A Twisted Rejection

by BBB Publishings

  And it’s on.

  The bunyip shifter, who happens to be filling the front passenger seat with his bulk, winds down his window and inhales deeply.

  “East,” he announces, followed by a pattern of directions until we’re in a quiet street with ocean views.

  Houses line both sides of the wide street, with manicured grass between the well-kept paths and the pothole free road.

  “There,” Flynn says, but we can all smell that this is where the trail ends.

  Somewhere inside the high fenced compound– the kind that’s been rendered then painted white to look pretty, with an electric gate.

  “Is this her house?” Lochy asks from next to me.

  “How would I know?” I snap.

  “She’s got good views, that’s all,” Lochy says – because the ocean is right there.

  “Damn sure not a police station though,” Steve says, pulling the car to the curb and immediately we all climb out.

  He stands with the door open and scans our surroundings.

  Quiet street. Sunday afternoon. Sun shining. The house next door is much less of a fortress. They’re having a kids’ party complete with a jumping castle on the back lawn, balloons freaking everywhere and some kind of costume entertainers with a big van in the driveway. The double back doors of it are open and an assortment of costumes are visible inside – but all the people seem to be in the backyard, not the front.

  I give up on my scan – because I know what that bitch is up to, and I’m beyond caring who sees me draw blood

  I take a running jump and launch myself straight over her fence. Landing on the roof of the police van with a hollow thud.

  The others are right behind me, landing on the driveway and in the gardens. Flynn reaches the house first.

  He’s not even through the doorway before his skin muscles begin to flex with bunyip strength and the seams of his jacket begin to shred.

  About fucking time!

  He thunders out of view, but only for the length of time it takes me to get off the roof of the van and chase the man. Lochy is in front of me and Steve’s behind.

  Her house is minimal and immaculate. Expensive tastes everywhere. Like a mini-mansion. It all feels wrong – and that drives my need to end this.

  With my heart racing, sharp teeth fill my mouth and everything else in the world falls into the background. Just the scent of my Puss, sex – and a soon-to-be dead woman.

  Steve and I dash for the staircase. The master bedroom and visions of Puss laid down on a bed fill my mind.

  “This way,” Flynn rumbles, the man’s senses heightened beyond my abilities.

  He’s gone right past the staircase, into a hall down the left. I almost over take him, but the guy shoves me back before tearing the door off and taking half the door frame too. He can smell it – sex, desire, lust – and it’s crossed his hard line too.

  He drops to all-fours, shifting into a giant panther-type-creature with muscles that tear his jeans to pieces.

  I barely get to see Sharon’s lips on Puss’ dick before Flynn snaps his oversized jaguar jaws around her. Bones crush and blood splatters across her cream carpet floor.

  Puss pulls up his briefs but doesn’t get enough time to pull his track pants up before I’ve yanked him to his feet by the front of his shirt. His pants fall to his ankles, and he nearly trips over them.

  You have no idea how relieved I am that his shirt is still on.

  He gives me a lopsided grin. The one that says he was in control. That he knew what he was doing. That he expected all of this.

  That he deliberately put himself in her claws in Steve’s place.

  He ended it all.

  “Fuck Steve,” I growl.

  “Please don’t,” Steve deadpans hovering near the torn up doorway. “You’re rough when you’re angry.”

  “Puss, I know you, you’re still going to regret this,” I snap.

  He half shrugs, like he doesn’t care to think that far into the future, and pulls up his pants.

  “It might be a good idea to calm the Bunyip before the neighbors see him,” Lochy adds.

  Flynn drops Sharon’s broken body and turns his bloody muzzle to face us.

  I should feel bad about the woman on the floor, but that weak cunt was just sucking my mate off. So no, this shifter doesn’t feel regret, or remorse, or even r… nope, I don’t have any more R words ready to go.

  She’s just a body on the floor. A shifter who overstepped the line.

  “How did this turn to shit so quickly?” Steve mutters, moving to the desk.

