The Bid

by Jacquelyn Frank

  “Vejhon!” She rasped his name as her hands tried to countermand his actions with firm, staying movements. “I know it’s all overwhelming, but take some time to adjust before you—Jhon!”

  Jackpot. He yanked aside fabric, hearing it tear and not much caring. He tore at it again, feeling her entire body jerk under the force of it, a low, grumbling sound of satisfaction rushing out of him when it gave way to him. His thoughts were simple and clear. All he wanted was to drown in the smell of her. The richer the better. And, although he was blind and all but deaf, he found himself licking his way unerringly into the depths of her beckoning pussy.

  His tongue touched concentrated aphrodisiac, or so it seemed to him, because the whiplash of pleasure that raced through him far outstripped her mewl of delight. His entire body rippled with excitement, all of his senses now blocking out anything that wasn’t centered against his mouth. Eyes still closed, he slowed to a detailed, tracing draw of his tongue along the outer lips of her sex. Her skin was perfectly smooth, radiating intense heat and fragrance as he glided over it.

  Jhon moved his body, now feeling the backs of her thighs with both hands and dragging her harshly beneath himself so he could better bury himself between her legs. He felt her fingers enter his hair in reflex, a pull and push of protest that he quelled by sticking his tongue deep into the flesh his hands were spreading open to him.

  “Oh, damn,” she hiccupped on a staggered breath. “Jhon,” she moaned, “you don’t understand what you’re doing!”

  He begged to differ. And did it matter? He had never tasted anything so delicious in all of his life. He was no stranger to women, but he knew without a doubt that there was no experiencing anything like this anywhere else in the universe. His body was wracked with pain, but he didn’t care. He couldn’t see, but he didn’t care. All he could focus on was the incredible aroma of heated musk, and now the feel and flavor as well. All of it raced through his senses and into his brain, screaming wavelengths of near ecstasy down the entirety of his body. He had to raise his hips to make way for the pulse-pounding tumescence he quickly developed as his woman finally stopped struggling and instinctively shifted her hips to raise herself into his foraging mouth. Now her hands were holding him to her; soft, low trills of pleasure rolling out of her.

  He used searching fingers to spread her fully apart, and immediately he found the tight knot of flesh and nerves that was her clit. He confirmed the find by swirling his tongue around her in slow, torturous circles, lapping up her hypnotic flavor and hearing her outcries of response.

  “Vejhon! Mercy, don’t stop! Don’t!” She canted up into his mouth as he sucked on her clitoris, rolling and tugging her against his teeth until he could feel her entire body bending back like an overstrung bow. “Jhon, please…” she begged in a sob as he repeated the sequence again and again. Her feet climbed his back mindlessly, her fingers clutching his hair and her thighs stroking against his ears.

  Scent. She suddenly was soaked in it, an even more intense concentration than before. He felt the fluid running down over his fingers and quickly moved to chase it to the source. Her entire body jolted as he tongued her from her perineum to the opening of her vagina. He left a lazy finger against her clit like a book marker and thrust his insatiable tongue inside of her. He licked and swallowed down every drop of her essence he could get, and then strummed her clit for more. Again and again he did this to her, never quite letting her reach peak, and not much caring. All he wanted was that scent and savory sweetness to go on forever while he feasted. Then, after deciding to use his tongue on her clit once more, he licked his way up toward it…

  …and found it unoccupied by his working finger.

  Puzzled for a minute, he recaptured his bearings with the touch of fingers, lips, and tongue all around her wet pussy. When comprehension dawned, it dawned with a hard rush of blood in his cock and a wrenching tightness to his balls. Two clits. One to play with an inch or so above the one tilted toward the top of the opening of her vagina. That meant if he were to stroke into her from above, he would hit across her second clit on each movement in and out of her. Amazed, he tested his theory to see if he was right. He fluttered his tongue over the finding just as he worked a finger into her. Neither did he neglect the higher set circle of nerves, his thumb flicking over it just as before.

