The Bid

by Jacquelyn Frank

  “An example would be during breeding. Due to multiple fetuses, the risk forces females to spend all of their late pregnancy in the Otherside, living as our cat selves. When we give birth, we birth a litter of kits. In the past, even as little as a century ago, a few months after birth the kits would learn to shift out of the Otherside, becoming babies. These children would then have the power to become the cat at will for the rest of their lives.

  “It’s believed that inbreeding is why our kits stopped becoming babies. It was a curse. They became trapped in the Otherside. Only the firstborn kit in a litter retained the ability to shift. The rest remained cats, with the intelligence of people, all their lives. There was only one exception. If the eldest of a litter met with death, it released the nextborn from the Otherside, and they would alter into the form of a person for the first time. Oh, it is a horrid curse, Jhon. The younger kits never know life out of the Otherside unless their sibling before them dies.”

  The detail of her story was amazing to Jhon, and if it weren’t so wild it would be easy to believe those honest eyes of hers. “So you’re saying all those cats are your brothers and sisters, and you’ve never seen them?”

  “I see them every day, Jhon,” she laughed softly. “I know and love them with all of my heart. They’re bright and funny, cranky and stubborn and all the things you expect your siblings to be. The only thing they cannot be is people. I spend a lot of time with them in both of my forms.”

  “You mean you travel to the Otherside. As a bellcat.” He stated it, verbally searching it in a way that would help him to grasp it. Her nod of affirmation was unnecessary. Things, little details, started to filter out of his memory. The feline way she moved, the sounds she made, her speed and strength, her pointed nails, the spots along her back…it all fell into place. “That must be something to see,” he mused, the speculation a soft challenge.

  “The feel of it is even more amazing,” she remarked with a small smile. “But Jhon, I need to explain your place in this story.” Hanna wanted to strangle him in a hug as he sat forward, his body language radiating full attentiveness even though she knew he felt doubt. “There seemed to be no cure for our genetic dysfunctions, although many in my family have pursued science and medicine in search of a solution. Meanwhile, cousins continued to wed cousins, and firstborns only knew their siblings as cats.

  “Then, only a single generation ago, my mother, who was a firstborn kit, fell in love with an alien slave. He was tall and powerful, a warrior in his soul and by his trade.” Unable to help herself, Hanna began to touch the distinctive trademarks she numbered. “He was fair of hair and had eyes like a bellcat.” She settled her hand on his chest and frowned. “My family was infuriated and appalled at the idea of an outsider becoming a part of our covenant. It wasn’t even possible to breed with alien slaves, they thought. Not to mention the horrors of public disgrace and the illegalities of such a class crossing. You see, though we may breed with slaves here on PAN, we may not marry them or in any way elevate their status. My mother wanted to run away with her lover, to find a way to wed him. My grandfather, Master of this House and responsible for everyone’s well-being, saw no choice. He knew that the rash act she was plotting would expose the House to a public scrutiny it couldn’t afford. If she did this thing, their secret could be exposed, threatening them all to yet another act of genocide. The notorious narrow-mindedness of the PAN insured that.

  “So, one night he tricked her slave into the room downstairs, setting all the members of the family on him. The slave knew my mother’s secrets, knew the creatures attacking him were his beloved’s sisters, brothers, and cousins, so he didn’t fight. He couldn’t bear the idea of hurting her by hurting them. So, he gave himself over to their will. They took mercy on him when they saw his nobility, each cat running a single paw through his flesh deep enough to allow him to bleed to death as quickly as possible.

  “He died and my mother found him the following morning under watch of her family who’d committed the crime. Grief-stricken, she kept his body sealed away with her in her room, letting no one come near her for three days.” Here Hanna took a deep breath and made certain he would see the truth in her eyes by holding his gaze firmly. “On the third day, the slave opened his eyes and awoke, as if he’d only been sleeping the entire time. It couldn’t be explained. Everything was the same for him, and everything was different. He seemed to live, breathe, and bleed just as before, but he had also grown the spots of the family on his back. His senses became the high-powered senses of the bellcat. Eventually, he would even master the ability to shift to the Otherside.

