, and then right, I see that I’m inside of some kind of cave lying upon a bed of leaves, moss and soft nettles. A tremendous bonfire blazes away in the center of the space. Outside, the moon is still hanging low and fat against the night’s black. Three of the creatures that I thought were certainly part of some bizarre dream are staring at me. My vision is blurred partially by the brightness and partially by what seems to be a sultry haze over the world, like a swamp mist, warm and thick instead of cold.

I finally get a good look at the beasts. Before, they seemed to be just wolves, but strangely conscious. Now, I realize that they
are
wolves, although something is very, very different about them. They have calm eyes, I notice, that seem old and wise and strangely kind. Searching the little clearing for the huge, grey wolf that spoke in my mind, he’s nowhere around, only these three soundless sentinels. One stands, stretches, and moves close to sniff my neck and face.

When he’s close, I can tell exactly
how
big he is. If I were standing, his head would be up to my shoulders. Where most wolves are lanky creatures, this one – these three – are very wide across the chest and the shoulders.
I should be shaking, but I’m not. There are three monsters all three of them with teeth bigger than my fingers, and one of them is straddling me. His breath is on my neck, now my face. At any moment, he could kill me without a second thought
.

He opens his mouth and his nose brushes my cheek as his teeth move around my throat slowly, carefully, almost like he’s seducing me. I’m completely at the mercy of this staggeringly beautiful beast, the likes of which I thought nothing more than a fantasy for kids.

“What are you?” I say with a breath. He sniffs again, and I feel his rough tongue caress my throat. “You’re not just a wolf, I know that much.”

His gentle, slow touch gives me no choice but to arch my neck and bare my throat to him. It seems foolish, but at the same time, I know that if he was going to hurt me, he had plenty of chance. The giant wolf nuzzles against my chest, right where my collarbones meet, and then strokes the top of his nose along my jaw, behind my ear.

A fire burns from inside me, near the base of my spine, and pushes up my body, making me exhale with a sigh every time the beast takes in my scent, or touches me. I shift my weight downward just a little, and my khaki shirt pushes above my bellybutton. He has another sniff, another lick, and then the monstrous wolf relaxes against me, his fur warm and soft, just like the breath caressing my throat. He closes his jaws, nips my skin between his teeth and then steps off, leaving me breathless, and rejoins his companions circling me.

A fierce, deep, animal scent burns my nose, and then I notice something else – something I never expected. Just underneath the surface, I realize they smell like men. I smell the iron in the rocks, the three different kinds of wood burning in the fire, and again, I drink in the bestial, oddly familiar scent of these creatures that have drawn nearer where I lay.
How am I smelling all this stuff?

All three of them, slowly closing the distance, look different now that I see them up close. They all have things that set them apart. The bravest or at least most curious of them is black, but has a pencil-thin shock of white going over his nose and between his bright, yellow eyes that seem to come alive in the firelight. Behind him, the other two are more cautious, and seem a little smaller. One of the two has a slight red twinge to his fur, just on the very tips, although he looks black when he’s away from the light, and the other is almost jet-black except for nut brown circles around either of his eyes.

I crook my knees, and prop myself up on my elbows.
No wolves in the swamp, huh?
I can’t help but laugh.

“Wh – who are you? I know you can understand me.” I say to the stalking creatures. I push a fallen curl of hair out of my eyes and back behind my ear, and my hand shakes. Just barely, it trembles, but still, this is the first I realize that I
am
afraid, just trying my best not to show it.

“Who are you?” I demand, my voice growing louder with each syllable, fear squeezing my throat. “Why did you bring me here? Where AM I?”

My shout catches one – the one with the brown circles about his eyes – off guard, and he snorts, a jet of steam shooting from his nostrils. He bares his teeth, lowers his head. All the hair on the arch of the beast’s great neck seems to stand on end, and I grit my teeth, expecting the worst. He snarls, lets out a terrible growl, and rushes forward two steps, and then reconsiders.

The wolf freezes, just like a statue. He instantly becomes absolutely still, drawing no breath, not a single twitch of the eye or flutter of his fur. As he watches, his eyes seem to flicker and I realize that within them are amber flecks, gold flecks, and a sunburst of brown right around his pupils.

Suddenly, it dawns on me that he’s still fifteen feet away, at least, and I can see every detail of his eyes. I can see his muscles moving underneath his thick, dense fur. And most of all, I can smell something coming off him. Again it smells like sweat, like sex, like a man.