  “OH!” she cried out. “Oh, fuck…no…no…”

  She said no, but her body felt like it was on super vibrate. He felt inner muscles clamping around his finger, making his impatient cock twitch and drip eagerly. Gods, he needed to fuck. He needed it so badly he couldn’t even keep still. Pain, sound, light…none of it affected him. His focus was all on the sweet little bitch beneath him getting ready to come. He should be inside of her. Riding her to the outer rim and back. But another part of him, the part that wanted to eat her pussy forever, wanted to make her come so he could smear the resulting juices all over his face and body. He wanted her scent. He needed her scent on him. Everywhere. Forever.

  When a tiny voice of logic intervened to remind him he could easily have both, Jhon chuckled wickedly against her, and began to work a second thick finger into her body as he lapped up over one clit straight to the other, then back again. He played, drawing a figure eight around them again and again with his tongue, loving the feel of her nails scoring his scalp as she lost her senses, thriving on the way she mewled and cried in higher and higher pitches as she built up for release. It was so much fun, so much to play with, he couldn’t decide how to finish her best. Then he just decided to skip between the two nubs, sucking one then the other again and again against the twirling massage of his tongue.

  “Jhon…Jhon, it’s too much,” she rasped, her nails taking little nips of him again. “Oh! No! I can’t!”

  She could. And she did. She exploded like a sun flare, bursting with fire meant to affect the entire universe. She locked up tight around his fingers, squeezing in a vice that felt like it could snap his knuckles. Just imagining that vice around his heavily swollen cock made his pulse roar in his head. Then he felt the rush of hot, viscous juices running over his fingers and hand, allowing him to slip free of her so he could set his tongue to the chore of savoring every last drop. Her limbs were shaking against him, and she was crying out his name. When he touched his tongue to that clit so near her vaginal opening, he felt her ricochet like she’d hit a springboard, her orgasm double backing on itself and turning her downswing into a second screaming peak. The response was absolutely fascinating, not to mention productive for his appetite for her essence.

  Unable to bear it any longer, he blindly climbed her shivering body, setting his inflamed prick against her drenched and sensitive sex. Her hands streaked down his back as he rubbed against her, lubing his penis in her juicy pussy before notching the swollen head to her entrance. Oh yeah, he needed to fuck her into oblivion. The way he was feeling right then, he could come all night long and it wouldn’t be enough.

  “Wait!” she croaked, her throat dry from the rasping speed of her breathing and the screams of pleasure he’d wrenched out of her.

  He didn’t want to wait. He started to stuff himself into her, little increments so he could feel it all again and again. She whimpered, instinctively tilting her hips to accommodate him yet again. Feeling sadistic, he pulled back after only an inch and took himself quickly back and forth across that tempting little clit. He did it again when he felt her react with a full-body shudder.

  “Mercy, baby, please,” she begged in his ear, her nails biting into his shoulders. “Wait.”

  “No,” he said adamantly. “I need to fuck you. Hard. Deep. Come inside you.”

  “Who am I?” She gasped the question when he started to slide inside of her again. “My name! Oh…Jhon!”

  “Hanna,” he rasped. “Hanna. I wanted you the minute I saw you, Hanna. Beautiful blue skin like nothing I’ve seen before. Curves that can kill. And that mouth so dark I can’t look at it without seeing it sucking my cock dry in my mind.
Bad, bad Hanna who stroked my cock and didn’t need that second stim to make me come that hard.” He punctuated the observation with a heavy thrust. He needed to be inside of her deep and hard so suddenly that he put all of his power into the movement.

  The clutch of muscles seizing around him was so unexpected and so powerful that Vejhon gasped out in shocked delight. Of course, he didn’t know better, so he tried to withdraw for a better stroke. The sucking draw of a muscular vice that refused to release him sent his blood pressure skyrocketing. The sensation was incredible, striking every key nerve at the head of his already overanxious erection, and rippling along the thick shaft only partially submerged in her body. Desperate to move, to stroke, to fuck, he tried to move again and again, only making her clutch all the tighter and quickly jerking him to the edge of orgasm.

