by Wendy Stone
“Holy shit,” Terry breathed, staring at the picture on the front page of the newspaper.
“What?” Nashe asked, concerned by the sound of her voice.
“Isn’t this one of the guys that was responsible for the ambush at Lukah’s yesterday?” she asked, pointing her finger to a mug shot of a huge man with an almost square looking face, his nose huge with a prominent bump on the bridge.
“Bray Bard. Yeah, he and his two brothers have run the cartel on drugs in the were world for a long time. Lukah and I have been searching for a way to run them out of town, and out of our world, for a very long time. I think Shurene might have done the were community a favor.”
“She didn’t seem that bad of a person,” Terry said as Nashe went back to fill the omelet he was fixing and to flip it in half expertly.
“She didn’t used to be. Since the death of her mate, she’s been unreasonable.”
“I can understand that. I doubt I’d be very rational if someone tried to take you away from me.” She blinked in surprise as he slid a plate holding half the omelet, toast and some fresh fruit in front of her. “Wow, being mated to a chef could be very bad for my waistline.”
“Shut up and eat it Terry. You’re still too thin and I don’t want you getting sick.” He sank down next to her with his own food and a bottle of water.
“So...” she asked, cutting off a piece of the fluffy omelet and putting it in her mouth. Her moan of ecstasy made him smile. “This is fantastic,” she breathed.
“Thank you,” he said. “So…” he urged when he realized she wasn’t going to continue speaking.
“How much do I get paid as a hostess?”
“You’re mated to the owner,” he said.
“Yeah, and that means?”
“You should be working for the fringe benefits.”
“Health coverage?” she asked, making him snort.
“I’ll pay you the same amount I was paying Marta, if you want. You don’t need health insurance because weres have their own doctors and they don’t accept insurance. We can’t go to a regular hospital. Their drugs don’t work for us, their blood would send us into shock and their doctors would take one look at any tests and freak.”
“So what happens if I’m going to work and the cab gets plowed into by a dump truck, leaving me half alive?”
“Another were would get to you before an ambulance could. They’d take care of you and get you out of there so there wouldn’t be any questions asked. We take care of our own, Terry.”
She took another bite of her omelet, considering his words. “Okay. I’ll work for you.”
“With me, baby. You’ll work with me.”
Terry rolled her eyes, making him laugh. “I’ll work with you.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll be there every minute and then, on breaks and your lunch…”
“Oh, God, you want a quickie on your couch in the office?”
“Of course. You don’t?”
“What, you think I’m easy? You think I’m just some cheap hussy you can feed an omelet to and get her to take her clothes off for you? I can’t believe you would think like that.”
Terry broke up laughing at the confused expression on his face. Standing, she kissed him, stealing the last bite of omelet off his plate before pulling his tee shirt up and over her head. “Is that all you wanted to talk to me about?” she asked him, dropping the tee shirt in his lap.
“No,” he said, though his green eyes grew hot as they stared at her near naked body.
“What else is there?”
He growled, feeling his beast rising inside of him, wanting to throw her over his shoulder, carry her back to bed and show her what she made him feel. His eyes glowed, the green shimmering in the morning light.
“It’ll keep,” he snarled, rising with such force that his chair hit the floor. He lifted her, throwing her bodily over his shoulder and then smacking her on her panty-covered ass when she tried to struggle. “You started this, now hold still.”
She bounced on the mattress, her breasts jiggling enticingly.
He followed her, crawling toward her on all fours, eyes glowing, hard body stretching the confines of the tee shirt and jeans he wore. Straddling her body, he sat up, yanking his shirt over his head.
Her hands touched his skin, cool against the heat of him. They sent a shiver of need through him as she caressed with the most gentle and loving of strokes. “I never wanted a woman the way I want you,” he whispered, watching her eyes. “I’ve never needed anyone…anyone” he stressed, “the way I need you.” He took her hands and placed them on the button fly of his jeans.
She pulled, the buttons slowly jerking loose. Rolling off of her, he stripped off the rest of his clothes, coming back to lie beside her. His hands were hot and gentle on her skin as he tried to touch every bit of her. From the top of her head to her feet, no part was left out. His mouth found her nipple, feeling the soft bud harden under the caress of his tongue. He suckled, needing her taste in his mouth. He wanted to lose himself in her, to revel in the way she made him feel.
With her, he was whole. That dreadful loneliness was gone. The awful feeling as if he were missing something vanished, as if it had never been there. She filled him with the warmth of her compassion, the brilliance of her sweetness and goodness. He needed to tell her how she made him feel. But all that would come from his mouth was the rough sound of her name, spoken in the guttural tone of his beast.
