Night Thief
The manor loomed over the moonlit lawn. There wasn't a better word for it. It loomed, dark and vine-ridden, like a horror movie set at an Ivy League college. Lights flickered dimly in a few of the windows, and a more ignorant person might think the building's interior was lighted only by candles. Christophe Xavier was not that person. He knew the telltale effects of sunlight-dampening windows when he saw them. If he hadn't been certain he was in the right place before, he was now.
Still, he triple-checked the house number screwed into one of the brick columns lining the driveway. He couldn't afford to be wrong.
—
"I need you to procure a certain item."
Christophe kept his eyes trained on Olivia's face. He knew she wanted him to look elsewhere. She'd deliberately left the top few buttons of her dress undone, tempting him with a deep valley of cleavage. She sat on the edge of her desk and parted her legs just enough for him to peek up her high hem. She swung one leg, trying to entice him with the motion and force him to linger on the long, eternally-smooth calf capped off with cherry-red heels. He didn't take the bait. He was too smart to fall for that sort of trick. "What kind of item?"
"A gemstone. As big, say as your…thumb?" She raised one hand to her lips, the same color as her heels and eyes, and bit her thumbnail.
Again, he didn't look. It wasn't a trap, though. He just didn't like seeing her teeth. "What does it do?"
The woman smirked and lowered her hand. Focused as he was on her eyes, he didn't see the hand again until it struck his face, and then he saw only stars until she grabbed his collar and yanked him to his feet. "Listen here, you little shoe stain. You don't need to know what it does, understand? I want it! You are going to get it for me! If I thought you deserved to know more, I would tell you more! Or are you the smart one now? Maybe you think you know better than I? And after all I did for you, when your precious church threw you away like garbage? Maybe I'll have my people stop watching your apartment, and we'll see how long it takes for—"
She stopped short, and the smirk returned to her face. In the sudden silence Christophe heard his heart pounding in his chest, the only such sound in the room. He wanted to pull himself free, but he kept his hands by his sides. It hid how much they shook. He swallowed once to clear the lump from his throat and stammered "S-sorry."
"Hm?" She tilted her head, inclining her ear toward him. "What was that?"
"Sorry, mistress."
Her grip uncurled, and he collapsed back into his chair like a puppet with its strings cut. She turned and walked around her desk. He didn't watch her as she went, no matter how her ass swayed when she walked or how tightly her dress hugged it. He couldn't afford to be caught looking now. She pulled an envelope from her desk drawer, bending over far too much as she did, and tossed it at him. "That's everything you get about the location. I expect results by tomorrow night. Don't fail me, or I'll make certain you pay for it."
She didn't need to threaten him further. His mind filled in the gaps on his own. He took the envelope and stood on shaky legs, already putting together a list of what he'd need. If there was anything he'd learned since meeting Olivia Stormblood, it was to never disappoint a vampire with a schedule.
—
Finally satisfied, he passed the column and made his way toward the house, sticking to the trees covering most of the property. Shade tress, of course. The knot in his chest ebbed as he approached, giving him just enough space to breath again. He had plenty to worry about besides how intimidating the house was. He kept out of sight, dodging the windows and making his way toward the back of the house. As planned, a man in a chef's coat stood at the back door, his lit cigarette a harsh pinprick of light against the comforting darkness. Christophe knelt and brushed the ground. No branch or stone jumped into his fingers, and he scuttled along, searching for something to throw before his window expired. Just as he was considering taking off his shoe and throwing it instead, he stubbed his finger on a rock. Sucking in breath to keep from crying out, he tossed it toward the building.
It skipped off the ground and rolled to a stop a few yards from the man, who did not move. Several seconds passed while Christophe perched at the ready, fingering his shoelaces just in case. The man took a final drag of his cigarette and flicked it into the lawn with a shower of orange sparks. Christophe relaxed. A flick meant he was good to go.
The man opened the manor's back door and retreated inside, leaving it open the barest amount. Christophe nodded to himself and pulled a small bottle, half the size of a flask, from his coat. He risked holding it up to the moonlight to verify it contents, then bit the cork off and spat it into his hand. With a pit in his stomach he held the bottle to his lips. Now came the hard part.
The concoction pummeled him, staining his tongue with its rotten taste and searing his throat as it made its way toward his dinner. He retched. He never understood why magic had to taste so bad. The man who sold him potions always said, with a jovial grin, that magic was like medicine: it hurts for a while, but it does wonders. Christophe always felt magic was like medicine in another way: it was damned expensive.
—
"WHOLESALE MEDICINAL HERBS AND TRINKETS"
The harsh neon sign bathed the alley in red, a safelight providing some small illumination to the filthy darkroom bordered by busier streets. Nobody came into a side street like this unless they were looking to rob or get robbed. Christophe was the latter.
The door next to the sign swung open without a sound, yet the massive man behind the counter never failed to notice Christophe opening it. He stood behind the counter, no hair and all muscle, grinning over a rickety display of homeopathic remedies. "Welcome back! How can we help each other today?"
Christophe said nothing. Talking never made things easier. He just walked to the counter and held out a list.
The man took the paper. As he skimmed it his chuckles grew louder and louder. "You know none of this comes with a discount."
Christophe just waved the man off and busied himself looking over the dried herbs on the back shelf. The man shrugged and disappeared into the back room, leaving Christophe alone with the merchandise. It was part of their routine, a sort of trust exercise. As long as the man trusted Christophe in his shop unsupervised, Christophe trusted the man to not break his legs. It was a mutually beneficial arrangement.
The man returned with a giant's handful of items and an unspoken joke in his eyes. Christophe paid without another word, handing over more hard-earned money than he could afford to lose, and stuffed everything in the many pockets of his coat. It was a long walk back to his apartment and he didn't want to look like he was carrying anything valuable. He never knew who was watching.
—
He cursed several times under his breath. He didn't know why it helped assuage the burning in his throat, but it did. One foot reached out tentatively, stepping intentionally on the smallest twig he could find. It bent under his weight and snapped without a sound. Not that he'd had reason to doubt his supplier, but with a potion as delicate as catstep, it never hurt to test it out first. After one last check for witnesses he silently jogged across the lawn, slipping into the ajar back door and closing it behind him.
In the mudroom he allowed himself a breath. He was in. Now he only had to deal with the manor's defenses. According to Olivia's information there were only six people inside: the chef who'd let him in but offered no further assistance, four other workers, and the owner, a woman he did not want to meet face-to-face. She wasn't supernatural, probably, but one ever wanted to meet the owner of a house mid-robbery. Still, in a building this size he'd have no problems avoiding six people. The problem was the traps.
Anybody who worked with magic for longer than a single, traumatic encounter knew the benefit of safeguards. People were fine defenses if you were into that sort of thing, but a bound spirit or a carefully-cast spell trumped them in all ways, and even an unbound spirit or amateur spell served as a deterrent, if a mutually-destructive one. Given the lengths to which Olivia had sent him, he saw no way there wasn't some sort of magical defense in the manor. The solution was obvious: stick to common rooms where frequent foot traffic would preclude any serious barriers, avoid anything with eyes like a statue or painting acting as a natural scrying target, and never, ever, under any circumstances, touch anything valuable, for any reason. Ever.
Except the thing you want to steal. That's fine to touch as long as you have an escape route. But if you can steal it without touching it, all the better.
He lowered his shoulders out of habit more than anything and skulked through the mudroom, sneaking to the hallway lining the back of the manor. The sound of a running faucet hummed from a half-closed door to the side, and he dropped to his hands and knees and crawled by it. At the far end, the hall opened into an ostentatious dining room in a older style, probably all the rage shortly after the Civil War. Everything looked immaculate, the product of an attentive cleaning staff, and he kept it that way. He stuck to the walls, under the portraits and out of the sight of long-dead men and women, and nudged open a door to another hallway.
He didn't even have time to close the door behind him before he saw the two suits of armor standing side-by-side on the carpet staring him down. He cursed again, silently, and froze, hoping they hadn't seen him. They had. Their joints strained loudly as they sprinted toward him, and he fell back into the dining room and took off toward the back door. A loud bang echoed behind him as he fumbled through his pockets, looking for his prohibitively expensive emergency plan. As soon as he disappeared into the back hallway he downed his second potion, choking down a brew that tasted like somebody had charred eggs to a crisp and tried to mask their failure with some of last week's fish. He dug his nails into his palm to distract himself from the pain and dashed through the door he had avoided before, entering the kitchen in plain view of the chef.
Self-preservation won out over logic, and he ran halfway across the room and ducked behind a chair as though it would help. But the chef didn't raise an alarm. He only turned and stared quizzically at the door until the suits of armor barged in, scanning the area. He turned off the sink faucet and threw up his hands, muttering something about stupid magical guards. The armors ignored him but made no further motion, too preoccupied with finding the intruder. Christophe exhaled slowly. They had no way to sense magic, and without it they were as useless against invisibility as anybody else.
But potions only lasted so long, and already he could hear his anxious foot tapping on the hardwood floor. While the chef shooed the armors back toward the hallway, Christophe left via another door, finding himself in another, longer corridor. He hastened toward the center of the house, aiming to make it there before the armors returned, and soon found himself in a main foyer. From there was was trivial to climb the two flights of steps leading him to his actual target, a mundane door leading to a room far from any exterior walls. Momentarily safe from patrols he reached into his pocket—which he noticed, with some distress, was again visible—and pulled out his lock pick set. He always loved how the magical types filled their homes with sensors and spirits and spells, but never invested in a lock more secure than one you might find on a bathroom doorknob in an everyday McMansion. In only moments he was in.
The door eased open to a gallery of sorts, replete with shelves of books older than his entire family and display cases sporting gems, weapons, fetishes, and other objects that screamed "magic" even to the most mundane burglar. In the middle of the room sat the object of his invasion, the thumb-sized purple gem resting in the palm of a kneeling demon statue. He looked around for a moment, checking for any obvious signs of security, but he saw nothing, not even a camera. Suspicious but unable to back down, he stepped into the room. Immediately the door swung shut behind him. He didn't try to open it. He knew it was locked. In front of him the statue clenched its fist around the gem and rose to its full eight-foot height, flexing its sculpted muscles and taking a single step toward him.
His notes hadn't said anything about an animated statue, but he knew better than to blame the notes, even if they were wrong. There was always a complication; his job was to handle it. He stood calmly, his weight on his toes, watching the demon lumber toward him. He didn't need to destroy it or disrupt its magic. He just needed to get the gem and get out. The plan was obvious: bait the statue into doing what he wanted. Nobody put a Fulbright scholar into an ugly hunk of rock. Whatever spirit animated the statue, it was probably stupid, subversive, or both, and it should have been child's play to get it to claw at him with both hands, drop the gem, and crash through a wall in the ensuing scuffle.
Should have been.
He ducked under the statue's outstretched hand, giving it a rap on the thigh as he passed; if the spirit was intelligent, that would irritate it, and if it wasn't, no harm done. The statue's elbow swung back, but again he fell out of the way, stepping back toward the glass cases. It hesitated only a moment before returning to face him full, sidling in preparation for his next dodge. He feinted, planting his foot as if taking a step but pushing off it in the opposite direction. As he moved he reached into his pocket and pulled out one of his potion vials. They were empty, but the statue didn't need to know it. He moved to toss it and stopped short, feigning frustration at losing his opportunity. A scowl formed naturally on his face as he looked around, looking for an escape he didn't need, and he let the statue tromp closer.
Then he spotted it, a signet ring, too large for a human, bearing a six-pointed star: the Seal of Solomon. Not the real seal, obviously. That was probably in some ageless mage's tightly-sealed vault hidden inside another, larger vault. But replicas like this often had some small power, and if it could command spirits, it could stop the statue. At least, what's what he wanted the statue to think. He lunged for it, sailing across the room with overdramatic intent. The statue reached for him, its claws closing inches from the hem of his jacket. He patted around the glass, looking for a latch, and pretended to find one. When the statue closed with him, he spun and flung his vial at its face.
The statue reeled backward in fear of the false attack it had scouted unnecessarily, and Christophe took his shot. With the statue's fists open to protect its head, the gem fell unimpeded to the carpet. He snatched it up and took off for the door, hoping to make some headway in picking it before he had to con the statue into breaking it and alerting the entire house to his presence. He didn't account for the statue's foot, which fell squarely on his coat, jerking him backward with an undignified grunt. He shrugged his shoulders, trying to disrobe, but a stony hand clasped around his forearm. Before he could pull out his other vial as a desperate last shot, the statue hefted him into the air and wrapped an arm around his neck.
He grabbed onto the arm, not to try and pry it loose—he wasn't stupid—but to ease the burden on his neck until he could brace his legs against the statue's thighs. So engrossed in keeping his airways clear, he almost didn't notice when the door clicked open. He relaxed, trying to hide his struggle. He was in trouble, yes, but he didn't need to look like it. He glanced down at the new arrival, a middle-aged woman in a stern suit with an expression like she'd just been called out of a Swedish massage to deal with an oil spill in her living room. Despite the literally well-sculpted muscles holding him in place, he managed a wave. "So, how's your night going?"
