The Hunter's Prey

by Diane Whiteside

  Jimmy’s slender fingers toyed with his cock, sliding the loose skin up and down all of the hard shaft. I gasped when he pulled that skin over the fat tip, deliberately inciting more wet beads to emerge from the narrow slit. His eyelids drooped sensually, their thick lashes almost concealing his blue eyes.

  He smiled and I saw a glint of white teeth against his lip. I blinked and he curled his lip back. He deliberately showed me his fangs. I choked as I wondered what he really wanted from me. I could pretend that the hawk had no connection to him but this was different.

  My finger hesitated and my bud pulsed restlessly. My body’s heat increased under his dark blue gaze.

  I remembered how many times he could have injured me as Bixby had. How many times he had given delight to me. How he always protected me from any harm.

  My finger moved again and I spread my legs wider in invitation.

  “You’re going to be very sore,” Jimmy growled.

  I laughed and held out my arms to him. He came onto me in a rush that wiped away every other memory of a man in my bed. I wrapped my arms and legs around him and pulled him against me until his heat burned into me. His fat cock rubbed my folds and I pushed against it. I arched my neck and caressed his head as his mouth tasted my shoulder. But I wanted everything he could show me.

  “More, please,” I begged, stroking his hair and wriggling against him.

  He came into me hard and fast, slamming into action. I dug my heels into his back and thrust myself onto him. We rode each other like wild cavalry that night, galloping headlong into a passion that asked only for honesty and willingness. I sobbed his name when ecstasy flared hot and bright, as I felt his fangs sink into my blood.

  I don’t know how often he had me. I don’t clearly remember how many positions that we found, just that I always liked each one. Some were excellent, like his chest hair rubbing my back while my backside snuggled his stomach and his cock nudged that hidden spot inside me. Some were sweetly enjoyable, like sitting on his lap while his arms leisurely lifted me up and down his hard cock. But I could always smell him on my skin as his cream overflowed my core and glided over my thighs.

  Finally, I fell asleep with my face buried in the pillow.

  I blinked sleepily when he woke me, and reached for the covers, trying to go back to sleep.

  “Sweet Anne, you look like a little hen, who’s finally found a comfortable roost.” He dropped a kiss on my hair. “Rest then and be happy when you face the world again.”

  He kissed me on the cheek and I mumbled something. I was asleep before the door opened.

  I awoke to the sound of laughter ringing through the room. At some point during the night, after the rain had finally stopped, Jimmy had opened the window to let the cool air in. I stretched, discovering twinges in places that had never known them before. I purred, remembering how I had gained those aches.

  I listened without opening my eyes. Linda and Clare were laughing but so were many other people. I got up and went over to the window, making sure to fasten my robe snugly first. There were a few drops of blood on my neck but nothing that mattered.

  A dozen or more people were standing in the road, looking up at the tree and pointing at Jones. He was a wretched sight, with scratches on his face and hands from the birds and a bloody trouser leg. His clothes and hair were smeared with chicken deposits. Now he was trying to find a way down from the treetop but couldn’t find a branch that looked sturdy enough for his weight. At least his wounded leg didn’t seem to be giving him any more trouble than its mate.

  While I stood there, another car stopped to see what all the commotion was about. Its passengers soon joined the others in poking fun at Jones. By the time I finished dressing, every resident of Susanville had found an excuse to see the mayor in that tree. The fire department’s truck suffered one of its frequent breakdowns so Jones didn’t touch ground until afternoon.

  Miss Jessie spoke to all of her boarders over breakfast that morning. She informed us that she was sure that all of her young ladies had seen nothing unusual on Saturday night or Sunday morning. We nodded dutifully, our mouths full of the excellent food. None of us would dare speak about the mayor’s misadventures anywhere that Miss Jessie might hear.

