Shifters, Beasts, and Monsters

by Aya Fukunishi, Linda Barlow, Elixa Everett, Virginia Wade, Savannah Reardon, Skye Eagleday, Giselle Renarde, Jessi Bond, Natalie Deschain, Audrey Grace, Francis Ashe, J. E.

  “And what? You’re good at building up tension.”

  “And he says he’ll be here before the end of the next full moon.”

  “So we’ve got a month?”

  “Well, he dated the letter three weeks ago. Meaning...”

  “The moon is full tonight, Jo. I think we should be ready for him. For whatever happens.”

  I nodded.

  “More than one thing is not as it seems here in the Kingdom of Zor.”

  “Nothing to be done tonight. Let’s try and rest. I have a feeling we’ll need it.”

  As I went to snuff the candle by my bed, I thought again. I lit one corner of the letter and watched the flames lick up it until they almost touched my fingers. I dropped it to the floor and let it be consumed.

  To my surprise, sleep came quick and deep.

  Both of us awakened at the same time, to cries outside.

  “Riders! Riders coming up the mountain! Man the gates!”

  ***

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  ***

  In Her Dreams

  By

  J. E. & M. Keep

  Chapter 1

  I always ate lunch alone. There wasn’t a reason for it, it was just something I preferred. A little break from the forced conversation and weak smiles. It gave me a chance to prepare for the rest of the day, to coax me through those next four boring hours.

  That’s all I really had. Little breaks in between the mundane office work and tepid small talk. I crossed my legs as I finished the chapter in my newest book, but they’ve gotten a bit thicker lately. They feel sweaty beneath my thigh-high stockings and black A-line skirt, so I push the rest of my sandwich away with a sigh.

  There had to be something else.

  Something exciting.

  Something that could free me from these binds.

  My boss was a tall man, handsome. “Striking” would be the word most women use. Despite the more eccentric nature of the other scientists who worked in the lab beyond the outer offices, he was all business. His sleek black hair so well groomed; the pinstripe suit he wore well pressed and cared for.

  He was always curt with me. He was never mean, certainly never harassed me, but he barely seemed to notice me. Another typical day he stopped by my desk after returning from his lunch. “Any messages, Rita?” The question so formal. Not even a spare glance in my direction. It was a miracle he remembered my name.

  I still gave him my most charming of smiles, my freshly made-up lips pulled taut. “Just one, sir,” I said as I handed him the pink message slip. “They said it wasn’t urgent.” I thought she sounded a bit too young to be calling him, personally, but men are welcome to their secrets, even if I didn’t have any of my own.

  As usual he gave a nod and a quiet, perfunctory “thanks” before he went back into the labs, leaving me to my tasks again. Only the faintest whiff of cologne reminded me another human being had once inhabited the plain white room.

  It started to make me mad after a while, and I clicked my black heels on the floor, just to hear something other than the ticking of the clock. When finally it was time to go, I’d like to say I was in a rush to get out of the sterile building, but I meandered.

  Life at home wasn’t much better.

  Chapter 2

  The quiet flat was just as I left it. Dark and lonely. I wish I could also say it was neat – as neat as my office space – but I had no desire to keep it that way. Why bother? I never had guests, and impressing myself with tidying skills never did much for me. So to hell with it. It stayed as it was.

  I suppose I should have used my free time to cook well or clean up, but my interests lay solely in reading and my hobbies. So as usual I turned on the oven for something quick and easy, that would no doubt add to my increasing weight.

  It all took too much effort, and I pinched some food into the small fish tank in the living room. I’m allergic to cats and dogs, but the little blue fish appreciated me as I was, and he made me smile. It was relaxing to watch him frolic, at the very least, and as I settled in for the night, I picked up my knitting.

  My brother has a baby, a one year old whom I never get to see, but his birthday was coming up and I figured a winter set was as good as anything store bought, and the click-click of the needles soothed my discontented mind.

