So that was out. She needed to be alive. And they wanted a virgin. And they were carrying her into the woods...
...in the middle of nowhere.
Suspicions crept up inside her brain.
A ritual sacrifice? She knew, intellectually, that the Satanic panic of years past had been nothing more than mass hysteria and delusion.
That didn't mean such things didn't exist, however.
Bonnie gulped and the panic, so far held mostly at bay by meditative breathing and drugs, began to well up inside her. The zip and zing of adrenaline fired in her veins, and her breath picked up the pace.
A large, warm hand touched her shoulder, and Bonnie started, shying away as best she could from her supine position.
"Do not fret," her backseat companion told her, his voice low and gentle. "You will likely make it out of this alive. We will be quite close."
"What does that mean?" she snapped. The words were loud and flat in the stillness of the dark winter night. The trees around them—she could feel them, their towering presence, their bare branches reaching out to tangle with her hair and clothes—creaked in a sudden breeze, as though agreeing with her.
Then something pinched her nipple. Hard.
Bonnie gave a tiny shriek. Shock and outrage poured through her, burning where they met her fear. How dare you? she wanted to scream. And yet the fear swallowed her words, because he could dare quite a bit more if he so desired.
They all could.
The gravity of her situation suddenly weighed very heavily on her mind.
"Do not speak," her companion commanded. "It will only attract unwanted attention."
"Unwanted for whom?" she hissed.
The heavy hand on her shoulder departed, then alighted on her breast. Large fingers closed around her nipple and pinched her again, this time harder, and tears sprung to her eyes.
"Quiet," he said. "We are nearly there."
And indeed it wasn't a minute later before she was dumped unceremoniously from the stretcher to the ground. She landed in a pile of leaves, rimed with frost, and when the bag was snatched from her head she realized they truly were in the middle of nowhere. The only light came from headlamps, illuminating the thick forest surrounding the clearing where they'd stopped. Her captors wore ski masks, their faces simply black holes in the dark, and the world took on a queer, surreal quality as they bobbed around her.
She watched their breath—and hers—curl in the air as mist. Leaves crunched, branches broke, and then the sound of metal on metal, the links of a chain slithering over each other, had her struggling to her feet. She didn't even get beyond a crouch before one of the men—a dark hovering presence in the clearing, obscured by the intensity of the headlamp he wore—pushed her down again.
She sprawled on the ground, sliding over the leaves and landing awkwardly on her hands. A spear of pain lanced up her arm and she hissed, tears springing to her eyes again. Rapidly she blinked them away. She wouldn't have them see her cry.
A rough hand grabbed her ankles and threaded the cold, hard length of another chain between her skin and the chains already holding her legs together. The click of a padlock, and then the chain jangled and pulled as her anonymous captor looped it around a tree trunk and secured it with another lock.
Chained to a tree, like a dog.
Slowly, Bonnie pushed herself back to her knees, twisting and turning as she struggled to get comfortable despite her bindings. Something large landed in the leaves next to her and she jumped and scooted away.
A low chuckle passed around the clearing at her nervous reaction, and again fury rose up in her. Anyone would be scared out of their wits at this sort of treatment. What sort of person would laugh at her fear?
The sort of person who would tie me up in the first place, Bonnie thought, and that was that. Squinting at the offending object, she saw it was only a pile of blankets. So they wanted to keep her warm? Fine. She didn't mind that.
The dark figures moved, each with some purpose in the clearing, and then as though by some unspoken agreement they suddenly began to melt back through the trees, retreating, taking the light with them.
"Wait!" Bonnie cried, unable to stop herself.
One of them paused and turned to her. She thought he might be her backseat companion. "Can't you leave a lantern for me?" she begged. "Just a little light?"
The figure shook his head, but when he spoke she didn't recognize his voice. "Trust me," he said. "It will be easier for you in the dark." And then he turned and was gone, the last of the light retreating into the trees, leaving her cold, scared, and utterly alone.
Chapter Two
Thinking was getting harder. More difficult. The swelling of the moon, the rising of the tides, the pull of the blood in his veins. Something about it awakened the beast inside, and the beast was a creature of instinct. Instinct, and rage.
Hunger, too. This in-between time, when he was not quite a wolf but not still a man was the hardest time, the leanest, hungriest time. His ungainly body was made for fighting, not for hunting. He knew, somewhere in the back of his mind, the part that was still human, that the mangled corpses of cows he left behind were bad in some way, a trail, a clue for his captors to follow, but he couldn't help himself. The muscles of his turning body bulged, his brain ablaze with beast and human thoughts alike, and the hunger gnawed at his belly like a nest full of fire ants.
The woods. Dark and impenetrable. The scents assaulted him. Puma and raccoon and porcupine and skunk and opossum and rat and mouse and all number of small, scared creatures catching his trail and fleeing. Uncanny. Unnatural. His own smell turned his stomach, and there was no peace, even when he slept, his mind filled with nightmares, the half-realized dreams of a man without a voice, a wolf without a pack.
He'd left his pack behind. The man in him had told him he had to. It had been necessary. Escape, or languish. Death by a thousand cuts. But out here he languished as well. No pack. No connection. No mind.