  “No. No no no no no,” he groaned. “Hanna, gods, don’t…I need…why?”

  “Still,” she instructed breathlessly for the second time. He was so overwhelmed he hadn’t heard her the first time. “Keep still a moment. Just for a few seconds. Don’t struggle…oh baby please, don’t move.”

  He wanted to listen, but he couldn’t seem to make himself keep still. In fact, the draw of her body had him completely enthralled. There was a kind of rhythmic sucking to it reminiscent of being drawn on by an eager mouth and hand. He was being pumped and he couldn’t break out of the pattern. Again…and again…he fought against her, yet moved in tempo to her at the same time. She was whispering, panting something to him. But his head was humming with the crescendo crashing up into him.

  He came like a rocket, the orgasm ripping up through the pathways of his body with a burn that made him feel like he was shooting pure acid into her. But not really into her. He was seizing with pleasure, gripping at fabric beneath his hands violently as he bucked and ground out grunts of obvious satisfaction. He shuddered with the effort it took to handle the impact.

  Then he finally drew a full breath and let all his weight drop over her. He felt the bath of his own cum drenching him as it ran out of her resisting body. Vejhon finally opened his eyes, fighting the screaming sensitivity to the light so he could look down into her face. Her expression was unreadable, as though she were being cautious to react, and he was suddenly embarrassed for his lack of control and selfish behavior.

  “No. Don’t think that way,” she said, her voice so breathily sexy it made the hairs on the back of his neck prickle. “We have a lot to learn about one another. That takes practice.” She smiled in a way that knotted up his nervous system all over again. “I like practice.” She grinned and nudged up a brow lecherously. He laughed, unable to help himself.

  For about five seconds.

  Then everything came rushing back over him. Like a second orgasm, only not nearly as much fun and nowhere near as welcome. Pain. He was sliced up along his skin in a dozen or more places and in his furor and haste to have her he had pulled open every single wound. The hurt was intense and sharp and he couldn’t imagine how he’d been able to ignore it. Even for the sake of sex.

  The smell of sex was definitely all over both of them now. He was breathing it in with every breath, the musk and sweetness of her body hotly combined with the testosterone and spice of his. He’d marked her thoroughly and everyone would know she was his.

  The possessive and distracted thought was so unlike him that it snapped him out of the tangent and sent his attention back to other details. His demanding senses were settling, although they still seemed to blare at him in a too-loud cacophony of information. He noticed Hanna was simply watching him, as if she expected something from him. He lifted his weight onto his palms, groaning a bit when the movement jarred his injuries, and looked down at their connected bodies.

  He was naked, she was not. Well, mostly not. He’d torn her dress up to her navel, the fascinating cobalt blue indentation of it making made him smile when he saw it. They were in his bed. The bedding…

  …was saturated in blood.

  He knew it by its smell, shocked he hadn’t noticed it before. He jerked away from her, scrambling back to see her in her entirety, searching for injuries.

  “It’s yours, Jhon.”

  His. Of course. The wounds. From what? He stared at the slashes across his sides and thighs, over his back, hips, and buttocks. His skin was smeared with blood everywhere, and so was hers.

  Clean her. The instinct to clean and care for her was instantaneous and unquestionable. Uncaring of his own wounds, he swung himself out of the bed and scooped her up after him. One step into the tub later, and he was stripping away her ruined dress and waiting for the soothing heat of the water to cover them. It stung as much as it eased, but it was for the best, he knew.

  Gently, after arming himself with soap, he began his task of bathing her. He was meticulous, cleaning every spot he could find, even making her giggle softly as she patiently withstood his obsessive need to see her skin spotlessly free of his blood. Handling her with far more care than he had a few minutes ago in bed, he turned her around so he could see to her back, moving the thick braid of her hair forward over her shoulder. He drew in air quickly when he saw, to his unending fascination, that she had stunning spots of silver blue running along her shoulders and tapering down her spine all the way into the crease dividing her gorgeous backside. He traced the rosettes’ pattern, seeking texture differences and finding none.

