The Reluctant Page 6

  She stroked my chest as her mouth melted into mine. I thought I’d be done right then, but somehow I managed to be caressed and kissed and last more than five minutes. I couldn’t stand it anymore. I pushed Brooke away.

  I could barely speak. “You’re going to get something you don’t want if you keep doing that.”

  She looked up at me with those newly brightened eyes. “How do you know what I want?”

  Well, that lowly spoken, sultry question did it for me. She put her lips back on me and I exploded in her mouth. The professor nibbled at my neck and ear as I came, intensifying my pleasure. That event cleared any reasoning I had possessed and I lay there dazed. Brooke pulled away from me and the professor crawled on top, straddling my limpness. I laughed.

  “You don’t honestly expect me to get it up again, do you?” I asked in my stupor.

  “Not really,” she admitted. She reached over to my nightstand and grabbed a pair of handcuffs, dangling them over me. “But we can have fun trying.”

  I had worn those handcuffs before. Whenever she felt particularly brutal, she would make me wear them during sex so that she could ride me and tease me. I smiled at the memories.

  “I thought you’d agree,” she said, bringing my hands together and slinging the cuffs around the metal frame of the bed to buckle me down. I squirmed slightly. She had never cuffed me to the bed, and I felt uncomfortable being so helpless. After all, we had parted in anger earlier. The unfathomable thing to me was that she was here with Brooke, but as I said before, I had no qualms about accepting it as my right as a handsome guy. I watched as she rose up magnificently over me like a dark angel.

  She stroked my face lightly. “I’ll miss your brown eyes,” she said softly. Then, more loudly: “Brooke, get the knife.”

  “What?” I cried. “What the hell are you doing?”

  Suddenly sobriety overtook me as I imagined that she was going to cut out my eyes. I could no longer operate in a drunken blur.

  Brooke approached with a small, ornamental knife. No longer than my hand, its blade looked particularly deadly in that fiery red head’s grasp, and her wicked grin gave me no additional comfort. “It only hurts for a moment, Will,” she assured me while handing the older woman the knife. Her tone turned deadly sweet. “Why didn’t you tell me that you were seeing our dear professor? Did you think you could just use me as your little plaything without consequence?”

  I had no time to argue with her. She had known that there would never be anything more serious between us. Besides, the professor had a knife at my crotch! Where would your attention be?

  “She’s right about it only hurting for a moment,” the professor admitted. She pivoted reverse-cowgirl style on me and continued over her shoulder, “But after that, you’ll be mine. Forever. And I have a lifetime to hurt you if I please.”

  I bucked and twisted, trying to get away from those two pairs of steel-like hands that held down my thighs to the bed. I yelled, screamed, begged. No one came. Everyone was at the party or too drunk or sleeping off their drunkenness somewhere. I was alone in the world at the hands of two women who wanted nothing more than to get revenge for my using them. The struggle against their attentions proved inadequate.

  The knife scraped lightly against my thigh, sending a shock up to my brain. Then, as it came closer to my favorite limb, the pressure became greater. I yelped as the blood ran from my thigh. Brooke leaned down to lick it, following the trickle up to the wound, a visible tremble running through her body as she did so. She moaned, trailing the knife as it cut its way towards me. It wasn’t the worst pain ever. Imagine how your tattoo felt: that stinging feeling as the air hits the open flesh before the ink sinks in is pretty similar to how the knife felt. I could not see her, but as Brooke covered my wound with her mouth, kissing the crimson path, I hardened involuntarily. There is something captivating about a woman willing to swallow my bodily fluids—even blood. The knife stopped shy of my balls and I exhaled. I realized then that I had been holding my breath.

  The professor chuckled wickedly. All I could see of her was that smooth backside and her long brown hair. The tension and the terror still dominated me, but I could not help but be aroused again. The phrase that promises “you can’t rape the willing?” Well, sometimes the body betrays its owner and the willing can be raped. I had made love with both of these women before, but now I was being turned on against my inclination. And I must admit, I never asked for them to stop pleasing me. The knife was the only problem area thus far. I hoped their threats would turn out to be just that—threats.

