Manaconda

by Sherri L. King

  Love Always, Jaid

  Chapter One

  Rural California

  Present Day

  She loved sex. Lots and lots of sweaty, pumping, pounding, gloriously wicked, undeniably naughty, kinky as all hell S-E-X with a capital S for Sex.

  It didn’t matter where she was—even driving along the highway in her very unsexy clunker of a car, the mere thought of impending passion made Dorothy “Dot” Araiza’s pulse race. It made her doe-brown eyes grow heavy-lidded and her legs squeeze together. It made her hands clench into tight fists and her breath catch in the back of her throat.

  (Confused passersby on the interstates might have mistaken her arousal for seizures a time or two, but oh well.)

  Yes, Dot loved sex. There was no denying that fact of life. It was just too bad she wasn’t getting any, she thought with a snarl. Because maybe if she was, she wouldn’t be sitting in her car, driving through a torrential downpour, voluntarily giving up her Friday night to sell her toys at a bachelorette party.

  Dot’s nostrils flared as she stepped on the gas pedal and plowed through the back roads of the one-horse bumpkin town like nobody’s business. She’d never even heard of Nowhere, California, for Pete’s sake! It certainly wasn’t on the map. But work was work and if this Nowhere existed, well hell, she’d find it.

  Dot supposed being a sex toy maker had its distinct advantages. She got to work from home. She enjoyed the thrill of invention. And, she thought on a harrumph that could rival any bah-humbug by Ebenezer Scrooge, the local charities never hit her up at Christmas for donations to the Toyz For Tots fund. One look at what kind of toys she made and all bets were off.

  Her former shrink had once told her she loved sex so much because in her mind it was a replacement for affection. An infliction that mostly males suffered from, but which strikes the occasional female. If that was true, Dot supposed she was a human lightning rod.

  She often fantasized about being swept off her feet by an extremely tall, muscular, hunky, alpha male kind of guy. He would snatch her up and gently but demandingly throw her onto her elegant pink satin bed with all its lace and ruffles. And then—oh boy and then!—he would, to be blunt, fuck the shit out of her. Oh yeah, Dot thought with a small smile, she entertained that fantasy a lot.

  The problem with turning fantasy into reality was that, as much as she loved sex, Dot also had the distinct disadvantage of being rather, well—shy. Very shy, unfortunately. Wallflower shy, she thought through gritted teeth. Wallflower, hopeless, sexless, utterly pathetic kind of shy. Arrrg! The minute a man so much as glanced in her direction she was all babbling idiot and no action.

  Dot thought back on the last time she’d almost done the horizontal mambo and couldn’t help but to grimace. Henry had been far from tall, not at all muscular, and nowhere in the vicinity of being an alpha male. The extremely conservative and rather butt-ugly pharmacist with the perpetually running nose might not have been a hunk or even close to it, but he’d been able to put her at ease enough to talk to him. Not even a woman so shy as she was could continue to babble like an idiot rather than carry on a half-intelligent conversation with a man as harmless as Henry.

  And so they’d gone out. Once. Twice. Three times. By the time the tenth date rolled around and the pharmacist had made no move to bed her, Dot feared they’d never get down to business and have sex. So she’d set out to seduce Henry. What a disaster that had turned out to be!

  Dot had read in a men’s magazine that males really go for forward women, that they love it when their woman seizes the moment and jumps their bones. If that was the case, she thought, her hands gripping the steering wheel until her knuckles turned white, the author of that column had clearly never met Henry.

  She had donned that see-through, peek-a-boo, pink satin nightie of hers which perfectly coordinated with the pink satin draped across her bed. Slipping into her matching pair of high heels, she picked up “Diesel-Dirk”—the name she’d given to the 30-speed ten-inch vibrator she’d designed and patented herself—and sashayed into the living room of her modest home-cum-laboratory where Henry had been patiently waiting on her to get ready for yet another date at the local frozen yogurt parlor.