"What do you think you're doing in my house?" She snapped, with so focused Christophe thought he might catch fire.
"Oh, this is your collection? A piece of advice: don't display Sumerian seals next to your Indian trick ropes. It's a little racist."
Her fist clenched, and he hoped she'd get angry enough to make a mistake. "Who sent you?"
"Mary Kay. We're offering a discount on our age-defying creams. Better discounts if you buy in bulk. You know, because of the…" he waved a finger pointedly at her face.
She took a step toward him before she caught herself. He smirked inwardly, remembering the easily-broken vial in his pocket. He had a weapon, but she was out of reach. She just needed one last push. "Don't try my patience."
"Lady, I don't think I'd try anything of yours."
She threw up her arms. "Unbelievable. Just…knock him out while I deal with this."
"Wait!" Christophe gasped as the arm pressed again his neck and the dizziness began to overtake him. She hadn't succumbed to his tricks yet, but he had one last change to bait her. "There's something you…you need to know about…this statue…"
The woman peered at him, but pulled away, and took with her his last chance at escape. "And that is?"
"The demon look…is so 1980s." He blacked out.
—
Olivia's phone rang. The landline, at that. She looked at the clock and smirked. Ten minutes late. He must have hesitated going up the driveway.
She lifted the handset to her ear. "Hello?"
"It's done."
"…Who is this?"
"I am not in the mood to play coy right now."
"My my, Katrina, so riled up. Are you upset at how far he made it into your inner sanctum? I recall you being so absolutely certain those walking tin cans of yours would ferret him out in a heartbeat."
"Look," the voice on the other end snapped, and Olivia could just picture her turning red in the tastefully middle-aged face, "I did exactly what you wanted for this little test of yours. I let my chef leave an opening for him. I turned off the scrying sensors in the main hall. I even ordered my statue to capture him instead of kill him, which was no mean feat. You know how spirits are when they get inside rocks. And I still caught this—" there was the sound of a hammer hitting a sack of potatoes, or perhaps a foot hitting a stomach, "—thiefred-handed. So either that book you promised me finds your way to my house in short order or I'll find another way to get rid of him."
Olivia's eyes narrowed, imperceptible over the phone. "Is he intact?"
"As can be expected."
She relaxed again. "Then you have nothing to worry about. I'll take care of reprimanding him. In fact, I'll send my ladies over to make the exchange right now. I'm sure you'll find something rewarding in that dusty old tome. Might I suggest beginning around page four-eighty? There's a wonderful ritual in there to reverse the aging process."
A click reached Olivia's ear, and she laughed as she hung up the phone. "Ah, I like her. Jane, Joan?"
Two identical women stepped out of the office's copious shadows, revealing themselves not by magic but out of a sudden desire to be seen. Even in heels Olivia had to look up to catch their dull black eyes scowling back at her. They weren't actually upset, of course. Nobody would dare look at Olivia Stormblood like that intentionally. She just found resting bitch face a useful trait in bodyguards.
"Go to Katrina's place with the book and come back with Christophe. Makes sure he stays unconscious until the festivities begin. Oh!" She called out as they turned to leave. "And if he's damaged in any way, bring back himandthe book. Understand?"
The women nodded and left. Olivia ran her hand over her cheek and smiled. She could hardly wait to get home.
—
The slap didn't wake Christophe up, though it certainly helped. It was more the throbbing behind his eyes, like his brain decided his headache was too good to miss by staying unconscious. When he tried to raise his hand to his temples it caught on something soft but tough, as did the other. As did his feet. A spike of adrenaline exacerbated the icepick in his head, but he used it as incentive to force open his eyes and take in his surroundings.
The first thing he saw was Olivia; even if she hadn't been standing right in front of him, and even if she hadn't been the sort to naturally draw all the attention in the room, there was no way a mere mortal could pull his gaze from her glower. "What did I say?"
Christophe pulled together as many of his facilities as possible to give her the most coherent response he could. "Hnn?"
He didn't see her hand move until it was already in his hair, forcing his head back. Still he strained his eyes downward to watch her face. Looking away would only stoke her ire. "I asked you a question! What was the last thing I said to you?"
Normally he wouldn't remember every word of a conversation he had yesterday, but conversations with Olivia were different, for more reasons than one. "You said not to fail you, or I'd pay for it." His dry throat crackled and strained against his own voice, allowing him to speak only in a low growl.
"And what did you do?"
The events of the night came back to him in remarkable detail, more clear even than the hard chair under him or the rope binding him to it. "I failed."
"Wrong!" She flicked his head to the side and let it go. "I don't care when you fail. You fail all the time. Just look at you. Is this the appearance of asuccessfulman? No, I expect you to fail yourself at every opportunity. The problem is that you—" she jabbed his chest with a long, supernaturally tough nail, "—failed—" her nail caught a rib, drawing out a pained grunt, "—me." Her last stab hit right over his heart, a position he interpreted with its full meaning.
He wanted to tell her she was wrong, but she wasn't. He glanced down at her bared teeth, where two impossibly sharp fangs made themselves known. "I'm sorry."
"Sorry! You hear that? He's sorry!" She slapped the back of the chair and stormed away. Finally able to look elsewhere he quickly scanned the area, an ostentatious bedroom almost as large as his entire apartment. He didn't recognize anything there, but based on the blackout curtains and his situation, he could hazard a guess as to who owned it. The people in the room didn't hurt either, as Olivia gestured to Jane…or Joan, perhaps. He could never figure out which of her bodyguards was which. "Well, everything is forgiven, as long as he's sorry! Suddenly I don't mind that all my planning and research went to waste, or that I've lost my only shot at the gemstone, or that I had to send both of you out in the middle of the night and trade anincrediblyvaluable tome to smooth over the fact that one of my people got caught red-handed in her house! It's all okay now, because he's sorry!"
He wanted to pay attention to the task at hand, he really did. But as he took in the room, it involved taking in some part of Olivia besides her contemptuous glare, and he finally noticed what she was wearing: a corset pushing her already-impressive breasts even higher and larger, a pair of almost-sheer panties in danger of being swallowed by her well-cushioned rear, and thigh-high boots he assumed were leather given her finances and predilections, all in black. Distracted, and chagrined by the bodyguards keeping him line with only their poise, he could only stammer out "I know that doesn't—"
"You're right!" She whirled on him with a spark of malice in her expression. "It doesn't!"
His eyes rocketed up to hers, and only an inhuman act of willpower kept them there. He forced himself to focus on her curls swaying with her irritated stomps, the lips he normally tried to ignore, even the crown molding against the ceiling—anything to avoid glancing down and risking another explosion. He opened his mouth, and words fell out before he could consider them. "I'll make up for it. I'll—"
"Oh, you will." She crossed the room in two strides and slapped his thighs, leaning over and displaying an unrealistic amount of cleavage. "You will reimburse me for every inconvenience you've caused even if I have to extract aliteralpound of flesh. But that's not enough."
The silence ran along his neck like a knife, sending goosebumps down his arms. "No?"
"No. You still have to pay for your failure. Isn't that what you promised?"
Cristophe had said no such thing, not in so many words. But he wasn't about to die on that hill. He nodded.
"Good. Your little emergency interrupted us just as we were about to have some fun. You're going to sit and watch, understand? If you're good, maybe I'll consider a bit of leniency. If you're not," she grinned, fangs exposed, "I won't."
He resisted the urge to gulp. "I understand."
"Excellent. Heather?"
The carpet rustled against sensible shoes as a young woman stepped into view. He guessed she was one of Olivia's attendants, the ones where you never knew whether they were a vampire or not until it was too late. He ogled her, telling himself he was assessing her as a threat. She looked cute, and young for a career servant. The stereotypical maid outfit seemed a bit much to him, but Olivia liked the classics. "Yes, Mistress?"
"I want you to push our guest a bit. Make him work for his salvation."
"Yes, Mistress." The maid turned to him, and he braced himself for a blade against his spine or a chain tightening around his chest. When she knelt by the chair and freed his half-erect cock from the confines of his pants, he was not especially relieved. Still, she produced no implements of torture, not in the traditional sense. Instead she began stroking him slowly and lifted herself up to give him a kiss.
He smelled no perfume, but fruit-flavored lip gloss was unmistakable. He loved it.
When her silken lips pulled away from him, he barely caught his breath before he saw Olivia, leaning back against her dresser with Joan (or Jane?) firmly planted between her thighs. The arousal on Olivia's face looked nothing like the flirty glances she gave him in the office. It more closely resembled the expression he imagined when she teased him over the phone, calling him only to let him know she was thinking of somebody else. Her red lips, framed by high cheekbones, parted in a tall 'O' as the bodyguard's head rocked in time with her lady's hips. Her hands splayed on the dresser, pale flesh a beacon on the dark wood, and her legs shook at her servant's ministrations. The bodyguard backed away, caressing Olivia's slit with long, wet licks audible even from his chair, and he wondered why. It must have been something Olivia liked.
Olivia's long nails stroked the bodyguard's scalp through the hair bound into a tight ponytail, and at the same moment the maid ran her nails across Christophe's head. His cock jerked, and he suddenly understood the game.
He tried to calm down, but Heather timed her strokes with his deep breaths until it seems like like he was matching her speed instead of the other way around. Whenever he tried to exhale slowly, she blew on his ear or flicked her tongue on his neck, ruining his concentration. The only thing she actively stopped him from doing was closing his eyes. He tried it once, and Heather whispered with a voice so quiet it might have been a dream "Mistress told you to watch." Fear, more than anything, forced his attention, but the burst of adrenaline did nothing for his attempts to go soft.
While Heather spurred him onward with the delicacy of a cloud, Olivia's ferocity only grew. Mere minutes passed before she shoved the bodyguard's face into her crotch, and Christophe momentarily worried for the woman's airways until he remembered her affliction. The guard dove into Olivia's pleasure like a starvation victim, moaning and sucking and licking with an encouraging volume. Olivia's chest heaved despite her lack of breath, rolling her body into her servant's mouth, and she too moaned to eclipse all else in the room. Christophe had seen porn stars less enthusiastic, but he knew better than to think she was putting on a show just for him. Olivia didn't do anything but for herself, and if it happened to also arouse him, he knew she expected him to thank her for the privilege.
Olivia shoved her bodyguard away, exposing skin dripping with fluids of both, and spread her legs slightly wider. The other bodyguard approached her, and Christophe now saw the jet-black silicone strap-on poking from the top of her unfastened suit pants. He deliberately avoided comparing it to his own size—if he knew Olivia, it would bevery slightlylarger. He only stared as it nestled between her lips and pushed inside her.
Olivia gasped and her eyes rolled back in her head, overblown but no less erotic for it. The bodyguard hesitated only a moment before thrusting into her with a rough but steady force. Heather stroked him at the same speed, and the comparison proved undeniable. He couldn't avoid thinking about how it would keep to trade places, if he was buried deep inside the vampire instead, if her leg lifted to allow him deeper access instead of a simple toy. He wondered whether she would be warm inside, how those nails would feel digging into his back, how loud her voice would be right against his ear. The other bodyguard stood next to Olivia and ran her fingers over the swell of her breasts, and he glared at her too in jealousy. He pulled against his ropes, half-wanting to leap forward and grab her quivering ass despite the consequences, but he stayed rooted, seated at Heather's mercy.
Too late he realized how close he was, and he grasped for anything that could allay his impending peak—baseball statistics, prime numbers, even the taste of potions still lingering on his parched tongue. None succeeded. His lizard brain cared nothing for good sense or his orders, only for the trembling vision of womanhood being pleased by somebody else. Olivia shuddered with what he knew to be an orgasm, and with every lusty moan Heather whispered his name into his ear. His fantasies put two and two together, replacing the young man with Olivia herself, and he accepted his fate as his load shot into the air.
Silence had fallen as he stared at the trail of white stretching over the edge of the chair onto the carpet below. Only the hammering in his chest and the slow rhythm of two set of breaths penetrated it. He noticed Olivia's leather-clad feet at the top of his vision, and he looked up to find her hovering before him, angry yet smug. "You've made a mess of my room."
"I—"
"Up." The bodyguards untied a portion of his bindings, freeing him from the chair but keeping his wrists bound behind him. "Off." They shoved his flaccid dick back into his pants, all the better to drag them to his ankles. "Down." They tossed him onto the bed, face muffled by a pillowy comforter and bare ass hanging over the edge. Something rustled behind him but he dare not move, preferring this disadvantage to a more forceful one. He didn't even tilt his head to breathe, not until he felt something cool between his cheeks. Something slick and small pushed into his anus, and he yelped in surprise but failed to pull himself away from it. "Calm down. We won't hurt you. I can still find a use for you…that is, unless you make this hard for me." He gritted his teeth and allowed it in, probing him and coating his insides with cold slipperiness. The object withdrew, and he almost sighed in relief until something much bigger pushed against him. It became clear: that was a finger warming him up, and this was the main event.
