Monsters & Guardians

by Kay Elle Parker

  They hit the floor in a tangle of limbs, his considerable weight crushing her into the unforgiving carpet and the solid floor beneath. He snarled when she rammed her fist into his windpipe, coughed and spluttered, then bared his teeth at her.

  Hot hands gripped her thighs, yanked them apart to expose her. Triumph gleamed in those hated black eyes, replaced by stunned confusion when her foot smashed unceremoniously into his jaw. Good, she hoped the fucker’s teeth fell out. Twisting out of his hold, Raine jammed her heel into his nose so hard he yowled, then drew both feet back and slammed them into his chest.

  The impact radiated down her legs, into her hips.

  The man was built like the proverbial brick wall.

  “Fighting me...won’t stop it.” Quinn’s words were garbled, as though he wasn’t used to speaking, forming sentences. His tone was rough, and it took her only a few moments to understand this wasn’t Quinn at all.

  Estrus brought out the fucking wolf.

  Don’t beg. Don’t beg. Don’t beg.

  “Quinn...” Raine’s voice trembled.

  “Quinn’s gone.” The wolf told her matter-of-factly and flipped her onto her belly with ease. Unbelievably strong hands gripped her hips, raised her up as she struggled, feet kicking weakly, fingers digging into the carpet for dear life.

  Not like this. Not like this.

  A thick finger prodded between her folds, pushing deep into dry flesh. The wolf grunted in disappointment and then heat covered her from shoulders to ass as his arms slammed down on either side of her head and his body forced hers into submission.

  Raine sank her teeth into his flesh, biting deep until the metallic flavor of his blood filled her mouth. He jolted, growled in warning as he set his own teeth against the nape of her neck. The tip of his cock pressed into her.

  “Mine,” the wolf muttered against her flesh an instant before he bit down hard and his hips snapped forward, burrowing into her unprepared channel like a battering ram.

  Raine couldn’t stop the scream, or the tears. Couldn’t alleviate the burn of abused flesh or rid herself of the pressure inside her. Something felt wrong inside, like she was torn. Ripped. Dying. Another scream scoured her throat like glass shards as he shunted forwards again, forcing more of that hateful cock into a place she never wanted touching again.

  “Tight. Relax,” he ordered.

  Sobbing, Raine strived to go limp. Pain overloaded her circuits, tried to sever the connection between brain and body. Her teeth rattled with the power of every thrust, her virginity was torn away without a second thought, and Quinn’s wolf fucked her without mercy, his body straining to get every inch of cock inside her unwilling sheath.

  Deep inside, she cramped horribly. She could imagine his cock hammering against the heart of her, demanding entrance, being denied. The carpet was wet beneath her face, abrading her cheek painfully as the motion of his rut rocked her back and forth. The pain of the carpet burn was nothing compared to the agony screaming between her legs.

  The body on top of her drove deep, drawing a high, panicked scream from her lips, and the wolf all but chanted, “Let me in!” over and over again. Something hard and thick grew outside her pussy, and with horror, she realized it was what the brothers wanted inside her. The knot. The tie.

  Quinn’s shaft thickened, stretched her further until fire annihilated every other thought. Burning agony consumed her from head to heart to loins. There wasn’t room to harbor the vicious anger hibernating under everything else.

  “Fuck!” The wolf howled and Raine twisted uselessly as stinging lashes of hot seed flooded her pussy, her voice too broken to vocalize this new level of torment.

  Quinn collapsed on top of her, sweat dripping and slicking his skin over hers as his cock pumped copious amounts of fluid into her.

  Raine closed her eyes and prayed he crushed her to death beneath his bulk. Death was welcome now—she’d open her arms to it and accept the kiss without hesitation. The fight was gone from her, she had nothing left. No future but this.

  Blood and pain and tears.

  Against her back, she felt him stir, his heartbeat slowing from the frantic pace of fucking. His breath ruffled her hair, damp with sweat and tears, and she cried out when he shifted his weight and brought new devastation to her existence.

  “Oh no. Oh no, sweetheart.”

