Still, it pleased him that she controlled the griffin well enough that she didn’t leave or attack. He wagged his tail to show her that this impressed the hell out of him. He stretched onto his belly, lying on the ground with his head high, so as to appear less threatening, but not submissive. They were a team. Neither was alpha.
When she settled in one spot, he sat. She hissed, but didn’t move.
Tony came to the door of the cabin with two thick, raw steaks. “Isn’t this handy? It makes cooking lunch easy.” He came down the steps and dropped the T-bone in front of Brian, patting him on the head. “A bone for a good doggy.”
Brian growled a mock warning, but immediately set into the meat. He was famished.
Olivia stood as Tony approached. About fifteen feet from her, he stopped and tossed a thick sirloin toward her. She snatched it neatly with her beak as it arced toward her, swallowing it in three bites.
“No more until after training.” He shook his finger at her and then retreated to the safety of the steps. Speaking to both of them, he sat and said, “As you were.”
Brian watched Olivia and she watched him. She settled lower to the ground, almost nesting, and didn’t move when he padded closer. He growled and whined, barked and howled. The most he could get out of her was a single hiss. Then she turned her head away. He braced himself, walked right up to her, and touched her on the wing with his nose. She ground her beak back and forth, but kept her gaze averted. He pranced and cavorted beside her, but still couldn’t get any more of a rise in her temper. It seemed she had the griffin well in hand.
Backing away again, he shifted to his half-way creature: the werewolf.
She came unglued.
Screaming shrilly, her beak jutting forward, she stalked him. She held herself low, her back in a flat plane. It was clear Olivia had lost control and the griffin was loose. In a mighty jump, she landed only a few feet from him. Then she launched into the air and was gone.
Brian changed back to man and joined his friend on the steps, taking the offered robe. He felt drained.
“Well, that last bit went well,” Tony said dryly. He glanced at Brian, “Shaking much?”
Chapter 45
It wasn’t easy to get the griffin to settle down when Brian’s werewolf was near. Olivia and Brian worked tirelessly at it. When they reached the point of toleration, they decided to shift focus and introduce the Bengal tiger. It had been almost nine days since she’d become the griffin for the first time.
Tony exited the cabin, grinning and wearing a silk robe like a prize fighter. Olivia brought out the griffin. Standing close and looking up at her, as he was, she thought she saw a glimmer of hesitation in his eyes. Still, he ripped off his robe and pounced into his creature. He growled, snarled, and hissed. He roared. He stalked right up to her and swatted her on the beak. To no avail. Though she still clacked her beak, she turned her head away, ignoring him. She was still occasionally angry with him for hitting her, but after the werewolf, the tiger seemed boring.
His snarls turned to cursing as he shifted to man and disappeared into the forest.
After she transformed back to herself, she said, “Tony needs a girlfriend. He needs to be the center of someone’s attention.”
Brian nodded thoughtfully. He scooped her up and whispered, “He needs lots of women for that. But not me; I only need my one. Let me show you.” Then he carried her into the bedroom and thrilled her with how badly he needed his one woman. Their lovemaking, as it always had been thus far, was wild and untamed. Passion moved them. They made love through the evening, while Tony was gone. When he stomped into the clearing, they were both quite satisfied and had just gotten up, showered, and were sitting on the front steps, drinking hot cocoa.
Tony was barefoot, but dressed in jeans and an oversized pink sweatshirt.
“Nice duds.” Brian laughed. “Some lady take advantage of the weather to hang laundry on a line?”
Tony didn’t answer. He stopped and looked from one to the other of them. “While you two were doing your usual, playing house, I was busy working.”
It was exactly the wrong thing to say, given the anger toward him that still burned within her. In a snap, Olivia shifted to the griffin. The pain was the worst thing she’d ever felt in her whole life. It was somewhere between being dropped into the sun and having her bones ripped out of her body lengthwise. The change nearly blinded her, but she lunged at him anyway.