  “And as much of a miracle as that was? The day my mother and father consummated their mating while in the Otherside, my mother’s sister, the secondborn of her litter, suddenly shifted out of the Otherside for her first time. Don’t you see? They had found a new path to setting a kit free from the Otherside! It was a blessing no one could have anticipated. No one knew why or how it had happened, but it had happened!

  “But, when they tried to repeat the act for my aunt using slaves from other worlds, they failed. Time and again, they failed. The slave would enter the room and once it died it remained dead. The magic would not repeat itself. It reached a point where my aunt refused to sacrifice any more lives, and the family agreed. My father’s shift to the Otherside, they felt, must have been a freak occurrence. Something was special about him that couldn’t be duplicated. Or perhaps…the sheer power of their love had been the cause.

  “My aunt was murdered in the Feuds a few years later,” Hanna said, the contempt in her voice a very familiar song to Jhon. “The instant of her death, my uncle came out of the Otherside and into this one. By the time the Chamber of Masters passed down a moratorium on all feuding, the damage was done. Now there were no more cousins to marry. You see, while we can copulate in both forms, we can only conceive as people. The family trapped in the Otherside cannot reproduce. Only those who could shift could conceive. My father and mother had become the final breeding pair.

  “Until the day my uncle attended a slave auction. Our family never cared for the practice of flesh peddling after my father became my mother’s mate. It just happened that my uncle was with friends and he attended with them. There he saw a beautiful blonde warrior dragged out onto the stage. She was proud and powerful, fair of skin and hair, and had the eyes of a bellcat.” Hanna smiled whimsically, affection filling the retelling of a story she had no doubt been told many times as she’d grown up. “He claims he fell in love that very instant. He didn’t even have the patience to haggle over her. He stood up, offered an exorbitant sum no one would counter, and took her home. He gained her trust and affection, but he was forbidden to tell her his family secret. Yet, he had to convince her to put her life in his hands. He also had to convince himself to risk the life of the woman he had grown to love. He could have her, but she would be barren because she was not one of us, and he would be consigning his brother, the last kit, to a life locked in the Otherside.

  “So, like before, he brought her to the family and she gave herself trustingly as the cats each made their mark. She died for three days, and when she awoke, she was part of the Otherside. And again, the instant they consummated their love on the Otherside, his brother was finally able to cross, living as a person for the first time.

  “My parents are dead now, but my uncles are both mated. They spend time between here and our House in the country places. The isolation of the country allows them to live more freely as families. It allows them to forget their wives are slaves. To wed a slave is considered an abomination, Vejhon, but this family will break those laws for the sake of our loved ones, although it must be done in private only. Slaves do not exist in this House, except in the minds of others looking in. Appearances only. Otherwise, we are all equals. I told you I could give you freedom….”

  “As well as you were able,” he finished for her. He sat there silently and thinking for a moment, studying her. “There were at least n
ine cats in that room. That can’t possibly all be from a single litter.”

  “No,” she chuckled softly. “I was my parents’ firstborn kit from her first litter. My mother had two other litters besides mine. Four kits in each. I have a firstborn sister and brother who shift freely between worlds. We had hoped that kits from a better mixed genetic pool would be free to walk between the worlds, but I’m afraid it may take a few generations to undo the damage done. At the moment, the only way to free this family is through aliens like you, Jhon.”

  “Like me…” Vejhon’s eyes, so much more like a cat’s than ever now, narrowed as he considered her words. It only took a moment for his entire countenance to shift into a dark wall of fury, and Hanna felt her heart seize with dismay. She tasted fear as she faced the possibility of his rejection, of his contempt for what she had led him into. It had been a part of the risk, but she’d had little choice. She’d needed him so very badly, for so many reasons.

  Vejhon seized hold of her upper arms and surged to his feet. The violence was leashed, but it was like containing a deadly storm inside of a spider’s web. Any minute it would burst free to destroy her.

