by Delta James
Managing to get loose, Flynn made her way through the thigh-high deep water, slowly but surely.
* * *
Hearing the voices of the two men ahead, King forced himself to pick up the pace. Just before he cleared the foliage, he remembered where he had smelled that scent before. The one from Koto, left by those in pursuit of her and in the urine. It had been on a trip with his nieces to the Seattle zoo. Somehow, there was a Komodo dragon hunting his mate. Komodos were not found, outside of zoos, anywhere other than Indonesia, which meant that the two men pursuing her were shifters.
As he hit the beach, he saw one man on the riverbank and a large Komodo wading into the water to get to Flynn who appeared to be stuck. He barreled toward the human, who took aim with a high-powered rifle and fired. King was able to maneuver just enough that the bullet only grazed his shoulder. He swatted the man with his enormous paw as he stampeded past him, splashing into the water and grabbing the giant lizard by the tail, pitching it away from Flynn.
The beast twisted its body and made a grab for his jugular, which was protected by thick fur and a large layer of fat. It was painful and he could feel venom pumping into the wound. He knocked the dragon’s head loose, submerging it in the water and standing on it, feeling it give way as it was crushed against the bottom of the river. King glanced over his shoulder and saw the man on the side of the river, gaining his feet and making a grab for his rifle.
King raced towards Flynn, who had freed herself and was trying to make for the other side of the fast-moving water. He ran in front of her, blocking her way. He nudged her with his muzzle toward his back. She didn’t understand. Gently, he took her arm between his powerful jaws and directed it to the top of his back before kneeling into the water so that she could climb aboard. She seemed to understand and clamored up onto him with a leg on either side of his massive shoulders, grabbing his fur in tightly clenched fists. King got to his feet and bounded to the opposite side of the river from the man with the rifle. The trees were closer on this side. He made his way toward them in a zigzag pattern. The man fired his gun again and missed them completely before they made the relative safety of the woods.
He loped towards a spot in the forest that angled up and would give them a good vantage point. The shot that had almost missed him had apparently been deeper than he thought but was already beginning to heal. As he ran, the pain increased but he was able to ignore it more and more and focus on the task at hand. He needed to put enough distance between himself and the hunter to provide them with a certain degree of safety. King also wanted to find a spot where Flynn would be unable to flee from him easily. He rather imagined she had a number of questions, but he had a few of his own. Why was she being stalked by Komodo shifters? Did she know who they were? And why had she run from him two years ago?
Chapter Six
Flynn had a death grip on the coarse fur of the bear that had saved her and was carrying her far away from the violent scene to which she’d been a witness. She had to focus on hanging on as the great beast lumbered along a path that seemed known only to him lest everything that happened overwhelmed her. She’d always known Kodiaks were enormous creatures but sitting atop him gave her a new appreciation for just how immense they were in sheer size.
She was trying to process all that had happened in the past hour. She’d heard two men plot to rape and kill her—two men she knew to be David and Kevin Koto, Henry’s brothers. But what had happened to Kevin... had he somehow morphed into the Komodo dragon whose skull was crushed by the bear on which she was riding? She clung to the bear, trying to ward off the wave of dizziness that washed over her. Had someone slipped her some kind of drug that was causing her to have continuing hallucinations? Was there any hope at all she might wake up to find she was in her own bed on the houseboat having just returned from New Zealand? Or had all that had transpired somehow been initiated by the night in the pub? The beast scrambled up the side of the mountain, moving swiftly through the heavy brush and trees until it entered a small cavern and once again knelt down.
Flynn slid from its back, noting that the bear was blocking her exit. It stepped back creating a bit more space and then seemed to shimmer before her eyes, as if it and the immediate air surrounding it... It? Him? All of the edges of the bear seemed to soften as if smudged before the entire outline disappeared only to have the process reverse. When the shimmer faded, leaving only the hard edges of flesh and bone, it wasn’t a bear that was on one knee, folded over himself. Before she could extend her hand or see if he was in pain or needed assistance, he stood. There was no question as to the gender of the beast... the fully erect cock that jutted away from his body was all the evidence she needed to attest to his sex. Her eyes were riveted to it and for a fraction of a moment she recalled, all too well, the feel of it stroking in and out of her sheath—nothing had ever felt more sensual, more dominant, or more right.
“Flynn,” he growled—the sound seeming to reverberate in her bones, before freeing all the butterflies in her belly and below. “Are you all right?”
She was silent for a moment until she recovered her voice.
“All right? I’m so fucking far from all right I don’t even know where to start...”
Before she could finish, the beast growled again, a low, reverberating sound that skittered along her skin, causing her nipples to stiffen and her pussy to pulse. He reached out, grasping her upper arms before pulling her into his hard, naked body. No, this couldn’t be happening again. Her mind, what was left of it, knew she should resist, but she had ached for him for so long and lust from the adrenaline surge was coursing through her veins.
