The Nightwind's Woman

by Charlotte Boyett-Compo

  Snarling at a male who dared glance his way, Wylym strolled away from the den. He gave a group of pups the evil eye as he passed and they cowered as he expected. As disgusting as he found the adult adlets in this wretched pack, he had even more contempt for their whelps. Not a one of them had partaken of human flesh before he and Oylevehr took control of the pack. But then again, neither had ninety percent of the adults. Only the elderly former Alpha and his mate remembered what human flesh tasted like and had halfheartedly feasted on the two human females Oylevehr brought back from a hunt.

  “Government assistance,” Wylym scoffed. “Doling out road kill and zoo demises in lieu of letting them use their natural gods-given rights to hunt humans. Sickening!”

  The pack had become a group of welfare recipients with no backbones.

  There was one pup, though, Wylym thought—looking around for the scrawny little prick whose name he hadn’t bothered to ask—who had been eager to dive into the carcasses. Ripping and snarling, salivating as he should have, the pup showed potential but where that one was now was anyone’s guess. The pup stayed away from the den as much as possible. Once his chores were done, you wouldn’t see hide nor hair of him for the remainder of the day.

  Which was the way it should be with pups.

  Walking out to the edge of the overhang that looked down into the meandering river, he braced one foot on a rock, put his hands on his hips and surveyed what he had decreed his kingdom on Terra. He lifted his head, sniffed the cooling air of early autumn and smiled. Once snow came, he would teach these ball-less bastards how to hunt in the towns surrounding the den. He smiled. Picking off the humans in their own backyards was a challenge that made his blood sing.

  Something shifted over his predatory senses and he cocked his head to one side. What was that new scent that had drifted in on an errant breeze? It had the slight tang of human but an undernote of something more…

  “Exciting,” he said. He smacked his lips. “Enticing.”

  He turned away from the sweeping vista below him and strode purposefully to the opening of the den in which his twin was grunting and thrusting.

  “Oylevehr!” he called out. “Food on two hooves!”

  There was a sputtering of curses then his brother came out of the den, snagging his pants into place around his hips. “Where?” he snarled.

  “Close by. Can you not smell it?” Wylym demanded.

  Oylevehr sniffed the air. His lips peeled back over very long fangs. “Aye. Sweet!”

  “Let us make haste to—”

  “Dearg duls!”

  The shout that came reverberating from the forest beyond the cliffs was filled with terror. It came from a young throat and Wylym was fairly sure it belonged to the young pup who he had been contemplating making his protégé.

  “Dearg dullllllllllllllllls!”

  “Here?” Oylevehr questioned. “On Terra?” His brows drew together. “How?”

  “Good question,” Wylym replied. He was too keenly aware he was trembling. “Let us g-go and mutilate the b-bastard!”

  “Aye,” Oylevehr agreed with no conviction.

  Brave talk for men whose faces had gone stark white at the mere mention of the creature coming at them.

  “We w-will tear him ap-part at the seams,” Wylym boasted in a voice that shamed him.

  That wasn’t quite how it worked out. The moment the twin adlets got a look at the ferocious, foaming-at-the-mouth beast that was sprinting after the pup, their mouths dropped open. All around them, the pack was diving for their dens—mewling with fear, the females screeching like owls. Though the twins stood their ground, they were bowled over by the rampaging beast coming at them like a rocket on rails. They went flying backward across the clearing—their asses dragging along the rocky ground—and would have risen to fight had they not seen the cheetah that came strolling nonchalantly from the trail.

  “Anam-itheoir!” the twins yelled in unison.

  The dearg duls whipped his head around, saw the cheetah then looked back at the adlets. The brutal grin that stretched over his maw of a mouth was so evil, so filled with vengeance, both adlets had piss running under their rumps.

  Lowering his haunches to the ground, the cheetah lifted a dainty paw and licked the sharp claws he extended. A loud purr rang out over the silence as he groomed himself.