So he showed her. Taking his time, running his mouth over the soles of her feet, suckling gently on her toes. He knelt by the bottom of the bed, unashamed of the proof of his desire. It didn’t just stick out, it stuck up, throbbing with every rapid beat of his heart. His lips touched her ankle, running his tongue around the small bone, then slid up over her satiny skin to her knee.
Her body, pale against the dark blue comforter, writhed as he made love to her knee. He refused to be hurried by the pleas that fell from her lips. She quieted as he moved higher, tasting the flesh of her thighs, running the sharpness of his teeth over the frail skin. Her arousal filled the air and saturated his nose, calling the beast closer until he was holding on by the tiniest of threads. His face changed until he was half man, half beast. He couldn’t stop it. Grabbing her hips, he rolled her to her stomach, lifting her hips in the air.
His nose moved between her thighs; his tongue, longer, more agile in this form, made an intimate foray through the musk of her arousal, investigating every crevice of her sex. She moaned and whimpered under him, her own beast raging to be free. He pushed his tongue deep inside of her, lapping at secret folds, finding her every sensitivity.
She rocked against his face, grinding her sex into him. His nose rubbed against her clit with a delicate pressure.
“Ahh!” she cried and he felt her climax in the muscles that moved against his tongue and the rush of sweet fluids that he greedily lapped. His own hips moved frantically, humping at the air. He needed to be in her, had to take her again, to reaffirm the mating. Rising over her, he found her sex with the tip of his cock. It was huge, swollen and angry red, the tip weeping drops of pre-cum to mix with her own juices, making his possession much easier.
With one long, hard thrust, he was seated inside of her.
“God, yes!” she cried and he howled his pleasure, knowing his mate was his equal even here, in bed. She could take as good as she got, already grinding her butt against his hips as he began the long thrusts that would drive them to bliss.
* * * *
Terry felt his huge paws curled around her hips, the claws carefully sheathed to keep from hurting her. He was pounding into her, his cock almost punishing in his intensity. But he didn’t hurt her. No, he was giving her exactly what she needed and she felt the pressure building up inside, so strong that she felt the change sweeping over her.
The hair on her back grew in with a tingle that made what Nashe was doing even better. She felt her hips narrow, her legs changing. She knew she was more beast than huma
n but she had to tell him before she allowed the change and the orgasm that was drawing painfully closer to overwhelm her.
“Nashe,” she growled, looking over her shoulder.
He grunted, leaning over her back, one arm around her waist, the other braced on the bed so she didn’t take all his weight. This position brought him close enough to kiss her and he did, with an abandon that had her forgetting about talking and pushing back against his every thrust.
I love you, baby, she heard in her head. I’m sorry if I upset you yesterday. Nothing you’ve done in your past will ever make a difference on how I feel about you.
Tears gathered in Terry’s eyes and she cringed because she knew it was time to tell him everything about her.
Nashe’s thrusts became more forceful as if he were trying to bring her back to what they were doing and out of her thoughts. It worked. Within three thrusts, she felt the orgasm wash through her, powerful and mind-blowing, leaving her weak. She let him hold up her weight.
His paws grasped at her breasts, the roughness of them stimulating her nipples, drawing out the pleasure until her eyes rolled back in her head. She felt him jerk, felt his cock swell inside of her. A liquid heat filled her, his seed spurting into her womb as he growled above her.
Rolling to his side, he kept moving slowly, staying hard. She stared at the mirrored doors on his closet, watching as his face slowly changed from beast to human on the pillow above her head. He sighed, pressing his face into her hair. “Where are you?”
“What do you mean? I’m right here,” Terry said.
“No, in your head you are somewhere far from here. Where are you?”
“This is something I should have told you before you mated with me,” she said slowly, feeling him tense up behind her, though he didn’t stop the slow caress of his hand over her stomach or the slow thrusting between her thighs.
“You’re acting like its life or death,” he said.
Terry could hear the dread in his voice and knew he didn’t want to hear it as much as she didn’t want to say it. But it had to be done and now was the time. She knew it like she knew she loved him more than her own life.
“It’s more death than life,” she said. “Promise you’ll listen to everything before you say anything?”
“I promise,” he said.
Terry was silent for a moment, trying to figure out a place to start. She could feel the familiar tingle of arousal inside of her as well, his slow thrusts beginning to draw her under his spell one more time.
“I was four,” she said softly. “Most people don’t remember what happens to them when they’re four. I think it’s a defense mechanism to keep your from remembering too many harsh things from your youngest years. Mine doesn’t work. I remember it all.”
“I had four sisters and two brothers. I was the middle child. We were poor. Almost homeless, except for the generosity of the church. They helped my dad find a house and a job.”
“Dad drank,” she said slowly. “When he did, he was mean, slapping us around for no reason. My older sisters took care of us younger kids. One day I noticed that Meggie’s lap wasn’t as big as it used to be. She told me she was having a baby. The baby was going to come from Jesus, she said. She also said she hoped it would go back to Jesus on the same day it came.
