by Abby Weeks
Harry looked down at the two men, one sucking her cunt while the other was toying with her anus, trying to squeeze his tongue as far as possible up into it.
“Just try to enjoy it,” he said. “This is the way we welcome women up here. Then he put his lips on hers and slid his tongue into her mouth.
Aisha shut her eyes. He kissed her passionately. When she opened them she could see that even more men were climbing up onto the table. One of them took her left nipple into his mouth and began sucking on it, very gently. Another began sucking on her right nipple, mirroring the sensation of the other side.
The feeling of all those tongues on her body was beginning to overwhelm Aisha. She could feel her body respond. Her cunt was getting wet and hot as the man down there continued to suck on it. He reached up with his hand and began fingering her cunt as he sucked on her clit. The finger sliding into her cunt sent a shudder of pleasure up through her body that almost made her lose her balance. If it wasn’t for the fact that she was surrounded by other men, she’d have fallen off the table.
She felt weak. Her knees wanted to give way. Too much pleasure and sensation was rushing through her body. She felt as if she was being suspended by the men around her. She decided to test it. As the pleasure in her cunt and ass and nipples grew to the point of overload, she let herself fall. She expected to collapse onto the men who were surrounding the table, but she didn’t move at all. So many men were surrounding her now that she couldn’t even fall. Their arms and mouths were holding her in place. More men had climbed up onto the table and were licking and sucking whatever part of her body they could reach. There were at least three men sucking her neck. She didn’t dare think of the marks they would leave. There were others who’d stretched out her arms and were sucking her fingers, licking her arms and shoulders. From behind, men were licking her back and the back of her neck. Someone had slid beneath her and was sucking on her inner-thighs. Still others were sucking her toes, licking her feet.
*
Chapter 16
AISHA COULDN’T EVEN COUNT THE number of tongues on her body. She couldn’t distinguish the individual sensation of each tongue any longer. The men were in a frenzy, as if everything about her drove them crazy. They craved her. They would have eaten her like wild animals if it was possible.
When the pleasure in her clit reached the point of climax, she began to moan. With the first sound of her moaning, the crowd of men began to cheer. She tried to restrain herself, but she couldn’t. As her moans grew louder and louder, the crowd grew even more excited.
The first surge of orgasmic pleasure pulsed through her like a muscular contraction. She broke her kiss with Harry and gasped for breath.
As the tongues continued licking her, the surging pleasure of her orgasm rushed through her like a wave of ecstasy. She threw her head back and screamed. The men licked and sucked and kissed and she cried out again, the orgasm overpowering every ounce of strength she had. It rushed through her body like an explosion. She cried out again, screaming up into the air, the men’s hungry mouths all over her.
She screamed. The pleasure pulsed from her pussy and then gushed through her veins to every part of her. She couldn’t stand it. It was the most intense pleasure she’d ever felt in her life. She felt she was bordering on some sort of ecstasy she’d never even known was possible.
As wave after wave of orgasm gushed through her like raging torrents, her scream grew louder and louder, till it could no longer even be described as a scream. It was a howl, a howl like the howling of a wild wolf on the night of a full moon.
Instantly the men stopped what they were doing.
Aisha felt changes in her body that she couldn’t explain. It wasn’t pain, it was pleasure. The pleasure of her orgasm mixing with something else that was completely new. It was a numbness and a dizziness that felt almost like being drunk. She felt as if the room was spinning. It reminded her of a night when she was eighteen and had gotten so drunk she couldn’t make her way home. She’d spent the night lying in the middle of the park, staring at the stars until she fell into slumber.
The sounds in the room changed. Suddenly it was like there was an extra dimension to the sounds she heard. She could hear everything in the room. She could hear the men moving back from her. She could hear the sounds beyond them of the other men, the one’s who couldn’t get close enough to climb onto the table. She could hear Hilda and Tilly. She could hear their breathing, and identify them from the sound of it alone. It was like every sound in the room took on a new quality that allowed her to tell what it was, where it came from, who it belonged to.
Her vision changed too. She could see everything, and she could focus on it and see it in more detail, almost as if she was zooming in on it like a camera lens. She felt as if she was controlling a camera that could move around the room and focus in on anything. She could suddenly see Hilda and Tilly, backed up against the wall behind the bar, watching the scene on the table with horror, terrified that it might be about to happen to them next.
She could sense everyone by smell too. Each person took on their own unique scent, and she could tell where they were by it, even without seeing or hearing them. Her skin felt on fire. She could sense the air in the room, the temperature, any hint of motion.
And the taste of Harry’s mouth became suddenly overpowering on her tongue. She could tell more about him than she’d ever been able to before. It was as if kissing the man had left an impression of everything about him that she would never forget. If she kissed a hundred men blindfolded, she’d have been able to identify every one of them by the taste, and point him out when the blindfold was removed.
“She howled,” one of the men screamed.
“Look at her eyes,” another cried.
Aisha looked in the mirror behind the distant bar and saw clearly something she could scarcely believe. There she was, standing naked on the table, and her eyes were as yellow and as piercing as Packer’s had been when she’d first seen him.
