by Gregg, Kari
Snarling, the cat captured Shane’s left wrist, then his right. He stretched both over Shane’s head and pushed them painfully down through crisp leaves and into flat, unyielding rock. Shane screamed again, bucking to shake the cat loose, but it was no use. This cat was huge, strong. His head spun at the foul, wretched stench, his stomach rolling with helpless nausea, but he squirmed and wriggled under the cat. Because this cat didn’t respect the mating bite on Shane’s shoulder or the smell of the first cat’s sex on him. No, this cat’s claws dug into the meat of Shane’s wrist with a growled warning that vibrated against Shane’s spine. “No!” Shane yelled again. He shrieked when the cat’s other hand worked down to Shane’s bucking hips to sink claws into him. The pain of the fully extended talons stabbing like daggers fogged his head.
Shane wailed, desperation renewing his struggle, but that only made him hurt worse. The claws holding him dug deeper. The cat’s grip on his wrists tightened, pulverizing bone. Excruciating. He contorted his body to try to get away despite the burn of torn muscle as blood streamed over his groin from his punctured hip.
The weight holding him down abruptly tore free.
Shane flinched and scrambled from the deafening snarls that still resounded too close to his ears, making them ring. He pushed up on his arms to crawl away, then face-planted into the ground when his ruined wrists twisted sickly, refusing to support him. Ignoring the shrieks and lashing claws of the cats, he shoved himself forward on elbows and knees. Once he cleared spattering blood and the thuds of blows landing, he lurched to his feet. Wobbling, heartbeat roaring in his ears, he stumbled away, just one step. Then another. And another.
He ran.
He couldn’t breathe again, this time because of his own screaming, but he couldn’t stop. The stink of the cat, the twin agonies of his shattered wrists… Cats fought over territory and potential mates, but once those mates had been marked— Shane tripped. He plummeted to the ground, grateful that the fall knocked the breath from his lungs. His mindless screams died. He grabbed at vines coiled around a thick tree, frantically grasping in spite of his clumsy fingers. Blood from his torn hip smeared the tree trunk, leaving a blatant trail to follow, but it couldn’t be helped. He yelled again when he tried and failed to wrench himself painfully up, his wrists throbbing. He couldn’t hang on. Instead, he somehow forced his legs to push him to his feet.
Weakening, consumed by agony, he shuffled a few more paces before he fell again. He ricocheted off another tree when he collapsed to the ground. When his aching body slammed into the leaves and the dirt, he stayed. His wrists were fiery miseries. He shivered at moist air cooling the hot blood that slicked his hip and sheeted down his thigh.
Shane couldn’t figure out what the hells had gone wrong.
He couldn’t run anymore. With his broken wrists limp and useless, he couldn’t climb either. Winded, in shock, the best he could manage was sweeping his arms to use leaf cover as camouflage.
A dark shape darted from the canopy. It scooped him against a warm and lightly furred chest. Shane cried out as his world shifted, the cat leaping high into the trees, and then relaxed as the cat murmured, “Precious.”
The cat who’d marked him had won this fight.
He wasn’t so sure of the other battle near camp. Shane didn’t know what had gotten to Fallon, or if the other man lived or died. Arenas were cleared before the Hunt, each perimeter examined to seal off tunnels circumventing the security shield and any opening in their defenses that might be used by Mariket’s most lethal predators. They should’ve been safe—Fallon from predators and Shane from other cats while the first cat’s marks still grooved Shane’s back.
Instead, even in his cat’s tight embrace, Shane felt like he was coming apart. He wrapped his clumsy arms around the cat and hung on. He grunted as they left the tree canopy, the thump of their landing on the forest floor jarring through Shane like a slap. The cat broke into a lope through thinning trees. “He touched me,” Shane said. Stupidly. His skin pebbled, revulsion and blind terror welling up inside him anew. Grief too. He clung to the cat, rubbed against the soft fur, but he couldn’t get the sour, twisted smell out of his head. “He touched me.”
The cat jumped.