My dad was coming in the door. He’d been drinking again and when he heard Meggie’s words, he lost control of his temper. He grabbed me so hard that he broke my arm. A torsion fracture, that’s what the doctor called it. Usually caused by abuse.
I remember screaming from the pain. But it was nothing compared to what he did to Meggie. Even now I can hear her screams and the screams of my other brothers and sisters as they tried to help her and got the same thing he gave her. I’d never seen my dad use a belt like that.”
She took a deep breath, tears streaming down her face, tears for her sister, for the baby that Jesus never brought, for all of them because of that one man.
“Meg lost the baby. She bled so much that both she and the baby died. I remember her skin turned gray, mottled looking. It scared me so badly that I didn’t want to look at her or touch her.”
“Dad got rid of the body, somehow. I don’t know how. I was in too much pain and the shock of everything had made me shut down. I sat in a corner, my thumb in my mouth and watched as dad made the others clean up, scrubbing blood from the walls and the ceilings. They wrapped the tiny little baby that came from my sister in a blanket and took it outside. My sister was wrapped in an old sheet and then my two oldest brothers took her out, too.”
“No one would even know she was dead. Dad would cover it up, like he always did. He wouldn’t be punished. I knew it with the certainty that only a child can have. I think that was the hardest part. Meg had brushed my hair everyday that I could remember. She’d taken care of me, hid me from Dad when he was on a drunk and become almost a surrogate mother to me. I lost it. Dad sank down on his recliner, his pants and shirt still stained with blood from the beating he’d given Meg. He’d pass out, I knew he would. He always did. As soon as I heard him snoring, I went into the kitchen and grabbed the big knife that Meggie had always told me never to touch.”
Terry was crying openly now, sobs shaking her shoulders.
“Baby, it was a long time ago and it doesn’t matter. You aren’t that scared little child anymore.”
“Wait, wait. I have to finish it. I have to.”
“Okay,” he said. “But it doesn’t change how much I love you.”
“I took that knife and I shoved it as hard as I could into my daddy’s chest. The pain made him sit straight up in his chair and he stared at me, then down at the knife handle that was protruding from his chest. Then he said something that freaks me out even to this day. He said, I always knew it would be you.”
“Baby, you were just a little girl. You’d watched him kill the only mother you’d ever known.”
“I’ve heard it all. I was in foster care, but they made sure that I got mental treatment I needed so I didn’t turn into a sociopath or whatever they’re calling them now.”
“What about your brothers and sisters?”
“Three of them left foster care as soon as they could get out. They’ve spread to the four winds. The others, well... we were separated because no one wanted all of us. I was lucky and got some decent foster parents who really wanted me, even after they heard what I did. They never did find Meggie’s body. My brothers wouldn’t talk. They were terrified they’d be thrown in prison for helping Daddy do what he did. Can you see why I was upset when you went into the computer and found me?”
“You’ve never talked about your past, Terry. I had to find out.”
“So,” she said, turning her tear stained face up to his, “now you know.”
“Yes,” he said slowly. “Now I know. It doesn’t matter. It just tells me that you were strong even as a little girl. You rose above what happened to become the woman you are now. I love you, Terry. I want us to have a family and a life together. I want us to work to make Abstracts a family restaurant, run by our family.”
Terry closed her eyes as a sob got past her guard. “Really? You don’t hate me?”
“Silly rabbit,” he said softly. “I could never hate you. So what do you say? Tell me you forgive me and that we’ll make this all work out?”
“I forgive you for being so high handed and I know that we can make this happen. It will just take work... and lots and lots of love. Just next time, ask. Don’t go behind my back.”
“I won’t. Now about those children we were talking about. Want to try for one now?” He was still moving inside of her, his thrusts growing harder even as he spoke.
Terry took a deep breath before she answered. “Yes.”
“Good answer,” Nashe growled, pulling out of her and rolling her to her back. He pushed back inside, her thighs parting eagerly for him.
They climaxed together, then slowly fell asleep in each other’s arms.
About the Auth
or
A small town girl with a master's degree from the School of Hard Knocks, Wendy started writing as a way to combat boredom and keep from gaining dress sizes after an injury to her back kept her from working. No one was more surprised than she when people actually enjoyed what she wrote.
Writing as Daniellekitten, Wendy has won many awards for her writing, including Most Influential Writer in 2005 at Literotica.com, as well as Most Literary—Genre Transcending. She's been nominated for many of the Reader's Choice awards, as well as the monthly awards at the same website.
Wendy Stone resides in a small Michigan town, spending most of her time writing and enjoying time with her animals and the company of her family.
Table of Contents
A Strange New Breed
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen