by Dawn Steele
Carlo turned a red, angry face away and exited through the curtains as she humped Rust’s cock in an increasingly frenetic hunger – a different sort of hunger from when she first ate the sashimi.
It was not just a physical hunger to climax for the umpteenth time that night. Hadn’t he fucked her three times tonight already? No. It was a hunger to be craved, a hunger to be cruel to someone who desired her and could not have her. A hunger to throw back at all the boys who had laughed at her size and timidity for all these years.
See? Men want me? I’m beautiful! They want to fuck me!
“Faster,” Rust instructed her. His breathing escalated.
She complied, thrusting her hips up and down at an accelerated pace.
“Rust,” she moaned. It was always his name on her lips.
Always Rust.
“Wait.” His voice was harsh.
He suddenly stopped her and lifted her bodily up with his large hands. She was surprised at how strong he was, but then, maybe she should not be surprised. His hard cock slipped out of her pussy, and before she knew what was happening, he had carried her to the table and bent her over the edge so that her breasts were pressed onto the surface and her buttocks were in the air.
Then his cock rammed into her pussy again.
“Ohhhh!” she cried out.
Her sodden, wet pussy, dripping with her own juices mixed with his pre-cum. He plunged back and forth into her with a force that left her breathless. His ardor was so urgent and his need so great that it was all she could do but be battered against the table, which was thankfully heavy and strong enough not to be pushed by the brunt of his raw, fucking power.
He stroked into her and pummeled into her. There was nothing gentle about his fucking this time. It was all raw heat and unbridled power. It was the fuck of a century. The fuck of flesh slapping against flesh and liquid, lubricating juices staining balls and inner thighs. The fuck of a rod-hard cock slamming against the mouth of her cervix, rubbing and chafing against her G-spot until she was delirious and screaming out in pleasure and pain and everything in between.
Her orgasm was even more violent than the previous one. That one had been the interplay of sensuality and differing textures. This one was borne of raw lust – lust like nothing she had ever encountered. God, to think that a man could want her so much! The euphoria this brought spiraled her soul into the starlight outside – to the reaches of the universe.
Rust! Rust! Rust!
He came just as the curtain opened again.
His sperm jetted into her over-stimulated vaginal tunnel. She could feel the tide of it, flowing in a hot deluge into her womb. And higher – crawling into the deepest spaces of her where her womanly parts lay waiting. The joy flowered in her heart and sent spears of ecstasy into her mind. Her satisfaction was immense.
Carlo stood at the doorway, carrying a tray with decanter of clear fluid and two glasses.
Rust did not pull out. He was panting.
“Your sake, sir,” Carlo said between his teeth.
Rust waved him in as he pulled his dripping penis out of Kate’s swollen pussy.
“Thank you, waiter.”
Kate was too winded to move. She lay draped over the table like a ragdoll. She could only watch Carlo come in once again and set the tray down on the table beside her. He expertly poured the Japanese wine into the two shot glasses.
Rust took one glass up. He stroked her damp hair off her forehead.
“You thirsty, beloved?”
She was aware of the undercurrents in the tiny room. How much was Rust playing to their audience of one? Beloved. Darling. The endearments kept tripping off his honeyed tongue like nectar.
“Yes,” she whispered.
All the talk had been fucked out of her.
He helped her up to the chair where she sat down, exhausted. Her pussy was sore like it had never been sore before. He put the glass to her lips and said, “Drink”. He watched her gulp at the sake thirstily and her throat move as she swallowed it.
He stroked her hair again.
“Satisfied?” he said.
“Yes.”
Carlo’s eyes glittered, and that was when she knew they had made a mistake.
10
Later that night, Rust tucked her into bed beside him. They were both naked on the big bed in his bedroom.
“I don’t think I can fuck anymore tonight,” he groaned.
She had to laugh. “Me neither. I’m glad to know you’re human.”
“Not quite.” He turned to her in the darkness. They had showered again and his hair smelled of clean shampoo. “This is nice.”
The tone in his voice was pensive.
She sucked in her breath.
Then she said, “Yes, it is.”
Silence. She could see the silhouette of his Adam’s apple moving.
He said in a casual air, “You ever thought of moving out of that college dorm of yours?”
The air froze around them. Did she just hear what she thought she heard?
She licked her lips. “Moving out?”
“Yes.”
Did she dare say it? Or was she setting herself up for disappointment again? Here comes the put down. So what’s new, Kate Penney?
But she was a masochist. A literal one.
And so she said, “Where would I move to?”
She could hear the thudding of her heart in her ears. Fool, fool, fool, she scolded herself. Why do you do these things? It was just like those diamond earrings. Carlo was right. She was a train wreck waiting to happen. A doormat waiting for Rust O’Brien to stomp all over and wipe his feet clean on.
After a long silence in the darkness, he said, “I was just thinking . . . that it would be nice . . . if you stayed here once in a while.”
There was a buzzing in her head which had nothing to do with her ears.
“A while?” she said.