His body resisted its intruder, but clenching only brought more pain as it forced its way forward regardless. He tried the other tack, relaxing in the way Heather had denied him before. That went much better, though still not easily. Rather than a stabbing pain, his anus ached as the silicone forced his muscles beyond their comfort zone. The lube helped, he imagined. He certainly didn't want to try again without it, but there wasn't any topical solution to being stretched wide. He felt more soreness than anything, not the soreness of a workout afterglow but in the sense of a muscle tear on the mend. The dildo pushed in and out lethargically, keeping him spread, and he silently thanked Olivia for at least selecting a toy without texture. Though it burrowed deep, the pain concentrated itself at his entrance, and he didn't know if he could handle any further stimulation.
"Very good," Olivia purred as she pulled out and let him close, exhausted and thankful. "You're starting to understand, aren't you? Failures get punished and successes get rewarded. Oh, which reminds me. Joan, would you like a turn?"
Christophe bit his tongue to suppress his whimper. The clanking and swishing of metal and leather sounded behind him, and some moments later he felt the strap-on against his anus again. Joan was even less tender than Olivia, forcing him open without a moment's hesitation and hammering her just as she'd used Olivia's much wetter, much more prepared body. The ache spiked, but a new sensation overshadowed it. Christophe hadn't thought much about the physics of sex, not until the friction in his ass began to warm him from the inside. The lube was cold, the dildo was cool, and the woman behind him emanated the chill of the grave, but none of it mattered to the hot poker impaling him. All he could do was bury his head in the comforter and try not to clench any muscles, letting himself be ridden until they were done with him.
After an unknowable amount of torture, Olivia traded out again, her relative amorousness exactly the respite his flagging body needed. Under her attention he felt himself responding, actually tolerating the penetration during the rare times it wasn't unbearable. And just as he started to entertain the possibility of liking it, she swapped with Jane, and the bodyguard broke him all over again. He tried to count seconds to occupy his mind and get some sense of time, but he gave up around three hundred. He couldn't even pull together valid thoughts, too caught up in what was happening and fighting his body's reaction to it.
Jane pulled out, and he expected Olivia to take another turn, but when the dildo pushed in and another angle he knew something was different. Heather's soft hands, a sensation he'd learned to relish, grabbed his ass as she sawed into him with slow, careful strokes. If he didn't know better he'd describe it as a loving penetration, far more palatable than the rough fuck the bodyguards gave him. She even shifted her hips to test out different approaches, and when she rubbed a certain place inside him he couldn't hold back his moan. She kept at it, rubbing that place with each stroke, and his body responded, allowing him to forget his soreness for a moment. His cock stirred, swelling and pushing against the soft fabric underneath his body. Against all odds, he found the energy to tense his hips, not willing to commit to pushing back but ready enough to participate.
When Heather withdrew he braced himself for another round of abuse to blow away any progress he'd made. But he recognized Olivia's nails on his back, just as heavenly as he'd expected. The vampire claimed his ass again, mimicking Heather's angle and speed. Somehow it felt different, manipulative instead of kind, and he didn't even mind the change. Any small bit of pleasure was better than the unmitigated assault he'd suffered at the hips of the bodyguards. He gladly took Olivia's compromise, relaxing and giving her as much access as she wanted as long as he could enjoy the ride.
Olivia whispered in his ear, and he didn't even hear it. His body was too sore, his mind too worn out to respond anyway. He turned off his thoughts and let his instincts do what they wanted, and what they wanted was to push back against her. She obliged him, fucking him tenderly with long, deep strokes. He humped the bed, rubbing his cock against the comforter with every thrust. That place in his hips throbbed with joy, and even if he could have stopped himself, he didn't think he wanted to. With a loud groan he came again, pumping a smaller load of seed into the comforter as his lower body shuddered in release and fatigue. Olivia froze and allowed him to finish, only pulling out when he slumped and tilted his head to the side to finally catch a deep, lovely breath.
She climbed over him and pushed a strand of hair out of his face. "I want you to remember this whenever I give you a task. I won't be so forgiving next time." Olivia leaned close, until he could smell her shampoo and her face filled his vision. "Never disappoint me again." She kissed him.
Her lips were cold.
Wolf Pack
The top of the bar felt nice and cool, a sturdy support for Christophe's soon-to-be-ailing forehead. His hand groped for his shot glass, intending to have it at the ready when he finally rose to greet it, but his fingers met only napkin. He grimaced, rolling his head to look up at his babysitter. "That's mine."
Heather held his empty respite, out of reach unless he pulled forth the willpower to raise his arm. He didn't. She stared down at him with her stone face. "Technically nothing you've had tonight is yours."
"You want it back?"
"Ugh." She emoted long enough to roll her eyes and he smirked, a short-lived victory to help him forget about his situation. "Pull yourself together. The worse you look, the worse I look."
"Don't remind me." He tried to mumble quietly enough for her to miss it and didn't notice how badly he had failed. Not like his last few jobs, where he knew exactly how badly he had failed. Or, rather, he'd had one failed job and two where he'd succeeded with insufficient grace for his employer. Hence his new manager, a maid Olivia saw fit to spare. He'd hated managing his finances, keeping track of his potion stock, and refreshing his magical paraphernalia, but he hated being forced to let somebody else do it even more. Now he got to spend his nights getting lectures about drinking from a girl who might not even be old enough to do it herself. Or was she actually a hundred years old? Christophe could swear he'd asked if she was a vampire but he couldn't recall the answer. Maybe if she smiled long enough to show her teeth. Or ever.
Heather ignored him and looked at the clock behind the bar. "Do you want to know how long you've been here"
"Fine, fine." He hefted his leaden arm and tapped the glass in her hand. "One more, then I'll head home for the—" He caught sight of the clock himself and winced. Eight o'clock. No wonder Olivia's club was empty. "Morning, I guess." His legs propped him up under protest, lifting him from his stool. The leather seat creaked in the empty bar, a reminder of how long he'd been in it.
She pulled the glass away and waved it toward a black door, unmarked, hidden in a poorly-lighted corner off to the side of the stage. She didn't say anything. She didn't need to.
Christophe groaned. He'd been in that room before. As far as the health inspectors were concerned it was a private employee bathroom, complete with shower and a decorative coffin to add to its ambiance. Only a few people knew the coffin's actual purpose: Christophe's bed, where Olivia expected him to sleep until further notice. She'd called it his punishment. He instead thought of it as a sick joke. "Come on. It's good to walk home. Gets the body processing things faster. It's science, probably." He raised his eyebrows and half-smiled, turning on as much charm as he could manage. Olivia was a hardass about her rules, but he had a much better chance at sweet-talking the girl who kept slipping him drinks under the table.
Heather didn't bite, but at least she showed exasperation. "You're not processing, Christophe. You've processed." Her hand jumped toward him and he lilted back unsteadily. "Needless to say, you're drunk, which means you're not nearly as attractive as you think you are. Now be a good boy and—" The shrill ring of the bar phone cut her off, and she put her tirade on hold to answer it. He lingered only a moment, until Heather pulled out a pen and wrote the name "Megan" on a napkin, then made his escape toward the front door. When Heather finally got around to her farewell "Right, I'll let her know as soon as she's up" he was halfway free. He glanced back at Heather's disappointed frown right before he entered the hallway and broke into the unforgiving sunlight.
Olivia wouldn't be happy he left the bar drunk, but that was tomorrow's problem.
—
His phone screamed an overblown orchestral pomp, the ringtone Olivia had selected for him. Christophe bolted out of his bed, jamming his toe on the floor as he scrambled to answer it. Even if the screen hadn't projected her name in white text with the brilliance of a hundred suns, he knew who was on the other end. Not many people called him. "Good evening, Olivia."
"Christophe!" Her shout removed all traces of pain from his foot, by reminding him of the icepicks drilling their way into his mouth by way of his temples. Maybe Heather was right about his drinking. "I have called you six times! You will be in my office in ten minutes!"
"Right, sorry, I—"
"Ten! Minutes!" A cymbal could have gone off in his bedroom and it would have still been quieter than Olivia slamming her phone. He pulled himself from his rumpled, sweat-soaked sheets and immediately fell to his knees, tucking his head low to keep it from swimming. He would never drink like that again, he told himself every time. Maybe he needed a more attainable goal. Next time he'd at least have dinner first.
He pulled himself together at an astounding pace, breaking into his stash of rare clean clothes and saving his personal grooming for a few fingers run repeatedly through his hair. He'd intended to run to Olivia's club, but in his state he barely managed a hasty stumble, reeling down the early-night sidewalks and alleys like a zombie minutes before its library book went overdue. With each passing moment his motor function caught up with his cognition, and fueled mostly by panic he burst into the club at a full sprint, ignoring the masses attending the current performance, and sailed down the stairs towards Olivia's office. He didn't greet the twins or even ask their approval, only barreled past the bodyguards and shoved the door open with his shoulder. "I'm here! I—"
All five senses stopped him at once. He expected the sight of Olivia to stop him in his tracks, as usual, but he didn't expect the bodybuilder sitting in front of her, all muscles, hair, and poise. The office didn't smell like normal, with Olivia's ancient, musty decor overpowered by the pungent scent of dog. For once the irritated growl wasn't coming from his boss, and that only left one source. The hair on his arms stood on end as he tried to beat back his panic, and he owed credit to the situation as much as to his run for the sudden taste of bile on his tongue.
A werewolf. Why a werewolf?
The office door shut behind him as Jane and Joan made up for the lack of consideration he had shown and gave him some privacy with the two most terrifying creatures he'd seen in months. As soon as there were no witnesses, the giant man stood and strode over to him with a predator's presence. He leaned into Christophe, sniffing once, and the growl grew louder. "This is the one? This is what you plan to loan tomyalpha? This frightened…thing?" He sniffed once more, loud enough to make Christophe jump, and jabbed his arm with a finger as thick as a carrot. "Is this even a man, or just some rabbit under a puniness curse?"
Christophe bristled, though not enough to defend himself. He let Olivia do it instead—as much as she berated him, he was still hers, and he doubted his shaky voice could match her satin tongue. "He has his qualities. He runs. He hides. Not unlike a rabbit, really. But he has a talent for what youralpharequires." She put special emphasis on that word. There was only one decision-maker in the room.
The man snorted, but there was something else in his eyes now. Curiosity? "Fine. I'll take him now."
"You'll take him when I'm done with him. And since you don't need him for another week, you'll leave him here for now. Tell Megan she can send somebody for him tomorrow night."
"That's—"
"We're done here."
The werewolf scowled, but the twins opened the office door and he quickly lost his fight. He did bump into Christophe on the way out, hard enough to send him to the floor even if he hadn't been exhausted and hung over. The door clicked behind him, and the heaviness in the room finally left. Christophe breathed.
Fingers snapped, and an unnaturally strong hand grabbed Christophe's hair and pulled him to his feet. He stumbled along with the bodyguard until she tossed him in the familiar position, slumped in one of Olivia's chairs while she sat on the edge of her desk. Now that she wasn't lurking behind the furniture and he wasn't struggling to keep his legs working he could finally give her the attention she deserved, and today he was more than willing to give it. While her suits normally fit her curves, this one was downright snug, apparently so snug she couldn't even button much of her shirt. One of her hands brushed her chest, tantalizingly close to her cleavage, and she spoke with a steely edge. "Do you know what this is?"
He knew a trap when he saw one, and he looked to her other hand, resting on something on her desk. "A clock."
"A clock? Are you sure? Because you don't seem to know what one is, seeing as it took you eleven minutes to get here. Minutes you wouldn't have needed if you'd been in the room I so graciously set aside for you."
"Mis—"
"Let's count off your sins, shall we?" She raised her hand and ticked off each point with a cherry-red fingernail. "You left the club drunk this morning, against the direct recommendation of Heather who, I am forced to remind you, is in charge of you in my absence. You ignored not one, not two, but five of my phone calls. When you finally deigned to answer me, you arrived a minute after the deadline I gave you, wasting even more of my valuable time. And worst of all, you barged in an a very important meeting, made an ass out of yourself, and embarrassed me by nearly wetting your pants at the sight of a creature who gets off on the smell of fear." She slid from her desk and leaned over, putting her chest front and center in his field of view, and whispered, "have I covered everything?"
Christophe was but a man, a tired one. His eyes drifted to her breasts, straining against their enclosures, and it took all his breath to respond "You look nice tonight, Mistress."
"My eyes are up here." She placed one finger on his chin and nudged his head back, and once his focus was in the right place she tilted further forward. Her teeth nicked his earlobe, only inches from his vulnerable neck and the surging blood within. Her breath caressed his ear, filling his mind with thoughts both erotic and terrifying. "Don't move, and we won't talk about your list of fuck-ups. Understood?"
Christophe didn't move. He didn't blink. If he could stop his heart he'd do that too and he wasn't fully convinced he didn't. He was a statue, keeping even his eyes locked in place when Olivia pulled away and returned to her seat on the edge of her desk. The seconds ticked loudly away. His eyes burned and the room faded into a cloud of colors, but still he sat, frozen by fear.
He jumped when somebody rapped on the door, but Olivia seemed willing to forgive his slight. "Who could that be," she called, with the playful tone of a woman who already knew the answer. The door opened behind him and the carpet rustled with footfalls, but he did his level best to remain motionless.
