The Hunted (Sleeping With Monsters Book 2) Read online

  Despite last night he turned around so he wouldn’t see me. I appreciated that. I carefully set my robe down and walked to the water’s edge, gasping as it touched my toes.

  “What?” he said, turning fast.

  “It’s cold,” I protested, arms crossed over my breasts. The locket swung between them, the only thing I wore.

  “Sorry,” he said, and returned to steadfastly looking away from me.

  I grit my teeth and slowly walked in, waist deep, my feet slipping over rocks on the bottom, worried about snapping turtles biting off my toes.

  How did those old timey baptisms work? You dove underneath the water a sinner, and afterwards came up clean? I held my breath and tried it. It didn’t feel like it’d changed anything.

  I untangled my wet hair with one hand, body mostly hidden by the water. With the sound of the cicadas and the rippling of the creek – everything was peaceful out here, except for me. I looked up at him, still angled away. “How did you know Vincent?”

  He was silent for so long I thought maybe he hadn’t heard me. “It’s hard to explain,” he said at long last.

  For seven years, I’d known Vincent inside and out, and I’d never once heard him mention knowing a mountain man. He had to have been one of Vincent’s old employees, back from when he ran fights, someone who’d then decided to go native.

  But why? Who was he hiding from out here? Who’d hurt him this badly? His fingers pulled three pieces of grass up and I watched him braid them rather than talk to me.

  “You haven’t even asked me what my name is.”

  “What’s your name?” he asked, without looking up.

  “Sarah,” I lied.

  “Nice to meet you, Sarah.”

  “Nice to meet you, too, Max,” I muttered under my breath, and dipped under the water again.

  He followed me back to the cabin – to see if I’d find my way back, I thought – and then we stood at an impasse on the porch.

  “I don’t have dinner yet – you need to go inside.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I have to go out hunting again.”

  “With your bare hands. Like a ninja.” He glowered at me. It might have worked on other women, but I was used to Vincent, so I held my ground.

  “I set traps earlier. It’s not humane to leave animals in them – plus if I don’t collect them, other predators will.”

  My eyes narrowed at him including himself among their number. Lions and tigers and Maxes, oh my. “You can’t lock me in again.”

  “You don’t understand –“

  “I may not,” I interrupted. “But I don’t want to be trapped.” He didn’t look like he would break, but I wanted to see how far I could push him. “What if there’s a fire?”

  His strong jaw clenched as he held words back. “Stay on the porch then. But don’t go walking around. I can’t protect you out there.” He gestured behind himself, and I got the feeling he meant all of the civilization past the trees too.

  “Okay,” I promised.

  He sighed deeply, giving me a distrustful look, but then turned and stalked back into the woods.

  I watched him go more closely than I should have. He was handsome underneath his gruff exterior. He walked the land like he was born to it, with competence that made him instantly attractive, and I knew that underneath his shirt and jeans he’d be lean and muscled. If he really did live off the land up here, he probably didn’t have an ounce of body fat on him.

  Vincent would’ve liked him. My man sometimes had things for other men.

  #

  “I just don’t want to scare you off,” he said, smiling down at me.

  We’d moved in together, in a way – he’d bought me a hotel room to live in, and he had the only other key. It wasn’t quite like being Suzie Homemaker, but it was close enough for a whore.

  “All right,” I said, reluctantly. I was in a short black dress and tied to a chair, my legs spread wide, ankles lashed to chair legs, with my arms behind my back, making my chest jut forward. I knew I was beautiful like this, in that way only he and I could appreciate.

  “Only two things left. Three, really.” He knelt down, and I could feel his heat and smell him as he leaned over me, putting something small and round into my hand. “If you want this to end, you just drop that, okay?”

  “Okay,” I nodded. “But why can’t I –“

  Vincent held up a small ball-gag, before I could ask. He proffered it out to me, like asking a horse to take the bit of a bridle. We’d done this before. I opened my mouth and let him place it inside.

  “Last, but not least, this – just for now,” he promised, and tugged a blindfold down, so all I could see was black.