  Then she told us that she was taking a vacation for the next month and closing the house. She frowned at the girls who objected to that and reminded them just whose business this was. When they were silent and trying to hide their worries, she announced that every boarder would receive one hundred dollars in cash, to help overcome any discomfort that the closing would cause.

  This sum silenced even the noisiest boarder. One hundred dollars was a fortune then to girls like us.

  She finished by saying that she hoped we would all remember her kindness and return when she reopened. Most of them did.

  I heard that when Jones showed up at the court-house on Monday morning, no one could look at him without laughing. He was in a foul temper, of course, but the ridicule was worse to him than anything else. He went home within an hour and was never seen again in Susanville. Gossip had it that he and his wife moved to Florida, where they lost a fortune playing at real estate.

  Linda and Clare became backup singers for a gospel music star, who took them to Nashville. They wrote songs for him, including one about the Susanville chicken roost. He recorded it for a country music album and it was played for a time on the radio. But mostly he stayed with gospel and the song faded. Except, of course, in my house since I have a copy of every song Linda and Clare ever wrote or recorded.

  You’ve heard the story from there a thousand times. How I took Scamp with me to San Antonio to visit you and Aunt Mabel. How I went to the dance and met Ezra, the handsomest man I’ve ever seen in a uniform.

  How we married within the month and he’s been your father and my husband ever since. How your brother Michael arrived within a year, James three years later, and . . .

  Never mind; you’ve heard it before or remember it for yourself.

  I told him the truth about my history, of course, before we married. All of it, including the lessons Jimmy taught me that night, but no mention of any individual men. Mercifully, Ezra has never been jealous of my past, choosing to live in the present and future like the career soldier he was. He often teases me about being a curious wench who never tires of exploring her man.

  Sometimes, though, I pray for Jimmy, who deserves better than the loneliness I saw on that Susanville street. I hope one day he lays down his ancient grief and finds happiness in a woman’s arms.

  the storm cellar a tale of don rafael perez

  It was a fine summer day in the Texas Hill Country, meaning that it was hot and steamy. The weather promised a storm, hopefully only a thunderstorm and nothing worse.

  Elizabeth Smith sat peacefully at the kitchen table, her gnarled hands shelling peas with the careless ease learned from decades of practice. The scene was the same as it had been when she left to marry her second husband almost seventy years ago. The barn was just visible beyond her small garden, blocking the view of her son John’s house with all its modern conveniences. She preferred to stay in the house her father had built, where she could avoid any squeaky floorboard. Not, of course, that her grandson Henry permitted squeaks in any building that his family lived in.

  Henry liked to manage both people and things, which was probably why his daughter Mary was over here now, far from the swimming pool or the air-conditioned house. She paced around the kitchen, unable to settle, her eyes red-rimmed and dull from too little sleep and too many tears.

  Elizabeth sighed, recognizing her own past in the younger woman’s actions.

  “Would you like some coffee, Gran?”

  “Thank you, Mary, thank you. A cup of coffee would be very nice. Do you know where everything is? Of course, you do; you’ve visited me here a thousand times.” Elizabeth settled back and let Mary pour the coffee. But she kept a thread of talk spinning between them.

  “I remember when I sa
w you in the hospital the day you were born. And when you and Joe got married here at the old family ranch. You two looked so fine that day.”

  Elizabeth clucked at her clumsiness when the tears spilled silently down Mary’s face. She got up with a spryness belying her age and wrapped her arms around her great-granddaughter. Mary buried her face against the familiar shoulder and shook with her sobs.

  “There, there now, honey. You can cry if you want to. Joe may still be alive. They just said he was missing over there in Southeast Asia; they didn’t know if he was dead for sure. There’s still hope. There, there . . .”

  Elizabeth patted Mary’s shoulder and kept talking to her, her words a soft croon against the quiet afternoon.

  “Sometimes it’s best to just cry it out. A good bit of crying can be just the thing for a person, like a thunderstorm bringing rain and washing the earth clean. But some storms aren’t like that at all. They take life away. I can still remember feeling my baby ripped out of my arms by the big hurricane.” She stopped, reliving that agony again. It always hurt; she’d just learned ways to live with the pain. She went on, trying to explain those lessons in words.