  The sound of Henry blowing his nose into the stained, moist hankie that always accompanied him like an appendage didn’t deter her. The fact that she was two inches taller (six inches in heels) and about twenty pounds heavier didn’t matter in that moment. She let down her chestnut-brown hair from its confining bun, shook it out until it cascaded down her back in soft waves, took a deep breath as she regally thrust her chin up and breasts out, and continued her seductive walk into the living room.

  “Hello Henry,” Dot had breathed out in a practiced, sultry voice. Henry had stilled as she came to a halt before him, his eyes widening and his jaw dropping. His expression made her confidence falter for a brief second, but recalling an old Mae West line she plowed on determinedly. “Is that a gun in your pocket,” she asked in a Marilyn Monroe whisper, “or are you happy to see me?”

  His face chalk-white and his eyes unblinking, Henry had then proceeded to pull out two very used hankies from his pocket and lay them on the coffee table, his deer-caught-in-headlights expression never wavering. Dot had frowned. That hadn’t been the reaction she’d been going for.

  You were supposed to say you are happy to see me, idiot! Now what do I do!

  Her heart began pounding against her breasts. Her brown eyes rounded in embarrassment and horror. She hesitated for a moment before taking a calming breath and regaining her original level of confidence.

  Plowing onward, she took “Diesel-Dirk” out from behind her back. She smiled as she held up the long, thick, veined vibrator that was, if she did say so herself, the perfect imitation of a well-endowed African-American man’s cock. “Dirk has given me pleasure beyond my wildest dreams,” she said in that smoky voice she’d practiced for ages. “Let him give you pleasure, too, Henry.”

  What she’d meant by that statement was she wanted to use Dirk on herself for Henry’s viewing pleasure. Apparently Henry had thought Dot meant to screw him up the butt with it for not even five seconds later, the pharmacist had gasped, eyes rolling into the back of his head, as he’d fainted dead away.

  Arrrg!

  Needless to say, the night had only gone downhill from there. She’d spent the next hour reviving and re-reviving a frightened, stuttering Henry. Within thirty seconds of being able to stand upright on two shaking feet, he’d run from Dot’s house as though she’d sprouted horns and spewed green venom at him.

  That, she thought, nostrils flaring and jaw tight as she drove down the back road through the pouring rain, had been the last time she’d had sex. Or almost had sex. That was four years ago now. Actual penetration with a member of the male species had last occurred four years before that.

  The memory of that night was even worse than the Henry fiasco.

  “Men suck!” Dot wailed into the night, yelling at everybody and nobody. “Who needs you anyway. I’ve got my toys!”

  And oh boy did she have toys. If there was one thing Dot knew she could do better than anybody else, it was create the perfect sex toys for sexually frustrated females. Being one of those women, well, she’d managed to turn her hobby into a full-time job.

  There was “Freddy-The-Fish”, a male mouth that could suck a woman blind. “Cum-Hither-Kenny”, a 20-speed vibrator with interchangeable heads that could do everything but make you breakfast. And, of course, there was good ole Dirk—still her most popular seller. Dirk could not only make you scream like a banshee in heat, but he was also capable of screwing you—hands free!—when mounted on a special mechanism she’d designed solely for the purpose of a woman being able to get off without having to hold the vibrator steady in her hands.

  Dot reached over to the passenger seat and affectionately petted Dirk on the crown of his glorious black head. “I just want to get this damn bachelorette party over and done with,” she muttered, “then me and
you will go home and have a little fun.”

  Who needed a real man, Dot decided on down-turned lips. She had Dirk. And Kenny. And—and…

  Shit!

  Dot screamed as a bolt of lightning illuminated the nighttime sky and cracked down in front of her car, effectively scaring the daylights out of her. Reacting instead of thinking, she veered a sharp left and before she knew what had happened her small sedan was in a flat-spin on a rainy, muddy back road.

  “Oh my God!” Dot cried out, her heart racing and her eyes wide. She couldn’t get control of the car. “Somebody help me!”

  It was too late. She espied the tree a moment before the sedan made impact.

  Her eyes rolling back and slowly flickering shut, she saw a flash of white and then nothing else.

