Melissa And The Cowboy (Western Night Series 1)

by Rosie Harper

  Now finding herself face to face with what could only be the gaping maw of a gigantic black bear, Josie found her vision blurring. A mere second later, the woman’s consciousness escaped from her body, leaving it behind for whatever horror fate had in store.

  ***

  She awoke an indeterminable amount of time later, covered in branches and leaves, with absolutely no idea about what had happened to her. At first, Josie merely moved her eyes around, wrestling with disbelief, hoping that what she experienced was a dream, a hallucination, or anything of the sort. What happened next, however, proved that it was all quite real.

  The very moment she started showing minor signs of consciousness, the figure that took her from the camp immediately rose from its prone position, barely a couple of feet away from her.

  Having heard all she needed to know about bears, Josie felt her body starting to betray her again. Her fingers and toes went numb, and that lack of feeling quickly spread over her limbs. Her vision blurred, and she might as well have fainted again had the figure not started shrinking before her very eyes.

  It all happened within a couple of seconds. At first, the gargantuan black bear lost a full foot of its height. The hair disappeared next, apparently having been reabsorbed back into the body. The creature’s face, initially a monstrous mass of hair and teeth, reshaped itself so fast that by the time Josie became fully aware of what was going on, she found herself staring into the eyes of a ruggedly handsome male figure.

  He is… the woman found it difficult to form a coherent sentence even within her own mind. He is…

  “Beautiful,” the man said, with a coarse, deep voice.

  That’s the word I was looking for, Josie thought. “You are,” she answered, barely capable of preventing herself from blushing.

  In response, the man merely pointed his right index finger toward the woman’s moonlight-illuminated face before letting out a short “You.”

  Only slightly in control of her own actions, the woman quickly rose from her prone position – and immediately regretted it, as her jacket got caught on a large, low-hanging nearby branch. Along with the slight tearing the bear-man left on it a while ago, this proved to be more than the garment could take, leaving Josie topless, aside from her bra and a few fresh rags.

  Reflexively, the woman covered herself, but that turned out to have been futile, as the man’s arousal was immediately apparent. Getting a good glimpse of his manhood before allowing herself to inspect his whole body more thoroughly, Josie felt herself instantly smitten by his presence. There was something primal, something wildly sexual in this individual, and it went beyond simple looks.

  As she slowly lowered her arms, allowing the former bear to get a better glance at her bosom, Josie felt a fresh wave of moisture spread along her panties. As if he could smell it on her, the bear-man started approaching, his erection waxing with every step he made.

  As the man’s strong right hand grasped one of her plump breasts, Josie felt the last shred of fear disappear, exiled by the overwhelming desire that now had complete control over her body. Almost immediately, the man’s left hand grabbed hold of the clothing that covered her hips and crotch, ripping them off in a single fluid motion.

  A faint dripping sound followed. Under any other circumstances Josie would have been ashamed knowing that her discharge was so intense, but here, with this man, it only served to empower her lust.

  Come one, you savage beast, she heard her own inner animal speak, ravage me like there’s no tomorrow!

  Just as she was about to say it out loud, the bear-man immediately reacted, as if he knew what she needed better than she herself did. Grabbing the woman by the waist, he lifted her up effortlessly, letting their eyes meet for a short moment. It was the most spontaneously sensual thing Josie felt in a long while.

  What followed, however, was even better. Without a hint of warning or subtlety, the wild man slammed the woman onto his throbbing manhood, filling her up to the brink. For a split second, the pain was overwhelming, but Josie’s desire for this was so all-consuming that pleasure quickly overpowered the discomfort. A brief period of silence ensued, followed by a single moan of pure enjoyment.

  Taking that as his cue, the bear man immediately started raising and lowering Josie by her waist, making love to her the way her husband never did. There was no room for pillow talk here; No preparation or foreplay. This was pure animalistic passion, and it was exactly what she wanted and needed for so long.