“Yeah. You know . . . a while.”
He clammed up after that, and she waited for him to speak again. But he didn’t. After a beat, she heard his gentle snoring. He rarely snored. He must have been tired out by tonight’s antics.
Oh, but how would she be able to go to sleep now?
Come on, Kate, he’s not asking you to move in. You are not even in that part of your relationship. He just mentioned it would be nice if you stayed over once in a while. You know, like a sleepover.
But he had been on the verge of asking her to move in. She knew it in her subconscious!
She gazed at his form in the darkness. The windows were framed with blackout curtains. Rust O’Brien preferred to sleep in absolute darkness.
“I love you,” she whispered to his sleeping body.
And she did. She really did.
With her body, heart and soul.
Train wreck.
11
Rust O’Brien woke up suddenly in the darkness.
He was thirsty. Phenomenally so. And hungry.
He was aware of the sleeping girl beside him. His loins twitched. Not again., he inwardly groaned. He had made such a fool of himself in recent days.
And it was all because of the girl.
He swung his legs noiselessly out of bed. The hormones coursed throughout his body like molten lava. Swiftly, he shifted into his tiger form and padded out of the bedroom. He was seemingly more at ease with his tiger form these days, and he had been having more and more urges to shift.
Not an urge.
A compulsion.
He walked into his bedroom lounge, which was connected to his study. He should know about compulsions well. He gazed out into the cityscape from the glass window there – at the spread of buildings and houses under the blanket of the night sky.
What was happening to him?
He was obsessed with the girl. Kate Penney. He who had never been obsessed with anyone in his life.
But she was everything he told her she was. Pliant, submissive, beautiful and sweet. He had never been with anyone like her. His la
st lover, the wildly feral Shamilar, was a panther, and she liked to scratch him in bed with her sharp nails as he fucked her. Truth be told, he was getting tired of women like those. Bold women who were as dominant as their shifter alter-egos. Women who hunted. Women who were predators themselves.
That was why when Kate Penney trailed him that first night, he let her.
He knew that she was following him out of morbid curiosity and her schoolgirl crush. And he was flattered. Of course, he knew that half the students and the teacher faculty desired him, but Kate was like an innocent lamb, so different from the predatory women that he knew and was used to. He knew that she was out of her league – that it wasn’t in her genetic and psychological makeup to do the things she did that night.
And yet, there she was. Breaching her own comfort zone to follow him and, subsequently, to be with him.
More overwhelming yet was his own reaction to her later. The sex. The incredible sex. The feeling of power he had over her to make her physically and emotionally obsessed with him.
He found himself thinking of her the next morning and well beyond that. He found himself reliving the sex they had together over and over and craving for more of it. But he couldn’t make the first move. That was the one and only time, he told himself. He was a professor at the college, and she was his student.
It was wrong.
But she had come to him. Offered herself up to him in the manner he relished. He was willing to bet she had never done something like that before when she marched up to his office, bypassed his PA and spread her legs for him on his guest chair.
He took her then and there.
How could he not? He was just a man. And a shifter. His sexual urges were higher than most.
But the tables were turned.
In the time they spent together, he found himself being more and more obsessed with her. Yes, obsessed was the right word. He craved her body like a drug. He could bury himself in her pussy all day, all night if she permitted him – breathe in that sweet womanly scent of her and tongue her senseless. He could drown himself in her mouth. He could not get enough of her tits, her ass, her holes – all of them. He could fuck her and fuck her forever and lose himself in her body. He loved the way her flesh engulfed him, and how – when he touched her – she was soft and comforting all over, not hard like those athletically toned shifter women were.
That was why he loved sinking his body into hers and against her flesh. He loved rubbing their skins together, their mouths together, their genitals together. He couldn’t get enough of her, and he knew he had it bad.
Oh Kate, he groaned.
It would have been wonderful had it not been for that other thing. The thing that was taking him over now.
The urges he had to shift, to become more animal – more beast than man – came with something else.
It was the need to devour.
There was another reason why he craved being with Kate so much. Her blood excited him. The smell of it, the feel of it coursing down her veins, gathering in her heart as it pumped it in its circuit around her fleshy body. And not only her blood, but her flesh. The sweet, sweet scent of it. The taste of her skin as he licked her.
His obsession with her went beyond being carnal. It was a deeply psychological need to be with her physically, and yet having to restrain himself from sinking his teeth into her flesh. He had to wrestle with these juxtaposing needs. It was complex, like something out of the Jung he taught in class.
And lately, there was something else. A third component to finish the triumvirate of his obsession and despair.
He wanted to be with her for reasons beyond the physical.
He enjoyed being with Kate Penney. He enjoyed the little things they did together outside of sex. He liked her quiet presence in a room. He liked watching her do mundane things.
He liked being with her, period.
Now there were three reasons why he wanted to be with her. And one of them was dark and dangerous and frightening even to him.
What was he turning into?
And would Kate be his victim?
They always became the victim, eventually.