  Chapter Two

  Hunting Grounds of the Zyon Pack

  Planet Khan-Gor (“Planet of the Predators”)

  Seventh Dimension, 6078 Y.Y. (Yessat years)

  Two crimson eyes flew open. Air rushed into depleted lungs, his concaved, translucent silver chest rapidly expanding to its total musculature and size. Deadly fangs exploded from his gums. Lethal claws and talons shot out from his fingers and toes.

  She is near…

  He had been cocooned for one hundred earth years, his body and mind in gorak—the Khan-Gori term for “the sleep of the dead”. Gorak comes every five hundred Yessat Years and occurs between each of a Barbarian’s seven lives. Five hundred and one Yessat Years he had spent without her, without the one. He mayhap ended his first life in defeat of finding her, but his second life was about to commence—

  Vaidd Zyon could feel her, could sense her, could smell her. He took a slow, deep breath, nostrils flaring and eyes briefly closing, as he inhaled her scent.

  It was her.

  His Bloodmate.

  He had evolved in gorak. Stronger. Deadlier. More ferocious than ever he was in his first life. ‘Twas time to begin his second lifetime.

  Every day, every hour, every second of the five hundred and one Yessat Years he’d spent without her had been akin to the blackest abyss. No sense of hope. No sense of joy. No reason to wish to evolve in gorak and begin the next five hundred years without the one who had been born that she might complete him. Many a day Vaidd had felt like ending it—forever.

  But his pack needed him. Verily, he was his sire’s heir apparent. And so he’d carried on. Grim. Lethal. Merciless. But he’d carried on.

  Vaidd took another deep breath and, once more, inhaled the scent of his Bloodmate. She was close. Very close.

  The beating of his heart stilled for one angry, possessive moment when his senses confirmed something else:

  She was not alone. Other males drew near.

  A low growl rumbled in his throat until it turned into a deafening roar. In an explosion of violence, hunger, possession, and desire, Vaidd burst from his cocoon and shot into the air, his twelve-foot wings expanding on a predator’s ruthless cry. The instinct to return to his pack was overridden by the more primal need to track his Bloodmate—and kill any male that might touch her.

  Her scent was strong, intoxicating. Bewitching. She would be his and no other’s.

  She belonged to him.

  * * * * *

  Dot’s eyelids blinked in rapid succession as she slowly, groaningly, came to. Her forehead wrinkled in incomprehension as she glanced around. “Well hell’s goddamn bells,” she muttered. “Where in the world am I?”

  What a night! she thought tragically. Turning off the engine, she opened the door of her car and arose from the driver’s seat. The rain must have ended and brought a thick fog with a cold front in its stead, for she could barely see anything at all and felt so chilled to the bone that it was as if she’d woken up in the middle of the Arctic.

  Frowning, she narrowed her eyes and ran her hands up and down her goose-pimpled arms, trying to make heads or tails of her location. But the fog was thick. She couldn’t see anything at all other than what was in the immediate vicinity of her car. Not even with the headlights still shining off into the distance. What she thought the oddest, however, was that the tree she had collided with was no longer anywhere to be seen. But she’d definitely struck it…

  Immediately noting that the oak she’d made impact with had left a highly noticeable dent in the driver’s side door, she angrily slammed the thing shut and harrumphed. Feeling in true drama-queen form, she lifted the back of her hand up to her forehead and sighed.

  Great! This is just terrific! I haven’t had almost-sex in four years, actual sex in eight years, I spent my Friday night driving through a horrible rainstorm in the middle of nowhere trying to find Nowhere…and now on top of everything else, my insurance premium will go through the roof!

  A lesser woman wouldn’t be able to pull herself together, she thought on a sniff. A lesser woman would come undone.

  Dot decided she was a lesser woman.

  A warbled cry of anger, frustration—no doubt partially sexual in origin!—and dismay began in her belly, gurgled up to her throat, and exploded from her mouth in a shrill, shrieking cry. She kicked the door in three times for good measure with the toe of one of the black high-heeled shoes she wore. (The ones that perfectly coordinated with her pink suit ensemble, if she did say so herself.) Might as well. The damn door would need fixed anyway!