  Over the course of several seconds, the wild man only picked up his pace, until Josie completely lost herself in his powerful grip. Any and all sensation she could still feel was the rough pounding he was giving her, made even more intense by the currents of electricity that kept accelerating through the tender flesh of her hips and breasts.

  Completely without warning, the currents converged, resulting in the most intense orgasm Josie ever experienced. For minutes she moaned uncontrollably, rapidly, and loudly, as her immense lover pounded her innards with a force she never imagined possible.

  Barely self-aware again, she felt those powerful arms move her around, planting her knees onto the leaf covered ground, her elbows landing slightly ahead. Still inside Josie, her wild beast of a lover immediately resumed his relentless onslaught, letting his hair-covered torso touch her back, and covering her jiggling breasts with his massive, shovel-like hands.

  They were barely at it for more than a few seconds, but the lust-controlled woman could already feel that uncontrollable tingling sensation swell inside her, reaching its maximum and exploding before she had the time to catch her breath. Contorting and moving her hips on her own, she barely unleashed some unintelligible sound before completely sinking into the sea of pleasure that was her own body.

  Now tired but fulfilled in every way, all Josie wanted was to lie down and take a nap, but the man was not done with her yet. Grabbing her voluptuous bosom even fighter than he did before, and burying his other hand into the cushiony orb of her right buttock, he resumed his pace, not slowing down even a little bit.

  Now stretched beyond what she thought was her limit, Josie moaned in a different manner, but her protest only caused him to swell more. Then, she felt it: an explosion of passion, power, and fluids, deeper inside of her than she ever thought possible. Roaring, the man came down on top of her, completely covering his lover with the immense, sinewy bulk of his torso.

  Completely exhausted, she didn’t even try to protest. This was, by far, the best night of my life, Josie managed to conclude, mere moments before falling into a deep and satisfying slumber.

  ***

  “Baby, let me sleep some more, please,” she mumbled out as her hirsute lover suddenly leapt to his feet. Fully intent to savor the moment, she lazily grabbed onto a large branch in an attempt to cover herself. Suddenly, though, she heard a cutting voice that immediately shocked her back into full consciousness.

  “What, in the name of all that is holy, is going on here?” George exclaimed, his refusal to grasp what was in front of him evident in the tone of his voice.

  Josie tried opening her eyes, but the men’s flashlights, pointed right toward her face, prevented her from making anything out. The wild man said nothing, merely standing upright, his muscles as tense as they could possibly be.

  “Josie?” her husband sounded genuinely concerned, as if he hoped that the answer to his next question would be affirmative. “Did he rape you, baby?” The unpleasant clicking sound of three rifles getting primed soon followed.

  What happened next was luckily beyond Josie’s ability to fully perceive. What little she could make out was mostly reserved for the aftermath: Her bloodied lover laid down on his back, shot through the abdomen by George, who was just in the process of shoving an excessively large piece of ammunition into that oversized rifle of his.

  Pieces of something that seemed to have been Carl lay strewn about a nearby tree, while Trevor, although mostly in one piece, was busy holding in his innards with both of
his lumpy hands. A split second after making that realization, Josie felt her dinner try to leave her body, clearly not wanting to be part of the situation any more than she herself did.

  Hypnotized as she was by the spectacle of horrendous violence that took place before her eyes, she barely managed to force herself to look away from Trevor’s twitching body and re-focus her attention onto what was happening between her husband and new lover.

  Having finished reloading his rifle, George was just about to point it toward the wild man, presumably to make a sight that was even more gruesome than the one she had just witnessed. Boiling with rage and adrenaline as he was, her husband would have most certainly pulled the trigger, was he not dissuaded from doing so by Josie’s interposing body.

  Standing like that, locked between the barrel of George’s gargantuan rifle, and the injured, bleeding bear man who lied behind her, Josie could feel the cold drops of sweat as they formed and trickled down her shivering body.