  “When that happens, you’ve just got to follow the good earth’s example: Hunker down and try to survive until it’s time to sprout again.”

  She fell silent and simply held Mary as the tears gradually ended.

  “But, Gran, didn’t you pray that your husband lived through that storm?” Mary stood up a little shakily and accepted Elizabeth’s handkerchief to blow her nose with.

  “Honey, I didn’t see my husband swept away by the water but I heard him scream when it took him. A week later, I identified his body after the tide brought it back to the land. So I hoped and prayed during that week. But when I saw what was left of him, well, I was more than ready to let him go to the darkness of the grave.”

  Mary shuddered. Her former restlessness returned and she checked the clock. The peach pies wouldn’t be done for another half hour and the kitchen was becoming very hot.

  “Would you like to sit on the porch, Gran? Maybe you could tell me a story, like you used to when I was small,” Mary asked wistfully.

  “Of course, I’d be glad to, honey.” Elizabeth smiled at her, remembering the bright-faced child with her long pigtails who was as ready to hear a tall tale as she was to play pranks on her older brothers. It was a terrible thing to see so much fear and pain on a girl who hadn’t yet seen her twentieth birthday. But Mary was older now than Elizabeth had been when she lost both husband and baby to the great Galveston hurricane.

  “Would you like to hear a story about a tornado? Perhaps you’re ready to hear about storms and how folks find shelter from them.”

  Mary agreed eagerly, clearly hoping for one of Gran’s tales to distract her, as they always had before. Elizabeth smiled to herself. She waited until they were both settled in rockers on the porch before beginning.

  I was twenty-five when this tornado hit. You’ve seen the picture of me from that age: five feet of hardworking Texas woman. My curves were all in the right places, if I do say so myself, and I had lots of yellow curls. Men paid a lot of calls but I didn’t pay them any heed. I was living back here at home after my husband and baby were swept away by that big hurricane at Galveston. Hundreds of miles of land felt like a safe distance between me and the sea. I wasn’t much interested in living, let alone getting close to a man.

  It was Monday and I was doing the wash and the baking. Ma and Pa had gone flying out of the house at first light when my brother-in-law came by. My sister Betty thought the time had finally come to deliver her first. The three of them were buzzing with excitement that I just couldn’t share. So I stayed home to do the chores.

  You grew up with electricity. Do you remember hearing just how much work washday took? All day feeding that stove to get hot water for the wash, then using the hot oven to bake bread and sweets for the rest of the week. It was just what I needed though: hard labor that left me no room for thinking about anything else.

  I did notice the weather though. It was hot, humid, and still. Skies were clear, at least in the morning. The light turned a bit green in the afternoon but I thought that was just the angle of the sun.

  It wasn’t until I went out to take down the dry clothes that I really thought about a storm. The wind slammed the screen door behind me and I looked up at the sky, trying to see the full moon rising. Big black clouds were boiling up, racing overhead like armies in a battlefield. It seemed like they could fall on top of me at any minute, crushing me into the ground. The wind pushed me back against the house. The sky was dark, growing blacker every minute.

  That was when I heard the noise for the first time. It seemed like every bit of air clamored and rumbled. I’d never heard that sound before but I knew what it meant. There was a twister close by—real close by. I might not have time to get to the storm cellar. . . .

  Thank you, Mary. Coffee is good for putting heart into a person, even when she’s just reliving old scares. Now, where was I?

  The wind howled louder and suddenly I could move. I had to reach the storm cellar on the other side of the barn before the tornado caught me. Normally I was afraid of that dark hole and the bugs inside but not now. There was no time to be scared of anything except this storm.