  “Like me…” he hissed, drawing her up until they were face to face. “And like Najir?” he demanded roughly. “Is he yours? Am I intended for someone else? If so, why would you let me think…? Why would you let me touch you?” Vejhon was in a physical agony that had nothing to do with his wounds. Everything inside the center of his body was contorting with horrible pain. She’d asked him to stop and wait, over and over, and he hadn’t heeded her. Was he meant for her sister? A cousin maybe? “No. No! I won’t give you up! You’re mine, do you hear me? I made you mine!”

  In an instant Hanna found herself out of the tub and on her back, water pouring off her body and into the thick carpet beneath her. Before she could draw breath, he was over her, his body covering her completely as he pushed her knees apart and settled himself intimately between her thighs.

  “I did it wrong, didn’t I?” he asked in a coarse and frantic whisper, brushing the words across her ear. “I didn’t know your body, and I wasn’t prepared for that sweet trap you set for me. I can make it different. I can make it better. I can make you mine.”

  Hanna knew he didn’t realize it, but he had begun to growl beneath his words. He felt threatened, felt his spoils were in danger of being stolen from him. His instinct now was to mark her again, deeper and more thoroughly than before. The idea gave her a little thrill and made her shiver, but she couldn’t let him upset himself due to a misconception.

  “I am yours, Jhon,” she assured him against his ear to be certain he heard her through the haze of his new animal instincts. “No one else’s. Najir is not one of us. He’s not from the Otherside.”

  Vejhon stilled, his thundering heartbeat rushing in his ears. He stared down at her and said numbly, “You bought him. He’s a slave. You said you don’t keep slaves. And he knows. I can see that he knows of the Otherside.”

  “I bought him,” she acknowledged. “It was my first auction and I couldn’t stomach what they did to him…and what I knew his future would hold. I admit, I thought he was perfect for the transformation, but there were flaws and we never attempted transition.”

  “Flaws?”

  “His eyes, for one. The auctioneer had doctored the color using an injection, but they altered back within days. It turns out we make better companions than we would mates anyway. We love each other a great deal, but we both feel something is missing.”

  Vejhon already knew that the statement was only a half-truth. At least from Najir’s perspective. “Have you been lovers?” Jhon queried gruffly, already knowing it was the worst thing in the world he could possibly ask.

  “Yes. On and off over the years when the fancy struck us. We’re isolated by these secrets,” she pointed out quietly. “Besides a few servants and guards, it’s just Najir and the family in this House, and I’m very much a cat with all the appetites that come with it. As you are finding out, our taste for lust is powerful. But Najir has always known that once I took my true mate, our interludes would end. He knew when he bought you that you would be that mate, and that he was resigning his access to me. I belong to you and no one else.”

  “No one else,” Jhon murmured, staring down hard into her eyes. “Why do I feel this way? Why do I suddenly need to own you like a prize, the scent of your body enticing me like a starving man is lured to a feast? I’m overrun with impulse after impulse.” As he spoke, he was rubbing himself against her, rocking gently above her as his hardening cock drew a path up and down between her labia. Every time he stroked over her clits she drew in soft, excited little breaths.

  “Because,” she hiccupped with a little moan of pleasure. “I am in heat. I have been since the moment I saw you, Vejhon. I have craved you so much. Feeling you in my hand burned you onto my memory and my chemistry, but I couldn’t…Oh! I can’t think when you do that!” she groaned.

  “And when the female bellcat is in heat, she sends the males into heat as well, is that right?” Jhon mused with a smile of understanding as he teased her vaginal portal with little prods of his fattened cock.

  “Yes,” she laughed breathily.

  “I noticed,” he retorted, remembering how uncannily irresistible he had found her even before this change that overwhelmed him now with nothing but pure craving. “So have I been a victim of chemical manipulation all of this time? Is any of this real?”

  “The choice you made was real. I struggled to keep sex out of it. I didn’t want you to accuse me…like this.”

  “I’m asking, not accusing. And you are right. I made a very clear choice. And now I’m making another one. Tell me how to love you. I need to fuck you good and proper and I mean right now.”