What was going on? What was happening to her?
She reared back her head and howled again, and even she could tell that she sounded exactly like a wolf.
“She’s a shifter,” someone cried out.
“A handmaiden,” someone else said.
She locked eyes with Hunter. He was staring at her as if she was a complete monster. She sought out Heath, and there was a look of absolute rage on his face. Harry and Chopper looked more surprised than anything.
“Get her,” Heath shouted.
She turned and looked at the men. They were closing in on her. They looked intent on harming her now.
What had happened? She didn’t understand any of it. She was more terrified than anyone in the room. She could sense their fear and knew that although they feared her, she feared them more. She could assess her weakness more clearly than any of them.
She felt a strong hand grab her by the ankle. Then another and another as the men closed in on her and grabbed her by the legs. She fell down onto them.
“Careful,” Heath cried out. “She’s my woman.”
She heard Hunter’s voice answer him. “She’s not your woman any longer, buddy. You know the law when it comes to handmaidens. She belongs to the town.”
She struggled against the men’s hands as they overpowered her. Someone was approaching with a leather collar, and she understood at that moment that they meant to put it around her neck. She felt stronger than she ever had before in her life but as she struggled against the men, she knew she wasn’t strong enough to overpower them all.
“The first handmaiden in twenty years,” she heard Harry say. “I never thought I’d see another one as long as I lived.”
As the man with the collar closed in on her, she suddenly heard something that sounded as close to her as her own mother’s voice would have if she’d ever had the chance to hear it.
It was the howling of a wolf. It sounded like a complete and perfect match to the howl she herself had let out.
“That’s them,” someone shouted. “That’s the shifters. They know she’s here.”
The howl was followed by another, and another and another. Aisha counted four distinct, clear howls, and what surprised her most was that she could tell each howl apart. And not only could she tell them apart, but she could tell so much about the character of the wolf making the howl. And of one thing she was certain—the first howl she’d heard was Packer’s.
They were answering her cry.
And at that moment, she felt an overwhelming urge to run out into the forest and meet them. She couldn’t resist it. She struggled against the men’s arms, but she couldn’t free herself. There were too many of them.
“If those shifters try to come into the town, I’ll kill all four of them,” Heath yelled. “To hell with them. We should have wiped them out when we had the chance.”
Aisha saw the man with the collar bend down over her and attach the tight leather band around her neck. She howled again, and the four shifters in the distance all howled back in unison. There was meaning in those howls, if only she could make it out.
*
Chapter 17
AISHA COULDN’T BREATHE. She grabbed at the collar around her neck and tried to keep herself up off the ground as the men dragged her, naked, from the inn.
What were they going to do to her? Kill her? She felt the panic in her chest, but she refused to give in to it. Heath was holding a leash that had been attached to her collar, and he was marching her out onto the street so fast that she was stumbling to keep up with him.
The men were lining the street, shouting at her, calling her names. She saw Hunter, Chopper, Harry—all of them shouting and yelling. It was like some sort of nightmare. She was afraid she was going to be lynched.
“Take her to the witch,” someone shouted.
Evidently Heath knew where Ma Hetty’s cabin was, because he turned and started dragging Aisha up toward it. The men didn’t knock on the door. They just opened it. Ma Hetty appeared to have been waiting for them, because she was standing behind the door, ready.
“What is the meaning of this?” she shouted.
Aisha was surprised at the force in Ma Hetty’s voice. Where had this little old lady gotten so much strength from? Aisha knew it was because she had the shifter blood flowing through her veins. It made everything more powerful, more alive. Aisha knew that now. She’d never felt so alive as when she’d been with Packer in the forest. She wished she could go back to that night now and behave differently. She’d have let him mate with her. She’d have gone with him back to wherever he lived with his brothers and let all four of them mate with her till the hunger in their bodies for a female was so satisfied that they’d never want for another woman in their lives. She’d bear their young and make them happy and live with all of them, keeping the memory of the shifter race alive for all of them.
If only she could go back and choose differently. She never should have come back to the village, not after she’d learned what she was.
“Witch,” Harry said, “we’ve brought you something that might be of interest to you.”
“I see what you’ve brought me,” Ma Hetty said.
“She’s a handmaiden.”
“And which one of you dared to put a collar around her neck.”
The men laughed.
“Let her go,” Ma Hetty said.
“We’re not letting her go,” Heath said. “She’s a deceitful little bitch. I lived with her for four years and never knew what I was sleeping with. I’m disgusted.” Heath pulled Aisha toward him with the leash. When she was close, he slapped her across the face.
She felt an anger rise up in her, an anger at all the times he’d done that to her in the past, and she growled at him and bit his hand.
Aisha was surprised. The shifter instincts in here were definitely stronger. She was thinking like a wolf. She knew it. She could see the vulnerable points on the men’s bodies. She saw what it would take to choke each man, or knock him over and smash his head on the ground, or disable him with a jab to the groin. She could hear and see and smell everything around her. She couldn’t turn into a wolf, but apart from that, she had taken on a lot of the characteristics that made wolves such dangerous predators.
