He was still trapped in the body of a beast, less man and more wolf than anything, but, he thought philosophically, one couldn't have everything. Had he heard that before? It seemed as though it were a familiar phrase, something someone had spoken to him many times. Had he once known someone who had said those words repeatedly? He thought hard, but the memory remained shrouded in a flat gray fog, maddeningly elusive.
Not that he had much time to really dwell on this question, as the most distracting thing in the world sat a few inches from his face: the quivering entrance of his fated female. Her taste still lingered on his tongue, and the pleasure she had given him with her mouth echoed in his body. His legs trembled, though his great strength held them both up. Unable to resist, he gave her pussy one last, luxurious lick before carefully setting her down. He hadn't noticed before because of the moon madness that had clouded his brain, but while his hybrid body, the one he wore for the majority of his time, was ugly by human standards, it was also full of strength.
He'd known that. But he hadn't really felt that. The power of his muscles hummed inside him as he slid her down his body, over his furred thighs to the ground below, where she sagged and sighed, her lips covered in his seed. The sight and smell of it rushed to his groin again, and he felt his balls tighten in their soft, furry sac. She drove him mad, even as she calmed the beast inside him.
Raw flesh graced her arms where she had tried to tear herself from the chains that held her. He wasn't certain that he could break the chains without hurting her, but now that the fog of lust had lifted he could see she was tied to the tree a few feet away.
Number Four started to think.
Why was she here? Out here in the wilderness? How had she come to be here?
Who had done this to her?
He had a suspicion, and he didn't like it.
Leaning down, he nosed her limp body, and she giggled, her hands coming up to pet his muzzle as he sniffed at her. “That tickles,” she said, sounding sleepy. Four felt a rush of pride. Whatever else she was, he was certain he had satisfied her. He extended his tongue and ran it over her chin, lapping up his own seed as he cleaned her face.
Her fingers combed through the fur at the base of his throat and he shuddered with pleasure at the feel of her hands on him. His eyes half-closed for a moment before he forced them open again and made himself back away a few feet.
Her eyes opened, staring up at him. He could see her in the dark, but he knew his human eyes were far weaker than these. She probably only saw him as a hulking shadow. That was fine with him. Straddling her body, he lowered himself down, covering her without putting his weight on her, so that she could share his warmth. At first she stiffened, but when she realized what he was doing she sighed happily and snuggled up.
Four worked his tongue and throat. He hated speaking in this form—his words came out choppy and he found it hard to form them so he had to leave some words out, making him sound stupid—but it was necessary.
“Who?” he asked. “Who you?”
Under him he felt her stiffen, but she didn't seem afraid. “My name is Bonnie,” she said after a moment. Then, “You can speak.” It wasn't a question and she didn't say it with wonder, for which he was grateful. It was a simple statement, and she didn't slow her words for him at all.
Even his captors spoke slowly to him when he was in this state, as if he were an idiot.
He pushed away the gratitude and reminded himself that there were more important things to focus on right now. “Yes. I speak,” he said. “Who tie you?”
She was silent for another long moment and his apprehension grew. Was she in league with his captors? Had she entered their union knowing that they were hunting him still? He was certain she was a trap, but his nose had not detected anyone nearby. The fur at his spine rose with his nerves.
Finally she shook her head. “I don't know,” she said. “I was drugged.”
Drugged. Yes. They liked to use drugs. He nuzzled the soft hollow of her shoulder through the wool of her sweater. Another scent of the sea reached him. She was salty and wild. He wanted to taste her again, this time all over...
“Can you help me?”
The words brought him back to earth. Help? Yes. Perhaps.
“Maybe,” he said, the word coming up from deep in his chest and sounding rusty. “You trap?” An inelegant phrasing, but he didn't have the tools at his disposal to be subtle.