  It took more energy than she had left to ignore the remorse in Quinn’s voice. The wolf was gone, apparently sated by its orgasm, and had left its human counterpart to deal with the aftermath of what they had done. But ignore it she did, heart hardened to everything but her own pain, her own misery.

  “Fuck. Raine, sweetheart, I need to pull out. I need to—”

  Raine clamped her hands over her ears and let the tears fall. They came harder when he pulled away from her slowly, carefully. Her throat worked with the effort to keep her whimpers silent, but to no avail.

  A rush of semen and what she assumed was her own blood wetted between her legs, pooling between her bruised thighs. It brought bile to her mouth, her empty stomach determined to purge itself. But nothing could purge the sickness from the rest of her, could it? Her soul couldn’t just throw up and be healthy again.

  “I’m going to get you onto the bed, sweetheart, just bear with me.”

  On the bed where the next lucky brother would get his turn to fuck the broken woman she’d become. Just the thought of it had her vomiting onto the already stained carpet, heaving so hard it felt as though her spine might snap from the effort.

  “What the hell am I supposed to do now?” Quinn muttered as he slipped his hands beneath her gently and lifted her ruined body into his arms. He cradled her, kissing the top of her head. “Finn can come in, treat you, Raine. He might...he might be able to make you feel better before the urge overpowers him.”

  Cool sheets hit her back, soothing the aching muscles and the bite he’d given her. Her skin flushed hot and cold, limbs trembling, teeth chattering, and she knew she was going into shock. And still a laugh, cold and brittle, bubbled out of her, almost hysterically. “Make me...feel...better? Long past...that, Quinn. Just go.”

  He scowled at her. “I can’t just—”

  “This is what...you wanted. Leave me alone.”

  She closed her eyes, unable to watch her words strike home. He’d done this to her—he deserved to carry the blame, to take responsibility for his actions and the actions of his wolf. Just as the next one would. She shivered uncontrollably as Quinn’s footfalls padded toward the door.

  “I’m sorry, Raine.”

  “Go fuck yourself...Quinn.”

  God, she was so cold. Ice stabbed into skin, through her flesh, until warmth was a memory she thought she’d never remember. Part of her wanted to reach between her legs, assess the damage left by a rutting beast, but she couldn’t move, didn’t really want to know how badly she was hurt. Didn’t need confirmation of what her body was telling her.

  Intentionally or not, the wolves would kill her by the end of the night.

  The strangest sound filled the room. Lost in the relative peace of shock, her foggy brain struggled to comprehend it, to pinpoint it. Did someone need help? That’s what she did, that was her purpose, helping people who needed it.

  Help yourself.

  Her body jittered as though she’d downed too much coffee, her teeth clacking together in rapid little clicks. And that godforsaken sound wouldn’t stop. She flailed out a hand, fingers clutching the quilt. Why wouldn’t it stop?

  “Fuck, little one.” Finn’s voice floated around her, quiet and gentle, like leaves tumbling off the trees in fall. Spinning, spiraling, fluttering. “Raine?”

  Was that her name? She couldn’t recall. Her world narrowed down to one throbbing ball of agony where names and purposes and life held no power. Only the pain had any meaning, everything else was inconsequential.

  A hot hand pressed to her forehead, bringing a grateful moan to the surface. The heat barely made a dent in the cold, but she w
elcomed it nonetheless.

  “Sweet Jesus, you’re freezing. Why didn’t you let Quinn take care of you?”

  Quinn? Quinn was a monster, the monster that did this to her. Monsters weren’t allowed to tend what they destroyed; they were never allowed to touch her again. Would someone please turn off that incessant sound before it drove her crazy?

  “Open your eyes, Raine. I know it hurts, I’m going to give you something for it but I...there’s not a lot of time before your scent wrests control from me.” A finger slipped into her mouth, risking her chattering teeth, and pried her jaw open. “Swallow this. It will help, I promise.”

  Not here to soothe her with his quiet voice and gentle hands, Raine finally understood. Her mind started to clear, shrugging off the calm peace shock brought to her traumatized soul, and fought to stop the keening whimpers straining her throat.