It lasted until the newcomer entered his view, and then he doubted anybody could have restrained themselves, irate vampire or no. The first thing to enter his line of sight, he had to admit, was her bust, so massive his back hurt just looking at it, and look he did. Despite the button-down shirt and overworked bra trying their hardest to contain them, he wouldn't have doubted if her breasts were each as big as her head. When he looked up for comparison, he settled upon a gorgeous face, either in its mature twenties or very well-kept thirties, with eyes the color of the ocean under blond bangs and above a nose with the slightest point to its tip. Two long tresses fell from the sides of her head, framing her chest in a way he assumed was deliberate, and the bulk of her waist-length hair fell down her back until a ribbon brought it under control right behind her ass. And what as ass it was, poured into a knee-length skirt that couldn't bring itself to cover any more of her long, marble thighs than necessary. Between the body of a porn star and the wardrobe of a middle-school teacher, she seemed the perfect foil to Olivia: still very much a woman, but pure and trustworthy instead of his boss' more authoritative style.
His impression lasted perhaps three seconds, until she looked down at him and drew up her arm in surprise. "Oh! Were you about to snack? I can wait."
Christophe shuddered, which at least helped him remember to stop gaping. Olivia would never drink from him…probably. The very thought had his stomach in knots despite its unlikelihood. Olivia wouldn't turn him or kill him. It wasn't her style. But it wouldn't really surprise him if she got herself a taste just to remind him of his place or, worse, share him with the twins. It was bad enough that they never let him live down the evening they'd all spent in Olivia's room. The last thing he needed was for them to mock him for his flavor as much as they teased him for the sounds he definitely didn't remember making when they were pressing him face-first into a mattress.
His hammering chest almost drowned out Olivia, but the roll in her eyes was unmistakeable. "No, this is your thief. Christophe. But, you know what, call him whatever you want. He'll answer to anything, won't he?" She slid from her seat and walked back behind her desk.
Christophe knew he was still in trouble. It hadn't abated. And he knew she'd commanded him, but his chivalry got the better of him. His next action wasn't borne from insubordination, but from an honest desire to serve Olivia until she forgave him, or whatever passed for forgiveness with her. He jumped from his chair, ignoring the rush of blood to his head, and took a single step toward her chair, intending to pull it out for her.
Olivia whirled on him, her eyes like lightning and her voice like thunder. "I didn't say you could move!" He fell back, a puppet with his strings cut. His hands went to the arms of the chair, putting them out in the open where she could see his obedience, and he pulled his spine as straight as it could go while it still shivered.
The blond woman giggled, a light, airy sound like chimes in the wind. Despite the perfectly functional empty chair alongside him, she spun on one foot and plopped herself in his lap. He grunted under her weight but refrained from crying out, even when he felt her fingers walking through his unkempt hair. He hadn't thought about it before, but she was not a small woman. Resting on his thighs she put her chest squarely at eye level, and she took advantage of it by pressing it against his face, trying to provoke a reaction. "So, Olivia. How've you been?"
Christophe was both right and wrong, as usual. The woman was trying to get a reaction, but it wasn't from Christophe. She wanted to provoke Olivia, and from the way her fingers bridged, it was working. "Megan."
The woman wriggled her hips, a powerful and inescapable stimulus. While he could keep his hands and mouth and even eyes still, he couldn't keep himself from getting hard under her soft, firm ass. His literally growing arousal was almost enough to distract him from the scent filling his nostrils, the smell of dog. His whole body tensed as he realized he was getting a lap dance from a werewolf, but Megan didn't care. She didn't even look at him as she strung him along, focused fully on Olivia with overblown innocence. "Yeeees?"
"Get off him."
"Why? I'm just getting to know him better. You vampires are always so standoffish with your people." She tangled her fingers in his hair and pulled him close, taking a loud, long sniff. "It's not like he's your lover or anything. I don't smell you on him. Which means he's available, right?" Without waiting for an answer she whipped her head around, moving her hair to mask their faces, and leaned in for a soft, breathy kiss. He gripped the arms of the chair for strength and let her use him, making absolutely certain to refrain from kissing back. Even as her tongue explored his lips, even as her breath entered his lungs, even as she moaned quietly into his mouth, he remained still, letting her seduce him without any conscious effort on his part.
"Still," Olivia's voice cut through the haze as it always did. "He's mine. I decide what happens to him."
Now Megan didn't look at Olivia, answering her almost dismissively. "Oh? I thought he was on loan to me for a while. Isn't that what you worked out earlier? That means he's all mine. And I intend to use…" She kissed him again, harder now, pushing deep enough to taste his tongue. "every…" Her hips shifted, relieving his aching erection, but a moment later her fingers grabbed it, fumbling for his zipper. "last…" She reached into his pants, stroking his shaft with a delicate grip. "…inch of him."
Olivia growled, which didn't stop Megan but did at least get her to slow down. "You are not going to fuck one of my people in my office."
"You know what? You're right." Megan popped nimbly to her feet, leaving Christophe flustered, cold, and unzipped. "We don't need any hecklers." She bent full at the waist, letting gravity stretch her bust even larger, and lowered her face to his lap. She licked her lips and exhaled on his crotch, a warm, wet breath he could feel even through his underwear, and just as he thought about twitching she grabbed his zipper and tugged it back up. He glanced down at her and she winked at him, then grabbed him by the wrist and pulled him to his feet with preternatural strength. His shaky legs carried him out of the office almost fast enough to keep up with her, and he gave Jane and Joan his most apologetic look as she dragged him down the hall.
Even with the thrum of a bass-heavy song suddenly bearing down on him, he could hear Hurricane Olivia tearing her office to pieces. As they fled the scene the cacophony faded, punctuated by a single floor-shuddering thump he could only assume was her desk landing on an inappropriate side. He couldn't even fathom the fallout from this indiscretion, too terrified to return Megan's barely-contained laughter. She pulled him into the club proper, all dim lights and bodies, and barreled through the crowd with the unique confidence of a woman who believed nobody would stand in her way and knew she could correct anyone who thought otherwise. Dozens of heads, mostly men's, broke from the woman dancing on stage to watch her make her way to the far side of the room, disregarding Christophe himself to focus on the buxom arrival whipping past them.
Megan didn't stop until she reached a booth in the corner, one clearly marked with a "Private" placard, and tossed him into the seat with all the dignity of a purse dropped on the floor of a car after a long day. Her laughter peaked when she saw his face, a tight soprano ringing clearly over the song. "Oh, she is going tokillyou after she calms down."
"Me?" he stammered, his wit momentarily absent given his abject terror. He yelled, less to be heard over the music and more because no other volume felt right for his defense. "All I did was sit there! You did everything!"
"Well she can't kill me, can she? And she's going to kill someone. Ergo…"
He wanted to argue with her, but she was right, which made disagreeing hard. He had found Olivia tended to blame him for things regardless of faultper se. Maybe he should put it on his business card. "Christopher Xavier: magician, rogue, scapegoat". Instead of fighting he only winced as his system flushed its adrenaline and the force of his hangover returned with interest.
Megan slid into the booth next to him, bumping him deeper into the seat with a new sort of hip-on-hips contact. With her back to the wall, she put herself on display to the entire club, and more than a few men took advantage of the opportunity to leer at her, ignoring the performer actually vying for their attention. She didn't seem to mind, and if anything she channelled their detached lust into something powerful and irrevocably focused on him. Her hand gripped his thigh tightly enough that she might as well have had claws, and she made the biggest possible show of pressing her breasts against his arm. He clenched his fist, trying to retain a single sliver of professionalism, and accepted her attention without making a single move of his own. He probably wouldn't survive it.
"What can I get you, Megan?" Heather's voice came just as the song ended, more likely perfectly timed than absurdly convenient. Christophe had never heard her yell, a welcome respite from Olivia's mercurial volume. A strange sensation passed through him. Maybe it was relief; it had been so long since he'd felt it. He let himself relax and glanced at the nearly-naked woman on stage trading places with another not-as-nearly-naked women, opting to enjoy something about the evening. His flimsy emotional state fell when Heather caught his eye. "And she's mostly right. If you're very lucky, Mistress will only kill you."
Megan's easy laugh helped build him back up somewhat. "I can't believe it, she's still too stuck up to share. Aaaah, let's go with a steak. No!" She pressed against Christophe, almost shoving him deeper into the booth. He pushed back, more out of spite than anything. "Two steaks, rare. Big ones. And whiskey." Heather nodded and shot a brief, unreadable look at Christophe, retreating just before another pop classic blared through the speakers. Megan forgot her, turning her attention back to Christophe and rubbing against the pressure he put on her side. "Oh, look who's grown a spine."
Truth be told, he was feeling better. He attributed it to being out of Olivia's office; thinking of her always did something to his mood, but being in her actual, tangible presence did something very different. Aggressive and dangerous as Megan was, she wasn't his boss, and he didn't have the same compulsion to suppress himself for her benefit. Besides, he thought with some grim pleasure, if he was going to die anyway, he might enjoy his last night. The whiskey would help. "This is a strip club. They don't have steaks."
"They do for me. Or they'd better." Her smile showed human teeth. "Olivia's weird like that. Be friendly with werewolves, sure. Keep food at the ready for when they show up, great. But I just treat her toys the same way she does, and—" she mock-gasped, "—suddenly she's queen bitch again. Does she keep you on a leash, too?"
"Please don't give her any ideas."
Megan's laugh sounded more like a bark, but he certainly wasn't going to say it out loud. "Maybe it's a vampire thing. They're all thrall this, minion that. They have to be in charge, all the time."
He raised an eyebrow. "You don't?"
"Of course I do, don't be stupid. But my people aren't my thralls, they're my pack. We look out for each other." Her fingers made their way back to his crotch, unfastening his pants under the table where he desperately hoped nobody could see. "In more ways than one, too. Ever think you might be more suited for us than for her?"
"I can honestly say I have not."
"She's trained you well," she sighed, "but at least this guy is interested. No need to let him starve just because the big head is thinking rationally." She yanked his underwear down, exposing him to the cool air. Already half-hard from her warmth, he grew to his full size in only seconds, and he glanced down at his lap despite his efforts to seem nonchalant.
"Megan." He barely caught Heather's voice over the music, and he looked up at her, positioned so her body blocked the view of anybody else in the room. He knew her warning voice.
Megan didn't. "Oh, good, you're back. Mind sitting with us?"
Heather twitched, but an order from Olivia's guest was exactly that. She bent halfway, sliding into the booth opposite them.
"No, no." Megan patted the seat next to her. "You sit next to…this guy. I'll go to the other side." She slipped under the table, barely getting her chest through the gap, and sidled by Christophe on the balls of her feet. Megan sighed and took her place, trapping him in the booth, and he adjusted his legs to give Megan more room. But she didn't come up the other side. Instead she pushed his knees apart and settled between them, with her face perilously close to his crotch. "Actually, this is better."
"Megan!" Heather hissed, her eyes flicking rapidly from the werewolf to Christophe's dick to the men watching the show and back again. "You said you would go to the other side!"
"Down's a side." She grabbed his cock and pulled it forward, but her focus was on Heather. "You could always go tattle on us. But if I remember right, the last time you left us alone this guy ended up with his dick out in the middle of a strip club. Who knows what would happen if you take your eyes off him again?"
Heather froze, then growled quietly and leaned forward, masking some of what was happening. She knew her place just like Christophe did; she was his keeper, and even if what happened in her absence wasn't really her fault, she couldn't count on Olivia to see it the same way. She just watched them, her face stormy and her fists clenched.
"Perfect. Now, for my appetizer." She opened wide and breathed—just breathed—on his cock, in an instant dispelling the cold of the room and his trepidation. Her attention coated him like a cloud, as erotic and all-encompassing as if she'd actually taken him fully into her throat. He could barely see her face under the table, and the dim lights of the club lent her a supernatural glow, especially off the large, smooth lips she held a fingernail's width from his skin. His dick jumped, unable to hold back any longer. Megan grinned to herself, belaboring the moment until he couldn't help but thrust forward, aching to feel her around him. Still she held back, out of reach, and quietly purred until he settled back down. Only then did she move, on her own time, and take him into her searing mouth.
She went down once and came back up, bathing his length in a layer of saliva. Once he was wet she pulled off and blew on him, chilling his skin from head to base. Her tongue stuck out and ran over him, warming him back up one languorous lick at a time. It pushed against him and he pushed back, shifting his hips to lean into each motion as she tasted every square inch he had to offer. Then she lifted herself above him, let a thick glob of spit drip from her mouth onto his tip, and repeated the whole process from the single head suck to the last assertive lick.
Megan said something under the music, words he didn't catch. All he knew was how she attacked him with fervor, grabbing his cock while she dove onto him. Her head bobbed up and down on the top half of his dick, rotating at the end of each motion to put a literal twist on his head as it nearly left her mouth. Her hand stayed still, squeezing rather than pumping, pulsing in time with her enthusiastic blowjob. As she went on she varied her motions, moving left and right with successive bobs or flicking her tongue instead of merely pushing. Her felt her throat vibrate with a humming he couldn't hear, grateful moans as he let her use him, punctuated with the smallest of gags when she took him just so far against the back of her mouth. He couldn't see her face under her hair and she kept her eyes down, focused fully on him, and he didn't care. As long as she did this forever, or as long as he could hold out, he didn't need anything else.
