I stared at him in incomprehension. “Now, what?”
“Now tell me about these issues.” He rubbed a hand over his face wearily. “Is it the whole brother-sister thing again? Because I swear to you, Rachel, there's not so much as a drop of common blood in our veins. We're not even fourth cousins twice removed.”
“No,” I said, curling my legs under me carefully and smoothing down the edge of my towel. “No, it's not that exactly.” I didn't want to tell him what it was—didn't want to tell him in the worst way because it was so embarrassing I could barely think about it, let alone talk about it.
“Well then?” He looked at me questioningly. “Is it that you're still having problems accepting how I dealt with my curse before I found you? Because honestly, Rache, I didn't just pick people at random. I actually researched their lives. I followed them—watched them beating women and selling drugs to kids and a hundred other horrible things. No one I killed to free myself from my other form was a saint by any stretch of the imagination.”
I bit my lip for a moment and thought of the bloody bodies of the mafia wiseguys he'd killed. No saints indeed. Maybe I could bend my ideals on this one—at least a little. “I believe you,” I said at last. “I do, Richard. It's hard for me to take, but I guess…I guess I can accept your past as long as you promise never to do anything like that in the future.”
He nodded gravely. “As long as you stay with me I can control the curse. So I'll swear never to kill again as long as I have you by my side. If you leave, all bets are off, though. I don't intend to spend the rest of my life as a beast.”
“I guess that's fair,” I said, nodding. But when he scooted up the bed and reached for me, I still pulled away from him.
“Rachel.” He looked at me sternly. “There's something else. Something you're not telling me. Whatever it is, I need to know because it's standing between us.”
I could feel my cheeks beginning to heat up. “I…I don't like the way I feel when I'm around you,” I said, trying to think of a way to say it without saying it. “I mean…the way I seem to lose control. The way I can't say no to…to anything.”
“Anything?” He raised one black eyebrow at me and frowned. “Or something specific? Tell me, Rachel. I need to know.”
It seemed like I was just going to have to say it. “Richard,” I said, looking down at my hands and speaking slowly. “You made me want you. Even when I thought of you as my brother. Even when you took me while you were…while you weren't even human. While you were an animal.” I looked up at him, feeling my cheeks heat to burning with my shame. “What does that say about me?” I asked him. “What kind of person am I to want to have that kind of relationship? It's sick—I'm sick.”
“No, you're not.” He stroked my cheek gently. “You're not sick, Rachel. You're Amon-kai, and we are a different breed. There's nothing wrong with wanting me to take you. With your desire to give yourself to me.”
“Yes, there is,” I insisted. “Especially when I…I enjoyed last night. Well,” I rushed on. “I don't know if enjoyed is the right word, but…but I wanted you. Wanted you in me even though you were…were an animal. I spread my legs for you willingly, and even though part of me hated it, part of me loved it. Part of me wanted it. I don't want to be like that. I don't want to be that person.”
“I think I see the problem.” He scooted closer to me and put a warm hand on my bare knee. I shivered but didn't try to move it. “The problem is that you're still thinking like a human,” Richard said. “But you're not human—neither one of us is. We're Amon-kai.”
“Stop saying that,” I said irritably. “What does it even mean?”
“It means that your body has different needs and desires, and there's nothing wrong with acting on them. Look,” he said reasonably. “You're upset because you wanted me to fuck you—to breed you—even when I was in my beast form. Right?”
I nodded briefly, not meeting his eyes.
“But that's normal for us,” he told me quietly. “In fact, back at the beginning of our race it's how prospective Lanor-zurs found their Lana-zeels.”
I looked up at him. “What do you mean? I thought they were bound as children—the way you said we were.”
“That's a fairly recent custom,” Richard told me. “It used to be that when a female became fertile, she was taken to a stone altar in the middle of a large field on the night of the full moon. Then she was stripped naked and bound on her hands and knees with her legs chained wide apart so that she was helpless to resist what happened next.”
I looked up at him with wide eyes, captivated by the story against my will. “What…what happened next?” I asked, biting my lip.
Richard stroked my knee gently. “All of the prospective Lanor-zurs came to circle her in a pack—and this was after they had changed and were in beast form. One by one they each mounted the steps to the altar. They breathed in her scent and tasted her nipples and pussy as she knelt there, vulnerable and exposed.”
“And then?” I knew what was coming next, but I wanted to hear him say it. For some reason the story made my sex feel swollen and sensitive. I could just imagine the poor girl, bound in the moonlight on her hands and knees, forced to submit, just as I had been forced to submit, while the hot, wet tongues of her prospective mates lashed at her nipples and lapped at her open cunt.
“If her scent was attractive enough, the male who was tasting her would breed her,” Richard said matter-of-factly. “And if she was attractive to more than one male, then she got bred more than once. Sometimes the same female would be bred by four or five different males.”
“My God!” I blurted out. “How…why…?” I had barely survived my own ordeal the night before. I couldn't imagine going through it four more times. “Why, why would they do that?” I finally managed to get out.