I open my mouth to make more demands, but as soon as I do, my silent watcher rushes forward again, his great jaws open wide enough to tear me apart at one go. I close my eyes, and he makes no sound, not a single one.

Until his jaws snap shut.

When I open my eyes, he’s standing above me, towering over my helpless figure, mouth still drawn in a noiseless snarl. I try to breathe, but my heart pounds so heavily that it takes real effort. Sweat beads up on my forehead. One drop spills down either cheek, and a third runs down the line beside my nose and to my lips where I taste the salt.
Was that sweat or a tear? Get a grip, Jaz, get a grip
.

And then I feel him lower his head, touching my chin with the fur on his. Stiff and warm, almost impossibly thick, the monster’s coat played a dangerous game along my jaw. Any moment, any second, I think, he’s going to snap his jaws open and close them again, but this time, it’ll be around my throat. Fear boils up inside me, a bitter soup with a foul aftertaste. Again I clench my eyes, and this time when the salt hits my lips, I know its tears because they’ve burned paths down my cheeks.

I hear him breathe. So soft that it could be a leaf rattling in the wind a hundred feet away, his nose fills with air, and his chest rises until it touches mine, and then shrinks again with his exhale. A little tendril of hair has fallen down in front of my face, the same one I pushed away a moment ago. Each time his hot, almost seductive breath slides across my skin, the hairs in that bundle jitter in front of my eyes.

His mouth falls open. I can see his teeth, and the tip of his tongue. Where the first wolf that approached me had long, pointed, sharp fangs, this one’s seem flatter, wider, but no less likely to rip me up. One of his paws goes to my shoulder and pins me flat against the ground. He’s heavy, and my bony shoulder pushing against the floor of the cave, even with the padding I awoke on, sends pains shooting down my arm.

“Stop!” I beg. “You’re hurting me! Please!”

My cries seem to get his attention, at least for a moment, and he looks at me, cocking his head slightly to one side, apparently as fascinated about me as I am about him. My squirming and writhing seems to just get him more interested in holding me still. Those warm, gold-flecked eyes watch me for another moment, and then he puts his other paw on my free shoulder, making absolutely sure I won’t move. I try to kick, but his body is so long, and massive as he crouches above me that my foot has maybe an inch to travel before it bumps, useless, against him.

“Let me up!”

The wolf freezes, as do the other two.

“Let me up, now!” I repeat, in the best do-what-I-say-or-else voice I can muster, given the circumstances. The one pinning my shoulders cocks his head the other way. I can see behind his eyes that something’s turning in his brain. Either he’s trying to figure out what I’m saying, or he’s trying to figure out the best way to rip out my throat.

He lets out a whining sound, a whimper almost. And then, the strangest thing happens – his smell changes. Just a little, not so much it’s very noticeable, but it does. Ever so slightly, the feral, wild scent of the beast becomes more man, as though two natures war within his skin. Or as though he’s a man turned beast.

“That’s...that’s not possible. There’s no way you understand me. Is there?”

Another whine breaks the silence. I look around, pry my eyes off the monster straddling me and see not just Stripe, but also Red, skulking close. As they come near, I notice the same thing that I see in Mask’s eyes – colorful flecks and sunbursts.

They look between one another, as though they were sharing thoughts. Mask steps back, one foot off my shoulder, then the other, and I push myself up on my hands and scoot away. The three of them share another glance and creep forward as I keep pushing back, over the rocky, dirty ground, until my back hits the cave wall.

Stripe, the biggest of the wolves, moves to the front of the group, leans his head low and nudges me, pushing my head back against the rock. On either side, Mask and Red do the same until all three wolves are against me, and I feel their breath sliding up and down my body. Goose bumps run in a line down my back, and follow the curve of my neck. Down between my breasts, the thrill shoots and I feel my nipples stiffen against the hard khaki of my shirt, which somehow come unbuttoned.

Almost immediately I lose track of which one is where with all the circling around and trading places the huge wolves do. Something I do notice is that the way their muzzles feel against my skin and the way they touch me is almost...human. Red licks my throat, but it isn’t like a dog lapping away, but rather practiced and sensual. Closing my eyes, I lean back and push my hips forward along the cave floor and, despite every shred of reason in my brain, allow the monsters to have their way.

“I don’t know why I’m...” I pause to draw a breath when one of them begins to nuzzle down a thigh that was mostly bared when I slid forward and my shorts rode up. “There’s something about you that I just can’t pin down, I – I...mmm...yesss...”