He tore her clothes from her body, removing her boots and socks so that she was as naked as he was. He reached up to heft the fullness of her breast, pinching her nipples as he did so. He inhaled sharply. Knowing that Kodiaks had an intense sense of smell, Flynn was fairly sure he could detect her arousal. If not, her beaded nipples and moan, as he’d run his hand down her side cupping her buttocks while continuing to fondle her with the other, would have been a dead giveaway. The need to be possessed by this man, to feel his strength chase away the fear, clouded her ability to think rationally.
Spinning her away from him, he shoved her over to a large boulder in the cave, placing her hands on the rough surface and pulling her hips back before kicking her legs apart. With no further warning, two of his fingers invaded her pussy, roughly stroking her. The noise he was making was not human, nor was it wholly animal, but some kind of hybrid in between. All she knew was that no other sound had ever spoken to the deepest part of her and called forth a profound need to be dominated and possessed by this man... this beast... this whatever the hell he was.
Lust, in its most pure form, spread throughout her body like a wildfire out of control. She remembered all too well his feral coupling and craved it like an addict needing a fix. The last rational part of her brain cried out for her to say something. But that part of her amygdala that appeared to be in control silenced any protest she thought to make.
“I have missed you, mate,” he growled as his hands dug into her hips.
He mounted her in one powerful thrust, forcing her interior walls to stretch in order to accommodate his size. He rammed home, the tip of his staff reaching the end of her sheath as the rough texture of the rock scraped her delicate skin. The weight of his body pinned her down. There was nothing refined or gentle about his possession. It was brutal and primitive, his need inflaming hers. His body demanded hers submit to him and it answered in primal surrender.
“No,” she wailed as she climaxed around him.
“Yes,” he hissed as he pulled back and rammed home several times before beginning to thrust within her with long, hard, deliberate strokes.
In the same way he had morphed from beast to man, she felt as though she was transforming from woman to a creature that needed this primeval, hedonistic claiming as much as he did. The animal between her legs pounding her pussy was in complete and utt
er control as he fucked her, and she reveled in his domination.
Flynn offered him no resistance, none whatsoever. She merely responded to him as she had in Seattle with repetitive orgasms, each more intense than the last. She could barely breathe and gasped as his cock hammered her cunt relentlessly. She needed to feel his strength and power. Only then could she wallow in his rough possession and stifle any misgivings she might have about being taken in this manner, either now or in the past. The sounds he made as he drove into her repeatedly were neither fully animal nor human but lay somewhere in the realm of fantasy. He grumbled and groaned as he plundered her pussy until, at last, she felt his release was imminent. Flynn felt his cum begin to gush into her as his cock jerked within, twitching and pulsing as her pussy’s contractions from her last climax caressed his cock.
Her need for him assuaged, reason returned to the fore. She wanted to feel ashamed or violated for having allowed him to claim her with none of her questions answered and with fewer words spoken between them than when it had happened in Seattle. Flynn couldn’t understand why she had responded to him in the abandoned manner she had. Never had she experienced what this man was capable of making her feel. She had all but convinced herself that the first time was an anomaly; that would no longer be the case. She knew that this had been no mere coupling to satisfy the lust that often accompanied intensely dangerous situations. Something within her understood it had been his declaration that she was his and that she would surrender to his dominance and need to possess her.
When he finished, he uncoupled from her, running his hands down her back and pinning her back down when she tried to rise.
“You stay where I put you, whether that’s in a root cellar for your safety or bent over something after I’ve fucked you.”
“My safety,” she scoffed. “You and I both know you left me there so I wouldn’t contradict whatever story you told the authorities. Who are you? No, scratch that, what are you? And how the hell aren’t you dead? You were wounded and then bitten by a Komodo dragon.”
“No. My Kodiak physiology makes me impervious to bacterial infections and venom. The wound was fairly minor and has almost healed. Again, due to my being a Kodiak shifter. Now, you will answer my questions. Have you been injured and why did you run from me in Seattle?”
“So, it was you,” she breathed.
“You know it was. Now answer me,” the growl had deepened and there was a definite edge to it.
“Where do you get off making demands of me? And now after you’ve fucked me a second time without my consent you bother to ask if I’ve been injured? How the hell would I know? You kill whatever that... that thing was, scoop me up out of the river and drag me up here so you can get your rocks off. No, I’m not even close to all right. We have a brief, albeit intense, encounter two years ago in a pub when I didn’t know you were some kind of freak, then you kill my client... that was you, right?”
“Yes. He tried to murder my brother. Why were you up here helping a guy on an illegal trophy hunt for a Kodiak?”
“I didn’t have any inkling he wasn’t up here to do anything other than take pictures until right before all hell broke loose. He didn’t shoot a bear as far as I could see, and I only have your word he tried to murder your brother. Considering the enormity of what I don’t know about you, I think it’s a bit much to ask me to give you the benefit of the doubt. And where did you get off spanking and fucking me in the first place two years ago?”
He chuckled—a deep, seductive sound that launched her libido back into the stratosphere.
Flynn told herself it was simply the residual adrenaline reaction to the danger she’d survived.