  Wylym scrambled to his feet. He swung his head side to side looking for an escape route but there was none. The dearg duls crouched between him and freedom. He whimpered low in his throat and hoped the beast hadn’t heard. Apparently it did for a long tongue swept out of that vicious mouth to lick the foam from its lips in anticipation of a quick end to the confrontation.

  “We did not know this was your territory, m-milords,” Oylevehr stammered, staying on the ground in a subservient position. “Our greatest pardon. Our deepest apologies.” He flicked his eyes to the cheetah. “Our most profound apologies for daring to invade your hunting ground.”

  The cheetah’s purr grew louder and its amber eyes held a glint of crimson.

  A low growl came from the dearg duls and both Wylym and his brother snapped their attention back to him. As they watched, he shifted into a humanoid—as naked as the day he had slithered from between his mother’s thighs. In a flash, black clothing appeared over his muscular nudity and for some reason him being clothed was far more frightful.

  “Reaper,” Wylym whispered. He swallowed hard. “He is a Reaper.”

  “And you, you slimy adlet, are done,” Cree stated in a growling voice. He tilted his head to one side. “Lest you want to spar with me.”

  Wylym was quick to shake his head. “No, m-milord. No!” He backed away. “We will leave peacefully.”

  “Leave?” Cree echoed. He turned to look at the cheetah. “Will they be allowed to leave, demon?”

  Kerreyder changed as slowly as Cree had quickly. One moment he was sitting there with the tan fur and black spots of the cheetah, the black teardrops at his eyes, then his body metamorphosed into that of his true self. The moment his face formed for the adlets to see, it was Oylevehr who recognized him for who he was.

  “The Warden!” he gasped. He leapt to his feet with both hands out as though to ward off the archdemon’s presence. “Wyl, he is Yn Drogh Spyrryd’s Warden!”

  “Aye, Cree,” Kerreyder said. “They will be leaving Terra but not on their own steam.” With a flick of his wrist, a net made of titanium and iron mesh materialized out of the thin air and fell over the adlets, trapping them.

  Striving to break free of the net, the adlets began a piercing howling twice as loud and eerie as any wolf had ever made. Though they fought desperately to get loose, the net slowly drew in on itself until their struggles were contained to the point they could not move at all.

  “Well, that’s that,” Kerreyder said with a grin. “Now I can go back to my woman.”

  “Come out!” Cree called to the adlets who were cowering in their dens. The tone of his voice, the timbre did the trick for slowly the quivering beasts exited their hidey holes and came out to cluster together.

  “Pitiful lot,” Kerreyder said. He swept his gaze over the thin, emaciated bodies of the creatures and felt sympathy for their plight. “They do not look well-fed, Reaper.”

  “They aren’t,” Cree said. He folded his arms. “Which of you is the pack leader?”

  A thin, cadaverous male slunk forward from the knot of shivering beasts. “I was, Your Grace,” he said in a shaky voice.

  Cree’s amber eyes narrowed dangerously. “Did you not know what these two perverted creatures led you to was wrong?”

  “We did, Your Grace,” the male whimpered. “But we feared them.”

  “I didn’t fear them! They are my heroes!”

  The Reaper looked around at the young pup who was standing near the edge of the cliff. It was the pup he and Kerreyder had trailed to the den. The young one was standing there with his fists and jaw clenched, his eyes hard and far too old for his actual age. In that
moment Cree knew the pup could not be left on Terra for he had tasted human flesh and found it to his liking. He glanced at the archdemon.

  “I agree,” Kerreyder acknowledged. “You’ll have to take him or else kill him here and now.”

  “No, please!” the pack leader pleaded. “He is my oldest pup. Please do not kill him!”

  “We cannot leave him here to be a danger to the humans,” Cree told him. “Surely you know this.”

  “Aye, Your Grace, but were he your son, how would you feel?” the adlet queried.

  “We’re not going to kill him,” Cree said. “But he will go with the perverts to Prysson.”

  The adlets looked one to another and it was clear they had no idea what or where that was. There was low mumbling. One female wrung her hands as tears rolled down her cheeks. No doubt she had birthed the pup.

  “Wh-hat is this place?” the pack leader questioned.