  We’d played these games before, but something about Vincent now was strange – he was nervous. He was never nervous around me – I did whatever he said, there was no need. I tensed in the chair, suddenly feeling trapped.

  Then there was a knock at the door.

  “Hey,” Vincent answered as the door opened.

  “Hey,” said someone else’s voice. “Wow – she’s beautiful.”

  “Uh-huh,” Vincent agreed.

  I swallowed, as my heart began to race. He’d brought someone else in here. Who were they? Was he going to share me with them?

  I heard the unfamiliar voice chuckle, and then the groaning of the bedsprings as they both sat down on the bed. I tensed, on tip-toes, leaning forward as much as my tied arms would let me -- then heard the soft wet sound of shared kisses, and Vincent, I knew it was him, catch his breath.

  My mouth fell open around the gag as I listened to them disrobe. The rustle of fabrics, as buttons were undone and flies unzipped. Together their breathing picked up, low and rough, and I could easily imagine where their hands were going, what they were doing to one another, laying side by side. Then I heard a sharp intake of breath, and another of Vincent’s groans, more guttural -- and I knew the stranger’s mouth was on his cock. Vincent moaned again, and the other man grunted, and I knew my man was giving his cock to him, fucking his mouth and throat.

  I felt a pang at that – sucking him was my job, and I didn’t want to share. I shook my head, trying to dislodge the blindfold, willing it down, jealous – and hungry. There was no way not to imagine them while I listened to their sounds, and I could almost smell the sex. The ropes around me chafed but not as much as being on the sidelines did.

  When I heard the familiar sound of a condom wrapper being opened I gave in, and dropped the ball I was holding.

  The action on the bed stopped, and I felt a presence in front of me. Vincent tugged the blindfold down. He was naked and beautiful, scars, tattoos, and an erection.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  I looked over his shoulder. There was another man on the bed too, one a little younger than Vincent was, with more of a dancer’s build, not a fighter, but he was every bit as undressed. I still had the gag in, so I couldn’t answer Vincent, but I prayed he would see it in my eyes.

  He gave me a pensive look – and reached between my legs. I gasped in surprise, and his expression went from worried to pleased with what he found there.

  “Do you want to watch?” he asked, massaging my panties into the wetness of my pussy. I nodded. “Or do you want to play?” he asked. I nodded twice as hard.

  “All right then,” he said with a satisfied grin. He knelt to untie my legs and arms. When I reached for the gag’s ties, he pushed my hands down. “Your mouth is just for me. Take your clothes off.”

  I hurried to do as I was told, and when I was as naked as they were he smiled, taking one of my hands to pull me to the bed like I was an arriving queen. The other man looked up at me appraisingly, while playing with his cock. “Sammy, meet Angel. Angel, meet Sammy.” Vincent spun me and pushed me on my ass into the bed. “I’m going to be fucking the shit out of both of you tonight.”

  And I learned that while you may not be able to talk around a ball-gag, you can definitely scream around one.<
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  #

  I sat on the porch and touched myself beneath my robe. Just like Max had earlier in the day, I couldn’t help it. If I kept my eyes closed, I could remember Vincent’s hands stroking me, what it’d felt like to be pinned by his cock, see his face with each thrust, hear the sounds of pleasure he made when he came in me. There were nights when he wouldn’t come at all, when he’d just torture me, bringing me close with his fingers and tongue and then falling away like the tide to other parts, sucking nipples, kissing the backs of knees, until it’d seemed like my chance to come was lost, and then he’d push his fingers back inside me – like I was pushing mine now, trying to recreate something now forever lost – “Vincent,” I whispered to myself, rocking on the wood, pretending that the sun beaming down was his heat on me. My hips felt full, I needed it, I needed it, I needed it – my orgasm gasped out of me as I rocked on the wood, quiet waves crashing on a smooth stoned beach. I sat there, panting, my hand slicked with my wetness, and sagged against the nearest timber.

  Coming seemed to have granted me some clarity. I had to get it together. I had to come up with a plan for the future. A timeline. I stood and took a deep breath. No matter what I’d promised Mountain Max, I needed to pace to think, and I couldn’t do that inside.