“To learn which one of them was her true mate—her Lanor-zur,” Richard said patiently. “You see, her body would only open all the way to the right male. And so the male that was able to get his knot all the way inside her pussy, to join himself to her and shoot his essence more deeply into her body than any of the others, was her mate. That's where the instinct to breed hard and deep comes from—it's a biological imperative. And it's also why the body of the Lana-zeel—your body—sometimes craves a second breeding almost at once. To strengthen the bond with the right male.”
“You said you wanted it to happen,” I said softly.
Richard leaned closer and looked in my eyes. “I did, Rachel,” he murmured. “I wanted your lust for me to be so strong you couldn't help yourself.” He laughed ruefully. “But I didn't count on you being so bull-headed and stubborn.”
I lifted my chin. “I don't want to do something that doesn't feel right to me, that's all.”
“Is it beginning to feel at least a little more right?” Richard asked me. “At least now you understand why your body craved mine even when I came to you as a beast—it's in your nature to crave being bred by the beast.”
I looked down at my hands, my heart pounding. “Does that…does that mean I'll want you again that way?”
“You may or you may not,” Richard said neutrally. “My essence is stronger when I'm in beast form—more concentrated—and your body will probably crave it at some point. Possibly at every full moon when it's easiest for me to change completely.”
“So if I stay with you I'll…we'll do it that way again?”
“Only if you want to,” he said soothingly. “And even if I change completely, I'll still retain my human consciousness—my sense of self. You do that for me—our bond tethers my mind to my body. So I can be as gentle or as rough as you want me to and you won't have to be afraid.”
“I'm not,” I said, and was surprised to know it was true. The idea that I might want to have beast sex with him again still made my cheeks hot, but if the urge was truly a part of my genetic heritage…well, I would have to think about that. About whether I really believed wanting something so strange could actually be a biologi
cal urge rather than an emotional disorder.
“Can you do it, Rachel?” Richard asked me, lifting my chin to look into my eyes. “Can you accept me for what I am and yourself for what you are? Can you let go of your human ideas long enough to embrace your Amon-kai heritage?”
“I…” I searched his eyes, Amon-kai eyes. “I don't know, Richard,” I said at last. “I need a little time. A little time to think about it.”
“All right.” He nodded and stood up from the bed, careless of his nudity as the towel dropped away. “I'm going out, Rachel, and I won't be back until after dark. But when I do get back, I want your answer. Understand?”
“You'll have it,” I said quietly. “I promise you that, Richard. One way or another, you'll have it.”
“Good.” He reached for his clothes and left me to sit on the bed and try to decide how I would spend the rest of my life.
Chapter Twenty-four
I knew I was supposed to be thinking about my life and making some difficult choices, but being up all night and the emotional scene I'd gone through with Charles had tired me out. I lay on the bed, too exhausted to even crawl under the covers, and tried to consider my options.
On one hand, having a normal life with Charles was now completely out of the question. In fact, I didn't even know if I wanted to go on living and practicing law in a town where I might run into him at any time during the course of my work. Tampa, which had seemed like my home town for so long, was no longer where I wanted to spend my life. The little lilac bungalow I loved so much just wasn't home anymore, but then again, I didn't know where home was if it wasn't in the cozy nest I'd created for myself. Maybe home was wherever Richard was. Maybe it always had been.
I rolled over and pressed my head into the pillow. Did I really want to spend the rest of my life with him? Did I want to give myself up to the urges I had suppressed for so long? I remembered how hard it had been for me when my mother first took me away, the craving for raw meat I'd had to suppress, and the desperate fight to fit in, to seem like just another human girl at the series of anonymous schools I'd gone to.
I'd given up my heritage at my mother's command. I'd forgotten the joy of hunting in the deep of the night and learned to ignore the call of the moon. I'd even managed to suppress most of my senses until all that was left of my Amon-kai nature was good night vision. I had done all of that, given all of it up because she wanted me to, because she warned me there was danger in remembering what I really was—that I was something besides human.
And she was right, I realized as I rolled over the other way, trying to get comfortable beneath the thin towel which barely covered me. There were dangers like nothing I had ever imagined. The man I was considering spending my life with had a killer beast locked inside him, and the door to that cage wasn't always firmly closed.
But it wasn't Richard's beast that bothered me so much as the fact that I desired it—desired him, even when he was in that other form. I understood the story he'd told me about the mating habits of our people, but I still wasn't sure I wanted to give in to those urges, even if they were a biological imperative. In fact, there was so much about my Amon-kai heritage that made me uncomfortable. So much that I had been taught was dirty, disgusting, wrong…
I sighed heavily as my head landed on just the right spot on my pillow. Suddenly it didn't seem to matter what thorny moral questions were crowding my head because I couldn't keep my eyelids open one second more. I curled into a ball beneath the thin towel and let sleep take me.
* * *
This time I didn't dream of the boy with wolf's eyes or the statues or the blood. Instead, I dreamed what might have been—snippets of a life that might have been mine if my mother hadn't taken me away.
I saw Richard and myself as older children and watched in impossibly quick glimpses as we grew through puberty and to the age of consent. I saw him come to my room the first time as more than a friend and brother—I saw him come as my promised mate. I saw him raise my nightgown and caress my breasts, kissing and sucking my tender nipples until I moaned with delight. I watched as he explored my sex, carefully parting my ripe pussy lips to touch me and taste me for the first time.