  That accomplished, she screamed again, this time longer and louder. She jumped up and down like a mad jack-in-the-box as she shrieked, fists tight and nostrils flaring. Her hair came undone out of the tight bun she’d had it coiled in, but it didn’t matter. Her tantrum was making her feel better. Much better, in fact.

  A low growl pierced the quiet of the night. And then another. The growls sounded as if off from a distance, but growing closer by the millisecond.

  Dot immediately shut-up. She ceased jumping. Her ears perked up and her eyes widened as she looked around.

  Nothing.

  The fog was so thick and all-encompassing that she couldn’t see anything. And the growling had just altogether stopped—practically as soon as it had begun. She swallowed a bit roughly, wondering to herself if this was what people meant by the old colloquialism, “the quiet before the storm”.

  Dot hastily arrived at the conclusion that she didn’t want to know.

  Deciding she could finish up being a lesser woman later—like in the safety of her home!—the sex toy maker determined it would, perhaps, be in her best interests to get the hell out of dodge. Like now.

  What a night! What a night! What a night!

  Throwing open the door of her gray sedan, Dot quickly scurried into the vehicle, slammed the dented thing shut, and locked all the doors. Her eyes still wide, she nervously glanced around to try and ascertain if any wild animals were drawing near.

  The growls. They are getting closer…

  Her heartbeat picking up in tempo, she mentally chastised herself for reacting like a scared ninny while simultaneously turning the key and revving up the engine. No wild animal could get into a locked car! She knew that, yet an eerie feeling persisted just the same. She felt as if she was being—well…hunted.

  No doubt her imagination, but she supposed it was best to err on the side of caution.

  “Come on, Dot,” she mumbled to herself. “Calm down. You can do this.”

  Problem was, the fog was as thick as clichéd pea soup. No matter how hard she squinted, she couldn’t make out where she was let alone where she was going.

  The eerie feeling grew, swamping her senses. She began to drive slowly, aimlessly, forward.

  Light ahead! There is light just up ahead!

  Dot stepped harder on the gas pedal, determinedly driving toward the faint illumination she could just barely make out in the distance. A small, brief smile of relief shown on her lips. The light was red—it had to mean a traffic signal or something of that nature. Civilization!

  But as she drove out of the all-encompassing fog and into the dark, yet visible world that awaited her, it wasn�
��t civilization that greeted her. At least not any sort of civilization she’d ever seen.

  Dot’s heart stilled as she loosed up on the gas pedal and came to a jarring stop. Dumbfounded, her jaw dropped. Her mind raced, inducing dizziness.

  Well, Dorothy, you aren’t in Kansas anymore. What the…?

  Ice-capped mountains with razor-sharp tips surrounded her on all sides. It was cold here, so terribly, hypothermia-inducing frigid. Her current location seemed to be in a semi-forested valley of sorts between two of the mountains. Translucent silver trees?? And the red illumination—

  Dot gasped as she looked up. Her doe-brown eyes rounded to the shape of the four crimson moons she was gaping up at. Four moons. Four RED moons!

  Blinking out of the trance-like state that had engulfed her, she held a palm to her forehead and whimpered. Either she was in a coma in some intensive care unit having one hell of a delusional dream or that last orgasm Dirk had given her had blown her mind—literally.

  “Wake up, Dot,” she whispered, her unblinking eyes staring up at the four crimson moons. “This isn’t happening.”

  A lightning-fast movement caught her attention from out of her peripheral vision. Frightened, her heart skipped a beat as her head whiplashed to the right to see what that movement had been caused by. She sucked in a breath.

  A man. A naked man. A naked man with…with…pearly white skin, black eyes, and a—holy shit! He/It had a tail!

  Dirk—arrg! What have you done to me?

  And then there was another. And another. And another. And another.

  Dot’s heart slammed in her chest as five of these…these—things—had her small, gray sedan surrounded. All five looked hungry, practically drooling as they took in the sight of her. They wanted to eat her, she hysterically thought. They were gazing at her like sushi.