  Without realizing it, I had drifted off, the task of knitting some children’s clothes not enough to keep me conscious after the doldrums. Normally I didn’t become aware of that until morning and it was time to start the whole routine over again. This time I awoke early.

  It was still night, although the first thing I noticed wasn’t the darkness, but the aroma in the air. It was nothing like anything I kept in my flat. It was foreign, exotic, masculine... wrong, but enticing.

  I fluttered my eyes open, but I didn’t see its source, not at first. Instead what I saw was a wispy trail of a dark, cloudy tendril curling around the corner of the door. The voice, however, was what took my interest. It was faint, as if from a distance across my home: soft and definitely a man’s.

  “Come to bed,” it called, as if the bed he spoke of – my bed – was somehow his to beckon me towards. Yet... it felt somehow right.

  It was almost like a fantasy, something dark and forbidden that I rarely let my mind wander to. It didn’t do me any good with my rounded, blushing face to let such thoughts in. Even my boss wouldn’t look at me, let alone a stranger on the street. Yet I stood up and felt my silken stockings press against the white carpet.

  There was no man, I reminded myself. It was just my subconscious reminding me that it was time for bed. That’s all.

  As if heeding that, the wispy black trail faded, and I walked alone. The beckoning call of “come to bed” repeated, but surely just a memory. My mind playing tricks.

  When I rounded the corner and flipped on the light switch, I could see that it was empty. All the desperate hopes of my lonely mind.

  In my younger days, I would have cried at the realization, but a single woman in her mid-thirties gets used to coming back to an empty house. I barely knew what I’d do if I had to share my bed with anyone else, even if it was far bigger than I needed. I liked to sprawl out, and the thought actually brought a smile to my lips as I unbuttoned the white, now wrinkled blouse and pulled it away from my pale skin. My bra was on the last clasp and my breasts spilled from the top before I undid it and threw it on the top of the dresser.

  I have no idea how he had gotten there, but the first real proof of his presence I got were his arms around me. Lean, but strong. He embraced me. Simply embraced me, and it would’ve been so sweet and tender if not so jarringly unexpected. Those bare, dark arms around me, just beneath my bust, his chin resting against my shoulder as he husked into my ear in a deliciously masculine voice, “You look so lovely.”

  Snapping my gaze to the mirror I could see him. Long dark hair, so silken and glossy, framing a stunning male face; beautiful almond shaped eyes, half lidded as he nuzzled into me. Although those features were lost when I saw the curved black ram-like horns on his head.

  I was going to argue, but all thoughts, all words left me as I saw him. My lips dropped open and I just stared at him, hugging my half nude form. My breasts were bare, the nipples slightly pinker than the flesh around them. I don’t think I’d ever seen them so aroused, and just the simple touch of a terrifying man was enough to make me warm between my thighs.

  It was then that his words sank in, and I shook my head.

  Why I wasn�
�t more alarmed at the presence of a dark, ashen skinned man with horns of the devil, I couldn’t say. I was more consumed with what he’d said, as if his very words were something that could not be ignored by universal law.

  “But you are,” he said, and his voice was something of a seductive whine as he trailed his nose up my neck to my ear and then wrapped his lips around the lobe. To feel his warm, moist mouth take that bit of skin and flesh in and suckle it softly...

  I couldn’t help but tremble, and he brought a hand up to cup one of my breasts, hefting it in his palm. “And I’ve never seen a pair so big that were quite so lovely as these,” he murred in my ear, each word a honey treat.

  God, it had been so long since I’d been touched, and my eyes fluttered back. Even if it all was a dream, a hallucination brought on by bad food or loneliness, it didn’t matter. It felt so real, and so welcomed that I swear I felt moisture beginning to form in my blue eyes, so I blinked it away.

  “You’re not real,” I managed in a soft voice, and it sounded like I was lamenting the fact. Because I was. Even some devil was better than the endless loneliness.