  God, that sound. How much pain was the shock masking if her body made those sounds while she drifted in No Man’s Land?

  Raine opened her eyes as Finn pushed two small blue pills into her mouth, to the back of her throat. Instinct had her coughing them back up, spitting them out. She’d take nothing from them, especially drugs.

  His gray eyes were darkening, that eerie transformation beginning to form. So creepy to watch the black eclipse the gray of his irises, knowing it eradicated the man behind them. “Please,” he begged gutturally, “take them, Raine. They’ll block the pain.”

  “Why bother?” she shot back, voice croaking through a wrecked throat. “Four of you left,” she continued, painfully slow to form words from cracked lips. “There’s no drug in the world capable of giving me relief from this hell.”

  “You should be in heat by now,” he said almost accusatorily, his tone darkening until it was as black as his eyes. Slivers of gray remained, and Raine braced herself for the shitstorm about to rain down on her yet again. “Pain becomes pleasure with the heat.”

  Raine laughed bitterly as Finn’s wolf yanked full control of their body from him and he loomed over her, sniffing her prone body from head to foot. “Pain will always be pain, regardless. You’ve shown me that.”

  The wolf homed in on the mess between her thighs, growled so low it set the hairs on her body standing to attention. It was an angry sound, the beast furious at finding her already fucked. A second later, it mounted her without preamble, and Raine’s thoughts were nothing but a continual scream of agony.

  Chapter Six

  Finn

  “Pain will always be pain, regardless. You’ve shown me that.”

  Hard words for a healer to hear, Finn thought as the beast inside him clawed its way to the surface, salivating at the chance to knot and breed the pretty little female spread out waiting for them. Just as being part of this, having to watch the other half of him plunder an already shattered doll was torture on his soft heart.

  Quinn had come downstairs, bloody and bitten, and quite obviously shell-shocked. His actions would haunt him, as Finn knew his would once this was over. All his brother had said was, “This isn’t right. Something’s wrong.”

  Finn had left him with their brothers and come upstairs with no idea what to expect. Some variation of carnage, yes, because the woman was a warrior through and through. Quinn’s smashed face was proof enough of that, as were the bites in his flesh.

  But he hadn’t expected the pool of blood and cum soaking into the carpet, nor the puddle of fresh yellow bile. He certainly wasn’t prepared for the sight of Raine laid out on the bed, one cheek viciously abraded, her eyes closed, hardly breathing. Slim thighs smeared with copious amounts of blood and Quinn’s seed, more leaking out from her gaping hole.

  The healer in him said there was more blood than losing her virginity warranted, while the wolf in him was furious at the scent of their brother staining their mate and didn’t care about anything but replacing it with their own.

  Finn grimaced as their first brutal thrust drove through swollen tissues. The wolf was thrilled, gripping Raine’s hips in a death grip as they pounded into her with only the need to breed. But her body contorted, her scream a knife in Finn’s soul. Her hands lifted to their face, nails raking down their cheeks, aiming for the eyes.

  He had no voice to tell her to be calm, to relax. To assure her it would all be okay if she just trusted him. But what was there to trust? he berated himself as her pussy seemed to spasm around his cock. The promises of men who were not men, who had hunted her down, stolen her, and breaking her into what they needed her to be.

  Yeah, not gonna be a lot of trust there.

  Quinn was right, there was something wrong. The overpowering aroma of estrus filled Finn’s every breath, turning his blood into a raging river of testosterone and outrageous lust. Beneath it, he could smell her heat, the godsend that would spare Raine so much discomfort and give her orgasms she couldn’t imagine.

  But the effects of the heat weren’t affecting her at all, offering her no pleasure or relief. Was she warring against it, her stubbornness repressing it? Was any female strong enough, stubborn enough, to override natural urges?

  The wolf grunted and Finn moaned silently as he felt their balls tingle. The point of their cock stabbed mercilessly into her cervix, drawing more devastating cries from Raine’s mouth as she rammed her fist into their chin, snapping their head back.

  She was sobbing, pleading for him to stop.

