Now? She was likely heading in that direction again.
“We thought as much,” bellowed the middle, bald-headed one blocking their path. His red satin robe seemed modelled after a kimono. “Let me introduce myself. I’m Vincent, and these are Lennox…” Lennox was bare-chested and wore kilt-like tartan. “… and Neo.” Neo favored a toga in skull-patterned black. Both Neo and Lennox had sparse brown hair sprouting on their uneven scalps.
“I’m Willow, but there are too many of us to introduce. Will you let us pass?”
“If I wasn’t inclined to, I’m sure you’d go by anyway. Though each of us can fling a car if we want to.” With a baleful eye, he assessed the Road-trip Band where they’d lined up across the roadway, beside Cyn, Vargr and Rutger. “Might I enquire where you are going and why?”
“Hmmm.” Willow cocked her head.
“We’re going to find something that will help us destroy the Ghoul Lords, and we also hope to find out about the experiment that made us.” Rutger had answered, though from the long pause, Cyn had the impression Willow might have been about to refuse to answer.
“I see.” Vincent ran a hand over his bald scalp. “Well, well. Then I have a request, and please don’t judge us by our fashion sense since your kindred back there in Adult Quarter have done so.”
He waited and she thought he almost expected them to say something terrible, to reject him.
Adult Quarter? If they took their name from the buildings, where had that come from?
“We do not judge you anything except to be fellow beasters.” Willow looked to her left and right along the line of her people. Toother ambled forward to squat on his hindquarters near her also.
At that… at that her vision wobbled and an intensely attractive siren call made Cyn whip her head sideways, then up. She should be elsewhere.
Wait, wait, no. Not that. Stop. She blinked.
This was not daylight hour. Why, then? She groped forward and encountered a shirt, and muscle beneath that shirt. Rutger’s hand came around and squeezed hers.
Her need cleared, and she breathed again. Just a momentary glitch then. Breathe.
She noticed Vargr staring at her and shrugged. It was nothing.
The scare made her look inward in search of her Lure manipulation power. It was there. It had to be. She closed her eyes, opened them, and for the first time since she killed the Thing she saw the translucent pink threads. They thronged the air, yet this was dusk, and then… then she discovered the column of them wriggling down from above through a part of the ceiling. Was there a flaw in the bridge roof, or some natural concentration of Lure threads? Whatever the cause this place was not as safe as it should be.
Her stomach crawled with fear, and who wouldn’t fear this if they saw it coming?
Fuck. If she backed away and left, she might be better off, or she might find herself lured again. It was a terrible dilemma, and Rutger was a better choice than being alone. In the meantime she should practice.
At least she saw them again.
So she reached for the threads while the others listened to Willow.
“We’ve not seen your beaster type before. Do you have a name for what you have become? I am a biotechie. I can do some forms of healing, and also I can handle electronics.” She extended her arms to show how the blue under her skin ran down to her wrists and hands. As if her neon-blue snake-hair and her eyes weren’t evidence enough. “These others are weaponsmiths, and soldiers of foot and wing. This one, Cyn, is an unknown.”
Unknown me. It was true. Not an insult. To her sorrow and frustration, that description still hurt. It made her feel an outsider.
And so? Look at these guys. She was wallowing in misery when no one was normal anymore.
“We call ourselves rockmen. It’s apt.” Vincent smiled. “Our skin resists most traumas. Our—”
“Wait. You say this quarter refused to let you live there, sir? And so you live here, the three of you?” Willow indicated the bridge.
“We also claim a part of the adjacent quarter.” The bald rockman nodded. “I like your sirs, your politeness, Willow.”
“Thank you.”
“I will admit to…” He sighed. “Being disliked by this quarter.”
“You committed some offence?”
“We are too ugly, too unusual for them.”
“Seriously?” Cyn couldn’t help asking. This was ridiculous.
His gaze switched to her. “It’s true, miss. Besides, they have several humans among them, and the smell does bother us. We are not prejudiced against our origins, just the scent of a human is bitter to us.”