  Much more difficult to endure than the crippling fear, however, was her husband’s expression: teeth clenched, eyes wide, veins forming on his forehead, it was apparent that the man was beyond himself. The full extent of her betrayal visible to him, George’s trigger finger twitched nervously and visibly. By this point, Josie was certain,it was willpower alone that prevented her husband from shooting her right then and there.

  George’s own willpower, however, was just about to get the better of him. Almost immediately after he managed to slow his breathing down and fully internalize what had happened between his wife and the creature that just massacred his friends, a monstrous figure rose from behind Josie.

  Foaming at the mouth and enraged as it was, firing at the creature should have been an easy decision to make. For some reason, however, Josie’s husband hesitated. The monster darted toward him, swinging its trunk-like forearm with a mixture of strength and speed that would pulverize a rock. Completely numb from what she expected to happen, Josie fell to her knees, expecting only the worst.

  A gunshot suddenly echoed, originating from somewhere around the place where Trevor used to lay. Hit by a large caliber round, the bear-creature lost its balance, merely nicking the side of George’s head instead of taking it clean off. Panicking, Josie’s husband now squeezed his trigger, embedding his payload into the ground next to his right foot as his consciousness left him.

  The monster, having temporarily lost its capacity for rational though, roared in fury as it turned toward Trevor, who was still in the process of holding his intestines in. No longer shackled by the will of the man behind it, the behemoth lumbered toward the overweight man in full force, ripping his throat out before he even hit the ground.

  Standing still for a moment, as if to savor its victory, the creature merely stared into Trevor’s mutilated carcass. Several seconds passed like that, and the bear that turned its face back toward Josie’s fallen husband again had a visible glint of human intelligence in its eyes.

  Step by step, the creature moved closer and closer to George, clearly intent on leaving another dead body in this part of the forest.

  No, Josie told herself, using up all the emotional strength she had left to rise back up from her knees. Attempting to show as little fear as was possible, the woman put herself between her husband and the approaching monstrosity.

  “No,” she said again, this time out loud.

  Completely ignoring her pleas, the bear took one more step, right before taking another.

  “Listen, you,” she spoke again, all while hoping, praying, that the man who stole her heart on the first try was still in there somewhere. “I’ve been married to this man for years,” she continued “Technically I still am.”

  The creature’s pace slowed down, as it turned its massive head toward her, apparently wanting to hear more.

  “I wouldn’t have been with him all this time if I didn’t love him in some way,” Josie maintained her monologue “That marriage, however, is over.”

  The bear-man now stopped his advance completely, staring into Josie’s brown eyes with his own pair of obviously inhuman, yellow ones.

  “You’ve shown me that,” she said, smiling. “Along with a lot of other wonderful things,” the woman continued, this time giving the bear’s crotch a quick peek.

  If the ursine-human hybrid had the ability to display a pleased expression, it probably would have done so. Instead, it merely looked horrifying.

  “But I didn’t agree to this!” Josie exclaimed, pointing her arms toward the bodies of George’s massacred hunting buddies. “They were not particularly good people, I know. Hell, they might have even been bad people as far as I know. But they didn’t deserve this.”

  For a second there, her lover’s monstrous form seemed disagreeable, so she immediately continued her monologue. “But it’s ok this time. I get it. It was pure self-defense.”

  Then, dramatically, Josie pointed her index finger toward her unconscious husband.

  “Killing an unconscious man, however, is by no means okay! Especially when he is my soon to be former husband,” she pouted, as if to make a clearer point.

  “Now,” Josie smiled again, all while extending her hand toward the gargantuan figure “Let’s just leave. Let’s forget about what happened here. You can forget about George. I know I will. How about that, huh?”

  The massive creature raised its paw, but by the time it touched the woman’s extended palm, it had done so with a human hand.

  “Mark,” the wild man said, still apparently out of shape in the fine art of speaking like a human being.