To his surprise, she snorted. “Probably. Sorry. Maybe you should run away. I think they wanted me to be alive to attract you, so I think you should leave me here before they get back—”
“Not leave!” The words exploded from his chest, gruff and forceful. “You mine! You mine!” Rage welled up in him. How could she suggest that he leave her? She was his!
She gasped, her heart rate picking up, and the sound of her blood pounding in her veins made his own heart gallop in tandem. His cock stirred again as he crouched over her, burying his nose in her hair, inhaling the scent of her skin, her blood.
“O...okay,” she said after a few tense seconds. “I get it. Do you... do you have a name or anything?”
For some reason, he felt a pang of sadness in his heart. “Four,” he said.
“Four?” She sounded puzzled. “Like the number?”
“Yes. Number Four.” He licked his muzzle, trying to get his tongue to cooperate with him. “Sub-ject. Subject number four.”
“Oh.”
She understood. He could tell. She reached up again and ran her hands against his face, feeling the sharp point of his muzzle, the loose skin of his cheeks barely covering his razor sharp teeth. The form of the skull underneath was so much more obvious when he was like this. Not a man any longer.
Any longer...?
Four pulled back. “Need go,” he said. He crouched down and sniffed at the chains at her ankles, wrapped around her calves. He only needed to snap the one tethering her to the tree to make their escape. His strength was enough for that.
Unbidden, memories of his cold, steel cell came back to him, and he shook himself, as though he were shedding water, trying to shake the memory—and the feelings it inspired in him. She must be feeling a taste of what he had known for years. The thought angered him. “Free you,” he ground out.
“Can you?” she asked, but he already had the chain in his clawed hand, and with a swift yank and a popping sound he broke it. He heard her sharp intake of breath and felt strong. Appreciated. He should take her now, now while she was still wet and willing, claim her as was his right...
The sudden instinct stirring in the beast startled him, and Four growled in consternation. Was the man not as dominant as he thought? Or was she somehow responsible for both the calming and rousing of the beast?
They needed to leave. She had been left as bait for him, and he wouldn't allow himself to be captured again. He tried to think, tried to remember the tricks his captors had pulled on him. There had been the drugs, of course, always the drugs, and the physical restraints. And the tracking device. Yes.
Four flicked the stub of his left ear, remembering. There would be a tracking device on her. In her? No, probably not in her. But in her clothes, yes. She needed to remove her clothes.
Turning back to her, he saw she was already shivering as she tried to work the chains from her feet, and frustration stung him. She couldn't be without her clothes. The blankets, perhaps? Would they be more likely to hide a tracking device in her clothes, or in a blanket? It must be harder to hide it in a blanket, he reasoned. And he did so like the idea of her naked body pressed against his as he ran, bearing her into the woods, away from them, the ones who had done this to her, who had tortured him and his brothers... Yes. The clothes. She would need to remove her clothes.
She was working her calves, and had finally found some traction. The chains were very tight, but she was able to push them down slightly, as webbed as they were over her shins, and she had managed to find some give. That was good enough. Moving to her feet, he sl
ipped his fingers into the small gap she had managed to create and broke the chain without injuring his woman. Then he reached up and snapped the chain holding the cuffs. She sighed with relief as the metal links released and fell away, and he crawled back over her, trying to give her as much of his own warmth as possible. She snuggled back into him, clearly enjoying him, and the sensation of her body against his caused him to momentarily forget what he had been meaning to do.
Then he remembered. “Clothes,” he said. “Off.”
She stiffened. “I'll freeze to death!” she exclaimed.
He huffed, frustrated with his own inability to communicate with his promised female. “Clothes. Track you,” he tried.
“What?”
Reaching down, he grabbed her wrists in his rough paws and she squeaked, but he only brought them to his ears. His clumsy half-fingers, half-toes wrapped around her slender digits, and he guided her hands over the long, tufted ear on the right—and the scarred stump on the left.
“Track,” he said. “Track chip. Clothes.”