  Brooke ran her tongue up and down my stiffness; I threw my head back and closed my eyes, intent on enjoying it and accepting the knife as a kinky prop. I felt the professor climb off. The cold steel now kissed my neck. My eyes flew open. She stood over me.

  I said her name, hoping that she would remember all the nights we had shared in less violent lust. She backhanded me with a force I had not known she possessed. “Don’t speak my name,” she commanded harshly. “You know nothing of me.”

  “I never meant to hurt you,” I said truthfully.

  Brooke laughed. I glared in her direction. She leered at my hard dick before meeting my eyes.

  “God, Brooke, what is wrong with you?”

  She rocked back and forth in the moonlight with her laugher. She became a flame-haired demon to me: her eyes blazed more intensely than before, melting into two bright points of green that really did glow in her partially shadowed state, her hair a deeper red, and even though her body was divine, the smear of my blood on her face disturbed me. She ignored me, wrapped up in her own mirth.

  I looked to the professor. “What the hell is wrong with her? Especially her eyes. What’s wrong with her eyes?”

  Knife still my throat, the woman leaned down and cooed, “She’s mine now. I Changed her. You’re going to be mine, too. Her mind is trying to accept what’s taking over her body. It’s working through the madness of the rejection of herself. She has to accept her new form.”

  “What new form?” I shouted, anger overtaking me. “What the fuck are you talking about, you crazy bitch? What the hell did you change her into?”

  A word of advice: do not speak in anger to a woman holding a knife.

  “I’ll show you how much of a bitch I can be!”

  She slashed the knife downward, severing my jugular. My vision started to fade from the corners, but the last thing I saw before I blacked out made me believe whatever madness infecting Brooke had jumped to me. And to some extent, I was right. Waking up on New Year’s Day was not only a shock, but the longest thing away from death that I could possibly imagine.

  It just couldn’t be possible that where once two dazzling women teased me, two wolves now began to lick my wounds and nibble at my flesh.

  Shortly later, I came to with a pussy in my face and a throbbing so deep and overwhelming in my balls that I felt I would be ripped apart by my desperate need. A hot mouth laved my cock and I thrust my tongue up to that wonderfully wet patch above me, intent on quenching the desire that tormented me by releasing some energy on it.

  The woman’s head went up and down, her actions quickening as she realized I was conscious and returning the favor. I did not care who she was, only that she continue to suck. She stopped for only a moment to loosen the handcuffs so that I could fully experience her.

  I fucked her several times that night, unable to stop the twitching rise of my cock again and again. Equally, her attentions did not wane. And right before the moon set, when the gray expanse of dawn invades, my body did what I feared: it began to stretch and rip into new proportions. The muscles twisted grossly as they reshaped themselves underneath my skin. My head pounded in agony as my skull thrashed against the wall repeatedly in attempts to knock myself out to escape the pain. I could not fathom the Change overtaking me; my mind came unhinged. I cried tears of anger, laughed at my own distress. Finally, the pain ended as I adjusted to my new skin.

  But it was n
o use. I could now smell the sex in the air as a pungent overthrow, hear my dorm mates fucking down the next hall, the wet slap of skin on skin and the moans. I could practically taste the density of the air. I flexed my toes, watching the claws scrape the carpet, ran my long tongue against the back of my teeth.

  The professor stroked my head. “Now you are beautiful, strong. Be proud, for you are Lycanti, and you are mine. Forever.”

  My memory rushed back with the repetition of those words. Red washed over me. I would not be owned by this woman who had done this to me! I hated her, hated myself, hated tasting the sweat of strangers at the back of my throat. The emotion drowned my senses and I could see nothing but death.