  “A place where he will not harm humans,” Kerreyder said. “You have our word—my word—no harm will come to the pup while he is with me and the Reaper.”

  Cree stared at the archdemon. In that look was clear evidence the Prime Reaper had understood the semantics of what Kerreyder said and had intuited the real meaning behind the duality of the words. No harm would fall upon the young one until he was deposited at Prysson where it was every creature for himself. The pup was in for a rude awakening.

  “I will trust you, Your Grace,” the leader of the pack said, lowering his head.

  The Reaper made a sound halfway between a snort and a grunt. He headed toward the pup who immediately took a fighting stance. He laughed. “You’re joking, right?” he asked the lad.

  “I’m not afraid of you, either!” the pup said but he backed closer to the edge of the drop.

  “Son, are you really that stupid?” Kerreyder asked in an amused tone. “Why did you run if you aren’t afraid of him?”

  What happened next would be spoken of by the adlet pack for years to come. The tale would be handed down from generation to generation—told in hushed tones of awe. It would become the stuff of legends among the creatures of the Pacific Northwest.

  Brandyse—the foolish pup as he would be remembered by his people—took one step too many backward. The rocky overhang upon which he was standing cracked and the shelf buckled. Fear lanced through the young male’s eyes as they widened with shock. He snapped his head down as his feet skidded down the lip of the shelf. He threw his hands up then dropped. His shriek of terror echoed through the canyon.

  One moment the Reaper was advancing toward the pup and the next he shifted into a huge black bird so ebon in color there were blue highlights on the tips of his feathers. He sprang up from the ground and over the cliff, diving for the hapless male.

  Rushing to the edge of the cliff, the adlets peered over the edge in time to see the massive talons of the black bird—some said it was a hawk while others swore it was a mythological black eagle—connect and dig into the shoulders of the screeching pup to stop his downward plummet mere feet from the rock-strewn floor of the valley. The sound of the bird’s oversized wings as it rose into the air snapped like sheets in a brisk wind. Moving back, the adlets oohed and awed as the Reaper carried the pup to safety over their craning heads then dropped him unceremoniously on the ground—far from the cliff edge.

  “Stupid little shit,” Kerreyder pronounced.

  The huge black bird landed, folded its majestic wings then shifted into the Reaper once more—a Reaper with a very angry glint in his crimson eyes and a very naked body.

  Chapter Ten

  Randon paused at the door to Kenzi’s office and smoothed down his hair. He tucked in his shirt then lifted a hesitant hand to the portal.

  “Come in.”

  Taking a deep breath, he reached for the knob. Why he was so nervous he didn’t know. She was, after all, his life-mate. His other half. His salvation. She belonged to him and he to her. It had been four days since he’d seen her but it felt like four centuries as he turned the knob and opened the door.

  Kenzi looked up politely then froze. Her welcoming smile slid slowly from her face to be replaced with one of such heat, such intense sexual need it staggered the Nightwind. The moment she jumped up from her chair and flew at him, his nervousness vanished.

  “Rand!” she cried out, throwing her arms around his neck, flinging herself into his open arms.

  Arms that clamped tightly around her with such force she grunted even as she lifted her legs to wrap them around his waist. His lips came down hard on hers and they staggered across the room until he could press her against the wall—deepening his kiss as he held her there. Thrusting his tongue between her parted lips he groaned, surging his lower body tightly to hers.

  “Want you,” he mumbled against her mouth as he slanted his lips in the opposite direction.

  She caught his lower lip between her teeth. “Need you,” she responded breathlessly.

  Growling, he spun her around, used his powers to lock her office door then carried her to the sofa that ran against the long side of her office wall. He put his left knee on the cushion and laid her out beneath him, dragging his cock along the apex of her thighs, rocking against her as he ravaged her mouth with his tongue.

  She clawed at his shoulder—needing the clothes from his body. It was all he could do to pull his mouth from hers and rip at his shirt. Buttons went flying. Material ripped as he tore it from his chest and threw it to the floor. Fumbling with the buckle of his belt with one hand, he used the other to jerk open her lab coat and insinuate his palm into the bodice of her blouse. Frustrated he couldn’t get to her breasts, he hissed and reared up. His fly was undone, the zipper down, his cock straining to get free but he wanted her breasts bare. He would have ripped open her blouse had she not batted his hands away.