When they splashed into warm water and sank like a stone, Shane shouted. Water filled his mouth and poured into his nose, but the cat bolted up, breaking the surface of the pond. The rich mineral scent of the water overwhelmed everything, including the smell of his cat’s sweat. Shane jerked, crushed by the loss of his cat’s scent, but the cat was strong, anchoring Shane against his chest. When Shane’s pulse stopped pounding in his ears, he finally heard the cat crooning to him. “He’s gone. Dead,” he said on a husky purr. “You’re safe. No one will touch you again.”
Shane groaned in agony, in protest—no one should have touched him in the first place.
“Breathe me in, Precious.” The cat nudged Shane’s head to the crook of his neck and shoulder. The scent was stronger there. Not sweat. The pond had washed that free of them both. Shane couldn’t detect the stench of the foreign cat now, and that was good, very good. Shane could still smell blood, though. His own. And he wasn’t sure he’d ever scrub the memory of the other cat’s stink away. While his hip remained underwater, turning the pond cloudy crimson, the punctures in his damaged wrists seeped. So close to the cat, mostly what he smelled was the cat’s lavish mating musk. More concentrated now. Intense. “Just breathe.”
Trembling, hurting—bleeding—Shane obeyed. With those arms and legs locked around him, the cat’s tail whispering along his back under the water, he didn’t want to fight anyway. Blood loss and shock dizzied him, but the cat steadied him. He sucked in air, clenched muscles slowly loosening.
Shane couldn’t stop shaking.
Oh gods, he hurt.
The cat slipped gracefully through the water, kicking them to the pond’s edge. Shane gasped as the cat hoisted him gently onto the moss-covered bank. A pink mixture of blood and water sluiced over his skin as the cat snatched clumps of moss from the rock and pressed fistfuls against his wounded hip. “To stop the bleeding,” the cat said and then heaved from the pond. He shoved Shane flat and hovered protectively over him. “Stay away from him,” he hissed. “Get back!”
Sick, confused, Shane tried to hold on to his cat but couldn’t make his fingers work anymore.
“He needs help, Lore. He’s losing too much blood.”
“He’s been attacked!”
“We know. He needs medical attention.” The voice was pitched low, calming. “Not an evac, I promise.”
A med tech in Arena 4’s blue jumpsuit rushed too close.
The cat’s—Lore’s—muscles bunched. “You’ll take him. When I’m dead.”
Head swimming, chills racking his body, Shane stared up at his cat.
Oh fuck.
He was a victor.
No! He couldn’t be. Not this fast. It didn’t make any sense.
Hurt, dying, Shane didn’t understand what was happening, but the fight hadn’t been knocked from him yet, not completely. He squirmed, trying to force his useless wrists to…shove the cat away? Pull him closer? Gods, he couldn’t think through the pain, and his skin still crawled at the phantom grip of—
“Pack the wounds, Lore.” When Shane’s cat growled, the med tech continued. “I’ll walk you through how to treat his injuries, but you have to let us help him too. If he doesn’t get immediate care, you’ll cripple him. I’ll tranq you first. I swear it.”
Under the direction of the med tech, Lore jammed more moss into the wounds on Shane’s hip. He held Shane down when Shane arched his back, twisting with the miserable hurt. The med tech passed a comlink to Lore to scan Shane’s ruined wrists, and the tech only handled each wrist to check the positioning of splints Lore strapped to Shane to force the broken bones together. Lore, rather than the med techs, applied pressure bandages to replace the moss sopping up blood flowing from five deep punctures on Shane’s hip. The techs didn’t even administer the
shots, two to Shane’s injured hip and the last to his biceps. Lore did. True to his promise, the med tech barely touched Shane.
Didn’t matter.
Shane screamed until his voice broke, regardless of how firmly Lore pushed him into the moss to immobilize him or how securely his face was buried in the cat’s chest. He didn’t have to see the others to know a stranger, a foreigner, an intruder—someone who was not Lore—touched him. He didn’t even have to smell them. Shane felt them there, the wrongness, to the marrow of his bones.
He screamed in that wounded rasp until the sedative finally knocked him out.
Chapter Four
“Life. Fear. Sex. In the arena, everything is confusing and surreal. Whatever you think you know is wrong.”