He actually felt her stiffen, then soften as she realized what he was saying. Her face took on a luminous quality in the dim light, one of gentleness and sadness. A look he had rarely seen on any face since...
Since when?
“Did you... did you do this to yourself?” she asked. Her fingertips stroked the scar tissue of his mangled left ear. “You did this to escape?”
“Yes.”
“Oh.” Her thumb circled the ruined stump, and it sent shudders of pleasure through his body. He found himself leaning into her hand, rubbing against her palm as she stroked him tenderly.
The crack of a branch, far away, brought him back to the task at hand. He pulled back slightly. “Clothes. Off. Track.” He swung his head, indicating the pile of blankets. “Blan-ket,” he said. “Find new clothes.”
Beneath him, she nodded, and began to wiggle out of her clothes.
The skirt was not a problem. A swift twist of her hips and it was in a pile of leaves. Her sweater was another story. She'd shucked it most of the way off, but it caught on her handcuffs. “Help me,” she said through chattering teeth.
Four ripped it from her with ease, his razor sharp claws slicing easily through it, and she sighed as it fell to the ground in tatters. “I liked that sweater,” she said wistfully.
Another branch broke, still very far away, but coming closer. Was it his captors? He couldn't stick around to find out. This was, he was certain, the closest they had ever come to him. She was a liability to him, and if they had discovered enough about him and his brothers to use her as bait, then they likely knew it, too.
Grabbing the pile of blankets from the ground in his claws, he awkwardly wrapped them around her shoulders, swaddling her backside before kneeling down to the ground.
“On back. Hold tight.”
She nodded and swung a leg over his waist from behind, and the reminder that she was his, his woman, his fated woman sent a bolt of lightning straight to his cock. When she lay down on his back and wove her fingers through his fur, securing the blankets under herself, he felt the soft mounds of her breasts mashed up against his shoulder blades and he nearly groaned.
Deep within him, the beast roused itself from its sated slumber, hungry for her body again.
No, the man in him told it. Time to run. We are being hunted.
Luckily the beast in him understood that. Survival first. Fucking second.
He took a step forward and felt her whole luscious body tighten around him, clinging to him in a parody of a human lover's embrace.
Down, he told the beast within him, and with a great burst of strength he took off running through the trees.
*
Hours passed, and Bonnie clung to the back of the beast, her mind racing as fast as he was.
He was being hunted. That much she realized. The ones who drugged her were the same as the ones who had held him, no doubt performing experiments on him. That he had mangled himself to escape horrified her and turned her stomach. She didn't know what they had done to him, but it must have been unspeakable. The sort of people who would drug a virgin and chain her up in the middle of the woods to be... well, honestly, probably to be raped by a monster were not the sort of people who would have any compunction about experimenting on a sentient creature.
She had been shocked that he could speak, but she'd gotten over that quickly, realizing that they were both caught up in a predicament and that she could learn from him. That he had adamantly refused to leave her gave her a bit of worry. If it came down to it, would he be able to escape again?
She tried not to think about what would happen to her if he escaped. She'd probably be kept alive. That was only the smart thing to do, after all, if they wanted to recapture him. But they would probably imprison her just as they had him. And if both of them somehow managed to elude their kidnappers, what then? She couldn't go back to school. She couldn't go back to her old life. If he wouldn't leave her, they would know exactly where to find him.
Whatever happened, that old life was over.
She buried her face in his fur and closed her eyes.
He was tireless. The bunch and spring of the muscles under his fur thrilled her, made her think of other things he could be using those muscles for. Which horrified her at the same time it intrigued her. In the immediate aftermath of sucking his monstrous cock, she had felt a swell of embarrassment that she had taken such wanton enjoyment in the act, but mixed in with the humiliation was the pure, white hot pleasure he had given her with his tongue and claws and teeth. Her first true orgasm with another person. Her first orgasm outside of her dreams. The dreams that echoed what had just happened.