“Don’t you men remember what you did twenty years ago? You drove the last of the handmaidens out of this valley, and with them went the shifters. That’s when all this trouble with the wolf population began.”
“We’ve got the wolves under control now.”
“Only because the shifter brothers are helping you. What do you think is going to happen if you harm the first female of their kind to enter the valley in twenty years? They’re going to leave us. They’re going to abandon us.”
The men quietened down a little. That seemed to get their attention.
“We don’t need the shifters,” Heath shouted, trying to rouse up the crowd. “I say we hang her from the guard tower as a warning to all foul beasts.”
*
Chapter 18
AISHA GLARED AT HEATH. Did he really hate her so much? She’d always known she couldn’t trust him, but hanging her from a tower?
The crowd was getting more and more worked up. Some of the men were excited at the prospect of lynching her. It was the mob mentality. As soon as they saw that something terrible might happen, they wanted it to happen.
It was Harry who stepped forward to calm down the situation.
“Listen up,” he shouted above the noise of the crowd. “Everybody listen up. We’re not barbarians here. We live by rules.”
“Don’t talk to us about rules,” Heath said. “This creature lived with me for years and hid the fact that she was a shifter.”
“I didn’t know what I was,” Aisha said. “I never knew till we came here that shifters even existed.”
Heath didn’t care what she said. His mind was made up.
“Listen up,” Harry said again. “Ma Hetty’s been here longer than any of us. She’s the seer. We let her live among us in exchange for keeping the lore and wisdom alive. She knows the rules better than anyone.” Harry turned to Ma Hetty. “Tell these men about the old ways.”
Ma Hetty drew herself up tall and straight. She looked at the crowd, she looked at Aisha, then she faced Harry.
“The old ways are over, Harry. We gave up on them when the brothers returned, you know that.”
“We never officially dropped the old ways,” Harry said.
“We let the brothers live peacefully. We welcomed them back. We needed them more than they needed us.”
“If you don’t tell these men about the old rules, then I will,” Harry said.
“The old rules are dead,” Ma Hetty said. “I won’t speak of them.”
“What are they?” one of the younger men in the crowd shouted.
Harry spoke to everyone. “The old rules say that any handmaiden captured will be allowed to live so long as she lives in the brothel. And she has to promise that she won’t have any contact or mate with any shifter male. That’s the rule.”
“We got rid of that rule a long time ago,” Ma Hetty said.
“We only got rid of it because there were no handmaidens left,” Harry said. “Now that we’ve got one, the rule comes back.”
Heath seemed satisfied. He didn’t raise any objection. Aisha thought he was probably excited about the idea of her living and working in a brothel, a whore for every single man in the town to please himself with.
Harry took the leash from Heath and Aisha was surprised when Heath let him have it. When Harry started marching back toward the dirt street, Aisha had no choice but to stumble after him.
The men all mocked and jeered at her as she walked barefoot down the filthy street. A number of times she tripped up and fell in the snow and mud, her naked body getting covered in dirt.
“That’s more like it,” one of the men yelled. “A filthy shifter woman should be covered in dirt. That’s how she belongs.”
Anot
her man walked up to her with a pile of dirt in his hand and smeared it on her face and across her breasts. Aisha spat out the dirt that got in her mouth. She’d never seen an entire community turn into such monsters. Was this really the way men acted when there was no law and order to keep them in check? If it was true, then men were more beastly than animals. Animals didn’t do this.
Another of the men ran toward her and slapped her bare ass. The sting of the slap hurt Aisha more emotionally than physically. Why did they all suddenly hate her so much? What had she done? She still hadn’t fully accepted the fact that she was a handmaiden, even though this was a fact that every man in the town was now fully aware of.
The men knew what had happened back in the bar. They knew their senses had been overcome by some force that was more powerful than just lust. They’d wanted to see her naked, they’d wanted to have fun with her, but they’d never intended to pile up on her in a feeding frenzy of sexual abandonment. That was something that hadn’t been seen in these parts since the days of the last shifters.
That was something they all remembered from decades ago, twenty years since the last handmaiden had overcome them like that. That was the real reason they hated the handmaidens so much, because they had a power over them. They couldn’t allow a female, no matter what species she was from, to have that much power over the male population. It went against everything they stood for. Aisha was a threat because of her sexual magnetism, and she was going to be punished for it.
For these men, the way they treated the handmaidens wasn’t just a symptom of their distrust of shifters, it was also because of their distrust of women in general. The handmaidens had to be punished so harshly because they were a double threat to the social code of the town. They were shifters, and they were female. Twice as bad.
The men thought if they allowed a handmaiden like Aisha to have that much sexual power over them, then what was to stop the other women in the town, Tilly and Hilda and the handful of others, from also having power over them. It would be the end of the entire social order they’d constructed. While that might have been normal in more forward-thinking parts of the world, the rough, unclean men of the far north were not ready for that. They were in control, and they had to keep it that way.