  So close, I can feel her giving in. The wolf told him.

  Wishful thinking, Finn thought. Her cervix remained closed, and their knot was forming against the swollen labia their thrusts were making red and sore. He had a brief thought to shove as many painkillers down her throat as he dared before orgasm rose up and wiped them out, the wolf baying as their seed erupted into their female.

  He blacked out for a few minutes, at least he assumed so.

  When he came back to his senses, his wolf was back in seclusion, grumbling to itself as it licked itself happily. He, however, was still buried deep inside Raine, and the first thing he noticed was the lack of response from her pussy. It twitched and flexed, but from discomfort, he realized.

  There was no rhythmic suck and pull of vaginal muscles trying to leech every last drop of cum from the cock filling her, no magical tempo of an orgasm rippling through her. She was just laying there, taking the fucking and probably hating all of them in a way he could understand very well.

  He loathed himself at the moment.

  “Raine?”

  Heavy pewter eyes glared at him through lids puffy from tears. Oh yeah, that hatred was brewing in the depths. But what affected him more was the brief flash of vulnerability at the core of them, there one second and gone the next. “Get off me. You’ve had your fun.”

  “I’ll get you cleaned up.”

  Her bottom lip trembled; she rolled her head to the side so she didn’t have to look at him anymore—he couldn’t blame her. “What’s the point? Five minutes and I have to—” she broke off, choked on a haunting cry. Her chest heaved with the effort it took to restrain the sobs desperate to get free. “I have to go through this again. Just fuck off, Finn.”

  Finn disengaged, hating the look on her face when pain speared through her. A slow wave of cum followed, and to his relief there were only a few streaks of dark red, not the puddle of blood he’d half-expected. “No. This is our fault, Raine. This is what our nature does to us. But I’m a healer and you need tending to. So that is what I will do.”

  She snorted. “A healer who fucks an innocent bloody. Ironic.”

  He didn’t reply. Walking to the bathroom, he cleaned himself up and gathered a heated washcloth, dry towel, and rooted through the cabinet for the small supply of meds he’d left there for emergencies. She hadn’t moved an inch when he went back to her.

  Counting out four tablets, he debated giving her six. They were his own creation, an herbal mix that would do several things at once. Pain relief was one, easing the swelling was another. They’d make her drowsy, floaty, but she wasn’t responsive to
touch right now anyway. Body and mind needed a rest she couldn’t be given—the sexual tension building in the room below would be an aphrodisiac to the remaining three brothers.

  Finn tapped another two pills onto his palm, cupped the back of her head and proceeded to open her mouth just enough to get the meds in. She gagged, almost managed to spit them back at him, but he slapped his palm over her mouth and ordered, “Swallow, little one. I mean it.”

  Misery washed over her features, bringing childlike innocence to her face. But she swallowed before she decided to ignore him. That was fine with him; he only had a few minutes to get her cleaned up, and by the time he was done, the drugs would have her flying high and long, away from the terror and pain that bound her to her body.

  “I hate you.”

  “I know, little one. I don’t much like myself at the moment.”

  Moving between her legs, he gently parted them further. Revulsion kicked him in the belly. On a deep breath, he used the damp cloth to wipe away the blood and semen down her thighs, her buttocks. He had to wash the cloth three times before he started on her pussy.

  “No!”

  “Raine, it’s okay. I won’t hurt you.” Tenderly, he parted her labia, her whimpers ripping chunks from his composure. The cloth did its job while he waited for lightening to strike and kill him where he stood. “Good girl. It’s okay.”

  He made sure she was dry before he took everything back to the bathroom and dumped it in the hamper. Digging through the cabinet again, he found the cream he used for bruised muscles after a rough hunt and returned to her.

  “This will sting for a moment, little one, but it will soothe what hurts.” Finn lathered the cold cream over his fingers, applying it first to the lips of her pussy. Adding more, he carefully pushed two digits into her sore sheath, eliciting a ragged cry from her, and coated her in the aloe cream. “All done, little one.”

  No natural lubrication. No internal signs of arousal.