  Since whatever way he took into the forest was probably safest, I followed his path in.

  It wasn’t as scary as I’d thought it’d be. What I was on wasn’t precisely a path but I knew where the cabin was and I wasn’t planning on making sudden turns. Branches and bark caught at my robe, so I tucked it up around me, ever so glad I’d packed appropriate footwear back in the day.

  When had Vincent known it’d be too late and decommissioned his own go-bag? I tried to think back, worried that I’d missed signs. He’d been more stressed than usual – and a few months ago Syd had come over, and Vincent had made me go away and wouldn’t tell me what they’d talked about afterwards –

  Lost in my own thoughts, I missed a stick jutting out from a fallen branch. It scraped across my ankle, drawing blood. “Shit –“ I knelt down. I doubted Max had any Neosporin up here. I licked my thumb and rubbed the blood away – and saw what looked like…jeans.

  I took another step forward. They were jeans – and a shirt. The same ones I’d seen Max wear out the door. His boots, too.

  What the hell?

  I stood and looked around. Was he…out here? Naked? Doing…what? Watching me? The rustling branches of trees that’d seemed so calming before now sounded ominous. I turned and ran until I reached the cabin’s porch.

  Chapter Six

  I trotted through the forest, carrying a rabbit in my jaws. I was hungry and wanted all of it, blood and bone, but remembered that I needed to share, so I only gnawed its head off, to share the rest with mate-smell person. I shook my head at my wolf’s foolishness, making the rabbit bob. Just because Sarah smelled like Vincent did not mean she was a mate. That was just crazy.

  I stopped in a hole I’d dug into the side of a hill, and pulled my wolf back in, feeling the pop and stretch of realigning skin and bones, until found myself gasping in the dirt, naked. The change always hurt, even when you were prepared for it.

  I could only protect her for three more days before I needed to figure out somewhere else for her to go – or for Vincent to come and get her back. I was my wolf’s master for now, but when the moon was full -- Vincent had to know that when he’d sent her to me. He remembered, I was sure of it. I stumbled out of the hole like I’d just been born, blinking in the daylight, and picked the rabbit’s carcass up to walk back to where I’d left my clothes earlier.

  Two steps away from the clearing, I paused.

  Something smelled like her.

  Was it my clothing? Because she’d spent the night? No – it was stronger. I crouched down, feeling foolish on all fours as a human – but my wolf found the fresh scent of blood.

  She’d been here. Like I’d told her not to. Shit. How would I explain this? I wondered, tugging my pants on. Did I have to? Did I owe her an explanation? Not really. I was doing her a favor – Vincent, a favor, not even her. I hauled my shirt on and buttoned it and stalked back to the cabin, expecting to find her standing outside, mouth full of questions. When she wasn’t there I took the stairs and stopped, halfway up, scenting something unusual and yet familiar. Sex, my wolf informed me with a whine.

  My hand on the rabbit’s legs clenched. What was she thinking? You couldn’t just go leaving all sorts of smells out here. It wasn’t safe. This was pack land.

  I walked into the cabin, braced for questions. Instead she just looked up at me from the couch, where she was thumbing through what might’ve been the oldest copy of National Geographic in the world.

  “You’re back,” she said, with a sexy voice.

  I nodded, and held the rabbit up. “See?”

  She blanched. I’d eaten its head off as a wolf, but the rest of it was intact and bloody.

  “I’ll be back,” I said, excusing myself, taking a knife and going back outside to clean the meat.

  In a few moments, she was at my side. Here it’d come.

  “Is there anything I can do to help?”

  I looked over at her, one hand full of rabbit guts. “Not really.”

  She made a face – not at what I was doing, but at being rebuffed. “I don’t like feeling useless.”

  I stopped my knife from raking a familiar path down the rabbit’s spine, and thought hard. “You can stoke the fire. And find a can of beans in the pantry – don’t worry about the expiration dates. And when we’re done eating, you can take the dishes down to the creek and wash them.”