But she did look up, her eyes wide and dancing. The edges of her lips curled up in a smile and she attacked him further, moving her hand with the varied, erratic motions of her head. Her shoulders linked the two, weaving and shifting up and down and from side to side. In fact her whole torso moved, her massive breasts shaking under her shirt whenever she moved too far too fast, and he imagined her hips rocked as well, picturing him between her thighs. With every passing moment her volume rose and her body thrashed more, devoting themselves fully to his ever-growing peak.
"Ugh, look at you," Heather grunted, watching under the table. Though she looked at Megan, he could tell he was the target of her derision from the tone of her voice. "Getting off in the middle of a strip club. You know that makes you a criminal, right? The second anybody else sees your cock out, they'll call the cops. But you're too horny to think straight, aren't you?"
He was, and he focused on Megan's spit dripping down his balls even as Heather continued. "See, this is why you need me. Can you imagine what Olivia would do to you if she saw this? 'Shitstorm' would notbeginto describe it. And I can tell her, too. I can tell her about this, or how much you drank last night, or the hundred other little things you've gotten away with. But I don't, and you keep failing. So you know what? I'm done."
Megan pushed forward, swallowing him to the base, and Heather used the distraction to grab his chin and turn his head to the side. "Eyes here. Did you hear me? I'm done letting you take advantage of me. I am the only thing between you and Olivia, so you are going to start paying me the respect I deserve, do you understand? If you keep pissing me off, I will make sure you pay for it." He must have assented, but it may have been because of the tongue wriggling into his hole. "Good. You ignore me, and I'll do whatever I can to hurt you. But you do what I say, and I'll do whatever I can to help. For example…"
Heather looked at Megan and nodded, and the werewolf smiled and retreated farther under the table. Before Christophe could react, Heather leaned her head into his lap and let his dick into her mouth. Never had he had an occasion to compare two women so closely, and the first thing that hit him was how cool Heather was, not frigid but not Megan's boiling insides either. Nor did she bob as quickly, or moan as loudly, or suck him as deeply. She moved with intention and purpose, an almost-robotic attention to her speed and rhythm. Still he sighed and rolled along with her, happy for the attention even if it wasn't as eager.
Though Megan had given Heather room to work, she wasn't idle either. She freed his balls from his clothing so she could bathe them with her hot tongue, sucking on them noisily and sloppily. The dueling styles overpowered him, leaving him an insensate mess while they had their way with his lower half. When Heather delicately tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear, Megan opened wide and batted her tongue repeatedly against his wrinkled skin. When Megan nudged Heather's head away so she could gag on his cock again, Heather rubbed his thigh and whispered veiled threats in his ear. He closed his eyes, ignoring the rest of the club and just hoping nobody would catch them as it proved harder and harder to keep his expression under control. All he did was sit back and occasionally move his hips, letting the women do whatever they wanted and happy for the chance to be their target.
Tightness formed at his tip, and he sighed out a one-word warning. Heather froze and Megan jumped at her indecision, pushing the girl out of the way so she could swallow his throbbing dick. She sucked every spurt of cum from him, drinking them down with the appetite of a parched woman. Each time she gulped it pushed him further, and over the course of several seconds she milked him dry. Still she sucked, imploring his aching dick for sustenance he couldn't provide. When he finally lost his nerve and cried out in pain she pulled away, licking her lips and leaving his crotch empty and deflated.
A clatter made him jump, and he looked up to find not a waitress or a cop but something far worse. Olivia's hand rested next to the plate she'd dropped into the table, paler than usual to match her hard-lined face. "Heather. If you're done playing, your break is over." Heather disappeared faster than he could notice, leaving only the two of them staring at each other.
And Megan, who popped up in the other seat of the booth. "Oh, hello, Olivia. Thanks for the meal." She giggled at her own double entendre, but pouted when she saw the steaks. "Just one plate."
"You'll be eating alone." In a flash her hand grabbed the back of Christophe's neck, lifting him to his feet. He tried to stand while clothing himself, and neither proved successful as Olivia hauled him across the room and into a stairwell. "Are you stupid? Are you actually,clinically, an idiot? Explain to me the thought process behind getting sucked off in my club, by my associate, in full view of all my customers." He bounced down each step as they descended, failing as always to keep up with her. "No, you know what? Whatever half-baked justification you have, as usual, cannot possibly rise to the occasion. You were inches away from ruining my deal, my business, and my reputation, all because you're too stupid and spineless to wait five minutes so you could get your dick wet in a place thatisn'tdisgustingly public." She pulled him down a hall he hadn't seen before, to an unmarked door. "And with Megan. Megan! Of all the people you could have picked today, her?" She threw the door open and hurled him inside, where he sprawled on the floor, still trying to catch his breath.
The door slammed and its lock clicked, trapping him in the basement with a livid vampire. "It seems I wasn't harsh enough with you last time.I'll fix that."
Love Bite
Christophe tasted blood. His, of course. Its source was unambiguous. The method by which it reached his tongue was not. Had he bit his tongue when Olivia had yanked him out of the booth, or dragged him through the bowels of her club, or literally thrown him into a room he could only describe as her dungeon? Maybe it happened afterward. His teeth were certainly chattering enough that he might have jarred one loose, and even the lack of mind-searing pain wasn't sufficient evidence against it. White-hot, unadulterated terror did funny things to a man.
Olivia's heels clacked on the floor, a clock ticking away the seconds to his execution, and her eyes dropped to him, on his knees in front of her. The wall chilled his shoulders, not least because he hadn't remembered backing into it, and he tried not to swallow, resisting any attempt at moving or breathing or twitching or thinking until she allowed it. He only stared back at her, brimming with dread, until she crossed her arms over her ample chest—a trick to get him to look away—and sneered at him as at a meal with a fly in it. "Do you have any idea how lucky you are?"
He recognized his opportunity to speak, and he relaxed his jaw, releasing the tongue he had literally bitten to keep silent. So that's where the blood had come from. "No, Mistress."
"Up." He stood. Her voice remained as sultry as ever, but he wasn't used to hearing it so even. There was no emotion to her command, no wry undertone of dominance, only the monotone pitch of barely-concealed rage. "You are impossibly lucky that I've already promised you for a job. If you were your normal, listless burden in the shape of a man, you'd be on that rack—" she pointed; he didn't take the bait, "—and I would be breaking your fingers, one by one, until you understood your failure. And then? Then I'd break something else, barely bigger than a finger itself."
His chest hurt. His lungs burned, desperate for a breath, but his heart also beat so hard he thought his ribs would bruise. Her eyes, smoldering high enough to light the room, drew him in, swallowing him, expanding and becoming his world. He had to apologize. It wouldn't help anything, but not apologizing would hurt much, much worse. His lips opened the slightest bit, just enough to beg her forgiveness, and his lungs saw their chance. The first letter in "sorry" came out as a hiss, a sibilant exhalation completely unlike the contrition he intended, and as he chastised himself for his slur he closed his eyes, themselves aching for moisture.
"Pay attention!" He fell to the ground out of instinct, intending to prostrate himself before his mistress, and he opened his eyes just as the chair passed over him. He never saw her move. He rarely did, not when she used the full brunt of her physical gifts, and the blood rushing through his ears was too loud for him to hear her footsteps. They only came to life for her scream and the sound of wood splintering on the wall behind him, raining pieces of the destroyed seat onto his back. He dropped his head to protect himself, half-expecting another item of furniture to come flying at him, and when he looked up Olivia was there, pale and gorgeous and livid and two inches from his nose, with her fangs long and her tongue preparing them for the feast. "You're not listening."
Her hand smacked his throat, rattling his brain and pushing him into a better angle. Iron fingers squeezed his neck, tight enough for him to feel his own pulse, and held him steady while she leaned past and cooed into his ear. "Your next job," she waited, and he waited back, hanging on her every word, "is a dash and grab, of sorts." A pin pricked his earlobe, and her hair, with her intoxicating smell, brushed by as the edge of a knife made its way down his neck, along the vein. His eyes grew wide. Teeth.
His body, forgotten in his fear, acted without his consent. He grabbed Olivia and shoved her back, wincing as his wrists gave way before she did. She chuckled at his futile attempt to assert himself, but her grip did relax, and Christophe wheezed at the sudden rush of air into his anguished lungs. She allowed him a moment to satisfy his biological imperatives, breathing and coughing and letting his heart beat without permission, and just before he was ready she grabbed him by the collar and hoisted him to his feet again. Dizzy, he fell back against the wall, and she pinned him there, her breasts against his chest and her thigh between his legs and her nails tracing thing red lines over the skin of his cheek. "I'll be lending you to Megan. There's a big werewolf powwow coming up at the end of the week."
Christophe almost nodded, but she adjusted her grip, grabbing his shoulders and hurling him to the ground. He caught himself, scraping his palms against the stone, and she knelt next to him, holding him down with one hand between this shoulder blades. His ribs almost buckled under the pressure, and no amount of strength he could muster was sufficient to shake off the vampire's hand. "See all the alphas—I shouldn't need to explain alphas; even you aren't that stupid—the alphas have these little contests to see who the real top dog is, so to speak. I can imagine you understand what sort of contests they are." He nodded hard, almost knocking a tooth on the floor. "For the last twenty years, the victor has been a Henry Randolph."
Her hand left him alone for one merciful second, and then her full weight settled on the small of his back. Her round, firm ass kept him still, and before he could even entertain the possibility of enjoying it, the sole of her heel met his cheek and pushed his head back against the ground. "Henry's been around a while. He's pushing sixty, but werewolves aren't as fragile against the ravages of time as humans are. In the face, he looks…oh, I'd say early fifties? Around there. It's the rest of him that really matters. Come to think if it, he's very much the opposite of you. Strong, well-built, handsome…ruthless." She purred the last word with a shiver he felt throughout his back, and out of the corner of his eye he could see her arms wrap around herself. Was she getting off just thinking about this guy? Was this just a show to test him, or—
Olivia bounced to her feet as easily as blinking, smirking at him still on the ground. "Then again, there is some appeal in boys like you. You're occasionally useful, in limited doses. And it's an absolute delight to fuck with you. Up." She waggled a finger once, and he struggled to stand while she continued. "You need to realize what you are. You are mine. Every part of you, from bottom to top, inside and out, is mine. You are my possession," she prodded at his chest, "my thief," she brushed the back of her hand over his stomach, "my toy," she put her fingernail under his chin, "that I can break whenever I damn well please."
He repressed the urge to nod. He knew the deal. She'd demonstrated it to him time and time again, in word and thought and deed, and he knew better than to think otherwise. He blinked once, ready to express his penitence as thoroughly as necessary, and when he opened ihs eyes she was gone. Instead he felt her against his back, one arm wrapped around his waist and the other around his chest, running her fingers over his collarbone as her husky voice whispered in his ear.
"But you know what? You can change all that."
Christophe gulped.
"You can be someone important to me." Cold radiated from her lifeless skin, or maybe it was the blood draining from his face. Her breath coiled around his neck, squeezing out his limited air, preventing him from even crying out when she snatched a handful of his hair and yanked his head back. "Someone like the others. The twins, of course, for muscle. Heather. When I'm through with grooming her, she'll be more than capable of running this place in my absence, freeing me for…other things. And ten years ago, I found you."
She fell away and he followed, unable to support himself on his own. He landed in her lap, cradled by her smooth, white thighs. Her teeth nipped his neck, hard enough to leave a mark but, he prayed, not enough to break the skin. "It's too bad about you so far. You haven't exactly panned out as I'd hoped. But I. Can. Fix. You." Each word was a nail against the underside of his chin and a blow to the gut, knotting his stomach further and further until it almost burst from raw suspense. "I can fix you. I can make it so it's not just you. I can make it so it's you—" she pushed his head toward hers with a single finger, and her eyes grew, blurring his vision, filling the room with nothing but their dead void, "—and me."
A knock rattled the door. Christophe jumped, almost high enough to send him right off Olivia. Air flowed back into the room in an instant, his muscles let go, and his heart pounded to make up for lost time. He didn't know if he relaxed or came. Both? She growled and looked to the door, an escape affording him the time to blink tears into his burning eyes. "What is it?"
The door opened, and Christophe hit the ground. Again, she had moved more quickly than he could perceive, and this time he could blame his half-conscious state. When Jane entered, all she saw was him on the floor and Olivia standing with a tapping foot and crossed arms, no more aware of what had transpired than he.
She didn't have to speak. Opening the door let the world in, and it declared its arrival itself with a woman's scream. His ears perked up. He'd heard the voice before, but never so loud, and never in more pain than simple frustration. He gathered his legs and pushed upward, ready to use whatever remained in his recovering body to come to Heather's aid. He didn't make it a full step. Joan pointed him to the ground. "Stay put, worm." He tried to ignore her, and he did manage a second step before Joan pushed past her sister and grabbed his waist. With amazonian strength she hefted him, tossing him onto her shoulder and carrying him back to the hallway with the other vampires.