Even in the dream the pleasure was almost more than I could bear. And in the dream I felt no shame. I only knew that this was right, that this was the way it was supposed to be between us because this was the way it had been for our people for thousands of years. Even when Richard pressed the thick head of his cock into my virgin sex and filled me with his cum, I felt only joy and pleasure in giving myself to him, in letting him know my body in this most intimate of ways.
In my dream the years flew until the night when my body was finally completely ripe for the taking. I saw myself naked in the garden—the same garden where we had performed the bonding ceremony so many years before. I heard a growl behind me and when I turned, I saw Richard's beast for the first time, standing in the moonlight.
My sleeping self gasped at the sight and wanted to run, to get away from the frightening monster that had suddenly appeared before me. But my dreaming self, the young woman I might have been if only I had been given the chance, had no fear of the huge, shaggy form. In my dream, I stepped forward bravely and raised my hand to stroke the coarse black pelt that felt like rough silk under my palm. Then, daring even more greatly, I let my fingertips trail down the beast's broad chest until I was stroking the long, thick cock with the swelling knot at its base. The beast growled gently, a sound of desire that rose from its inhumanly broad chest. But again, I felt no fear, only a deep desire to know Richard completely in his most primal form.
I watched myself turn my back to the beast and kneel on the long silky grass in the center of the garden. This was where we had started the bond we shared between us, and this was where we would seal it. I felt the rough pelt of the beast as it knelt over me, preparing to mount me, and its heated breath on the back of my neck. I spread my legs eagerly, feeling the long grass tickle my naked inner thighs. My pussy was wet, drenched with my juices, ready for my lover, ready to take everything he offered and more.
The dream seemed to slow down now, as if to show me the tiniest detail while the beast mounted my dreaming self. I watched as the thick cock breached my cunt for the first time and saw the expression of ecstasy on my face as the wide knot at its base finally found its way inside me. I watched in horror and fascination as I rutted with the beast, as I spread my legs and arched my back to get its cock more fully inside me. I gasped and groaned and cried with pleasure when its hot essence began filling my cunt.
God, could I really be enjoying this, even in a dream? Could I really have given in to my Amon-kai instincts so completely that I wanted to be fucked by the beast? Apparently, in the dream, I could and I had. What I was watching wasn't the me that was, the me that had been taken away as a little girl and taught that everything she wanted and longed for was bad. It was the me that could have been. Or, I realized, the me that could be, if only I would give in and accept the Amon-kai part of my nature.
I watched as the beast lifted its shaggy head, howling its lust to the moon above as it bred me, as it took me completely, owning and claiming me as I had always meant to be claimed. Beneath its bulk, the slender blond woman on her hands and knees howled, too, in pleasure and in completion. She had what she wanted, what she needed, what her body had demanded for years. And was that really so wrong?
* * *
I woke with a start, my heart pounding and my pussy soaked with my juices. I remembered every detail of the dream, right down to the end. Instead of trying to push it away, I examined it, trying not to feel ashamed of the desire that rose in me when I thought of the erotic details. Was it really so wrong, what my body wanted? Was it really so wrong to open myself to the part of me I had suppressed for so long?
I sat up in bed and saw that it was dark outside—I had been so exhausted I had slept the day away. Soon Richard would be back, and I still didn't know what I would tell him. Standing, I pulled
a thin silk robe around me and went through the Florida room out onto my small back porch.
The moon was full and high overhead, and the air was perfumed with night blooming jasmine, a scent I always associated with my childhood and home. For once my nosy next-door neighbors appeared to have gone to bed early. All their lights were out, so it was just me and the moon.
Talking a deep breath, I untied the robe and let it fall to the ground at my feet. The cool night air teased my tight nipples and slid cool fingers along the slippery lips of my sex. I was still wet and throbbing from my dream, and I spread my legs, welcoming the invisible invader, opening myself to the night as I hadn't done since I was a child.
I could feel the moonlight like icy fingers at the back of my neck and smell every plant in my small garden distinctly and separately. I could hear the heartbeat of a gray squirrel that lived in the branches of one of my trees and smell the warmth of its fur even though it was hidden away and not moving a muscle. I could see everything with my Amon-kai eyes. The shadow in the corner of the house wasn't just a shadow; it was one of the many tiny lizards that lived near the cool shelter of my home, and the cloud overhead wasn't a cloud but an owl, searching for dinner.
Suddenly, there was something else in my line of vision. A larger shadow detached itself from the side of the house and drifted silently forward. It was Richard, and he was in the form of his beast.
My first instinct was to scream and run—to get away from him in the way I hadn't been able to in the cage the night before. My body was poised for flight, my heart stuttering in my chest like a machine gun, but then, something stopped me. Maybe it was the dream I'd just had, or maybe it was the realization that if I ran now I would be running forever. Running from the man I loved, the man who loved me, running from my future and my past and never finding happiness because I was too timid to look it in the face and realize that what might be wrong for everyone else on the planet was somehow right for me.
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