  I picked up my skirts and ran as fast as I could. The demons of hell grabbed at my heels as I went. All my hairpins were lost before I passed the barn. But I reached the top of the bank and slid down the other side on my fanny to the storm cellar. Then I grabbed the trap doors and tried to pull them open. But the winds kept whipping the doors shut.

  Suddenly a man’s arm came over mine on the handle. Together we pulled it open. He pushed me in and I fell down the steps. I shouted at him to get in. Moments later, he was on the steps, fighting the tornado for the doors.

  I caught one glimpse of him in the little bit of light. He looked Spaniard but he was a big man, taller even than Betty’s husband. He had a harsh profile, with a hook nose. Black hair, black eyes against that olive skin. He was dressed in a black suit, too; fine gentlemen’s clothing. Then he shouted something and yanked and the doors fell into place, closing out the strange skies and the storm beyond.

  The tornado still raged outside, trying to break into our hiding place. I screamed when something banged into the doors. I couldn’t hear myself think over the noise. Then he was on his knees beside me.

  I went into his arms like a homing pigeon. I hid my face against his shoulder and cried, trembling like a cobweb. He tried to calm me, saying that we were safe and the tornado wouldn’t hurt the ranch. He told me not to think about the storm but I kept on crying. Finally the flood of tears was gone and I calmed down.

  It was dark down there and the wind was quieter, although I could still hear things crashing in it. He released me carefully and I took a deep breath. He moved away and I heard a match strike.

  Soft golden lantern light lit the cellar. It both softened and emphasized his face’s harshness and reminded me of how the green light had outlined the washing that had been hung out to dry before the storm.

  I stared at him, seeing an attractive man but not one that my family would ever approve of. He watched me with equal intensity and I began to feel enticing, as long-dormant emotions began to stir. His eyes were a mite reserved though, like clouds in a blue sky that hint of a storm but cause no problems for the moment. A coil of heat flickered in my belly. The cellar doors rattled but I paid little heed.

  I blinked at my own thoughts. Then I looked at him again, openly studying his magnificent body under the fine clothing. My stomach clenched again and I felt a little damp between my legs.

  His nostrils flared and heat burned in his eyes under my stare. He looked at me as if I were the most desirable woman he had ever seen. I ran my tongue over my lips, moistening them. His dark gaze followed the movement and I became wetter.

  He walked toward me slowly, the beams brushing his hair. He glided like a cougar, arrogan
t in his own masculinity and confident of his welcome. I trembled before his strut but lifted my chin proudly, my eyes locked to his.

  I put out a hand to him and he took it. He lifted it slowly to his mouth. He kissed each finger and then the back of my hand. Then his fingers shifted and his mouth tasted my palm. I could feel his lips caressing me before his tongue moved to the pulse in my wrist. My hand stroked his strong jaw and I moaned. He smiled slightly and repeated the caress on my other hand. The wind outside howled louder and my blood raced faster.

  He fondled my cheek with his other hand and I rubbed against it, treasuring the touch. My nipples hardened like rosebuds as I shivered. His hand slipped under my chin and lifted my head. I felt like a moon-flower seed, buried in the earth but waiting for the first touch of rain to start sprouting.

  Then his mouth touched mine. I opened my mouth and his tongue took advantage of the opportunity. He tasted sweet, like fresh water from a deep well. Our mouths explored each other slowly, gradually moving closer and closer, until finally our tongues were entwined like sweet pea vines.

  His hands slipped over my shoulders and down my arms, smoothing away my clothes. I trembled and leaned into his touch, enjoying the damp air on my skin. Then he leaned back and looked at me. I stood proud and tall under his hot gaze, like a sunflower reaching for the sky. He smiled at me and traced my nipple. He murmured something about honey before his lips took possession of my breast. A jolt of fire ran through my body and I arched back against his arm.

  Somewhere the wind was shrieking beyond the cellar. I was hot and wet at the same time, shuddering as life flowed through my body in response to him. . . .

  Sorry, honey. I guess I must have lost track of my story for a moment.