He felt their absence like a raw, open wound, and nothing would salve it. It maddened him, out here in the dark and the cold and the wild. He needed his pack, his brothers, his bloody companions.
Subject Number Four ran, fleeing his own despair.
*
And then there was her.
A moment of lucidity, as of the dark of the moon. Yet the moon hung above him, strung between the branches of the trees like a lantern, a slender waxing crescent as sharp as a silver thorn piercing the heart of the sky.
Four paused. His breath puffed in huge bursts of mist in the cold. He had feasted on a goat already today, so it wasn't the scent of food that stopped him. It was the scent of... woman.
Woman.
In his belly, something stirred, deep and primal. A hunger borne of years of starvation.
His woman.
Her scent tickled his nose, the smell of water and night-blooming flowers and starlight. Her. His woman. His untouched, promised woman.
How he knew these things, he could not say. The man in him was confused, wary, but the wolf simply knew.
He lifted his nose to the air, long and dark, and inhaled deeply.
There. To the west. She was there.
Without pausing to think, he set off in her direction. His paws—still half-hand and tipped in deadly claws—moved silently across the frosty ground, shifting through the leaves, avoiding branches by instinct. His heavy body, ungainly in hunting, was nevertheless lithe and graceful as he stalked toward the location of the woman.
His woman.
In his veins, his blood began to heat, bubbling and boiling. Her scent invaded his head and his jaws dropped open, his tongue lolling out as he panted in anticipation. Ribbons of drool dripped to the forest floor, pattering like raindrops. And the closer he got, the more clearly he began to think. And the more clearly he thought, the more monstrous he felt.
A woman, his woman, bright and sweet and waiting for him in the middle of his forest... it wasn't right. It must be a trap.
Four looked down at his long-fingered paws and willed them to stop, to pause for just a moment as he sorted through his thoughts, but they refused to obey him. The instinct drove him forward, curled like a fist at the base of his spine, sending signals he was helpless to resist. His tail twitched in anticipation, and his cock—until now just a useless lump of meat between his legs—suddenly stirred, sending an ache out through his limbs.
He had to have her. Her, her, his woman, his promised woman.
Four stalked forward.
*
Bonnie shivered under the blanket she had managed to pull around her shoulders. After her captors had gone, she had called for help, her voice screaming and echoing in the woods, but either no one was there to hear her, or they simply didn't care. Now she hunkered down on her bed of leaves, the chains around her ankles biting into her skin, and waited for whatever would come.
She breathed deeply as she crouched there, wishing she were a master of meditation. She had never been terribly good at meditating—she had so many worries, so many things to do, that all of them crowded out the quiet and tranquility she always sought—but now she wished she had quit med school and joined a monastery. She'd heard some monks could raise the temperature of their bodies simply by willing it in a state of deep meditation, and she would have given anything to have that ability now.
But she didn't. She could only try to conserve the heat she did have. Her teeth chattered and she tried to move as much as possible beneath the heavy wool, but it was simply too cold and she was too immobile. Maybe if she could stand up and move around, but she'd tried that already. Chained to a tree, her legs lashed together, she could only jump in place, the hem of the blanket flapping around her and inviting the chill inside.
Now she hunched under the wool and listened. The wind whispered in the trees, but other than that, the night around her was silent.
It disturbed her.
Logically she knew it should be quiet in the middle of winter, but the utter stillness struck a nameless fear into her heart. Instinct, she supposed. Some old animal instinct left over from the caveman days.
She wished she had a light. Any light. The moon was so feeble...
A branch cracked.
Bonnie gasped and whirled around, her long, frizzy hair whipping over her shoulder as she glanced behind her, but the night was so still that the sound could have come from anywhere.
Perhaps it was a person? Or a mountain lion or a coyote more like. Either way, her reaction should be the same.
Bonnie took a deep breath. "Help!" she screamed into the darkness. "Someone, help me!"
Her voice echoed eerily between the trees, then died away.
The hairs on the back of her neck stood on end. Then branches rustled, and she couldn't tell if it was the wind or something else.
She opened her mouth again, meaning to call out, meaning to ask if someone was there, but the words wouldn't come. They died in her throat.
She looked up at the tree she was bound to. She could barely see it in the dim light of the waxing moon, but she knew it to be tall and full of branches, some even within her reach. She'd noted it when her captors had dumped her here. For a wild moment she considered trying to climb it. Could she make it off the ground? Would the chain looping the trunk allow her to get very far? She hadn't tested the length of it, since near or far from the tree, she was still bound to it, but if she changed her thinking, went up instead of around...
Reaching out, Bonnie grabbed the chain tethered to her ankles and pulled, hoping it was long enough for her to climb to something that might resemble safety, although bears and bobcats and pumas could all climb trees...
It snapped taut quickly, and her hope died in her breast. So much for that.
Another branch broke beneath something heavy and slow moving. She heard it now, the pause, the emptiness of the air where the creature—and she was certain it was a creature since a human, hopefully, would have responded to her scream—where the creature stood. It was off to her right, just ahead of her. Hidden in the trees.
