Shifters, Beasts, and Monsters
Page 58
I wanted to sleep, but I stayed awake, enjoying the peace and the sudden, rocking peaks that tore through my body, forcing groans out of me as they rose and faded, over and over. Eventually the swell faded and I wriggled free of him, his cock sliding out of my body as I rolled onto the floor and spread-eagled, gasping for breath. Max grunted and drew himself back down into human form and lay there, naked.
“Now what?”
“We have to go,” he said, rising, “Better if she thinks it was all a dream.”
As he was helping me dress he said, “You shifted.”
“I did, didn’t I?”
“That should take years to come in. I’m impressed.”
I grinned in spite of myself.
As I lifted my arms, he pulled my shirt down over my body. I buttoned his, and he held my pants for me to step into, caressing my hips as he did. We left Chastity on the bed and went outside, holding hands.
“We’ll have to feed again if we want to keep touching,” I said.
“Yes.”
“But we can,” I said. “We can do that. Hunt together.”
“I think so,” he said, leaning over to kiss my cheek. “What would you like to do now?”
“I want food,” I said. “Real food.”
He took me to the same cafe where we’d first met. I wasn’t sure what to expect when I brought the cup of coffee to my lips. The taste and heat were dulled, somehow, like the coffee had gone stale. I drank it anyway, but the warmth of it vanished once it passed my lips. I could taste the bagel I bought and the jam I spread on it, but it was more like the memory of a taste, a hint of something lost. There were some trade offs, I suppose.
“I’m not going to die when the sun comes up, am I?”
He laughed. “We’re not vampires. There’s a difference.”
Eating and drinking gave me little satisfaction. I felt antsy, my leg bouncing under the table. Max tightened, his statuesque muscles visible inside his shirt.
“That fast, huh?” I said.
“You’ll learn to control it. I can go for weeks, if I need to. We have to be careful.”
“Why?”
He looked around, at the other people sitting at the cast iron tables. “If these people knew things like us existed, how do you think they’d feel?”
“Things?” I said.
“I mean that in the best way,” he sighed.
“What are we going to do now? I’m still… hungry.”
“The night is young,” he said, eyeing me. “You’re hungry. We’ll do what we do.”
I finished my coffee and stood up. “Want another one?”
He shook his head, and turned to watch the people drifting by on the sidewalk. I tried not to look at them. It unnerved me the way I felt, appraising each one as potential prey. I walked up to the counter and tossed my cup in the recycling bin, and waited for the barista to move down to take my order. She caught my eye when she turned to speak to me. I swept my gaze over her and felt a thrum deep down in my belly. I glanced over my shoulder at Max, who shrugged. The barista’s nametag read Felicity. She had dirty blonde hair piled up under her hat, and green eyes.
“Another of the same?”
I nodded, and watched her as she made up my drink, working the milk frother and the espresso maker, and mixing in the flavor before setting a lid on it. As she set it down, I slid a twenty across the countertop. She took it, and I made sure my fingers brushed hers. I felt a little electric pop when our skin touched, and she jerked. Her pupils dilated, and her mouth parted a little, as if she’d just felt a sudden rush. She shook her head and went over to make change. I went down to the counter to her, and made sure I got another touch when I took the folded bills between my fingers. She stood there and stared at me, blinking slowly, as if trying to think something through. I slid the change into my pocket and took a sip of coffee, looked away, and looked back.
“Can I ask you something?”
“Sure,” she said.
“How do you feel about dragons?”
Natalie Deschain has been writing and publishing erotic fiction since 2012. The author of over 120 short stories, three novellas and a novel, she lives with a cat, a boyfriend who looks at her funny when she asks him to howl for her, and a really expensive mechanical keyboard that is on the verge of breaking from all those words.
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Mated To The Minotaur
By
Audrey Grace
PROLOGUE
Emily Worthington screamed, scrambling backward, the shredded foliage beneath her slipping and sliding, reversing any progress she was making.
Before her, Jason’s shirt, now tattered and torn, hung from a gigantic, fur-laden, musclebound body. Emily shrieked again, unwilling to believe what she was looking at. On top of the body was a bull’s head, flared nostrils emitting snorts of steam, and two curled horns that could puncture a sheet of steel.
“Jason?” she cried, wondering if the bull-beast before her still had an ounce of humanity left in him. She had watched him fall to the ground, convulsing and shivering, every muscle in his body cramped and tensed. She had first heard the leather belt snap, surprisingly loud, before the shirt tore. She had seen his eyes, normally green, turn to a glowing, menacing red. Then columns of steam had erupted from his nostrils, and he had looked down at his changing body, terror bunching up his face.
And still she had not run. Not even when Jason had shouted at her, told her to run for her life, to get away from him. His voice had been unusually deep and gravely, rumbling and rattling her bones and soul. He didn’t speak again after that, but he roared, grunted, while writhing, while shifting.
Morphing into a Minotaur!