He wanted to make some snide remark. He tried a few of them on for size in his head. "If you wanted me, you should have just asked." "Does your boss know you're picking up strange men in clubs?" "Well this isn't exactly 'staying put', is it?" "I won't ask how you knew about the secret love dungeon." He didn't say any out loud, of course. Nobody was that stupid, not for long. But if he was already back to coming up with clever retorts in his head, at least his brain was working right. All he actually said was a passive "hey, what the hell?", which required neither response nor acknowledgement. It was the best sort of thing to say to the twins, he'd found.
Heather's screams grew as Joan carried him back up the stairs. He didn't try to figure out where he was going—it wouldn't help, anyway—and just focused on righting his body and mind, flexing everything to make sure it worked and calming his nerves for whatever panic had required Olivia's attention. He was just getting to his legs when he found himself without a base, sailing through the air and landing in a heap on the floor.
He looked up and saw Heather, also prone. But while he could pull himself upward pending the agreement of his arms, she had a more solid obstacle: a rugged, scuffed boot on the side of her head. He followed it up to a dark pair of pants and a very familiar chest, ending at Megan's smug face. "Oh, hey, look at that. Even you can be reasonable In the right situation."
He tried to figure out how to respond, but she wasn't looking at him. He glanced back to where Olivia stood, flanking by her bodyguards and drilling holes onto Megan's forehead with just her glare. He left them to their silent power struggle, reaching toward Heather and mouthing "are you okay?" Her eyes widened. She was right; it was a stupid question.
"Here he is." He recognized Olivia's tone. He'd heard it a few times when she talked to him, and several other times right before he woke up in a cold sweat. "Now take your foot off her, mutt." She spat the last word the way one might use a racial slur. Which, in this case, it probably was.
Megan's body didn't move, except for a tightened jaw. But he saw its effects as Heather's terror grew and the rest of her body flailed, kicking at the wall and scratching the floor and doing everything in its limited, human power to resist the unstoppable force on her cheek. He'd never heard a scream like hers before, not even in the most diabolical rituals. Shrill, raspy, short, the howl of a person with nothing else left. His nightmares had a new soundtrack.
He was on his feet before he knew it, even before Olivia moved herself. He grabbed Megan's arm, putting his full weight behind pulling her off and only sliding his shoes along the floor. If brute strength wouldn't work, he had to try something else. "Hey! Hey, come on. We—" he swallowed, praying Olivia would understand, "—we don't want to make a mess on the floor, do we? Come on, Momma Wolf. Let's get out of here."
The screams stopped, and suddenly Megan's body responded to his touch. She backed up a half-step, setting both feet on the ground next to Heather's head. Olivia watched the scene without moving, without blinking. Heather curled into a ball, grabbing her head and sobbing, but he didn't look. His problem was Megan, who titled her head and smiled at him with all the sweetness of a teenage girl at a pet store. "Awwww, you were worried about her! How cute."
He pulled again and this time she came, letting him lead her flint away from the tinder. Every step seemed an eternity, wondering if this would be the last one he took before Olivia extracted bloody revenge inches from him, and each time he was wrong. He burst into the night air outside the club like breaking the surface of the ocean, letting it stir his senses back to normal. He inhaled so hard he coughed, just happy to have good, natural breath back inside him, and the pressure of Olivia's presence faded away like a bad memory.
A hand smacked his ass so hard it nearly sent him flying, and he barely remembered not to glare when he looked at Megan, grinning from ear to ear. "Look at you, white knighting for the damsel in distress. I mean, it's not really my thing, so if you're looking to get on my good side—"
"I'm not," he interrupted, for a second ignoring the consequences. Surviving Olivia's white-hot wrath had left him feeling invulnerable, and he realized he'd picked a poor time to test it. "Not specifically. That wasn't all a show just to impress you."
"Ah, come on," she batted at him, not enough to hurt even in his state. "You did good. You had a part, and you played it beautifully. What, you think Olivia was going to put everything at risk to save some dumb girl? Naaaah. If it wasn't for you, she would have been squashed like a grape. Just—" she made a popping sound with her lips. "Like that. Shame, too. Looked like she gave great head."
Christophe sighed and turned, intending to put his forehead against the building and maybe bang it a few times until either everything seemed right or he stopped caring about it. Instead he bumped into a passer-by and stumbled back. "Sorry, sorry, I didn't see you."
"Don't worry, tough guy," a silvery voice replied, and a long hand patted his chest. "I can handle a little bump." He looked down at the hand, half-expecting it to prod him between the ribs, and traveled up to meet its owner.
His breath left him again, for a much better reason. The girl before him, a full head shorter than he, smiled with soft ease, showing clear white teeth without the slightest hint of fang or a drop of blood on the lip. The only red he saw was her hair, a shoulder-length cut shimmering in the streetlight. Her eyes—baby blue, he could tell, even out here—twinkled up at him, dispelling his fears with just a glance. Reluctantly he tore himself away and looked the rest of her over, drinking in a pair of pants too tight for anybody who didn't want others to look and a smallish chest trapped behind a jacket doing it no favors. At a glance he could tell she paid attention to her muscle tone, and he took much more than a glance.
He almost stammered out a response, but he couldn't think of one. How could he respond tothat? What could he possibly say to match the melody she called words? He could only nod at her, something even he couldn't mess up, while she put her hand on her (slim) waist and cocked her head at Megan. "Is this the guy? He seems a bit…awestruck."
He moved his head the other way, clearing the cobwebs with a vigorous shake. This was no time to stand there agog—it rarely was. He had to put his best foot forward, not as a man whose body ached with need despite the best efforts of the woman beside him, but as a potential ally who really, really did not want to be killed by a werewolf. "Christophe Xavier," he managed without a hint of a tremor and stuck out his hand, "and it's a pleasure to make your acquaintance."
She grasped his hand and pumped it with a startling amount of strength. He sized her up again. Strong. Athletic. Confident. Knows Megan. Isn't deathly pale. His lips tightened, forcing the smile back into his face at gunpoint. Make thattwowerewolves.
"Diana Liones, likewise." He reassessed her for so long he almost missed her name, but there was no way he'd miss her wink, an awe-inspiring eclipse. He filed both away for careful consideration. He'd almost gotten his thoughts stacked when she walked past him and bumped her hips against his, a playful touch to send them tumbling all over again.
He assumed Megan didn't notice his fluster, because she didn't mock him for it or even snicker. "Is everything ready?"
Diana nodded, jerking her thumb back at a Jeep parked just down the street. He cursed himself for not noticing it. Not many Jeeps parked just outside nightclubs. "All gassed up and good to go." He glanced over her shoulder, and Christophe stared straight into her eyes, lost in their waves. If he seemed awkward enough about it, maybe she wouldn't realize he'd been staring much lower before she'd turned around. "Mind if I come with?"
Megan hummed, belaboring the moment. Now he doubted she hadn't noticed his preoccupation. If anything, she just wanted to see how long he'd act like a hopeful puppy around her. "I don't know," she crossed her arms just under her abundant chest and turned to Christophe. "How does that sound to you?"
Now he knew she was playing with him, and he only sort of minded. Wary of how his voice might betray him, he only nodded, more than happy to spend a little more time with this new goddess.
A hand landed on his shoulder, his first indication that a person had come up behind him within striking distance. His self-preservation instinct, usually suppressed around Olivia, was finally coming back online, and his muscles moved with only the slightest conscious thought. Secure your attacker by grabbing their wrist. Shift backward, reducing the room they have to move. Drop, lowering your center of gravity. Move the attacker's arm and push back your hips, rolling the attacker over your body. His assailant fell through the air and landed with asmackon the pavement, prone before him and hopefully dazed.
The attacker looked up and snarled "Well, aren't you in for a world of trouble, Rabbit."
Christophe took a moment to recognize the face in the moonlight, the voice outdoors, and the build at his feet. But he recognized the smell as it passed over him, and the dismissive tone he'd heard on his last visit to Olivia's office. He'd just attacked a werewolf, and he wasn't even sorry. All his frustrations came back to him at once: Olivia summoning him across town in the dead of night, dealing with this guy in her office, Olivia browbeating him for not falling asleep in an actual coffin, Megan and Heather literally jerking him around, Oliviayet again, and even jumping between a werewolf and a vampire because he couldn't trust them to stay civil in the same room. The flash of adrenaline mugged his reason and left it in an alley, sauntering through his brain and out his mouth with all of his bluster and none of his sense: "Fuck you, clown."
He barely perceived the man rolling onto his stomach and jumping to his feet, not until the man's hand was on Christophe's throat and his feet dangled above the ground. "Who are you calling a clown? If I—" His threat ended prematurely, kicked away by Christophe's foot planted squarely between the man's legs. They both fell, the man to his knees and Christophe on his back and hips with a force he'd feel in the morning. He started to crawl backward, arrested by the man's death grip around his ankle. They looked at each other, and Christophe made a decision. While the man snarled and his arms bulged with oncoming exertion, Christophe reached into his jacket, pulled out a small vial, and smacked it against the man's forehead.
The man's eyelids fell and his shoulders sagged, prefacing his lazy slump. Christophe pried his fingers apart and withdrew his ankle, rubbing it tenderly before he stood. "So," Diana asked from his shoulder, which nearly triggered another fight-or-flight response, "what did you hit him with?"
He exhaled hard and fast, trying to set something in him right. He didn't want to stumble when he spoke, not now. "It's a mixture I put together. It induces a deep sleep in its victim. Normally it lasts for a while, but on a werewolf, it's probably not as effective as on a human."
The man stirred. Christophe's feet carried him a few steps back while his brain tried to process it. "That's still faster than I thought."
Megan clapped her hands. "Alright, that's enough. Both of you." The man rose back to his full imposing height, blinking away the bleariness in his eyes and clearly trying his level best to pretend he hadn't just been knocked out. He grabbed his chin and head and twisted, cracking his neck in what Christophe hoped was an empty show of power, but it was all he did. His hands hid in his pockets as he turned away, stalking down the street while Megan shooed Christophe in the other direction. "Come on, we can talk on the way. It's a long drive."
"Right." He had a hard time taking his eyes off the man, but at least Megan gave him an alternative. "How long, exactly?"
"Two days."
Christophe tried not to groan and did not entirely succeed. He used the walk to the Jeep to recenter himself, calming down with long inhales and longer exhales. The gentle rhythm of his feet against the pavement gave his mind something to follow besides his own pounding heart. His chest still went taut when he though about how much he would pay for his little stunt later, but for the moment he had other concerns with other werewolves. With current company in mind he tested the door to the Jeep. It opened, and he stepped aside for Diana. She adjusted the seat, waving him into the back of the car. He nodded in thanks and climbed in, settling down next to Megan, who gave him a look. "Oh, I see how it is."
He waited to shut the door before he responded. "See what?"
"One look at Diana and you forget all about me." Megan pouted a little too hard to be believable and waited for Diana to take the driver's seat. "Don't you remember our time in the bar? How you moaned out loud in front of all those people and made me swallow your load? There was so much of it, and I kept trying to pull away, but you just held my head in your lap until I'd drunk all of it down."
"That's not what happened," Christophe half-shouted, turning to explain himself to Diana. She looked back with annoyance, which to him was almost as bad as seething rage. At least he had more experience with the latter. "She's lying. I didn't make her do anything."
Diana's foot slammed on the gas and the car lurched out of its parking spot. Christophe bounced against the seat and forward, enough for Megan to grab him from behind and hold him in her steel arms. "You know what he tried to do after that?"
Christophe reached for Diana, as though he could literally wipe the irritation form her face. "I didn't try anything!"
Diana broke first, snorting with the beginning of a laugh. Megan joined her, and in seconds the Jeep filled with a joke at his expense. When Diana calmed down she looked at Christophe in the mirror, a narrow window with his favorite view. "Calm down, Big Guy, we're just testing you. Everybody knows Megan's style of humor." She stopped at an intersection and reached into the backseat, grabbing his collar and pulling him forward for an all-too-brief kiss. "If you can't take it, maybe you should stay with me when we get home. If that's fine with you, of course."
Megan grinned almost loud enough to hear, and he ignored her. "What's your room number?" He'd meant to tease her back, play their game. He hoped she didn't take it seriously, and also hoped she did.
Diana just laughed and returned her focus to the road, and Megan pulled Christophe against her, his head resting on her breasts. "Alright, enough fun for now. Time for business. What all did Olivia tell you about the job you're doing for me?"
"She said it's a snatch-and-grab at some werewolf fight-slash-meetup."
"…And?"
"That's it."
"Such a great boss, always keeping her people informed." She rolled her eyes and ran her fingers through his hair, doing more to quiet him than any breathing exercises. "First off, calm down. You're so hard-wired I'm worried you'll short out. Second, here's an actual job description from an actual boss. I need you to steal a weapon for me. See, back home, we have these ruins underground. It's where we bury people who deserve special recognition: alphas, their mates, honorable werewolves, the like. Their spirits stick around, protecting our most sacred treasures. They only recognize people in the pack. If anybody who isn't in the pack goes there, the spirits know right away, and bam. Dead thief."