~ Shane West
Day 3
The canopy
The cats had been using the arenas and the Hunt for generations. Several had carved hollows from trunks in the upper canopy to use as mating dens, and a steady stream of cats had widened and improved dens to increase comfort since. Lore’s was wide enough for the two of them to spoon together in a curl of twined bodies, the hollow lined with fresh leaves under furs to provide a cozy nest. A tangle of vines thick with blue flowers as big as Shane’s missing flatscreen curtained the opening to the outside world, so he knew they must be very high in the treetops. Only small blooms that thrived in shade blossomed in the forest gloom below.
Tucked against his chest by the cat’s arms around him, Shane’s wrists ached.
Lore lapped at the bite in Shane’s shoulder, and Shane shivered at the sting. Then stiffened and sighed as the cat prodded his slick cock in Shane’s crack and smoothly slid into Shane’s ass. Astonishingly, with the cat’s dick filling his body, Shane could think more clearly—a first since the cat knocked him to the forest floor and mounted him what felt like eons ago.
His name was Shane West. He’d fled Narone after his brothers’ attempts to kill him had grown perilously close to succeeding. His grandmother had helped sneak him to Mariket, hoping to hide Shane in the Hunt. If he competed well, he would become a representative to the cats for his home world and too valuable to waste on the family business. One of Shane’s brothers would be named heir instead. Shane would never see Narone again, but he’d survive. Homeless. Alone. But safe.
Except he’d fouled it all up—by becoming Lore’s victor. Which was impossible.
Just like rogue beasts prowling the arenas was impossible.
And attacks on mated competitors by other cats.
Impossible.
But it didn’t feel that way. Shane felt as though, if he’d awoken without his cat cuddled against his back, without Lore slipping into his body, he would have lost his mind.
The gaping maw of his destroyed life stretched before him. The loss of who he’d been, coupled with the confusion of who he was now, was more bewildering and painful than the injuries that tormented him. He didn’t want to—couldn’t—think anymore, and for now, for this moment, he didn’t have to. “Fuck me,” he said, voice still scratchy from his screams.
There wasn’t room in the den for anything save the gentle rocking of his cat’s hips joining them together, but that was all right. Shane ached too much for the raucous sex of the first night’s chase. His hole stung. The tender stab of the cat’s cock inside him made him forget the soreness, though. Moaning, Shane squirmed to meet each thrust, the wicked tingle in his ass building, building, obliterating everything else. He arched his spine, a cry working from his throat when Lore bit into the shoulder wound, but the pain didn’t deflate Shane’s cock. He hardened as Lore’s teeth clamped like a vise. Blood trickled down Shane’s pec, too fast to be licked and sucked into the cat’s voracious mouth.
Their sex was beautiful, consuming. And cruel.
Lore hugged Shane’s wrists to his chest once in silent warning and then dropped a hand to Shane’s hip. He didn’t mark Shane there again. Pristine white bandages—odd in the untamed forest of the arena—covered the punctures the other cat had inflicted and were as impenetrable as Mariket’s defense shields. Lore wouldn’t risk scars on Shane that hadn’t come from him. Instead Lore swept his claws across Shane’s unprotected stomach just above Shane’s bobbing dick. He carved five grooves into Shane’s belly, then five more.
“Oh gods,” Shane moaned, pushing his ass back to welcome the dick filling him.
The cat grunted and bit so hard tears gathered in Shane’s eyes. Good, so good. Even the pain was a comfort, promising Shane that his cat craved him beyond today and this moment. He wasn’t alone. The certainty of the scar Lore tore into his shoulder offered solace, rest, protection. Lore shifted his attention from the wet agony of his mating bite to nip Shane’s earlobe, driving Shane out of his mind. “Want my spend, Precious?”
Shane shuddered, the pleasure from his ass streaking to his balls and then to his untouched cock. “Please. Yes. I—”
“I would give you the world.” While Shane, dazed and needy, grappled with how their temporary mating could have gone so permanently wrong, the cat looped an arm around Shane’s bloodied stomach and fucked him in earnest.
His mistakes, Lore’s, what had happened in the arena below—suddenly none of it mattered.
The smell of sex mixed with the forest scents as well as the sharp coppery tang of blood. The smack of Lore’s groin slapping Shane’s ass broke a quiet punctuated only by moans and their panted breaths. Shane quaked with each thrust, rocking his cock against Lore’s arm. Lore pumped into him in short stabs that jolted through Shane like lightning. Pleasure intensified at his dick, and when the madness took him, Shane groaned. He spilled into their furs in pearly ropes.
