I searched within myself. There was nothing there to explain it. Just the ever-present thrumming of my heart, the whooshing of my blood, and deeper still, a dark ball of energy, waiting for me to call on. But at the edge of my awareness, there were pinpoints of life. Some so tiny, they were barely there, moving frantically, scuttling to and fro like insects. Others were swift, but seemed plodding in comparison. There were slightly bigger, probably mice and other vermin. Further afield, there was a small mammal, maybe a cat or a dog.
And just on the other side of the wall, there was a large presence. It loomed suddenly as if it had hidden, but now revealed itself. My eyes flew open, and I forgot to breathe as icy fear paralyzed me. But then, adrenaline drove me to my feet, overwriting the stiffness after sitting for so long.
Rapid steps moved away from the boiler room. I stuck my head through the door, staring down the darkened tunnel. At the other end of the hallway, the person turned and looked back at me. The faint light coming in through the stairwell illuminated a woman of average height. In the gloom, I had no chance of making out her identity. Yet her bearing, her posture seemed familiar.
Then the door slammed shut, and she was gone. Why hadn’t she challenged me? I wasn’t supposed to be down here. Had she seen what I’d done to the rat?
A familiar, oily feeling slithered up my throat. Fear. I wasn’t afraid for myself. But what if this got back to Amber? What would she think of me? I stamped on my anxiety and took several deep breaths until I calmed down. It had been so dark in the room, there’d been no way the woman could have noticed any details.
But to be safe, I’d stay away from the others. They could never know what kind of abomination I was.
MACHA
* * *
“I saw him.”
Callahan shook his head. “I’m sorry, Macha. I checked with HR and with Assistant Director Hennessy. Your dad’s not on the payroll.”
I wrung my hands, but stopped when he glanced at them. Taking a deep breath, I tried again. “When we got here, I saw him clear as day. He wore a suit like all the agents. This is my father we’re talking about. I’d know him anywhere.”
Callahan clasped my shoulder, his sympathetic expression doing nothing to dispel my anxiousness. “Look. You suffered a trauma most people don’t recover from. Most humans who are pushed into another shape—well, let’s say we either find them a good home, or we put them down. The human mind doesn’t take kindly to being forced into something that alien.”
I fought the urge to slap his hand aside. “I’m stronger than most. I retained all my memories. I know what my dad looks and sounds like. I saw him.”
Taking a deep breath, I reminded myself that he was a friend and trying to help. It didn’t wipe the bitterness from my voice, though. “Thanks for nothing. I’ll find him myself.”
I left him standing there and closed the door forcefully behind me. Callahan didn’t follow me. My thoughts tumbled over each other. What was I going to do now? I didn’t think Callahan was lying to me. Which meant that my father was here, but hidden somehow. Maybe he’d changed his name. But why would he have done that? Every time I found a hint of my old life, new questions came up.
I didn’t even know how long I’d been a cat. Kiernan had met me before. I was still younger than my friends, so it couldn’t have been years. More like months. Either way, my family had no idea what had happened to me. I needed to let them know I was okay.
I strolled through the hallways, keeping my head low. I’d barely cleared a corner when a metal door a couple of yards ahead opened, and Julian stepped out. I slipped back before he noticed me, waiting a few seconds before checking again.
Julian was walking away, his hands in his pocket, and his head lowered. Even from a distance, the body language of his lanky frame betrayed sadness and defeat. There was another guy who had a lot of issues. I felt a kinship with him. He’d also been forced into an unnatural situation. I’d hoped to find an ally in him. Instead, he was as closed up as a constipated clam.
Well, he had his problems, and I had mine. My priority was to get back to my family. I waited until Julian had disappeared down another part of the hallway before I continued walking.
There were a couple of things I’d retained from my cat body. Compared to before, I was silent as an assassin, stepping quietly and swiftly. If I didn’t want to be seen, I wasn’t. I sensed people before I could see them. But I was also a lot jumpier. I was much happier avoiding others, but to find my dad, I had to go against my instincts and seek them out.