  He let loose my lobe and flicked it with his tongue before mewling into my ear like an admonished pet. “Don’t say such things.” He squeezed my breast, letting the large, ripe flesh swell between his dark, slender fingers. “I’m as real as you,” he countered. “I should know... I’ve watched you for so long. Watched and yearned.” I noticed the feel of bare flesh against my back, the whole of his chest as bare as his arms and shoulders.

  No one watched me. No one even saw me. I was like a ghost, floating invisibly through life, and it felt like the weight of it would bring me to my knees. But he was my buoy. I forced my eyes open again, staring at my troubled face and then up to his mirrored reflection, looking over his tall, fit form with a quivering lower lip.

  “No you haven’t,” I argued back.

  He was gorgeous. Everything a man should or could be. Strong but beautiful; muscled but majestic; tall but lean. Most importantly, his face was such a vision of perfection. So well-shaped, he looked like a man out of a movie. Perhaps he was, and I had stolen that memory from a film and used it to fuel my deranged fantasies.

  “Why don’t you like me?” he asked, and I could see the wounded look on his face. He wore so little, and though his groin was masked from me by my own body in the mirror, it looked like he wore nothing there. Only leather cuffs about his wrists, a thick leather collar around his neck. Some straps of leather that criss-crossed his chest, and what looked like dark black socks covering his calves and feet, though they looked like a seamless part of his whole.

  “I hoped and dreamed that you’d like me when we finally met,” he bemoaned.

  I hated making people sad, and my entire face fell in deep concern. “I would like you,” I admitted. If he were real, of course. Which he wasn’t. Still, turning down my fantasy man certainly wasn’t on my list of things to do, and just the thought of someone feeling my body was enough to make me come alive in a way I hadn’t felt in years.

  It felt like I could leap out of my skin, the sensations were so raw and tender. My back moved into his chest more eagerly, because I didn’t want to wake up to find out he wasn’t there.

  That one sweet moment was bliss, but I blinked and he was gone. A phantasm.

  “What do you mean you would like me?” came his voice, and my eyes darted to the bed to find him there. He lounged upon it, his body full and on view to me. That exquisite male physique so casually displayed, and there fully exposed was his manhood. That proud, large member, flaccid but still so big, rested against his thigh as he propped his head up on his palm and watched me. “I’m right here. Don’t you trust your own senses?” he asked with a troubled gaze.

  I’d never seen one so large, and I caught myself staring before I blushed and tore my eyes away. My nipples tightened, and my thighs warmed, but I tried to ignore it. To ignore him. I wanted so badly for him to be real, though, and my stockinged feet carried me forward.

  “I don’t...”

  He patted the bed beside him invitingly. Inviting me.

  “I thought I had finally found someone like me,” he said sweetly, that dark voice rich and yet welcoming. It drew my gaze back to him, as if against my will, and I witnessed that large cock twitch as he stared at me. Ogled me. “Someone alone. But special. Someone so beautiful.” He licked along his full lips, leaving them shiny with his saliva.

  I wanted to argue, but this was a fantasy. It was all a pleasant dream, and even in such a pleasant dream, it bothered me letting the compliments stand. Yet his cock throbbed again, and my eyes dropped to it. I could barely believe how horny the sight of a naked man was making me, even if he wasn’t like any man I’d ever known.

  I swallowed as I stood next to the edge of the bed, the mattress pressed to my thick thighs as I stared down at him. “I am alone.”

  His lips formed into a soft smile. “You don’t need to be,” and he reached out, took my hand in his, tugged me towards the bed and I found myself compelled to obey. I had to climb in towards him as he gazed up at me so fondly. So longingly. “Neither of us has to be anymore,” he added as he rose up – along with his cock, so enormously large and proudly it made my head spin – pulling me onto the mattress and into his arms.

  The warmth, the feel of another person was overwhelming, and I wanted so badly to be surrounded in the feel of his flesh. To have him touch me and hold me; to fill my head with sweet lies that I desperately wanted to believe. My body was soft where his was hard, but he responded how I wanted him to.