  “I don’t have any more clothes here,” she told him as she made quick work of opening the buttons of her blouse.

  “You’d better bring some,” he said on a throaty snarl as he slid his hands under the cups of her bra and pushed up the garment so he could get to her nipple.

  Kenzi sucked in a harsh breath as his wet mouth closed around the straining peak of her breast. His cock had escaped the confines of his opened pants and was probing at her core. All that stood between her and what she wanted was her damn slacks.

  “Rand,” she said. “I gotta get out of these pants!”

  He was too engrossed in tonguing her nipples—going from one to the other and back again as he sucked and laved and nibbled—to hear her. His right hand was molded around the underside of her left breast while he hotly drew from her swollen bud.

  “Rand!” she snapped. “Let me undress!”

  With a grunt he removed his mouth from her breast, pushed away from her and went to work on the closure of her slacks. He was rougher than he wanted to be—should have been—but he got them undone and down in record time. Jerking her flats off her feet and tossing them away before pulling the garment from her. Snagging his hand in the thong she wore, he destroyed it. Before the hiss of her irritation had barely left her mouth, his was on her wet center and his tongue deep inside her.

  Kenzi groaned for he had wedged his broad, muscular shoulders between her legs to part her thighs wide, hooked his arms under her knees to bring her cunt to his lips. She threaded her hand through his dark hair to anchor his head against her as he lapped and licked, thrust and flicked his way over all her folds. He made noises deep in his throat like a starving man at a feast.

  Movement behind him caught her attention and she turned her head—eyes going wide as she saw Kerreyder standing there watching them. She stiffened and her hands tensed in Randon’s hair. Her soft cry made him lift his head. Seeing the look on her face, he craned his head around to see what it was that had disturbed her.

  “What the hell are you—” he snarled, lips drawing back over his fangs.

  “Oh, don’t let me interrupt,” the archdemon said. He came to stand at the head of the sofa�
��staring down at the two of them with a half-smile on his handsome face. He leaned over and took hold of Kenzi’s wrists, drew her arms over her head, pinned her hands to the arm of the sofa. His hot gaze went directly into the Nightwind’s startled gaze. “Take her, incubus.” He licked his lips, arched a black brow. “Take her hard for me.”

  Randon glared at Kerreyder for a long moment then glanced down at Kenzi. He watched her sweet lips part and desire darken her green gaze. She gave him a look that seared him to the core.

  “Do it,” the archdemon whispered. He hunkered down so he was at eyelevel with the Nightwind, never breaking eye contact or so much as blinking.

  Something very primal, very mean and very intoxicating engulfed Randon. He forced his stare from Kerreyder to give Kenzi a questioning look.

  She nodded slowly.

  Yet he hesitated, flicking his gaze once more to the archdemon.

  Then the scent of Kenzi’s arousal floated around him. He clenched his teeth, took hold of his cock then dug his knee into the sofa cushion before placing it at the wet center of his life-mate’s body.

  “Take her,” Kerreyder ordered.

  Lust flared hot and heavy between his legs and within his balls. He eased the head of his shaft into her softness then something wild overtook him and he thrust hard and deep.

  Kenzi cried out—not in pain but in pleasure. He rammed his hands under her ass, lifted her and began to piston his hips against hers. All the while his eyes were on the archdemon who was looking back at him with a frightening desire of his own. He knew as soon as he came, as soon as he spilled his seed inside Kenzi, Kerreyder would want his turn.

  And Kenzi wanted him to have it.

  That should have disturbed Randon on so many levels but he found himself caught up in the intensity of it. Kenzi was writhing beneath him, tugging on the hands that held her captive as though she wanted to get free but the Nightwind knew she didn’t. She was enjoying what was happening. She was thriving on it. For some reason that only underscored the pleasure he was taking from sliding in and out of her wet heat.