My dreams, Bonnie thought. This was just like her dreams.
A shudder wracked her body, full of fear, with the tiniest hint of pleasure beneath. She had to forcefully remind herself that this was not a dream, and whatever was out there would probably do her harm rather than... well, something else.
Focus, she commanded herself. Focus, focus!
She had no weapons except the handcuffs. They might do some damage, but they would injure her as well. And her feet were bound. If only she had taken kung fu instead of aikido. She only knew how to spread her feet and find her center, not waver where she stood. Too little contact with the ground. She would go down in an instant. Perhaps if she played dead...
Bonnie lowered her head and tried to remain calm.
Out in the forest, her unseen stalker growled.
The sound was low, dark, hungry.
It went straight to the base of her brain, bypassing rational thought. Bonnie felt it rattle in her bones, hum in her blood. It sent her heart racing, picking up a sudden staccato beat in her chest, hammering out an SOS against her breastbone. Panic flooded her and she leaped up, jerking against the chains that held her and earning only abrasions on her wrists and a painful spill back to the earth for her troubles.
She hit the ground with a jaw-jarring thud, her head jerking on her neck, and the awkward angle sent another burst of pain through her shoulder. Panting, Bonnie lay in the leaves, the cold night air caressing her face as she strained to hear the creature again.
A rustling sound. In front of her.
It was coming this way.
Clenching her teeth, Bonnie tried to force herself to calm down by sucking in deep, even breaths, but the sound of footsteps—large steps, spreading steps, she could see them in her mind's eye—coming toward her overrode her reasoning. The cold of the night sliced through her throat with each inhalation as she twisted again, reaching down and grabbing the chain at her ankles and yanking on it, though she knew it was useless. The links rattled together, loud and harsh in the cold air. The tender skin of her hands tore and bled, and then the creature passed into the clearing, emerging from the trees, just a movement at the corner of her eye, and she froze, petrified. Then, slowly, she forced herself to turn and look at it.
She could see it. Barely. The thin, watery light of the moon spilled over it, outlining its contours and leaving the rest of it in shadow, but it was enough.
At first she couldn't understand it, couldn't assimilate it. Her scientist mind would not accept its existence. For a long moment, she was utterly certain she was hallucinating, completely positive that her dreams were coming to life in her mind and dancing across her eyes, completely imaginary and yet masquerading as reality. The drugs in her system, the fear, the cold, all were converging on her brain, making it play tricks on her. Such things didn't happen. Twisting an arm, Bonnie pinched herself, hoping the pain would jerk her out of it, would wake her up, but all it did was hurt.
The creature still stood there.
It was huge. Covered in fur, a hulking mass of muscle limned in silver light. It stood like a gorilla, massive forearms, crouching hind legs. Like a man, but of monstrous proportion. Plumes of silvery mist puffed from its hidden mouth, blooming and fading. One pointed ear and one former ear, now just a stump, sat atop its head, swiveled toward her. Listening.
I'm going to die, Bonnie thought, very calmly and clearly. I am going to die.
The world took on a certain clarity, and she watched as the creature took first one step toward her, then another, and another. It crossed the small clearing in seconds, its monstrous limbs eating up the earth between them with ease.
It was strange, but the closer it drew, the calmer Bonnie felt. Distantly, the med student part of her was droning on and on about the psychological response to life-threatening stressors, but the part of her that was in the moment, feeling as trapped as a mouse beneath the paw of a cat, was thinking, in a bemused s
ort of way: How beautiful.
Beautiful the way a tiger was beautiful. Huge and weirdly graceful, and every inch a deadly creature. Death personified in the body of a beast.
Then it was standing over her, and its scent hit her.
Rich. Musky. The smell of sap and ice, the smell of blood on snow. A high bright tang of blood streaked across a dark, oily hide. Leaf mold and turned earth. The dying of the light.
Winter.
A tiny thrill, sweet and swift, scurried from her heart to the base of her belly, and there it burrowed, growing warm, and then warmer, and then warmer still, gathering heat like a fledgling flame.
The sensation was so strange and foreign to her that she almost didn't recognize it, and when she did she stilled in shock at her own inappropriate depravity.
The smell aroused her.
Of course it does, she thought.
Bonnie started to giggle, a giddy, tinkling sound. She couldn't help herself. Of course this would happen now. After years of searching for the right guy, after late-night drunken kisses with other girls, trying to find out if she were gay, after a cascade of boys desperately trying to turn her on and finding her still bone dry, after submitting to a humiliating exam to indeed confirm that she was a virgin before being thrown out here into the woods, of course she would discover what aroused her had been what had aroused her in her dreams all along.
Of course it was the stink of monster. Of course. And now, feeling the swift, singing arousal zipping through her veins, tickling her clit, curling around her nipples, she was going to be eaten. A virgin sacrifice for the beast, only finding what her body had apparently desired all along at the moment of death.
The giggles wouldn't stop. Why couldn't she stop?
Baiting the Beast (Virgin Werewolf Beast Erotic Romance) Page 2