Christophe probably should have panicked, but the nails drawing soft lines on his scalp brushed away all the worry. Why didn't anybody tell him it felt like this? She should charge money.
"Now I hear you're special. Olivia tells me you have a gift for resisting possession and some skill in summoning. We're going to put both those talents to use. You're going to let yourself get possessed. I've already made arrangements with the spirit of one of our alphas, and they'll help you out."
He dimly wondered about how she knew about his talents, specifically because he didn't recall telling Olivia about his experiences with possession. But it wasn't something he could answer today, and the nails just felt so good… "What am I stealing?"
Megan just hummed, leaving Diana to take up the conversation. "It's an ancient silver blade. It's for killing werewolves. You know, silver. You understand why we don't want it just lying around. Bunch of people have tried to get it before. It didn't work." She blinked and smiled at him in the mirror. "But I'm sure you'll be fine."
"Werewolves looking for a werewolf-killing weapon? Should I ask why?"
Megan sighed, lifting his whole head with her breath. "It's Henry. You know him?" Christophe nodded, inattentive. "He wants me as his mate. We're going to fight, and if he wins, he'll get to claim me. And I'm really not looking forward to being his mate."
"Histhirdmate," Diana added helpfully.
Something wasn't adding up. He wanted to look at Megan, but Diana was right in front of him, and she was a good enough reason to keep staring ahead. "This sounds like a long way to go for a fight. Is he so far beyond you that you need an ancient blade to beat him?"
Megan kissed the top of his head. "Yes."
He tried to say something, but he forgot it again as Diana saw him in the mirror. He only hummed, oblivious to Megan's giggle. "You're such a man-whore. Quit staring so hard at Diana. You can't have her anyway; she's already mated."
He jumped bolt upright in his seat. "I was—I—no, but—"
Megan's laughter nearby rocked the car. "Oh my God, you should have seen the look on your face!" She grabbed her stomach, nearly doubled over with glee. "You just met her, what, a half-hour ago? And already you're crushing on her so hard that—that—" Another guffaw burst from her.
The heat in the car suddenly grew unbearable, and no matter how he tugged at his collar it didn't seem to help. He looked to Diana, trying to find some way to explain himself, but she just waited for Megan to quiet down before she spoke. "She's lying again. I'm not mated." He stopped breathing for a moment, then his back gave out and he leaned back in the seat, suddenly relieved. He adjusted his jeans, rearranging himself after the smooth head-scratch and the sudden stop. Megan looked between them and pouted, staring out the window in silence.
Several minutes passed before she poked Diana and told her to pull over, stopping the car at an all-night diner. Christophe moved to get up, but she pushed him back into the seat and climbed out on her own. "I'm going to eat. You two have until I get back to work this out."
"There's nothing to work out, Megan." Diana sat her forehead in her hand. "I'm not fucking him, alright? He's not even a werewolf. Can you imagine how I'd hurt him? Or worse, what if I got pregnant? Oh, and let's not forget about your vampire friend. You know, the one who owns him? I'm sure she's not exactly willing to share."
Christophe just buried himself in the seat, hoping the conversation would work itself out without his contribution. The gleam in Megan's eye suggested otherwise. "So you'd fuck him if he was a werewolf?"
"Yes, that is one of the many problems I—" she stopped short and glared at Megan. "Don't you fucking dare."
"Diana? Don't move."
He didn't understand what happened next. He felt something in the air, a sort of tingle, for lack of a better word, and then his physical support disappeared again. He landed hard on his back, probably outside the car, though the stars in his eyes might have been something else. He heard Diana scream, but not any words he knew. He saw Megan, and he thought the shape covering his mouth ended at her shoulder, but he wasn't really looking. Once she was on top of him, he only saw her eyes, a rich honey gold, and her teeth, growing in the light of the parking lot. "This will only hurt a little bit." She smiled with an impossible face and lunged for his neck.
His body twisted, clawing for a handhold as the world spiraled out of control. Knives pierced his skin and burrowed deeper, working through his chest and arms and hips and legs. Fire burned him from within, a heat too intense to feel, and his only recourse, his screams, died against Megan's iron hand. "It's fine," she lied a third time, "it'll go away soon. You'll pass out in a moment. But while you're still here, I just thought you'd like to know you're my first." She hovered over him, part Megan, part something else, and licked her lips. "Lucky you."
Diana yelled, but even her voice couldn't hold him, and he fell into blackness.
—
He woke from a dream he didn't remember, using the twilight of sleep to let the world leak into his thoughts. The first sensation to hit him was warmth, not a scorching heat but the soft caress of a winter morning under the covers. Then there was something uncomfortable below him and something comfortable on top, and then the thrum of movement other than the blood in his ears. There was light under duress, from the moon or a streetlamp, at once sufficient and sorely lacking.
And after all the external stimuli, the pain. It had no source, just a full-body ache like his anesthesia was wearing off. Every muscle hurt and he doubted he had a fruitful day at the gym to thank for it, but he couldn't quite remember how they'd gotten so strained. He walked back through the events of the night. Was he feeling bruises from Olivia manhandling him? Had the angry werewolf hurt him more than he'd thought? Maybe it was all of it, and he hadn't realized how hard he'd been tensing everything until he got a chance to relax. It could even have been something mundane, like resting uncomfortably in the seat of a car.
Stiff material crinkled under him, and he realized that's exactly what it was: the back seat of a Jeep against his skin. He failed to pry himself from it, finding a weight holding him down, but his struggles caused it to shift over him far more than his feeble efforts could explain. He opened his eyes to get a better handle on his captor, and his vision filled with the face of an angel. No, Diana. Close enough. "Take it easy," she warned, laying her hand on his shoulder to hold him still. "No need to jump up so quick. You gave us a scare passing out like that."
He had several questions floating to the top of the soup he called his short-term memory, but he could boil them all down to "What happened?"
Diana bit her lip, holding back an answer, and Megan's voice saved her from the front seat. "You tell us. We stopped to eat, you got out of the car, you took a few steps, and you keeled over. If I hadn't been there to catch you, mmm." She took her eyes off the road to glance back at him. "How do you feel?"
He couldn't come up with an appropriately poetic description of his physical and mental unpleasantness, and the effort he put into thinking of one must have shown on his face. Diana shook her head. "Why don't you get some more rest? We're going to be home in a second. We can give you a once-over there."
He let his head fall back into the seat. Doing nothing seemed like a great option at the moment. He closed his eyes and Diana shifted on top of him again, the gentle caress of her skin against— "Are you naked? Am I naked? Why are we naked?"
If he could bottle her blush and keep it for rainy days, he'd get a dozen. She avoided his gaze, pulling a blanket a little higher over her shoulders. "After you passed out, we thought I should keep an eye on you in the back seat. And then you started sweating, and your body got cold, so we had to warm you up. We've been taking turns staying back here with you, keeping you…stable."
Megan snorted. "What she means is I checked for temperature once, and she's been keeping you 'stable' the rest of the trip." The earth shifted, once figuratively and once literally, and the Jeep came to a stop. "You two stay in here. Let me talk to everyone before you come out. Don't want the pack picking on the sick human too much."
It was like she hadn't watched him embarrass a werewolf in a street fight with mostly his bare hands. It had only been…an hour ago? Yesterday? Time didn't make sense. Rather than remind her of his heroic exploits, he just groaned, "Thanks, Mom."
Megan leaned into the back, kissing his forehead. "So that's the role-playing you go for? Kinky."
He sighed. His mental state would not let him keep up with her pace. Maybe after a little more rest and a lot more food, but not now. She lingered a moment, waiting for his snark, and when none came she shrugged and got out of the car.
Diana slid her body off his, careful to keep herself mostly hidden while she gathered a pile of clothes from the floor. As she pulled her bra up her arms, he tilted his head to see her better, and a dull pain throbbed against the side of his neck. He moaned and rubbed it, putting most of his energy into lifting his arm. Diana looked back at him, and he couldn't even appreciate her state of undress when she pulled his hand away. "What's wrong?"
"I'm not sure," he answered. It was perhaps the most honest thing he'd ever said.
"Come on, you should get dressed too. We'll get out of this car and I'll help you get settled in. Sound good?" He nodded and rolled halfway over, prying his body from the indent he'd left in the seats. Just the one little act took him the better part of a minute, and when he actually managed to pull himself upright, he found Diana already fully clothed. She looked him over once more, leaned close to him, pressed her lips against his in a quick kiss, and whispered. "I'm glad you're okay."
His legs still didn't work right. His arms felt like dumbbells. His back ached from his sleeping position, his head swam, and his neck throbbed most of all. He couldn't remember the last day and a half, he was about to walk into incredibly hostile territory, and he was plotting with a woman his boss seemed to hate so she could cheat in a fight against a powerful werewolf who was sure to learn his name. But he'd do it all gladly if Diana would just say that again.
Beta Male
Clothes hurt, and not just because they meant his few, glorious moments naked with Diana had ended. They rested heavy on his sore muscles, added weight he didn't need after a fitful nap in the back of a Jeep. Various items sat in his pockets at odd angles, and he sighed and patted himself down, setting them right as he took inventory. He had everything he needed for this task. Or, he hoped he did. He really hadn't been expecting to handle werewolves when Olivia had roused him from his last, equally insufficient slumber, and he hadn't been in a state of mind to equip himself appropriately. But if he was missing something, he saw no use in complaining about it now. He had the things in his pockets and the rumpled clothes on his back, nothing else.
Besides, Christophe would take any clothes and gear over being naked in the woods. Impossibly wide trees towered over him, an unbroken network of grasping branches and fluttering leaves barely visible in the obfuscated moonlight. They whispered to him, a flowing susurrus drowning out the cries of nocturnal creatures. He knew they were there, though. Watching. Waiting. All manners of creeping beasts moved around him, just out of sight, ready to make an example of the city-dweller who dared intrude into their territory. Never mind the actual monsters; Christophe would die a happy man if he at least never saw another bug for the rest of his (probably short, probably miserable) life.
He summoned the supreme will to shuffle forward, lurching over the uneven ground. "Couldn't be a mansion, could it?" he muttered to nobody. "Couldn't have some ostentatious werewolf manor with…I don't know, gargoyles and shit. Had to be some campsite in the middle of God-forsaken nowhere."
His diatribe ended, not because he finished it but because his throat suddenly failed him. It seized and collapsed, crushing his windpipe and curbing any further complaints before they left his lungs. An instant later, when his feet left the ground, his tired brain recognized the true form of the blockage: a thick arm wrapped around his neck, hoisting him into the air. Dimly he heard Diana's growl, still melodious, but his ears filled with hot, raspy breath. "Well, well, well, look what I found. A rabbit in a den of wolves."
Christophe rolled his eyes—not only was heso very tiredof dealing with his particular man, but also a sudden lack of oxygen limited his faculties. He jammed hs elbow into the werewolf's chest and all he managed to do was bruise himself. The man laughed and fell to the dirt, dragging Christophe with him. The breath returned, quieter, low enough that he almost didn't hear it. "Who said you could get friendly with her?" Christophe searched for meaning. With Megan? Because they shared a car? Because of the blowjob? Had it only been yesterday? His mind wandered, already deprived of oxygen, and his limbs fell, ready to pass back into sleep. Only a spark of panic kept him going, and he patted his pockets, groping for something, anything, to get himself free.
"So this is how you're going to die," she cooed, her iron voice breaking through his haze, "at the hands of a filthy mutt? I take my eyes off you for, what? Two seconds? And already you're being choked out by this…thing. Ironic, I guess. He's not worth the air he's breathing and yet he deprives you of yours."
He knew Olivia's voice. He heard it whenever he thought of her, whenever he failed, whenever he slept. That must be it, then. He was going to sleep. Good…sleep was good…
He could swear he heard her grin. "But, then again, it follows. You're just a little boy who can't do anything without someone holding your hand. You've always needed somebody to save you. Always. I'm sure your wolf friend, with her cute little pack, finds your helplessness somehow endearing. I do not. I find it disgusting. I findyoudisgusting." Cold breath wafted over his neck, the same breath he'd felt from her dead lungs. "Now, be a good boy. Pick yourself up, resolve to do a single good thing in your empty shell of a life, and kill. This. Pathetic. Creature."
Searing pain struck him, and Olivia was gone. In her place was sheer agony, radiating from his shoulder. His eyes flicked over, his vision filled with snout. Teeth bore into his flesh, tearing through the skin, already red with blood, and his savage scream burst from his crushed throat as a whimper. A muffled laugh seeped through them, filling the air as the maw backed away. The arm left his neck and the heat left his back, abandoning him on the ground until a foot buried itself in his ribs. "You come into our territory like you belong, just because someone asked nicely? Did you think coming here would be easy?" Christophe craned his neck up, and up, to finally see his assailant, fully changed, a towering mass of short fur and gleaming teeth. The man—no, the werewolf—spat a mass of discolored drool into the ground. "I was right. You taste like garbage."
Christophe ignored the taunts for now, his world consumed by the pain in his shoulder. He clapped his hand over the wound and immediately regretted it. Blood loss was bad, but just touching it made half of his arm go numb. He hissed. This wasn't just a bite. This was awerewolfbite. This was bad. Very, very bad.