“I see. We have one human only.” There she was apologizing for Maura. And Maura was completely oblivious and zombified—only the rope attached to her waist that Locke held was keeping her from wandering.
“You may pass, Willow.” The three rockmen began to move aside. “Just step carefully with the Adult Tribe. They can be touchy.”
“Wait. What if I were to invite you to come with us? Would you? I think there will be fighting along the way, and you look as if you can handle that.” She nodded at the cars they’d obviously been rearranging.
“Let us discuss this.”
The rockmen went into a huddle.
The concentration of Lure threads gave her an easy target. Cyn reached out again and tried to weave them as she once had. Pain built slowly between her temples, but she refused to acknowledge it. If she pushed through the middle of these threads, maybe…
A lance of darker pain blasted in. She ducked her head and splayed her hand across her forehead. Stopping was not an option. Not now, not here. When she looked up again, temples still throbbing, with the Lure threads worming at her thoughts and beckoning her, she found Vargr peering at her. He blurred, refocused. The whispers began. She stomped on them.
No!
Concern radiating from his frown, Rutger took her wrist and pulled it down, away from her face. “You okay, girl?”
“Of course,” she bit out the words, took a slow breath. “I am okay.”
“She’s not. She needs fucking.”
Grrr. She showed her teeth. Not here. The asshole meant to embarrass her. Not that all those here would not have experience with Lure-affected humans… except she was not merely fucking human!
Vargr only smiled at her.
Her practices with the Lure yielded her nothing but headaches and now she had Mister Asshole amused. She swung back to the conversation, for Vincent returned.
“We will join you, providing we are equals.”
“Of course you are, sir.” Willow lifted her chin. “What else could you be.” Not a question, a statement, bless Willow’s heart.
Cyn found herself tearing up. What the fuck was this discrimination in the middle of the fucked-up mess this world was in? As if there were not evils enough to screw with anyone; as if simply surviving was not a big enough pain in the ass.
Then it hit her again, the beckoning, and it echoed, plucked at her, and she collapsed to one knee and cursed whatever was there. The floor, the Lure, this despicable weakness. She would not go. She would not.
While she was still cursing at the floor, someone grasped her by the wrist and began to tow her away. “Come.”
Rutger? Vargr? She hadn’t the opportunity to look. Opening her eyes would render her weaker. Easier prey to the Lure. She clung to the shreds of her sanity and went with them, blind.
Chapter 9
“Hey, Princess, open your eyes.”
That had to be Rutger. She opened her eyes and found it was indeed him, staring down at her, with her backed into a wall of those ancient car bits. Metal things prodded her back.
“This is a little alcove off the way we came in. As private as we can get.”
Someone made a move, a whisper of sound, and she looked sideways. Vargr was here too.
“You?”
“Me. Look, she just needs fucking, so get it over with.” Such hard eyes on a man she’d once thought
a friend.
“Not with you here.” She glared, daring him.
“If you’re going to give me blue balls, at least I get to watch.” A sneer crept across his mouth. “Don’t tell me you’re fucking too innocent to let me watch?”
“Hey. Hey.” Rutger held up a hand, palm out. “Isn’t bondmating supposed to mean you like each other?” An incredulous tone lifted the pitch of his last word.
Cyn shifted away from Vargr, trying to ignore the siren call of the Lure and hate this man at the same moment. In a two-by-three-yard space, it was difficult. In one corner, part of the hood of a battered blue car projected from the wall. Above was the far-off concrete ceiling and the pink Lure threads trickling down, drifting…
“No. Bondmating says attraction and bonding, not fuckin’ love, Rutger. I expect loyalty from her and not getting shot. You did not see what she did, close up.”
“Oh, god. Man up.” She bumped her head on the car wall, distracted, then she inched sideways because she needed to get around Rutger to where the exit lay.
“Wait. No wandering.” Rutger trapped her wrist and hauled her to him, kissed her neck. “No, I didn’t see that, Vargr. True. But this is not the time. We do this or I do this. That you two hate each other is cute, because I know it won’t last.”