  Which is the first time I actually notice that we’re in her office. She has one of those big mahogany desks, bookshelves behind it, couch in the middle of the room. Everything screams of wealth – which is not how I would have described the woman at all.

  Steve sits in the big black chair and starts tapping away on the keys.

  “She has security cameras, but they’re a closed system.”

  Puss holds his hands out, part in surrender to Flynn and part to get the guy’s attention. I wouldn’t – he has blood dripping from those massive teeth. Insane! This is all insane!

  Flynn shakes his massive head… then begins to shift.

  When he’s fully human, but still covered in freaking blood, Puss waves toward a door at the back of the office.

  “Guest shower is through there. Shared with the guest bedroom or something,” Puss says.

  I bristle all over again, thinking about her talking to him, about what she said to get him in here and his pants down.

  “What did she say to you?” I demand.

  Puss rolls his shoulders in a lazy shrug.

  “What did she say that made you get your dick out?” I ask again.

  “Well, she’s a shit kisser, but –”

  I cut him off – I know what he’s going to say. Shifters feel fucking amazing when the only women we’ve been with for years have been human. And I say we because it’s more fun with three.

  “You know what, keep it to yourself,” I grumble.

  Flynn doesn’t say anything, taking his naked but-at-least human ass into the bathroom. Seconds later, the shower flicks on.

  “Cameras are clean. Did you leave any prints?” Steve asks.

  “Nope.”

  “Because you knew we were coming,” I grunt.

  “Yep.”

  “Motherfucker,” Lochy snaps, shoving both his hands into his armpits because he has a habit of touching shit at crime scenes.

  Especially scenes we shouldn’t be at.

  “How much do you think a cop earns?” Puss asks.

  “Shut up – you don’t get to talk yet,” I growl at him. He just smiles at me again. “For fuck’s sake.”

  I can’t stand him right now – he smells like a fucking rabbit.

  He goes to walk away, and I grab the back of his shirt, yanking him back to my side. Because he’s not leaving my sight either.

  “Problem,” Puss says, stretching to pick up Sharon’s phone. “Looks like she had us on speaker.”

  He holds the phone up.

  “And we’re already coming for you motherfuckers,” a voice declares. Then the line goes dead.

  Steve snatches her laptop up off the desk so quickly that the cable pulls half the socket out of the wall. Puss puts the phone on the ground and smashes the shit out of it. While Lochy disappears out of the room and towards the front door, only to backtrack in a hurry.

  “Out the back, out the back. A dozen rabbits are coming in the front gate.”

  I wrap an arm around Puss, dragging him in Lochy’s wake down the hall. I have no idea where the back door is, or if there’ll be rabbits waiting for us, but logic says that the back door is toward the back of the house – and I run with that.

  “I’ll get Flynn,” Steve says, heading in the other direction.

  Our role shifts from getting out of the house alive, to getting out of the house alive and drawing the damn crazed mob of rabbits atte
ntion to us, so the other two can get the hell out.

  Chapter Six

  Sharon

  The black recedes, replaced with haze, but the pain doesn’t go anywhere. So much pain.

  I can’t remember what happened, but it wasn’t fun, whatever it was. Footsteps run past me, then backtrack.

  “Benny,” someone shouts. “She’s in here.”

  Yep – I’m in here alright. I can’t even find the energy to be pissed that Benny is in my house.

  My body knits slower than I’d like. Shifter blood pulses through me trying to repair some serious damage. Every rib. Lungs. Damn, even my spine feels damaged.

  “They’re going out the window!” someone shouts, rushing for the bathroom, maybe for the spare guest room beyond it.

  Oh, that’s right. Puss. I was sucking Puss.

  Clearly, I didn’t have as much time as I thought I did, and there was no delicious sex involved, or I wouldn’t be almost dead on my office floor.

  I groan, and twitch my finger, but the pain is instant. Feeling completely miserable, I go back to laying limp on the floor.