Up ahead, agents were talking. I passed several men and women, only slightly older than me. Some of them threw me a curious glance, but nobody as much as called out a greeting. There was no sign of my dad. I continued walking, keeping my head down, but staying aware of my surroundings.
At one stage, Mrs. Hennessy walked towards me, deep in conversation with a colleague. I smoothly slipped through a door into an empty meeting room until they’d passed. I waited a few seconds until I continued my search.
Several hours later, I trudged back to our quarters. I’d made no progress. There’d been no sign of my dad anywhere. Logically, I knew the compound was so large, it might take days to find him. Maybe he wasn’t even here anymore.
I flung myself on the bed Amber was on and curled up into a tight ball. What did that say about me that in the depths of despair, I still searched her out? I was too depressed to answer the question.
Amber looked up from what she was reading. “Hey, Macha. What did you do all day?”
I shook my head and scrunched my eyes together, rolling myself up tighter. Amber scooted to a sitting position. Fingers connected with my scalp and scritched in comforting circles.
It felt divine. I’d loved this as a cat, and I loved it as a person. It was hard to stay upset when she did that. My shoulders loosened, and I pushed my head harder against her hand.
“Do you like that?” The smile in her voice lifted the dark cloud. I opened my eyes and nodded.
“Roll to your front.”
I did as I was told. She straddled my hips and sat down on my ass, stretching my spine. Then she bent forward and dug her thumbs into my tight shoulders. A rumbling sound escaped my throat, and Amber laughed. “Oh, my God. You’re purring.”
I didn’t want her to stop, but I also didn’t want to admit it. So I said nothing. She snickered and continued with the massage until I was about to fall asleep. She bent over and kissed my neck. “I love a relaxed kitty. You’re still recovering. Take it easy on yourself.”
I would have nodded, but I didn’t have the energy. The door opened, and somebody entered the room. Amber said, “Hey. Do anything cool today?”
When nobody answered, I opened one eye. Julian’s face was paler than usual. His expression closed Amber and me out as effectively as steel shutters. “Nothing. I did nothing.”
I opened both eyes and lifted my head. I’d never heard him sounding that dead before. Not even when he’d been a ghost. Amber’s eyebrows rose, but she knew better than to push. Instead, she said quietly, “Hey, you know you can talk to me when you’re ready.”
When Julian answered, his tone was final. “There’s nothing to talk about.”
6
AMBER
The Soul Weave had changed us. I wanted to learn more about what it had done, but I didn’t trust anybody enough to ask. Besides, I suspected nobody at the compound knew, anyway. Maybe the librarian, old Mr. Denholm, might? After all, he’d given me his personal spellbook at the Academy. I made a mental note to find out how to contact him. Callahan could help.
Either way, since we’d done the ritual, I was energetically connected to the boys. If I focused, I sensed their energies. Their souls burned in my consciousness like tiny color flares. Julian’s was a muffled turquoise blue, Kiernan and Lance were different shades of purple, and Macha was an angry berry red.
I could feel them, but only when I concentrated hard. According to the ancient book, the ritual shoul
d have tied us even closer together. I couldn’t tell how far away they were, or what they thought.
If they stood in front of me, I knew when Julian was grumpy and Macha scared, but any person with a bit of empathy would have known that. It felt like there were layers missing.
But then, the Soul Weave ritual hadn’t been completed. Macha’d been a cat. He’d been present, but he hadn’t taken part. I wasn’t even sure if Julian’s participation had counted, since he’d been a disembodied entity at the time.
Yeah, I definitely needed to find out how to fix this. Was there a penalty to half-ass a ritual? I put it on my mental to-do list, right after what to do with Julian.
He’d turned into this closed off, cold person I barely recognized. Where he was concerned, my emotions were all over the place. I’d mourned him, I killed in his name, and now I’d become weary of his moods.