She glowered at her enemy from Rutger’s embrace, warming to his caresses, almost shamed that she did. Except the Lure reminded her of why this had to be.
“You good?” he whispered, undoing the buttons of her shirt.
“Fuck. Yes,” she murmured, watching him fumble, revealing more of her breasts. He easily tore her bra down the center—a move that almost had her cursing him—then he popped the rest of the buttons.
Vargr was eyeing her body.
If he was staying, fuck him. She stuck out her tongue and gave him the finger, then squeaked as Rutger bit beneath her nipple. He hung on.
“Ouch,” she hissed. “Heyyy.”
“No teasing him.” He slid his big hand up her thigh, and then… pulled at the pants zip while his teeth tugged, here and there, at her skin, slowly moving down to where she really needed that mouth. Her own mouth fell open in awe at the blossoming lust rising, at her memories of that spiked cock of his… Would it matter if she drooled?
She shuddered at another bite and decided she was okay with whatever he planned.
“Fuck.” Vargr rubbed at his chin. “The both of you…” He groaned and his wings shuffled open, feathers brushing against the metal before he lowered them again. Not enough space, of course, dickhead.
She smiled with her eyes only, a subtle taunting.
“Want in after all, boy? Got a hard dick? Tsk.” Without rising, Rutger dragged her shirt and the remains of her bra from her.
“Call me boy again, and I’ll kick your ass, you suped-up Pan.”
With his mouth on her belly, Rutger kissed her there even as he laughed, struggling with his amusement.
That they talked over her, she didn’t care anymore. She was lost to the sensations and wound her hands onto Rutger’s blue-blue horns, strangling them, breathing in staccato as he bit, kissed, licked his way over her mons.
“Fuck.” Her breath hitched for he’d reached her clit and sucked.
Her jeans were at her ankles by then, and he ran his hands from her ass to her thighs to her knees, then down her lower legs, making goosebumps rise. She shivered as her jeans were removed along with the boots. But his mouth had stopped its work.
She wriggled. “Keep going. Please.”
“You need me? After all? No more arguing?”
The beaster’s assured smile vied with her natural inclination to taunt him.
“I need you. Keep going. Or else.” She pulled at his horns, attempting to bring his mouth to her.
“Uh-uh. You two are going to be nice to each other. If you’re staying, Vargr?” He eyed the other male. “You have to join in.”
“Oh hell. Hard bargain, asshole.” He pushed off the wall with his shoulder. “I’ll hold her down. You fuck her, and I’ll do anything else that strikes me as worthwhile in the moment.”
“Deal. Just know that when I find a giant dildo, I’m training her for ass fucking with my cock, not yours. Unless that tempts you?”
“Hey. What? Offering me to him like that is not okay.” She’d barely decided this was okay—him being here at all.
Vargr had stepped in closer, and now he trapped her wrists and began to haul them upward, until they were going above her head. As he did so, she thought about yelling at him or spitting, but her one excruciating problem was that this, him holding her while Rutger played, it had melted her, had reduced her to so much willing flesh.
Fuck.
Close-up, he eyed her, eyebrow cocking upward and his dark smile radiating an attitude that both riled her and somehow did the opposite.
“Damn you,” she whispered.
“My pleasure.”
The fucker.
“Shhh.” Rutger’s thumbs were prying apart her flesh, her pussy, fingers slip-sliding in her wetness. “Be good for us. You know you like being held down, fucked while you protest, while we do bad fucking things to you.”
Stunned, she looked down, and the devil in Rutger’s eyes made her heart falter. He’d nailed it in one.
Just, hell and damnation, she hadn’t thought she’d let Vargr watch, or put his hands on her. Not yet. The bastard had deserted her.
Fingers plunged into her pussy.
“Oh. Fuck.” She’d whispered that in a lame attempt to not be too obvious, but had also arched, and her hands were opening and closing as she tried to yank them from Vargr’s grasp. She couldn’t, which was absolutely perfect.