  “Sharon,” Benny cries, diving to the floor beside me and pressing his hands to my cheeks, making me meet his gaze. “She’s alive.”

  “They went out the back too. How many dudes was she fucking?” someone shouts.

  “None of them,” Benny growls.

  I’ve no idea who or why. I never met any of Benny’s friends – or maybe it’s all those brothers he mentioned. I never met them either. But there’s plenty of people running around my house now. And gunshots. And shouting.

  I ignore it all as Benny slides his arms carefully underneath me and lifts me off the ground.

  “I’ve got you, baby,” he murmurs, pressing me to his chest and pausing until I’ve stopped groaning in pain. “Fuck your dad.”

  “Fuck my dad,” I murmur, which he probably can’t hear through the fresh blood still wet on my lips. “I forgive you.”

  He snorts. “I don’t, but I’m going to fix this.”

  Molten desire pools into my chest, something that was missing with Puss and Steve. Not this deep. Not this intense.

  Not this.

  I want this with a soul deep yearning.

  Benny, why the fuck did you take so long. Why’d you leave me? I want to demand, but all of that gets buried under the louder chorus of feelings. My Benny is holding me. My Benny is saving me. My Benny came back for me.

  “Just hold on baby, I’m getting you out of here. I’m never letting you go again.”

  Everything else that’s happened, all the time and all my plans and plotting, it all seems unimportant. Just this moment, this feeling of the pieces of my heart snapping back into place.

  A rib snaps into place too, and the pain causes the world to fade again, but I don’t care. Not one single bit.

  Chapter Seven

  Tas

  I’m about to demand how the hell we’re going to get those rabbits to focus on us to give Steve and Flynn time to escape when we burst out the back door and into the open, lush, green backyard. There’s another high fence out here, but sections of it are grates rather than bricks to allow for glimpses of the ocean beyond. Not a beach though, just ocean. And I’m willing to bet there’s one hell of a drop down into the water.

  I turn in a tight circle. A chorus of, “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” slipping from my lips.

  A terrified looking gardener steps around the corner, then doubles his wide eyed look as he meets my gaze. He lets go of the mower he was dragging and freezes.

  Puss – cool, calm and collected as always, saunters over to him and takes the jerry can from his fingers.

  He even says, “Thank you,” before turning and walking away.

  “Maybe run?” Lochy tells the guy, and despite his short legs and loose overalls he rushes for the fence on the right and hauls his ass up, over, and into the kids’ party next door.

  Good effort really.

  But still no sign of Steve or Flynn.

  “What are you going to burn? The house is brick,” Lochy hisses, but he pulls a lighter from his pocket anyway.

  Makes me wonder about the weed comment earlier.

  “The inside isn't,” Puss says.

  “You’ll be setting Flynn’s and Steve’s exit on fire,” Lochy says.

  Since when did he become the voice of reason!?

  But he’s right. We have to burn something – and that something has to actually make a difference.

  I meet Puss’s gaze, and for the first time since all this started, he frowns.

  “Light me up,” I say.

  “Fuck,” Lochy gasps.

  I grab the damn jerry can and nearly snap the lid off.

  “I should do it,” Lochy says.

  “Mate, you’re a shark! I’m not running in there as a human – are you crazy?” I say, then dump the contents of the can over my head – in the exact same second as I shift down from man to Tasmanian devil. Small. Cute. Deadly.

  The first of the rabbits hit the hallway with a straight line of sight out to us. Guns are pretty rare in Australia. Mostly shifters tend to fight with muscle and whatever their animal affinities are – claws and teeth and such. Works in our favor when we’ve bloody hesitated long enough to become targets. They could shoot us right now, but they run at us instead.

  Lochy drops the lighter, muttering, “Sorry, mate.”

  I feel it tap my ass and take off running.

  The smell hits me before the heat. From my lower vantage point the first three guys trip over me, at least two of them turn to give chase.

  After that, the adrenaline kicks in.

  Then the burn. But stronger than my fear or pain is a gut wrenching need for them to chase me, hunt me, ignore the others.