  “My turn,” she murmured over her shoulder before she turned back to face him. She made him sit back in the water, soothing him softly when he cursed at the stinging of his wounds. She found a bathing linen and chose a soap very carefully. Once she had soaped up the linen she slowly began to cleanse his every wound and all of his skin. The soap must have been medicated, because about halfway through he noticed a numbing effect and the scent reminded him of a kind of antiseptic.

  “I don’t remember how I got hurt,” he mused absently.

  “Do you remember meeting my family?”

  Family? He would remember that, wouldn’t he? He’d been damn curious about them. Yet he had no recall. There wasn’t much making sense to him at the moment, besides the fact that she was starting to smell really appetizing again.

  “Do you remember the special room? The one with the bellcats?”

  “Oh hell yes,” he said, his body startling with surprise. “You said I was going to die. I thought you were feeding me to your pets.” He pulled back to stare at her, confusion furrowing his brow. “That’s how I got hurt.”

  “That’s how you died,” she corrected. “Once my family approved of you, as I knew they would, they began to take you across to our world. You’ve come over to the Otherside now, Vejhon. You’ve become part of the family. Look…”

  She touched his head and turned it until he was looking in the reflecting glass behind him. In amongst the scratches…the claw marks…was a pattern of spots just like hers, only his were a muted gold that almost matched his hair. He knew damn well he hadn’t had spots on his back before, and those sure as hell were claw marks all over his body. He’d been mauled by her cats. It looked like every single one had gotten a lick in. He whipped his head around and narrowed dangerously angry eyes on her.

  “I’m a few chapters behind, cupcake. You want to explain all of this?”

  “Yes. I wanted to explain it when you woke up but…” She trailed off, not needing to finish. He seemed to recall her asking him to wait. He also recalled the drive inside of him that had made him refuse to listen. Even now her draw on him was dynamic and really damned distracting.

  Taking initiative, Hanna laid gentle, coaxing hands on his shoulders and made him rest back in the water. Her touch soothed, even as it stirred, but Jhon forced himself to focus on his need for information as opposed to the needs of his unusually hungry body. As she calmed him and continued to bathe him, Hanna spoke with full disclosure for the first time in a very long time with someone outside of Najir and the family.

  12

  “Call it a blessing or call it a cu
rse, but my family has carried it for hundreds of years. In fact, there was a time when many families were able to travel to the Otherside. The Otherside meaning the world of the beasts. A special world where we could live between here and there, as people or as beasts, trading from one to the other on command. Because of this skill, many people looked on my ancestors as gods. In time, that would change. A religious war targeted us as infidels and pretender gods. Though we are powerful, these fanatics hunted us to near extinction. This House is the only one to have survived with the ability mostly intact. When we go to the Otherside, we become the great and powerful bellcat.”

  “Wait! Are you telling me that when you refer to meeting your family, you mean those cats?” Jhon was so aghast he hardly knew how to react. The concept she was proposing was preposterous…and not a little insane. “And ‘cats’ is too mild a term, Hanna, because they’re massive, lethal predators!”

  Hanna didn’t blame him for his disbelief and took no insult in his descriptors. She realized she had such a long way to bring him yet. “After this genocide,” she continued, “in order to preserve our survivors, we left the jungles we once called home and became pretenders in the society of our destroyers. We hid in the safety of normalcy. If we use care, there are no outward signs of our heritage, except for the spotting down our backs which can be hidden under clothing or cosmetics if need be. In this way we began protecting ourselves; by gaining social status, power, and, unfortunately, with a great deal of inbreeding.

  “Then the great apocalypse came and all but the strongest families of this nation were destroyed. Our ability to shift into the Otherside helped to protect some of us from that horrible time of cataclysm. Forty-four Houses survived in all, including ours, and each would earn a seat in what would become the Chamber of Masters and the beginning of a new world.

  “Unfortunately, this meant our genetic pool became severely limited. Our need to stay hidden remained paramount, lest we be hunted again and destroyed, so breeding with outsiders was out of the question. Our numbers dwindled, and the ability to shift from the Otherside became limited.