“Interesting how you keep coming back to our first time. I would take that to mean that you understood the enormity of our meeting. Now, either you answer my questions about whether or not you’re injured and why you ran from me or the spanking you get for putting yourself in harm’s way will get a whole lot worse. Which would you prefer?”
“You’ll what?”
“You heard me, Flynn,” he said evenly.
He crossed his muscular arms across his brawny chest covered with tawny-colored hair that was heavier across his pecs and then tapered off as it ran down the center line of his body past his navel, acting almost like an arrow pointing at his engorged phallus that had the vestiges of his cum combined with hers covering it. He stood tall and proud and seemed unaffected by the fact that he was stark naked in front of a woman he barely knew. Flynn was finding it difficult to divert her gaze from his impressive appendage.
“You don’t get to talk to me that way,” she said lamely.
“Oh, but I do. First you bolted on me in Seattle, then you managed to elude me each time I came looking for you...”
“You came back to Seattle looking for me?”
“Why does it surprise you that I would come after my mate?”
“I’m not your mate,” she said incredulously.
“You are,” he stated flatly.
“I’m not. I’m just a girl that let you beat her ass before tossing her over the edge of a desk and fucking her to the point she was sore for days afterwards.”
He quirked his eyebrow and nodded towards the stone.
“Alright, and put up with your rough treatment earlier. But if you let me go and swear never to bother me again, I won’t tell anyone about you and will just go home and leave you in peace.”
He laughed, but it was not a sound that held any mirth. “First, you didn’t let me do anything,” he said. “I spanked you in Seattle so that you would understand from the get-go that I would dominate in our relationship and that you would submit to me in all things. It’s a common enough practice amongst my kind. The fact that you didn’t take that lesson to heart was obvious when I returned to take you out of that bar to find you gone. I had thought to preserve some of your modesty and pride by leaving with you through the back entrance. I won’t make that mistake again. Second, as to you being sore, you’ll have to get used to being fucked more roughly and routinely than you’ve been used to. After a while, though, I will probably only make you ache either when I choose to or during the rut...”
“The what?” she asked surprised at the matter-of-fact tone he was using. “I don’t know what you are or what you think is going to happen... and I am grateful for what you did back at the creek...”
“Had you not been so elusive, none of what has transpired in the past few days would have happened. Josh wouldn’t be lying in a hospital and I wouldn’t have a minor wound. Third, you might want to take a more amenable tone with me as you’re lucky I don’t have a strap to welt your ass with me and will have to settle for using my hand.”
“A strap?”
“Yes. A belt can serve the same function, but I think having a strap that hangs by our bed might help you to focus on why you want to behave. Are you injured?”
“What? No, I’m not injured, other than the scrapes and bruises my latest encounter with you will, I’m sure, produce. Do you hear yourself? A spanking? A strap? Fucking me hard? In addition to being an arrogant prick, what the hell are you and for that matter, what was that thing you killed in the river and what was David Koto doing there?”
Flynn could feel herself getting hysterical and tried to rein in her emotions. What had she allowed to happen? She could excuse the first time in Seattle; she hadn’t known what he was, but this time she knew... maybe not yet what he was, but that he was not human. Although, the cock that he’d hammered her with had felt decidedly human.
He moved towards her and she recoiled. A deep rumbling came from his chest that was somehow soothing and comforting. He reached for her and grasped her upper arm and prevented her retreat.
“Enough, Flynn. I’m not sure we lost Koto; we should get on the move.”
“Oh sure, we can stop long enough for you to fuck me, but when it comes to giving me answers I need, we don’t have time. I’ve got news for you... I’m not going anywhere with you.”
“I wasn’t asking, Flynn; I was telling. Are you going to come willingly?”
With the arm that he hadn’t been holding, she’d been reaching behind her, searching for something she could hit him with. She had to get away. Her fingers found a rock; she swung it towards his head with all the strength and speed she could muster, but his reflexes were well- honed, and he ducked out of the way.
“Nasty-tempered female,” he said, pulling her into his body and wrapping her around his hip. “I would have preferred to wait until I had us in a more secure location, but I don’t have time to debate what we need to do.”
She could feel his cock beginning to stiffen as his hand came down with a resounding crack. The sound seemed to bounce off the walls of the cavern, eerily echoing all around her.
“You bastard,” she screeched as the pain in her ass reached her brain.
His strong arm held her in place as he swung his hand down and landed agonizing blow after agonizing blow to her backside. Feeling her flesh respond to the impact of his hand was deeply painful and oddly arousing at the same time. She could feel her pussy pulse each time his hand connected with her buttocks. Flynn yowled and squirmed, trying to get away from him.
The creature, whose name she realized she still didn’t know, proceeded to cover her buttocks with hard swats. She could feel the pain and fire blooming all across her rump as he spanked her.
“You will learn to mind me, Flynn. The longer you fight me, the longer your spanking will last. Keep in mind that regardless of how long this takes, I’m going to expect you to move at a fairly quick pace until I decide we are safe.”