  “Okay.” She nodded, sending a dirty-blonde wave of hair bobbing over one eye. Sarah -good-smell-sex, my wolf muttered.

  I swallowed, and I didn’t dare to look over at her again as she went inside.

  Within an hour she was scraping meat with her teeth off of rabbit bones. “This is pretty good.”

  “Yeah,” I agreed. I did most of my eating as a wolf, because what was the point of cooking without company?

  It’d been so long I’d forgotten all the problems that having company could bring. Like conversations – and questions. There was no way she hadn’t seen my clothes out there today – but if she wasn’t going to ask, I wasn’t going to offer answers.

  She set the bones down on her plate, and came over with it to reach for mine. As she leaned over I could feel-smell the heat of her, blood at her throat, fatty weight of her breasts.

  “I’ll be right back,” she promised.

  I quickly glanced out a window. “Don’t bother. It’s almost dark.”

  “It’s not that far –“ she protested, still hovering.

  “I’ll take you there tomorrow, and make sure you know the path.” I took the plate from her hand and roughly set it down.

  It was time to talk. I couldn’t keep waiting for her to tell me things about him, I’d have to ask questions, even if asking made me weak – even if she told me answers I didn’t want to know. I grabbed her hand before she could pull away. “Sarah – where is he?”

  Her face clouded – and at the same time I heard a distant howl.

  “Fuck.” I turned towards the window. The howl dropped and then restarted. I knew who it was -- Karl, Syd’s errand-boy -- and where he was. I stood, pushing her back. “I’ve got to go.”

  “What -- why?”

  “No time to explain.” I started for the door, and then turned. She’d come after me once before – I couldn’t take that chance again. Not with pack outside. I picked her up and threw her bodily onto the mattress.

  “What’re you doing?” she shouted.

  I planted a hand over her face and hissed, “Shut up.” I grabbed hold of a pillowcase and flung the pillow out of it, then gagged her with it while her hands scrabbled at me, leaving long gashes with her nails. I could scent her terror, the bile rising in her throat, as I wound the rest of the sheets around her, hands and ankles, tying her to the bed
frame. Her eyes were wild and she was afraid of me, truly afraid. I breathed over her, for a moment feeling like the monster she thought I was.

  The howl called again. If I didn’t answer quickly, Karl would come for me.

  “I’ll be back,” I told her, realizing that might not be particularly comforting.

  I stripped off my clothing the second I made it into the woods, and hurled myself down into my wolf’s form, feeling the pop and change, a fraction of a second before I hit the ground. Rebounding on all fours, I howled back to Karl, a warning, this is my land, come no further, although both of us knew the truth. My job was to discourage humans from coming onto pack land, and to keep it free of traps, but I was only left alone out here because Syd didn’t consider me a threat.

  The only time I’d gotten to be in peace in my own skin, or as a wolf, had been with him.

  #

  Blowjobs, morning, noon, and night. That was how it’d started. I craved to serve him. Any time I could take his cock into my mouth I would. Kneeling in front of him, eyes closed, feeling him slide in and out of me, hearing his grunts and gasps as I sucked on him until he came, him looking down the flat washboard of his stomach at me, jaw dropped in disbelief. I licked all of him, wanting to taste all his skin, leaving nothing hidden. The scent of his musk, the dewy drops of his precum, the feel of his hands on my back as he bent over to moan. I worshipped him like a beast designed for it, trading my pleasures for his, knowing that I would satisfy him and through that, satisfy myself. We didn’t leave his new house for three days, because I needed him and he wanted me.

  His hands flowed over my back and chest, fingers raking through my hair, but anytime he ever reached for my cock, I pushed his hands away. But this time I reached for him, he pushed me back, bodily. He rose up on his elbows on his old bed in his new bedroom and stared at me as I looked up at him in confusion.

  “Max -- don’t you ever want more?”

  I froze. I knew from long experience that packmembers who asked for too much got beaten down, so I didn’t dare say a word, no matter how much the wolf inside me whined. His eyes traced over my body, looking at my chest, my stomach, my scars, then met my gaze again.