Yet I still wanted him. I wanted all of them all the time. Although the five of us slept in two beds, we hadn’t had sex since the ritual. We kept our distance from each other, aware that our relationship had shifted. And we didn’t know what to do with it.
But when the guys took off their clothes in our shared space, I stole glances at their physiques, their wide shoulders and powerful legs. They were still mine, and it was time to reconnect with each of them.
Kiernan had gone out to meet his mom. Lance and Julian had disappeared to God knew where, and my cat boy had fallen asleep after the massage I’d offered him.
Without looking at it, I pointed a finger towards the camera in the corner of the ceiling and sent a tiny jolt of electricity to fry the wires. I did this every night, and every day, a grinning technician swapped the damaged surveillance kit for a new one.
Brushing a finger across my chest, I suppressed a moan when my nipple pebbled. Before I could change my mind, I stripped off until I was naked and slipped into the bed next to Macha.
He lay on his side, scars standing out vividly against his reddish-brown skin. Black curls covered his torn ear, corkscrewing along his hairline.
I backed into him, snuggling my ass into his groin until my back connected with his chest. Then I grabbed his arm and pulled it over me. I closed my eyes, looking to force the connection the ritual had promised. But I didn’t even know what a proper soul weave was supposed to feel like.
So instead, I focused on the sensation of his warmth against me. He heated up my skin like a furnace, and my tense muscles relaxed and softened against his hard chest. Drawing idle circles on his forearm, I kept my eyes shut. His presence grew brighter in my mind—his sleek physique against my body, his heartbeat drumming against my back.
I shifted as my need for him became stronger. I wanted him. I wanted to feel all of him. His breathing sped up against my throat, and soft lips brushed over my skin.
“That’s a lovely way to wake up,” he purred.
His breath sighed past my ear, and I shuddered. His hardness grew and pushed against my butt. His wiry pubic hair tickled as his cock nudged between my cheeks.
“You feel good,” I whispered, wiggling and rubbing my ass up and down on his erection. His arms tightened around me, pulling me closely against him. His tongue rasped along my throat, bringing blood to the surface. Then he kissed the spot, soothing it.
Without saying a word, he disengaged himself from me and pushed until I was on my back. He slotted himself between my legs, levered himself up on his hands, and looked down at me. His blue eyes held my gaze with a warm intensity that shocked me to my core. I needed this man to make me feel safe and cherished.
I tugged on his shoulders, wanting him closer. He smiled before lowering his lips over mine. His breath puffed against my skin, and I opened my mouth to accept him.
I gasped when his tongue scraped across the inside of my mouth. It hadn’t changed back fully. It wasn’t as rough as a cat’s, but not as smooth as a human’s. But it didn’t hurt and made every sensation stronger.
His hands held the sides of my face as he took his fill from my mouth. His body never stopped moving above me, and the feeling of skin against skin shot arousal into my lower belly.
I moaned at the flavor of him, how he pushed against my tongue, and the hardness nudging at my core. I lifted my legs until my ankles crossed behind his lower back, begging him wordlessly to get on with it. My pussy was so wet, I felt like I was turning into liquid.
My body was on fire, ready to go off like a rocket. But Macha wasn’t done with me. My cat boy understood I wouldn’t last. He leisurely disengaged from my mouth and winked. Then he made his way down past my ribs, past my belly, as I wiggled my hips to get more friction.
He dragged his mouth across my skin, worshiping my body with tongue, lips, and teeth. Every nip sent jolts to my pussy, but when I tried to rub against him, he held me down firmly. My back bowed, pushing my breasts shamelessly into the air. My nipples were so hard, they ached.
“Get on with it,” I groaned.
He bit me hard enough to sting. When I glared at him, he chuckled. “You’re in such a hurry. You’ve got to learn to enjoy the journey, not just the destination.”
If he hadn’t held me so tightly, I might have kicked him in the head. But finally, finally, he arrived at his goal. The tip of his tongue swirled around my clit, and I lost the ability to think.
“Oh, my God. More.”