Lore stroked Shane’s stomach rather than holding him in place. He licked instead of biting him, the sandpaper scrape of his tongue on Shane’s skin electrifying and soothing all at once. The cock lunging into Shane’s aching ass slowed.
Shane choked back a sob.
The cat hadn’t come. Damn thing had the stamina of no species Shane had ever known. He needed it, though, required the cat’s semen inside him, painting his guts, drenching him in his cat’s scent.
Lore rolled to his back and manhandled Shane to perch on top of him. The rigid cock buried within Shane felt more necessary than breathing. Shaking, bloodied from Lore’s scratches, Shane tried to brace himself on the cat’s chest so he could work Lore’s dick deeper, but pain flared laser-hot in his broken wrists. He would’ve collapsed if Lore hadn’t caught him.
“Here.” The cat raised Shane’s hands and threaded them through vines overhead, anchoring his arms by the crooks of his elbows. “Ride me, Precious. Show me how much you want me flooding into you.”
After Lore had hunted him and their brutal first fucks, Shane’s hole was tender. His entire body was overstimulated. The throbbing of his wrists from the attack of the other cat had renewed. His scratches smarted, both from mating Lore and from branches that had whipped him during his wild race that first night. His balls felt dry and empty. Shane had never come so much. Had it only been a day? Two? He wouldn’t come again, not this quickly. But he desperately wanted the cock inside him spraying him full of the cat’s amazing scent, so wincing, he lifted his hips. The hard tube of flesh stretching his hole slipped from his ass until just the tip remained inside. Shane slammed down, whimpering as he impaled his overtaxed body. The cat purred, staring at him with hooded yellow eyes that urged him. Lore stretched beneath him, thrusting up, the fur of his groin brushing the scratches on Shane’s thighs.
Shane bobbed on the cat’s dick, using his upper body strength and the fulcrum of the vines to steady himself. His cock slapped wetly on his blood-smeared stomach as the muscles of his abdomen tightened and released. He milked Lore’s dick, loving the sounds the cat made while Shane struggled to please him. Sweat poured off Shane, mixing with blood and cum. Grunting, he took the cat deep, so deep, his heart skipping when a low rumble vibrated in Lore’s chest. “Just like that.”
Shane shiver
ed. He worked the cat’s dick as good and as hard as he could, but blood loss sapped his strength. Shane knew Lore was close. The cat’s cock was hard as granite in his ass, and the oils Lore produced while he was in season slicked Shane’s crack. Shane panted as though he’d been fucking the cat forever instead of moments, and still, his body failed him. “Please,” he said, breathless, quaking. “Help me.”
Lore’s hands flew to Shane’s pumping ass. He took control of the thrusts, shoving Shane’s body down as his hips speared up. Shane yelled out his relief. Grinding pleasure married with the hurt of the quickening slap of their bodies. The instant his cat’s claws dug into his ass cheeks, Shane’s cock tingled. He couldn’t resist the feral pleasure. Didn’t want to. Shane pulled the vines overhead, keening like a wounded animal as the cat fucked him, and Shane’s dick grew harder, longer. Needier. His balls slammed again and again into the cat’s groin. There was no way Shane could produce more semen.
But he would come again anyway.
The cat would make him.
As Lore lurched up, Shane finally accepted he no longer had any say over his body. If the cat wanted him to come again, he would. “Give it to me, Precious. Come for me, and I’ll shoot you so full, you’ll never get me out.”
Shane arched his spine and surrendered. The orgasm streaking up his dick hurt as much as it pleasured him, but a thin, weak stream spit from the tip just the same. Shane gritted his teeth around the shout that wanted to tear from his throat. His arms tensed, biceps clenching, but then the cat finally growled. One last lunge into Shane’s ass, claws like fire in his ass cheeks, and Lore’s dick sprayed. Shane shuddered at the scalding heat. Lore’s grasp tightened, making Shane take every burst of semen splashing into his guts. It warmed him from the inside out. So deliciously.
Senses spinning out of control, Shane cried out as the vines that kept him upright snapped. Lore groaned, gathering Shane against his sweaty chest. His hips continued to rock, dick spurting into Shane. “Give me your mouth.”