Denying them was imperative, but Rutger was making busy, turning her on, finger-fucking her. She opened her legs some more, clenched her toes, and rocked onto the balls of her feet, unsure if this was better than pretending to Vargr she wasn’t actually fucking aroused.
Ugh. No. Couldn’t.
Her eyelids fluttered as she pushed her lower body onto Rutger’s fingers and mouth. More. Undoing her brain in one sly move, Rutger worked another finger inside her.
She moaned softly, turning her face away from Vargr, unable to stop feeling what was being done to her below.
“Just so we’re clear. I’m not fucking you, needy bitch,” he whispered an inch from her ear. “I just wanna see him screw you until you’re shaking and crying out because he’s inside you. Let me make it plain I’m doing this for me.”
The flick of Rutger’s tongue over her clit made her shudder, and she turned and saw Vargr watching her face, intently, as if later there’d be a test. The bondmating had him by the throat too. Blue balls, whatever. He was compelled, just as she was, and that fact destroyed her last piece of rebellion…
Him watching her be fucked had just become the hottest thing ever.
Later he’d be jerking off like crazy.
That pleased her.
His eyes narrowed.
“Here’s the full deal, Rutger. Don’t make her come, just fuck her, or I leave,” Vargr growled out. “Besides, time is short. Willow is waiting.”
Below, everything ceased. Crap. She looked down at Rutger and found he was rising. No. No, no, no.
“He’s right.” He shrugged.
“What? Nooo.” It would take seconds to get her off. Cyn squirmed on the wall. Rutger actually grinned.
“Over here.” Matter-of-factly, as if she was a doll, Vargr dragged her to the hood of the car then sat on it and forced her over his lap.
She could have kicked and screamed. Could have given them both bloody faces, put holes in them, but this wasn’t about suffering, it was about fucking, and she was really keen on the latter.
Definitely when her bondmates forced her into it.
Her clit was aching so badly, and Vargr’s hand was wrapped in her hair so tightly that it hurt, yet she dreaded him removing it. With his other hand wrenching her hands into the small on her back she wa
s held where they both wanted her—ass up, naked.
Rutger kicked apart her feet and shoved a thumb into her sopping entrance and squeezed, and with that she fell into fucking…
Heaven. That first breach of her cunt. The shove of cock parting her. She gasped, tensed. The world froze in appreciation. Then she stuck her butt higher, whimpering as Rutger slammed in again.
She’d swear her pussy had felt the thrust of his spiked cock even before he’d poised himself behind her, before he’d probed at her wet entrance then stuck it in minus any ceremony at all.
Vargr tightened his holds. “Hell fuckin’ yeah. Go for it man. Make her squirm.”
He went for it, ramming deep until it was almost too much for her to bear, stretching her past redemption. She wriggled and achieved nothing, held in Vargr’s vice-grip on her hair and wrists and Rutger’s at hip and ass.
Her sounds were a mix of gasps, squeaks, and pitiful moans. Her thighs parted further as she strived to be the perfect target for this very large cock. The jarring smack of his muscular body into her butt and legs was almost enough to make her orgasm as she was sandwiched between him and Vargr. The erection on Vargr was obvious and rubbed on her arm. She arched and sobbed, and was fucked so thoroughly her eyeballs rolled up. When Rutger finally… finally, erected those spikes and blasted his full load of come into her, she heard Vargr chuckle at her choked cry.
She hung her head, panting, until Vargr dragged it up again.
“Fuck.” Rutger groaned, ran his raked fingers down her sweaty spine, his cock pulsing with the last squirt of come. “Fuck that was good.” She heard him stagger upright, felt the pull of his cock from inside her. “You make a good handler Vargr. I don’t think I need you for anything but that in future.”
A taunt that far surpassed her own. The silence ripened.
Despite her exhaustion a smile broke across her lips.
Vargr barked out a laugh. “Dream on. I’ll fuck her. One day, when it’s my goddamned decision. This murderous girl is not governing me.”
As his fingers loosened in her hair, she considered her next words which were going to be atrocious, but she licked her lips and said them anyway. “If I had a gun now, I’d shoot you again.”
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