  Two minutes later, there lay a dead Lycanthrope at my feet. Of course, I did not know what she was then, but then again, I, a newborn Lycanti who knew nothing but I had changed somehow, did not stop to think. Overcome by so much blood in the air, I could not help myself. I savaged the body as if I had not eaten in days, licking the blood from every surface and devouring the meat and gristle with relish. The salty sweetness blanketed my tongue. Sometime later during the feeding, another wolf joined me. I know not where she came from. I barely acknowledged the gray but willingly shared my kill. Her gleaming green eyes mocked me as we ate.

  After feeding, I fled. Everyone slept, too hung over to listen for or watch for a huge wolf capering down the halls. Thankfully, Luka had been attracted by the scent of Lycanthrope blood, curious as to who had killed one of the Clan. If not for him finding me at the edge of campus, I’d be dead, a bloody carcass for some opportunist scavenger to find. As it was, the revulsion of my actions shamed me. I had become a killer, a true monster straight from my own nightmares.

  Emily

  I awoke that very night to shouting. I immediately noted Will’s absence from the bed. My first thought went to Brooke and her not-so-subtle threat about “knowing where Will kept me.”

  But a male voice argued with Will’s—Luka? I crept to the back of the house to hear the muffled shouts as words, leaning against the doorpost of the den. Will and Luka argued on the back porch directly in front of me.

  “You’re fucking insane, man,” Luka yelled, his accent overwhelming. “How can you ask me to do this? The Clan will hunt me. You know they do not allow Lycanti to take human mates.”

  Will mumbled something unintelligible, but Luka felt no such restraints to keep quiet.

  “I hope she fucking wakes up. Does she even know what you have planned for her? The blood? Gods man, the blood loss could kill her.” His voice dropped to speaking tone. “What if I can’t save her in time? Or worse, what if she turns into one of those mutant freaks? Then the Clan and the Children of Dacre will hunt her for a different reason.”

  “I trust you.” Will spoke evenly and calmly.

  “Yes, yes, I know, you trust me,” Luka sneered. His voice broke on his next words, “Don’t you remember what happened to Shasta?”

  “Come on man, it was an accident. Let it go.”

  Luka snarled. “It is a selfish thing you ask of me. Like a rato crouched in the mud to see his friends eaten by the jacare.”

  “The Clan will not find out.”

  “They will.” I heard Luka’s hand slap the wall to emphasize his words. “They will. They always know. And then they will come for me and for Emily, but not for you—oh no, not for you little rato, because of your mother.”

  “Luka…”

  “And when she’s lying dead at your feet, you fucking well better remember that you told me to let the guilt of Shasta go.”

  “Luka!”

  I hurried to the screen door just in time to see a Changed Luka bounding off to the woods.

  Will turned to me and blanched. His eyes held a pain I could not even imagine. “I’m sorry we woke you, Emily.”

  I instinctively pulled him to me, hugging him close. The need to protect him from his own sorrow overwhelmed me. “I’m fine,” I murmured. “What was that all about?”

  Will sighed. “Luka does not want to Change you.”

  The heat drained from my body in the cool night, but I released Will.

  “Why would he Change me?”

  “A pure blood must do it. I am not strong enough as a Changeling.”

  “I heard him say that the Clan will kill us.”

  Will shook his head violently. “Myth. They do not hunt their own, especially not here in America. They only hunt renegades. We honor the Clan’s ways. Anyway, I have every intention of seeking their approval first.”

  “That’s not comforting.”

  He pulled me to him, forcing my lips to accept his kiss. His tongue caressed mine and the familiar wave of current crawled up my spine. He inhaled deeply.

  “I can’t live without you, Emily.”

  I said nothing. I just continued to let him hold me, stupidly thinking that this change, whatever it involved, could not be that big of a deal. Apparently, werewolves infested the state of California in droves. A thousand questions swirled in my head, but I knew Will would only answer them partially. No lies, just a strategic placement of the truth.

  My gut told me that Luka would tell me. At this point, I had accepted that I would be a part of Will’s world. Luka would not Change me if he became my friend. In my mind, I spun a plan to snare Luka’s affections and his trust. I did not know then that I was one step closer to accepting my fate and defying Will’s version of it.