  “Josie,” she responded, gripping his hand as hard as she could. It was coarse; a working man’s hand – or a warrior’s one. One day she would learn all about where these hands have been. Today, however, was not the time for that.

  “We need to go, Mark,” Josie finally spoke, shattering the romantic moment she had created in her mind. “Can we move fast enough?” she asked, finally remembering that Mark had been shot not one but two times.

  “Yes,” the man responded, still covered in blood, but seemingly displaying no superficial injuries. “I heal from everything,” he added, turning around to lead the way through the barely visible path ahead.

  Incredible, Josie thought as she followed suit. For a brief moment, she considered taking a moment to check the extent of her former husband’s head injury, but that seemed counterproductive after she just barely persuaded Mark to spare his life.

  Sorry, George, she heard her inner voice speak, I’m afraid you’re going to have to help yourself.

  ***

  Barely conscious and still fighting the urge to go back into that blessed, pain-free state of oblivion, George opened one eye. He wanted to open the other one, but something prevented him from doing so. The world was spinning, circling around his injured head, as if to mock him for the discomfort he had to endure.

  Slowly, the injured hunter raised a hand, carefully lowering it onto the left side of his face and using it to feel about the eye he couldn’t open. What he discovered hit him in the back of the head like a stream of cold water, excising all remnants of previous drowsiness. Replacing the general area around his felt eye was a mass of flayed flesh, caked with a viscous, foul-smelling liquid.

  Previously numb, his head responded to touch by exploding with waves of the most vicious pain he ever felt in his life. It took all the strength of will George still had not to sink back into that sweet place called unconsciousness, where his body was still whole.

  “God damn you, Josie,” he said out loud, almost choking on the words. Is this what I deserve?

  After all the years he spent taking care of her, living for her, she spat her thanks into his face by eloping with… something.Something that mutilated him, no less.

  Motivated by anger, George finally managed to set his torso straight. In response, the pain intensified, spreading down his spine like the bite of a venomous serpent. This time, he managed not to make a sound, gritting his teeth with such for
ce he almost shattered a filling.

  “You ungrateful bitch,” he spoke again. What was your problem this time? Not enough attention? Not enough spontaneity? Not enough passion? Disgusted, he spat to his side. It was bloody.

  It’s always about what you feel like at the time, isn’t it? He continued his inner monologue, in a futile attempt to keep the agony at bay. Let George do all the work while you mope around your failed attempts at “art”. It’s all your husband’s fault that you’re socially and sexually frustrated, isn’t it?

  “After all,” George spoke out aloud again, this time unable contain the fury in his voice “I’ve only ever given you everything you ever wanted! Whatever you winked at, I would buy!” Taking another breath, he wanted to stop, but the words kept pouring out. “Who cares that I was tired from taking care of you? Why would it matter that I need some unwinding from time to time?”

  His fury having given him the strength to rise, George leapt up to his feet, almost losing his balance in the process. Luckily, the well-timed interposition of his other leg had prevented his face from meeting the ground. Barely preventing himself from howling in pain, he stood upright, observing the butchered remains of his buddies with one remaining eye.

  So, this is who I’ve married, he concluded. An ungrateful, cheating whore who would leave me for an inhuman monster… callous about the trail of bodies her betrayal would leave behind.

  You’ve called me cold, George kept talking to himself as he dragged his feet toward what was left of Trevor. You said I was distant. Still fighting the pain, he dropped down to one knee while opening an intact yet bloodstained pouch from the side of Trevor’s jacket. You couldn’t see that it was all for you.

  Taking out a box of painkillers, George swallowed a bunch of them, completely unconcerned about the dosage. Next, he pulled out a roll of surgical gauze, soaked it in alcohol, and stared at it for a couple of seconds, knowing full well what was about to happen.

  No way around it, he knew. Unless, of course, you want to die of infection. Or lose a part of your brain. Gripping the sides of the gauze with his bloody hands, he chuckled madly. Perhaps that wouldn’t be so bad.