  She giggled for a second, and then lifted her bottom to coax him a little farther into her. “It’s only a matter of control, Jhon. You invade, I resist. You wait until the muscles relax and then…you are free to fuck me as hard as you like, as long as you like, as often as you like. Better yet,” she purred, “as often as I like.”

  “Why do you resist?”

  “I don’t know. Perhaps a reflex to assure fittest survival. Only a bellcat with power and strength of control will persevere to spread his seed. Mmm.” Hanna rumbled low in her throat, a sultry and beckoning sound that sought out Jhon’s spine and shook the tree of nerves awake. “I thought you wanted to fuck me, Jhon,” she taunted softly, pulling him down to the lick of her tongue. “Or if you like, we could just take time to taste one another. I long to rub the taste of your cock all over my tongue.”

  Clearly the thought appealed to him. She felt the rush of excitement that ran through him in his grip, his breathing, and the amazing hardness invading her. She also saw it in the wildfire intensity of his eyes as he raked them over her body and face.

  “Later,” he rumbled roughly. “I haven’t the patience to watch you do that to me right now. Not when all I want is to make you mine the way I ought to have already.” Jhon slid farther into her on the back of the observation, his musculature tensing tighter and tighter in anticipation of that trap that sought to undermine his needs. He braced a hand by her head, the other on her hip and holding her how he wanted her. His mind was already working on ways he could potentially defeat her body’s natural defenses. He was a soldier after all. Defeating all kinds of fortifications was in his job description.

  Hanna could hardly catch her breath as he moved so torturously slowly into her, as if that would prevent the inevitable. She knew it wouldn’t, but she wasn’t about to criticize. Every nerve ending lining her vaginal sheath was screaming with sensation as he teased past them. Not to mention he was purposely slipping back and forth against her nearest clit.

  In surrender, Hanna let her arms fall away from his body, her hands lying in abandon above her head as if invisible restraints held her. She closed her eyes and turned all of her focus onto the flesh he touched and prodded. Right about the time he redisco
vered that trap he sought, he also found the hard point of her left nipple and its dark areola. He sucked her into his mouth on a sort of sudden gasp, the shock of pleasure riding through him as her muscles fisted around him, reminding him of why it had been so hard to keep in control last time.

  Hanna cried out as his teeth tugged hard on her sensitive breast. He hadn’t yet learned how many nerve endings she had in her breasts, nor that they were nerves shared on the pathways of her clits and vagina.

  “Wait,” she gasped, the encouragement punctuating the way her chest rose again and again in her breathlessness. Vejhon smiled inwardly because she was rhythmically thrusting her breast up to his voracious mouth. Still, he listened to her advice, holding himself perfectly calm even though her muscles tried to con him once again.

  And just as she had said, her body relaxed after a long minute or two. The release was so liberating and exciting that he drove into her fast and hard, as if he were afraid she’d resist again. But as promised he sank into her perfectly, their pubic bones connecting.

  “Okay, now we’re making progress,” he muttered a bit savagely as he nipped and bit at her fat, juicy nipple. He traded sides, hearing her squeal as he withdrew in search of an energetic rhythm at the same time his tongue wrapped around the berry-dark tip of her tit.

  When she screamed out so sharply, his name bolting out of her as her body stiffened, he worried at first that he’d hurt her unintentionally. However, as he raised his head and saw her face contorted in bliss and felt her shuddering around him, he realized she was coming with unexpected impact and suddenness. Jhon braced his knees and dove into her seizing body in long, tight strokes, riding her orgasm like pushing through an extreme storm. In both cases, everything was wet and wild, sending his adrenaline spiking as he strained to go as deep as he possibly could. He had been deprived of her true depth, cheated of his right to spread himself inside of her. Jhon reached out to wrap a powerful hand around her head and face on the right side, gripping her in a silent, commanding little shake. Her eyes flew open, midnight blue sparkling up at him from around black oval pools shot wide with ecstasy.