Slowly, he circled the sensitive nub. How did he know what hurt and what felt amazing? The cat-like roughness could have been too much, but he licked with the lightest of touch.
One moment, he flicked my clit, then he flattened his tongue and dragged it up and down my folds, dipping into my core as he passed. My excitement went up another notch as his broad shoulders pushed my legs open until I was fully exposed to him.
Being that open to his gaze might have felt too vulnerable if the lust in his eyes hadn’t matched mine. He was humping the bed in tiny up-and-down movements. He was as hungry for me as I was for him.
At that moment, he dragged his tongue all the way from my ass up through my folds to my clit. He wasn’t holding back anymore, but I was so wet, it didn’t hurt. The raspy surface ignited a fire in my pussy, waiting to erupt.
Macha lifted his head, and his stunning blue eyes bore into mine as he did it again. My muscles clenched and my thighs trembled as he pushed two fingers into me.
“You’re so wet, I can’t wait until I bury myself inside of you.”
My eyes rolled back as I held on to his head, wanting him closer and harder. And then he crooked his fingers, hitting that spot inside of me that connected all the pieces. His tongue, my clit, his fingers, my pussy.
7
He did it one more time, and that’s all it took. I went off like a rocket. Waves of sweet torture spiraled from my core into my legs and my arms as he continued licking and pumping his fingers into my clenching hole.
My orgasm was still rolling through me when Macha rolled me to my front with incredible strength and pulled until I was on my knees.
“Stay there,” he commanded, his voice strained.
I was too shaky to support my weight on my hands and lowered myself to my forearms, wiggling my hips to get him to hurry up.
“Shit.” Macha swore, fumbling with the stuck drawer. There was only a few seconds between him tearing open the condom square and pushing himself into me. But it felt like an eternity.
His cock was the other organ that hadn’t completed the transition to human. There were spines under the skin that popped up when he was erect. They didn’t hurt, but as he entered me, they massaged the nerves of my inner walls. My eyes rolled into my head as my pussy clenched around his hardness.
When he was fully seated, he pressed his chest into my back and playfully pinched my neck with his teeth. “You still with me?”
I nodded, groaning as he tentatively moved his hips.
“Am I hurting you?”
I glared over my shoulder. “I’ll tell you if you do. Now move, Cat Boy.”
There was an i
ndulgent gleam in his eyes. “Always so pushy. Don’t worry. I’ll take care of you.”
And before I could say anything else, he straightened up, pulled nearly all the way out, and slammed back in.
I yelped at the sting of the sudden entry, and the bastard laughed. Then he really got moving. Every time he entered me, the spines raked along my clit, and his cock hit my G-spot just right.
My orgasm approached, unstoppable like a freight train. I threw my head back, incoherent with need. “Macha.”
His hand grabbed my shoulder, steadying me. “I’ve got you. Come for me, sweetheart.”
The convulsions spiraled from my core, clenching my pussy around his cock, and tightened every muscle until I shook like a leaf. I couldn’t hold myself up any longer, collapsing onto my front as he continued pounding me.
Then he stiffened and moaned his climax into me. The sound of his broken voice as he ground his hips against me, helpless under the onslaught of his orgasm, were so erotic, so intimate, I relaxed under his weight until all the day’s stress drained out of me.
He dropped kisses along my spine, my neck, my cheek. His love for me poured into my soul until his connection to me glowed like a light beam in the darkness.
Macha lay next to me, fast asleep. I ran my fingers through his hair the same way I’d done when he’d been Slug. Old habits die hard.
But there was so much of my pet in this man, I couldn’t help myself touching him. Plus, it gave him as much pleasure as it did me.
I’d needed that release. My body felt as if it was liquefied. And even though my pussy ached, it added to the feeling of relaxation.
When the door opened, Macha’s arm twitched, but he didn’t wake up. Lance entered the room and smiled. “Oh, good. Did you two...?”
Second Chance Doom: a paranormal romance adventure (Second Chance Academy Book 5) Page 3