Unless he could stop himself.
12
“Kate!”
She swiveled. She was walking to the cafeteria to meet Michaela for lunch. When she saw who it was, she walked faster.
But he eventually caught up, as she knew he would.
“Kate.” Carlo’s voice was urgent. He grabbed her arm. “Please . . . talk to me.”
“What’s there to talk about, Carlo?”
She stopped anyway. She felt guilty about the whole thing. She felt like she owed Carlo for her shameless behavior – for flaunting herself in front of him like that. For having power over him.
“Please,” he said, his eyes pleading, “let’s talk.”
*
She nursed her coffee, feeling awkward.
“You’ve seen what he does to people,” Carlo said. They were at Starbucks, away from the prying eyes of campus. “He’s cruel, Kate.”
Only to you.
She shook her head. “Not really, Carlo.”
“You don’t think he’s playing a game?” Carlo’s eyes flashed fire.
“You’re a waiter. He was a customer. You were doing your job, serving him.” She didn’t dare to use the word ‘us’.
“He could have asked for another waiter.”
“You could have declined to serve us.” She raised her eyes. “But you wanted to stay, didn’t you? You wanted to see what he would do.”
Carlo swallowed.
“Yes, I’ll admit it,” he said. “I wanted to stay to see how far his sick mind would go.”
“You call him sick . . . and yet you fawn over him after class each time.”
“I wasn’t fawning. I’m a partial scholarship student. I am genuinely interested in what I’m studying. I do that in all classes.”
“Why do you like me, Carlo? Why do you persist on doing – ” She waved her hand “ – this? Do you want me that badly? I asked you this before. Do you want me only because he wants me?”
Carlo hesitated. She stared at him – at his handsome olive-skinned complexion. At the color rising in his cheeks.
“I don’t know,” he confessed. “Maybe it started out that way. But not anymore. I like you, Kate. I think you’re beautiful.”
“Because you have seen all of me, and I’ve seen all of you? A shared experience of nudism?” She should be flattered, but she just felt sad.
“No.” He placed his hand over hers. She did not move her hand away. “Because I’ve gotten to know you, and you are good and powerful and strong on your own. You just don’t know it. You don’t need some guy to make you feel like a woman. You can do it all on your own.”
“This isn’t about what he makes me feel,” she argued. “It’s about what I feel about him.”
“And do you love him? You think you love him? It’s only lust, Kate. What he’s feeling for you is probably just lust as well.” Carlo squeezed her hand. “When it wears away, he will drop you like a sack of potatoes. I know this guy, Kate.”
“Really?” This time, she withdrew her hand and placed it on her lap, under the table. “Then tell me what you know about him.”
Carlo paused.
Then he said, “I know that he used to date a girl called Shamilar. He knew her from our circles.”
Shamilar. Why did the mention of her name spear her heart so? Inwardly she flinched but steeled herself not to show it.
“‘Used to’,” she said. “We all have pasts.”
“It’s what happened to Shamilar that you should know about.”
“Is this hearsay or is it the truth?”
“It’s the truth as our circles know it. Shamilar got pregnant – ”
This time she cringed. She felt her womb contract.
“ – and he made her lose the baby. It was because she wasn’t a tiger shifter. He didn’t want contamination between the s
hifter breeds. And he was furious with her. Furious because she tried to trap him.”
Kate’s mouth went dry. Her stomach turned with more dread than she could anticipate.
“Well, she shouldn’t have tried to trap him,” she whispered.
“Yeah, she shouldn’t. But doesn’t that tell you something about the kind of guy he is? He would abort his own child if the genetics didn’t suit him.” Carlo’s tone was bitter.
She knew Carlo was trying to turn her against Rust. But it wasn’t going to work. She was in too deep – sexually, emotionally.
She loved Rust, no matter what Carlo said about him. Whether or not he was damaged, or callous, or cruel.
“Carlo,” she said gently, “whatever you say doesn’t matter. I’m not going to turn away from Rust.”
“Yeah.” He sighed. “I got the sense of that.”
“You’re young. You’re good-looking. You can have the pick of any girl you want. Any girl who isn’t taken, that is.”
“Taken,” he said bitterly. “That’s a good word for what he does to you. You have no idea how crazy you drive me, Kate.”
“This is going around in circles.” She got up and reached for her purse.
“No.” He got up too. “I’ll pay.”
But she had already fished out her wallet and placed a ten dollar note on the table.
“Thanks for the coffee,” she said.
She left before he could protest. Her heart was beating fast.
She wondered if she was doing the right thing.
13
Kate walked and walked blindly. She found herself walking to the river once again, the scent of water guiding her nostrils.
Once she reached the embankment, she went to the railing and stared out into the river – at the boats and barges trawling there, at the cafes and the pedestrians on the river walk down below. A tourist boat was winding its way upriver, its tour guide speaking into the blaring loudspeaker.
Her heart was palpitating so severely that she thought it would burst.
Carlo’s voice sounded in her ears like a warning bell.