  Emily

  Will and I sat in the kitchen sharing lunch and talking about catching a movie when the doorbell rang. Yes, contrary to what you probably believe by now, our lives remained relatively normal, boring sometimes even, though the Lycanti females stalked us from a distance and Will wanted me to become like him. Our relationship existed easily and I was more under his sway than ever. The doorbell, unlike the events of the past two weeks, was a rare occurrence. Since only Luka ever visited the house, I jumped up eagerly. Will looked very uncomfortable.

  As well he should. After all, it had been two weeks since the argument on the back porch. We had discussed the matter very little since Will made it clear that without Luka’s help, I could not be Changed. I took small comfort in that. My plan would be easier if he stayed angry at Will. I could not allow them have a chance to see eye to eye on Will’s reasoning.

  I opened the door to Luka’s smiling face. “Good day, Emily,” he said boldly.

  “Hey Luka,” I responded equally affectionate. “What’s up?”

  “Nothing much. Just here to let you and Will bask in my glorious wonder.” He spread his arms wide and cast an attempted holy gaze towards the sky.

  I laughed and he relaxed. “Yeah, okay, Ghandi, come on in.”

  Will stood and took Luka’s proffered hand. “Hey man. Good to see you again.”

  Luka nodded. “I had to work some things out. A long run cleared my head.”

  “Did you go home?”

  “Yes. I also visited your mother’s clan on the way back to deliver non- FedEx-able messages to the elders.” He grinned. “Your mother sent something for you.”

  Will stiffened. “What?”

  Luka reached into the inside pocket of his leather riding jacket. Oh, did I mention earlier that Luka’s choice of transportation happens to be a Ducati 999? Probably not. I was pretty dazzled by his personality at the arcade that night and focused on Brooke and her hostility. Some things just slip my mind as I recount events.

  He pulled an invitation out. “She wants you to attend her Bonding.”

  “Again?”

  “She swears it is truly love this time.” He cast a smug smile to me. “Surely you realize how addicting it is to be in love?”

  I blushed. Will smiled softly at me as he took the invitation and glanced over it indifferently.

  “If I wasn’t in present company, I’d say that the Lycanthrope don’t love. No offense, Luka.”

  Luka grimaced. “Yes, well, we heartless fiends sometimes like to play dress up anyway and pretend. Humor us.�
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  Something passed between the men then that I could not recognize. As an observer, I felt I had no right to intrude on the tenderness of the subject. Luka’s laughing demeanor had instantly turned mournful. I thought of my owl in the park, so sad and lonely. I did not want to hurt my new friend by bringing up something that he and Will would not discuss openly.

  I attempted to change the subject, lighten it up a bit. “We’re going to watch a movie tonight, Luka. Want to go?”

  “What are we seeing?” he asked equally vibrantly. Strategy achieved.

  “Some remake from the 80s,” Will answered. “Emily’s obsessed with seeing it, so I promised we could go tonight. Her obsession with that decade stretches to cover the obscenity that is hair bands.”

  “Yes that is a tragedy,” Luka agreed solemnly. Then, in a chipper tone he added, “Will there be beer? Because everything is remarkably better when beer is involved. Well, except when Emily provokes people into wanting to devour her entrails whole. That’s always entertaining with or without involving alcohol.”

  Will and I laughed at Luka’s cheekiness.

  “Come on,” I said between laughs. “Eat lunch with us, and then let’s see when the movie’s playing. Oh, and my entrails are not on the menu.”

  “Alright,” he conceded. “But only because Will keeps beer in the fridge, no other reason without the promise of intestines. It won’t truly be lunch without it.” He offered me his arm.

  I slapped him playfully on the bicep and took his arm in a courtly fashion. Gah, werewolf humor, gross. Will followed us, lightheartedly mumbling, “Damn alcoholic mutt.”

  Luka called back over his shoulder dismissively, “Yes, well, better to be engaged in alcoholism than be some emo-kid half breed with a penchant for humans.” He winked at me. “No offense, Emily.”