  I do two laps through her posh sitting room, around her ten seater dining table, and underneath everything I can.

  With rabbit shifters still hot on my tail, trying to kick me mostly, I tear through her office. Making sure to run over her couch, that fucker goes up in flames real quick.

  I run through the bathroom, and do a tight turn in the guest room. No sign of Flynn or Steve. They’re out. I don’t stop to analyze who’s chasing me, or who’s holding Sharon’s broken body. Though it does surprise me for a moment that anyone would mourn her, just a moment though, then I succumb to the burning pain.

  Hot. Hot. Fucking-hot!

  I tear back through the house, down the hall, into the yard where Lochy is just knocking one guy out and Puss has five bodies on the ground.

  Puss is deadly.

  He sees me, cups his hands, and I launch into them. Next second, I’m airborne and going over the fence – dropping over a cliff and falling into the ocean. I don’t shift until I’m under the rolling waves. My skin searing even though the flames have gone. My healing kicks in, mending as fast as it can. Burns are surface wounds – they hurt like hell, but for a shifter, they heal pretty quickly.

  Suddenly, a shark brushes against my leg – Lochy. Fucking great white shark. Puss swims into view and without going up for air, because we’re shifters and we don’t have to, we both grab hold of Lochy for dear life and let him pull us along the coast.

  We have to trust Flynn and Steve are out safely. Here’s hoping they will follow the coast to the nearest beach – but if not we always have contingencies.

  Backups.

  Because shit always goes wrong.

  After a few minutes, Lochy surfaces. Still swimming us parallel to the cliffs, but letting us breathe. I groan in pain, take in a mouthful of water, and splutter it back out. Learning my lesson, I keep my mouth shut.

  Relief washes over me when we near the beach. Flynn’s form is unmistakable even though he’s holding something big and gray – with a trunk.

  Flynn has a trunk.

  Not on his head, in his arms.

  My feet brush the sand, Steve instantly by my side and offering his arm. Steve knows better than to touch a person in pain unless he has to
. He offers his arm, and I grab it to pull myself up. Taking inventory as I do.

  Beard’s gone. Hair’s gone. Even my damn pubes are gone. All the other bits are still in place though, and I cup most of it into my hands to walk out of the water. It’s not a busy beach – but we’re not alone.

  “Nightmare fucker,” Flynn says, really it’s a pretty good greeting from the big guy.

  I’m naked. Lochy is naked. Flynn would be naked except he’s got some… a…

  “Are you wearing a sundress?” I demand, my throat tight with healing vocals.

  It’s strappy, cream with blue flowers, hangs down to his mid thigh, and is flowing ever-so-pretty in the deliciously cool breeze.

  He grunts, shoving the head of an elephant costume at me – then the one-piece-jump-suit body of it at Lochy.

  “Put your junk in the trunk,” he grunts.

  Lochy tries to brush his part of the costume aside.

  “Just ‘til we get to the car. People are already looking,” Steve says, pulling his shirt off and holding it out for me.

  “That won’t fit me,” I mutter, but I take it anyway.

  It’s long sleeved, white, and not looking nearly as neat and professional as when I saw him earlier today.

  I tie the arms around my waist. Most of the skin on my stomach has healed, but my arms and back are still shedding damaged skin and growing new layers.

  “An elephant?” Lochy is muttering. “Where did you get an elephant?”

  “Kids’ party next door,” Steve says.

  “Can’t I have the dress?” Lochy asks.

  “No,” Flynn grunts – and I would laugh at him, if my chest didn’t hurt.

  “Did we get them?” I manage.

  “Well, they’re not chasing us. We might have the real police on our asses soon though,” Steve says.

  We all look toward the billowing smoke on the horizon.

  Lochy is still muttering as he pulls the elephant onesie on. He can barely pull it over his shoulders and only gets the zip half up with those broad shoulders of his.

  “Looks good on you,” Puss says. “I really like that dress too.”