  I might have put on pounds with time, but he showed no sign of being troubled by it. He lowered me down onto the bed with such ease using those strong arms of his. He laid me out like I was a prized treasure, those dark, almond-shaped eyes of his wide as he loomed over me. “You are perfect,” he murmured huskily, and I felt that massive cock of his throb against my thigh as he positioned himself on top of my body.

  He needed but the one arm to hold himself up, and the other felt out my flesh. Cupped, squeezed and kneaded my full breast, gazed at it in awe and wonder as it melded between his fingers. “I’ve never wanted someone so much,” he said in a confessional tone, and I felt that throbbing cock brush me again, this time leaving a streak of sticky precum upon my thigh and stocking.

  I gasped and felt a lightning shock travel through me, making me so wet I could barely stand it. A dream or not, I didn’t care anymore, and my hand traveled down my stomach until I grazed his manhood with my fingertips. Oh god, I wanted it so badly. I needed it. Everything, every part of me was so warm, so desirous of the strange fantasy man.

  He sensed that surrender in my mind, for he grinned toothily, angled his head down so that his long, ebony hair fell about his face so beautifully. “I knew you’d want me too,” he said, and that large cock throbbed so thickly in my grasp. It was spectacular. So perfectly shaped, lined with such prominent veins, filled with the rich heat of arousal.

  Lowering himself down to me he buried his face into the crook of my neck, kissed me there, licked his tongue up the length of my skin and suckled. How he ravished me with his affections, kissing and nipping in such perfect form. “I want you so badly,” he said in a moan.

  “I want you,” I whimpered back, because it was the truth. Because I was lonely, and in need of comfort and affection, just like anyone else. Because he wasn’t just a random person that was as despondent as me. He was virile and attractive, and everything I’d given up on getting in life, and he wanted me.

  My heart nearly stopped, and my breathing held in my chest as I swallowed. “I want you very badly,” I clarified.

  His heart must have sang as mine did, for he responded to that addendum with a grind of his hips, causing that thick, meaty shaft to push through my hand in such an erotic manner. It caused his foreskin to peel back, and the bulging, elegantly carved crown to bloom out from beneath its hood.

  “Oh, yes,” he said in response
, and lifted his head to kiss my lips. It was pure passion, unadultered desire with which he tongued my mouth and plumbed its depths. He kept his tongue within me long before he parted our mouths and gazed at me with those wide eyes of his. “I’ve waited so long for you.” His eyes went glossy with moisture. “I worried I might never have you.” He lunged for my mouth again, his thick dick bulging even wider in my grasp, and staying its new, obscene thickness.

  I didn’t know what he was talking about, but I also didn’t care as my tongue pressed against his, probing and desperate. I needed him, I needed to have him before I woke up. My hand grasped his cock tighter, feeling the throb of his manhood meet the rapid pulse of my heart. My other hand slid down over my hips until I felt the zipper of my skirt and started tugging it down.

  He felt me going for it, and his hand left my breast – though I could read the reluctance on his face as he let go of that great mound – sliding it on down to my hip. With such a dextrous hold he shimmied the garment down from its place, then began curling his fingers into my panties. Eagerness was plain upon his face, and the incessant throb of his dick grew quicker as he unveiled me to his gaze, his breaths increasing. “I want to be inside you,” he mewled so pleasantly, and my underthings rolled away with his touch.

  I nodded, my brown bun getting mussed up by the pillow as I lifted my bum and let him slide the white panties off. “Hurry,” I begged him, for it wouldn’t last much longer. I’d wake up, alone in my bed, and I needed him in me. Urgently.

  With a flick of the wrist it seemed he had those panties off. He brought them to his face and fluttered his eyes shut as he inhaled my scent through them. He was delaying giving me what I needed, but to see him so enraptured with my scent was intoxicating. “Wonderful,” he murmured, before finally letting them go.

  Without even realizing it, he had his other hand in my hair and undid the bun to let my dark locks free as he lowered himself. “You are simply gorgeous,” he said with such an honest, caring face, though he nudged his way in between my thighs, eagerly seeking out a place between them for himself and his startlingly large shaft.