The creature rose to its feet, massive, hulking. The last bit of clothing fell off its body, and Emily’s eyes went to the beast’s crotch, and saw there a penis of gigantic size, and still surprisingly human-looking. The beast roared at her again, and she tried to back up, tried to find purchase somewhere amongst the grass and leaves that kept on giving way, continued to slide out from beneath her frantic feet and hands. And when she did finally find some leverage, she launched herself backward, perhaps two feet, before her back came up hard against the trunk of a tree. The bark dug into her skin, sent a piercing sting shooting through her.
“Jason!” she yelled again, trying to bring the man out of the beast. The Minotaur stopped, seemed to consider the sound, but only for a moment. Then its eyes were once again on her, menacing, and the creature took one thunderous step toward her, and Emily knew she was at its mercy.
She shut her eyes, squeezing tears of fear out of each. She tried to control her breathing. She tried to think rationally. Could she outrun the gigantic thing? Probably not, and even if she could, she wouldn’t know where to go. It was getting dark, too. Soon the sun would dip below the horizon, and as crazy as being at the mercy of a monster of myth might be, being out alone in the wilderness was something altogether more terrifying.
“Jason!” she shrieked, anger putting a dry desperation in her voice. “Don’t hurt me!”
But the Minotaur bore down on her, and she yelped as it took one of her ankles into its thick, hairy hand. She was hoisted up, painfully, onto the creature’s shoulder, and the beast thumped off into the forest, her upside-down world bobbing to and fro.
She was tired, exhausted even. She had nowhere to go, did not know the land. The Minotaur… Jason was her only chance.
And Emily Worthington knew then that she had completely resigned herself. She was at the mercy of the Minotaur…
CHAPTER ONE
“You’re shitting me.”
“No, I’m not,” the Editor-in-Chief of Wild Magazine said, his face expressing sincerity and excitement. “I’m serious.”
“A… Minotaur?”
“Yes, Emily!”
“This guy has evidence?”
“He says he ha
s. He’s found an old cave, and etched into the stone there are apparently drawings—”
“Drawings don’t mean anything, Tom.”
“Let me finish, okay?” The fifty-something man with a complexion like bread-crust put his hand on his hip, and tilted his head at her.
“Okay, okay,” Emily said, her voice low, but her boss didn’t continue to speak. “Come on, Tom, will you just tell me?”
“You won’t interrupt me?”
“I won’t,” Emily promised.
“Good,” he said, interlocking his fingers together and resting his chin on his knuckles, elbows on his desk.
Bitch, Emily thought.
“Not only are there depictions etched into the cave wall, but apparently there is a fossil.”
“A fossil?”
“Yes.”
“Buried?”
“Until recently. I gathered that it wasn’t very deep underground. This man, this, uh,” he said, pausing to look down at his pad. “This Michael Nimon, said there was something in the cave soil that helped to preserve the fossil.”
“That’s it? You’re just going to go on the word of a man?”
“I thought you said you wouldn’t interrupt me, Emily.”
“Tom, we’re talking about a freaking Minotaur here, can we just get over useless social etiquette?” Emily threw her hands up in exasperation. She hated having to deal with the man.
“He sent me a photo as well. Told me he sent it to the top universities in Greece, too.”
“Greece?”
“Oh yes, Greece. You didn’t think a Minotaur was found in Montana, did you?”
“Right,” Emily murmured, nodding.
“Specifically, the cave is on one of the sides of the, um—”He paused again to look at his pad. Lefka Ori, otherwise known as The White Mountains, second highest mountain range on the island of Crete.”
“Crete?” Emily echoed, touching her lip. “Palace of Knossos.”
“Exactly, where the Minotaur was supposed to have been banished in his labyrinth.”
“If I am remembering right, that was supposed to be near the palace, not in it or under it.”
“Whatever,” Tom said, waving the correction aside with his hand. “All that stuff’s myth, anyway.”
“Maybe not, though,” Emily said, pointing at the pad. “What’s this photo?”
“Here,” Tom said, grunting as he turned his computer monitor to face Emily, knocking a stapler off the desk. On the screen was a dimly lit photo of a small dig site. It looked entirely unprofessional, but clearly visible in the center was the imprint of two gigantic horns on a slab of what Emily guessed to be stone.
“That’s the fossil?”
“Yeah.”
“Could be an animal.”
“Look closer.”
Emily leaned in, and though it took nearly a minute, she spotted it. “It’s so blurry, I can barely see.”
“But once you see it, you always see it.”
“Yeah,” Emily agreed, trying to keep the excitement out of her voice. “Interesting.” Beneath the vague fossilized remains of the two large horns was what looked like a vaguely-human ribcage, similarly preserved in in the sedimentary stone.
“Interesting? That’s an understatement.”
“Yeah,” Emily agreed in a whisper, locking eyes with her editor. “When do I leave?”
“Tonight.”
“What do I need?”
“A story and photos.”
“Who can I take?”
“Take Jason.”
“What? The intern?”
“Hey, this comes down from the top. I got a call from his father directly. Jason’s to go with you. Also, you’re not to tell anybody. From what I understand, we, and the universities, are the only people who know.”