He ran gracefully, but when he had to slow down to maneuver through the crowding trees his gait changed, becoming awkward and ungainly, and she had to cling harder to him. Her bare pussy rubbed tantalizingly over the fur of his back, and she felt the hard, sinuous movements of his spine against her clit. She found herself riding and cresting, just below the threshold of release, over and over and over again through the night. Sometimes she dropped into sleep, for hours it seemed, but it could only have been seconds because she woke again as soon as she began to slip from his back. Time grew distorted, and when they finally stopped she was exhausted and felt as though a thousand nights had passed.
He crouched down and she slid to the ground. Her bare feet met scrubby grass, and she blinked, forcing herself to look around and take in her surroundings.
A shed stood in front of them, the chains around the handles broken and rusty. In the east the sky was turning dull gray and pink with the rising sun. He had run all night.
Now, in the lightening air, she could see him a little more clearly. She found she was not shocked by his appearance, nor scared. He was huge, as big as a small horse, but every inch a predator. A canine head, a richly furred ruff around his neck, and a vaguely human body covered in muscle and fur. His coat was thick and sleek and sable-colored, and he even had a tail that she hadn't noticed last night. His arms and legs were a little strange, somewhere between wolf and man, and his front paws were half-hands. Huge claws extended from the tips of his fingers. It was quite impressive that he hadn't accidentally disemboweled her with them.
All in all, he cut an impressive figure of a wolfman. Which was what he must be. Bonnie wasn't the sort of person who rejected information just because it didn't seem to fit her preconceived notions of how the world worked. He was here. He looked like a creature caught between wolf and man. Therefore, wolfman.
Fine. She could live with that.
Bonnie watched numbly as he walked on all fours to the shed doors, then awkwardly leaned on one forepaw to reach up and open them with the other. One door swung outward with the scream of rusty hinges, revealing a dusty, disused interior. Only a pile of blankets in the corner gave away that he had used this place before, probably to hide during the daylight hours. He stood back and looked at her and she realized he wanted her to g
o inside.
Licking her lips, Bonnie started forward, but he stopped her just as she reached the threshold.
“Blan-kets,” he grated.
Right, she thought. Possible tracking devices. With a pang of loss she shed the warm blankets she carried and stumbled inside to the nest he had made. Reaching out, she dragged one of his blankets around her. It was freezing cold, but it was dry, and she knew if she piled enough of them on top of herself, her shivering would eventually warm her up again.
Of course, there were other ways to become warm...
Unfortunately she was destined to be disappointed, at least for now. The wolfman—Four, she remembered—lifted the blankets she'd dropped in his jaws and said something around them that sounded very much like stay. Then he closed the door, none-too-gently, and she was alone and shivering in the dark.
Taking the blankets off somewhere, no doubt. He would return soon, probably. She would wait for him.
With aching limbs and bone-deep weariness, Bonnie gathered the new blankets around and under her, and lay down to wait. She was asleep within seconds.
Chapter Five
Instead of waking in her warm bed in her modest studio apartment, ready to begin another day of classes, Bonnie woke to Four's hard, furry body curled around her, giving her warmth. For a moment, she wanted only to snuggle down and breathe in his scent. It calmed her, gave her peace. A sense of being protected that she'd only felt when she was a small child, cradled in her parents care. The danger, the kidnapping, the uncertainty of her future—she let all that fade into the uneasy background. Inhaling deeply, she let the smell of winter fill her up.
Then, after a few deep breaths, she realized each inhalation caused the hot space between her thighs to swell and ache with arousal. The realization was frightening, though her desire clouded that fright somewhat. What caused her to want this beast?
Stirring, Bonnie opened her eyes to find Four staring down at her, bathed in the light of the setting sun filtering through the small, flat windows at the top of the shed. His eyes were a beautiful rich golden-red color, not the cold yellow she'd imagined them to be, and she found herself staring, mesmerized.
Baiting the Beast (Virgin Werewolf Beast Erotic Romance) Page 4