To his credit, he stood his ground, though he started the change to Bengal and then stopped midway. They stood face to face, separated by no more than five inches, beak to nose. His breath came quick and shallow, almost in a pant. Hers was sure and steady; she wanted to kill this man. At the very least, she wanted to maim him. She repeatedly clacked her beak in aggravation.
One move, one excuse, real or imagined and Tony’s life would be over.
She saw Brian, still in man form, out of the corner of her eye, moving out from behind her to get a better view. Brian. She again heard in her mind the echo of his constant reminder that everything she did mattered. She tipped her jaw to the left, shifted out of the creature, snatched up one of the always available robes, and walked away.
“I’m sorry,” she said over her shoulder as she entered the forest. She don’t know how far she walked. Honestly, she was a bit more than upset. She’d wanted to kill Tony. She almost had. Over nothing. Just some words misspoken and that knockout punch the night before her first change. Truth be told, that had probably saved his and Brian’s lives. If she had been allowed to change in that tiny cabin, there was no telling what she would have done.
She was the most miserable wretch on the face of the planet that night.
Chapter 46
Brian stood near the cabin and watched Olivia walk into the woods and disappear behind a large grouping of blue spruce. She jerked on the robe and settled it on her shoulders. He didn’t follow. He wanted to though. Seeing her hurt that way nearly tore him in two. But, this wasn’t his mess to clean up.
Tony’s voice came from the left of him. “Well, shit! Before you kill me, Brian, let me see if I can fix things with her.” He entered the woods, following Olivia.
“You’d damn well better,” Brian called after him. He hung on the cusp of joining them. But no, this was something Tony had to do himself. His friend had been true to his word, keeping his asshole comments to himself when around Olivia, until today. He deserved the chance to make amends. In every relationship, there was bound to be some disagreement.
He smiled with pride. He’d been relatively sure Olivia had wanted to kill Tony. But she hadn’t. She’d contained the griffin with ease. Though, he was sure, to her, it had seemed like a huge battle. That she could do it so soon after becoming the creature was amazing. It was a testament to her strength. And that strength was what he’d seen when she was fighting for her life in her apartment that first night. It would be very important as they faced Hall and his men. Everything she did from here on mattered.
He wandered around the clearing and picked up pieces of Olivia’s clothing. Then he flicked on the external light of the cabin and sat on the steps with a drawing pad and pencil.
Chapter 47
Olivia found a boulder overlooking a valley below. With the griffin’s sight, she could see every detail as if it was daylight. Window-lit cabins with wood smoke rolling from their chimneys dotted the perimeter of a small lake. She could smell the smoke, even from this distance.
It had now been nineteen days total since the attack in her apartment. The life before that had been nothing but a dream. This was the real world, and it was full of shifters and exciting adventures. Yet, she longed for the quiet of a life like the people in the homes below her had. The time she’d spent alone with Brian in their first cabin had been heaven for her. She wondered if they would ever have that again.
To her surprise, it was Tony who found her, not Brian. He motioned for her to scoot over and sat beside her. They were silent for a long time. Eventua
lly, she spoke. “Tony, I don’t know what to say. I’m so sorry.” She wished he could see how sick she felt about it.
“It took me months to learn to handle the tiger like you just did with your creature. It was impressive, to say the least. Was it difficult, talking her down?”
Olivia shook her head, though she still couldn’t look him in the eyes. “No. She stopped herself and didn’t fight moving back to human. It was almost seamless.”
“So, you have her then. She’s you now. And you’re her. Sometimes it takes something like what happened to get a good grip on the beast.”
“I guess.”
“I know I’m an asshole most of the time, but it was just plain stupid of me to say what I did. I’m well aware of how griffins think.” He paused, “And now, I’ll confess something to you that may make you hate me again.”
“I think I already know. You fought against the griffins in the war, right?” She’d already figured this out. His animosity seemed too deep for it to be caused by anything she’d done.
“It actually is worse than that.”