“And Michael Nimon.”
“And the discoverer, Michael Nimon,” Tom confirmed. “By the way, there’s something else you should know.”
“Oh?”
“I did a little digging into this Michael Nimon, and can’t find anything, anywhere. I did, however, find a man by the name of Dante Nimon, an archaeologist who specializes in the ruins of the Palace of Knossos. They could be the same man.”
“Dante, huh?” Emily said, shaking her head and smiling. “What the hell is going on?”
Her editor shrugged his narrow shoulders. “Could be the same man. Maybe he took a second name.”
“Maybe,” Emily murmured, touching her lips. “Sounds like there could be the potential for a mystery to unravel.”
“So be careful, okay?”
“Yes, Tom.”
“I’m serious. Because I know you’re wondering the same thing I am, and if there’s something going on, you need to be prepared for it.”
“What am I wondering, Tom?”
“Why this Mr. Nimon called us at Wild Magazine.”
“The leading paranormal investigative journalism in the world,” Emily corrected, but not without mirth. The corners of her mouth curled. It was a ridiculous accomplishment to bandy about.
“Still,” Tom said, rubbing his forehead, missing it entirely. “That’s not enough. Why not call one of the big boys? One of the nature mags? Why us?”
“Maybe he’s a fan of our work.”
“Maybe. There is one thing, though.”
Emily seethed. “Don’t hide things from me, Tom.”
A look of annoyance rippled across his face. “We’re not done talking, Emily.”
“Just tell me.”
“He asked for Jason.”
“The intern? Specifically?”
“No, not specifically. He said he wanted a member of the Harris family. Jason’s father is too old to go. So he’s sending his boy.”
“Why that family specifically?”
Tom sighed. “No idea. But this seems too good an opportunity to pass up, and he’s not communicated anything back to us. So I guess we’re going to go for it.”
“I don’t like it,” Emily said. “Something doesn’t smell right.”
“I hope you’re more creative than that in your article.”
“Is there anything else I should know?”
“Yes,” Tom said, and he pulled a paper envelope from his desk drawer and opened it, pulling out a cluster of pages torn out of a ring-bound book.
“What’s that?”
“It’s something this Mr. Nimon sent us. Pages from a personal diary of someone called Pamela Johnson.”
Emily raised her eyebrows. “What’s in it? And how did he get his hands on it?”
“A written account of an encounter with a Minotaur,’ Tom said gravely. “And on the second question, I don’t know.”
“You’re kidding me.”
“Nope.”
“It could be fake.”
“Mr. Nimon says he has reason to believe it is real, considering this person also disappeared.”
Emily took the pages from her editor, and flipped through them. “It’s in English.”
“Yes.”
“Expatriate in Greece?”
“Doesn’t seem like it.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Just read it, Emily.”
She took a deep breath, and calmed her nerves. This could be the most exciting, fascinating discovery in human history. But she had learned a long time ago to temper her hopes.
“Okay,” she said, exhaling. “Let’s do this.”
“Be careful, Emily. We already lost Katrina last year. I don’t want to lose another reporter.”
Emily nodded. “Yeah.”
*
I look out of my window, and all I see is farmland. It stretches out until the horizon, unending.
It feels a little like my career path. Unending monotony.
Ha! What career path?
But living with my parents has its benefits. I don’t pay for board. And there’s always someone nearby that I can trust.
I don’t want to get out of bed this morning. I f
eel tired and sluggish. Probably a little too liberal with the cheap chardonnay last night. In fact, I think I’ve got a bit of a headache.
The scratching from this pen is driving me crazy.
-
I’m at the breakfast table now. Mum never understands why I like to keep a diary of my thoughts. She doesn’t seem like the type who ever was that introspective, though. I like to pen my thoughts. It helps me organize them in my head. It helps me make sense of the way that I feel.
I guess I get my emotional nature from my Dad. He’s always in a good mood one moment, and a rotten one the next.
Mum tells me, “We’re leaving at the end of the week.” She’s talking about her anniversary trip with Dad. That’s sweet, and I’m glad he’s taking her. They’re going to Paris, and the thought of that makes me laugh.
Paris! The land of art and culture and sophistication.
Meets my Mum and Dad?
Laughter spills from my lips. She looks annoyed with indignation. I tell her that there’s no possible way Dad won’t make a fool of himself with his clumsy, quaint country colloquialisms and mannerisms. His gruff exterior and alarmingly spare fashion sense will ensure that he sticks out like a sore thumb in one of the world’s fashion hubs.
Mum doesn’t care. She just wants to see the Eiffel Tower. How cute.
They’ve been preparing this trip for months. They’re leaving the farm to me for their trip. It means there’s going to be a lot of hard work for me. I guess I’m okay with that, though. I can handle it.
Dad’s just walked into the kitchen, cradling his cup of black coffee. He always kisses me on the head in the morning but today he doesn’t. I wonder why.
Ah, it’s because he’s got something to tell me. I can see by the way he’s standing uneasily.
“We’re hired help,” he says.