She turned to face him and spoke softly. “After the war?”
He stared off into the dark. She wondered what he saw out there with his tiger vision or if he was peering at something internal. He looked ashamed. “The griffins, your kind, were out of control during the war. They slaughtered every last dragon and many, many others. Some kept on killing, as if they had to take revenge. Since knowing you, I’ve learned how differently griffins look at the world. I understand now how they would have felt back then. But I didn’t at the time. I saw them as evil.”
He glanced down at his hands, as if seeing blood there. “I led the hunt for them. We exterminated hundreds of your people. Finally, I had enough. I was sick from killing. I couldn’t eat or sleep. I quit, but many others kept on until there were no more. I had nothing to do with killing your parents, and that’s the honest truth. But, I’m not excusing myself from the rest. I did it. And you have no idea how sorry I really am.”
She wanted to hate him for all he’d done to her people, but she couldn’t. She’d already guessed some of it. It was odd, but, being a griffin, she understood how her kind could very, very easily be misread. She could find no anger anywhere within her. She leaned her shoulder against his. “What a world we live in.”
After a moment, she added, “That took a lot, confessing that to me. You must trust me.”
“I do.” She felt him nod through the motion of his shoulder. He asked, “Are we good?”
“I think so.”
“Good. I’m tired of carrying this damn pistol around. Let’s get back to the cabin. Brian’s beside himself with worry. He’s a bit like a mother hen, that one.” He cuffed her arm and pulled her to her feet. Side-by-side they walked home. They talked of inconsequential things until they entered the clearing by their cabin.
Brian stood from his seat on the steps. Near where he’d been sitting, she noted his ever-present drawing pad and pencil. Even though the light above the stoop was dim, she could see his gaze go from her to Tony and back. He must have been satisfied by what he saw because he smiled. “All better now.”
Beside her, Tony laughed. He turned to her and said, “See what I mean? Mother Hen.”
When they joined Brian, he shook Tony’s hand and hugged her tight. He gathered his sketch things and set them aside. She noticed he now spent more time drawing her with wings than without. They seemed to be something for him to envy.
They sat on the steps, with her between them. Brian said, “Let’s talk about Hall. Let’s work out a plan.”
They talked until they devised a plan that needed a small valley with a road, something they could box in if need be. Over the next ridge, Tony had earlier found a narrow flat glade with rough cliff walls, pines, and no cabins. The valley’s skinny river emptied with a steep drop into a deep chasm. The January thaw hit Colorado, driving temperatures into the mid to upper fifties. The snow melted and the river thawed. A few birds actually sang in the trees.
That very next morning, Tony went back to Boulder to let their location be known to a few loudmouths while Brian and Olivia strung up an old tarp as a makeshift tent in the center of the valley and changed homes.
The minute Tony was out of eyesight, she and Brian wrapped themselves around each other, pulling off all their clothes, not quite making it into the makeshift tent. Their private times together had been few and far between. Not only was it Tony’s presence that had kept them apart, but also the training where she spent every waking hour. She had so much to learn and so little time.
Their lovemaking was slow and gentle, not like it had been before. Even at the first cabin, when they’d had the most time together, their passion had overrun any tenderness they wanted to share. It was different here, laying in the middle of nowhere. They were truly alone, with only the morning sun and a few birds to watch.
Brian ran his fingers through her hair, down the side of her face to her cheek. He did this again and again, staring into her eyes. He nibbled and licked her lips in a constant motion. His other hand stroked her side, from mid-thigh to ribs.
Her hands weren’t idle, either. They caressed his broad back, from shoulder to hip. They played in the hollows of his buttocks and traced the deep crevice between them. Her tongue darted out, tasting his. She held his gaze and kept her nose gently against his, breathing his air even as he breathed hers. The experience was like a bath in fine wine, intoxicating and overwhelming.
She pushed against his shoulder to roll him off her and onto his back, but he would have none of it. Instead, he took her hand in his and stretched it above her. He captured her other hand and joined it with the first.
His tongue was like a fire, lapping her skin. He trapped her nipples, one-by-one, in his mouth, rolling his tongue around the dark areola, sucking and gently pulling on the nipple itself with his teeth. His free hand continued the slow stroke up and down one side of her front now, but he used his nails instead of the flat of his hand. Each time he brought his hand low, he drove it between her legs, rubbing his fingers against her swollen clit. He kept a constant rhythm starting from her mound, sliding up her body with his nails to tweak and massage her breasts.
Her body started its own rhythm in time with his, undulating like a liquid seeking the workings of his hand. Her legs, of their own, spread and pushed her hips to meet his hand each time he returned it to her wet mound. Need swallowed her. She wanted him inside her: his erection, his hand, whatever she could get of him. All, if she could.
She whimpered as he again pulled his hand away without entering her.
Abruptly he let go of her hands and brought his face to hers. “Tell me what you want.”
She opened her eyes to look into his. “You. I want you.” She felt his erection against her sex, hard and hot. Her body arched against it.
“You have me. What do you want me to do?” His eyes sparkled, holding her gaze.
“I want you inside me. No. Wait.” There was something more that she’d wanted for a while now. “I want to taste you. To hold you in my mouth.”
He kissed her deeply and eased off her to lie back on the ground. His engorged shaft stood upright from his body, waiting for her.
She didn’t begin with any preliminaries. She lowered herself between his legs and took his shaft in her hands. So soft and silky smooth! So thick and long! Rubbing her cheek against it, she inhaled his male musk deeply. Her tongue flicked out, tasting, testing the head. Little drops of lubricant beaded to the surface, and she lapped them up. Stroking his shaft with her tongue, she followed the thick dorsal cord all the way to the base and the nest of his pubic hair. The strength of his musk was dizzying there.
His sac lay before her like a secret pouch, and she cupped it in one hand, gently massaging it with her fingers. Returning her attention to his erection, she again followed that dorsal cord to the head and let her tongue circle the cap, flicking back and forth across the ridge and the crease d
own the center.
As if from a great distance, Brian moaned. His hands tangled in her hair and pushed her where he wanted her. She opened her mouth and took him inside, sucking and rubbing her tongue over the area where the dorsal cord joined the cap. He was so big, she knew she’d never get him all the way in her mouth. But that was okay. She kept one hand on his sac and wrapped the other around his shaft, using it as an extension of her mouth. As she sucked and lapped, she rhythmically moved up and down his erection, taking in as much as she could. Brian’s hips rose to meet her.
All at once, he sat up and pulled her away. “Stop. I’m so near, but I want to come inside you.” He rolled her to her back, positioned himself, and pushed her legs open with his knees. He rubbed the head of his member between the lips of her cleft, wetting it. With a slow, smooth press, he buried himself within her. Sparks of pleasure ran from the base of her spine to her brain, and she arched her back to meet him.
He pulled almost all the way out and thrust back in. He paused. “Don’t. Move.”
Olivia’s eyes were closed and she rubbed her face against his neck. “Not moving,” she whispered.
After a moment, he retreated and then drove in again. This time he didn’t stop. Each thrust sent a cascade of sparks throughout her. She wrapped her legs around his waist, giving him deeper access. “Don’t stop.”
“I don’t plan on it,” he hissed through clenched teeth.
The sparks inside her coalesced for a split second and then suddenly exploded. They blinded her to everything but the exquisite pleasure-pain. Dimly, she was aware of two voices crying out, of strong arms crushing her against a hard shuddering body. They lay still for a long while, wallowing in the sweet bliss that followed. He moved to get off her, but she held him. “Don’t.”
“I’m not too heavy?”
She laughed. She was a griffin, after all. That strength carried through to this body. There wasn’t much that was too heavy for her anymore. After a few seconds, he laughed too. “I guess not.”
The Last Griffin Page 17