"What's wrong, Rabbit?" The werewolf chuckled, tromping back to him in furry legs. "Lost all your fight already? I haven't even broken any of your bones. Yet." As he approached, Christophe whipped his head around, looking for a way out. He saw Diana, far out of reach, held down by three men, screaming something about running and saving himself. The exact words neither mattered nor registered. He didn't see Megan, at all. He cursed. He couldn't run, not from a werewolf, not leaving Diana to deal with them alone. He had to deal with this himself.
…or, actually, he didn't.
He rolled into his hands and knees, drawing shapes in the mud with a trembling, blood-stained finger. He had one hope left, reliant on his enemy's ignorance, and to his great fortune ignorance seemed to be a trait his opponent had in spades. The lines met, forming a small circle, and the instant he finished a clawed hand grabbed him by the hair. He grabbed the wrist as it pulled him up, barely keeping his scalp attached. The werewolf roared into his face, all heat and spittle, and Christophe slammed shut his eyes and fell back on his oldest, trustiest weapon: naked snark. "Oh, good God…your breath! Do you kiss your mother with that mouth?" He watched rage well up in the werewolf's cold, black eyes, and he smacked his arm a few times for good measure, and he regretted it all for just an instant when the wolf surged forward and headbutted him. He slumped to the dirt again, briefly wondering about concussion protocol. His hand flailed out, reaching for where he hoped his circle was, drawing his beaten body over the ground. His fingers brushed the dirt and mana flowed from his body, entering the circle instead. He fell into his back and grinned, trying to see the moon in the spinning sky. "I call forth…actually, literally anybody. I don't care who's listening. Come one, come all!"
The werewolf stared down at him, and at his hand, and at the shape, and realization struck at once. The summoning circle glowed and expanded, growing large enough for its new inhabitant. A massive shape, bigger then the werewolf, bigger even than the Jeep, rose from it, shaggy fur atop the body of a bear. Shards of glass jutted from its splotchy red hide, and claws the size of cleavers scratched the dirt as its bulk fell upon it. It ignored the werewolf, looming over the prone Christophe and speaking with a voice like a cave. "Your offering of mana is insufficient, mortal. My assistance carries a heavier price. What do you offer?"
Christophe raised a hand and tucked in his thumb. "Tell you what? How about I offer your four sacrifices? Four nice, tasty souls. And big meaty bodies, if you're into that sort of thing."
The werewolf backed away, and the bear ignored it. "More."
"Gods, you're needy." He pushed himself to a seated position, putting most of the effort on his good arm. "I'm giving you four whole people. You know what most demons would do for that? What else do you want, a love song?"
The bear took a single step, covering the full distance to Christophe's face. "You are not as amusing as you think you are, mortal."
"Agree to disagree."
Motion drew their attention as the three men on top of Diana jumped to their feet, suddenly intent on being somewhere else. The bear smacked the ground with its manhole-sized paw, sending forth a tremor and knocking all of them to the ground. "You will pay tribute later. I will not forget this."
Christophe relaxed. Dealing with an angry demon was dangerous. Dealing with an annoyed demon was only slightly better, or perhaps he just had more experience with it. Haggling, however, was par for the course. "Well, it's only going to be a few seconds, so…ah, shit. Diana! Cover your ears!" He clapped his hands to his head and tucked his face into his knees, ignoring the pain of straining his shoulder for a few moments more. Even those barriers barely protected his eardrums. He'd heard the werewolf up close and personal, and he knew how powerful his lungs were. But the mind-wrenching scream of a soul being torn from a body was an order of magnitude beyond a simple angry bellow, and Christophe told himself he'd never let himself hear it again. Just like he'd promised the last time.
The shrieks abated, and he dropped his hands, wincing at the muscular action in his shoulder. It was funny. Normally an adrenal rush dulled pain, letting him work through whatever damage he had inflicted on himself when things inevitably went wrong. But now, with the threat of impending death no longer occupying his thoughts, he found he didn't hurt as much as he'd thought. The lingering vestiges of terror? Maybe the pain was all in his head. He touched his wound and hissed—mostlyin his head. Diana crawled toward him, and he drew away from his injury, at least willing to pretend it didn't bother him as much as it did. She settled down next to him, still pristine despite rolling around in the dirt. "Are yo—your shoulder," she gasped, her fists clenched. "Please tell me Smokey the Demon Bear did that."
The bear lumbered toward them wiping its mouth. "If I had touched his shoulder, it would not still be attached. That is a werewolf bite, girl. Wishing otherwise does not make it so." It fell to its haunches and loosed a yawn that shook the air. "They tasted horrible."
"What? Noooo," Christophe chuckled. "You demons eat purity, right? Well, those guys were pure as the driven snow. Probably choir boys. Definitely virgins." He laughed, and the bear did not. He patted himself down, searching for something to seal the deal. His hand fell on a minor charm, a gold pendant in the shape of an angel, and he held it out to the demon. "How about this? Angels, right? Blessed with holy water. Super pure."
The bear sniffed the extended charm and sighed. "This is the best offering you can muster?"
"This? No. The best I can muster is most of my mana and, lest we forget,four actual souls. You're the one griping about how that's still not enough. God, no wonder you're so damn fat."
He regretted it immediately, but the bear took it in stride. Good thing he'd happened to summon something relatively agreeable. Between this and how he'd dealt with the werewolf outside of Olivia's club, he was beginning to think he needed a better way to deal with blinding terror than taking it out on the next thing he saw. "This will have to do. I accept your offer. But should you call me again, know that I expect a more appropriate offering. Pure souls. Virgins. Or at least a creature with a more palatable taste." The bear licked the charm into its mouth, leaving a thick trail of saliva on Christophe's palm. It grew—not in height or width or depth, but in some other dimension Christophe felt more than understood—and sank back into the circle, disappearing from the world.
"A fiasco." Olivia's ephemeral voice twirled around his head again, even louder than before. "That's what this was, a fiasco. You should have been able to kill a single, solitary, stupid mutt without even breaking a sweat. And yet here you are, collapsed on the ground, barely able to walk, nearly devoid of mana, only alive because you threw everything you had at somebody else so they could solve your problem for you. A real man would have handled it without so much as a scratch, but you? You barely crawl away with a qualified victory. If you hadn't managed to at least get away without a major injury yourself, I'd come out there myself right now and kill you for being an embarrassment to me."
He blinked. She thought the bite didn't count as a major injury? Or…or she didn't know about the bite. Good. Whatever method she was using to contact him, he didn't see any need to test whether it let him correct her.
"It's unbelievable," she continued, never willing to abandon an opportunity to chide him. "You know, at one point I thought the most shameful thing you would ever do was botch that break-in. And then, after your performance in my bedroom, I thoughtthatwas the most shameful thing you would ever do. But somehow, you keep digging deep and finding new and exciting ways to disappoint me. I've been treating you with too easy a hand, it seems. When you get back, I'm going to set you straight. I'm going to teach you how to act, how to move, how to think properly if I literally have to sear every single lesson into your limp, useless body." Her presence faded, leaving him mercifully alone again.
Diana spun around and leaned against him, back to back. "So…it is over?" She hadn't heard Olivia's voice. Also good.
He flexed his dry hand. At least the demon had the good grace to take its spit with it. "It depends on why Megan's still hiding in the brush. Whether there's still danger, or she just thinks it's funny, or—" He turned his head and grunted, reminded of the gnawing (a joke he only understood in retrospect) pain in his shoulder. "So am I a werewolf now, or do I just pop a few pills and sleep this off, or what?"
She sighed. "It's…maybe. Probably? A bite doesn't always mean you change. But we'll keep an eye on it, and if you do change…you know, there are worse things?"
He could think of very few worse things in the moment, but he didn't care to elaborate on them. He was too busy trying to figure out what had happened to the moon, why it had gotten so low, and why there were two of them packed into a too-tight shirt…ah, no, that was Megan. "Chrissy! Sweetie. I think it's important you know that what you did was fucking hot." She dropped to her knees and grabbed his face, pulling him into a deep kiss. If the night chill hadn't already seeped into his exhausted bones he might have overheated. "Has anybody every told you power is a huge turn-on?"
Diana cleared her throat. "Not to distract you, but did you happen to notice his shoulder? The bleeding one? The one with a bite you definitely could have prevented?" She hopped to her feet in a single smooth motion. Christophe, absent his support, fell back.
Megan fell with him, landing with her chest on his. She didn't have to, but he appreciated it. "I could have stepped in, sure. But then those guys would have just been a problem later. And look! You solved it all on your own, just like I knew you would, and now I know what you're really capable of." She hovered over him, drinking in his features as he reciprocated, until her eyes reached his shoulder. She bit her lip. "Let's get you cleaned up and get some food in you. After that, we can see if this took. I know a little trick to bring our your inner wolf, so to speak. If it exists, that is. It might not work, in which case, hey! Still a human. Or, if you'd prefer, we can wait a bit. We still have a few days before we have to find out for sure."
"Compelling. Uh, could you…you know?" Christophe nudged Megan away, and she jumped to her feet and pulled him up by his unblemished arm. "Thanks."
"Always up for a good tug. Hey, I have to go handle some pack things real quick. Diana, think you can keep everything together while I'm away?"
Diana nodded, and they looked at each other, exchanging some information Christophe didn't understand. Maybe it was a werewolf thing. God, he hoped he wouldn't find out.
Megan turned to him, and he pretended he hadn't been lost in dread. "Don't worry about things you can't control."
"That's almost everything."
"I'm serious. If you do go through the change, we're not going to drop you in the woods to fend for yourself. I'll make sure you have all your faculties before we let you do anything. We're not going to watch you struggle for our amusement like some cruel bitch who can't get herself off unless somebody's crying, who shall remain nameless but is a vampire and is also Olivia."
He felt the need to make a token attempt at defending his boss, but his heart simply wasn't in it. Megan wasn't exactly wrong.
Diana saved him from his lack of manners by tugging him away from the clearing. He followed along until they were out of sight, watching her rear sway in her jeans until she turned and he had the great pleasure of looking at her eyes. She winked, and he shook his head. Maybe werewolf brains didn't handle shock and terror the same way human brains did. His hands still shook, his heart still pounded, and the bundle of energy inside him thrashed about, wishing nothing more than to express itself as insults and fury. Diana and Megan, however, seemed much calmer. Or, at least, their excitement manifested very, very differently.
As if to prove his point, Diana kissed him on the lips, just enough of a peck to make him wonder if it had even happened. "What's wrong? Come on, we have to get you cleaned off. Both of us, really. And I know we can both fit in Megan's personal shower." With a few short sentences, she wiped away all of his concerns. He nodded and followed willingly, more than ready to see where she took him.
A cabin peeked through the trees (some sign of civilization, so at least they didn't expect him to sleep in the dirt…probably) and Diana pulled him through it, barely giving him a moment to appreciate its plain decor and simplistic furniture. His focus, and hers, was on the bathroom, tucked at the end of a hall between two closed doors. She dragged him inside and shut the door behind them, leaning against it with a smoldering gaze. He only stood, far too weary to take the lead, as she pulled open the curtain to reveal a shower big enough for two and then some. She fiddled with the nozzles until water sprayed over the tub, already starting to fill the room with heady steam. She stripped, revealing her pristine body layer by gorgeous layer, and he merely disrobed, shucking his clothes into a heap by the sink. His eyes traced over her body: long, firm legs perfectly build for sprinting or wrapping around a waist; a tight butt, with just enough flesh to grab his fingers; an immaculate midsection, supported by abs far more toned than his; breasts the size of oranges, round and high even without a bra, and upturned nipples the color of her lips; and a divine face framed by soft red hair, sporting the dimmest smirk and a pair of eyes he could watch for days. His admiration didn't stop when she took his hand, and if anything stepping under the water only woke him up enough to fully appreciate it.
He expected his fantasy to end immediately, giving way to the drab minutia of actually scrubbing the day off his body and fumbling about as they both tried to monopolize the shower. He was wrong. "Touch me," she whispered, guiding his hands to her sides. He ran his fingers up her body, using the water to glide over her skin and disguise his jitters. The steam did nothing for his light-headedness—it was like he was actually there, in a shower, touching a naked Diana. But her hands on his arms showed him it wasn't a dream, she was actually there, face-to-chest, encouraging him to touch her. Even his fatigue was no match for his libido, and he felt himself rise to attention as he cupped her breasts, brushed his knuckles over her face, and trailed his fingernails over her spine.
"Lower", she said, and she nudged his hands below her waist. He bent forward to reach putting his nose against her hair, and inhaled. His fingers circled the tuft of hair on her hips, only delving further when she jolted into his grip. He reached her bud—"ooooh, yes," she moaned—and slithered past it, touching it with each knuckle as he slipped between her lips. Once he nestled against her sex, undulating his finger just at her entrance, his other hand grabbed her ass and squeezed it with all the force he could muster. At the very edge of his reach his fingers prodded between her cheeks, and when she didn't discourage him he stretched further, exploring the private skin guarding her last bit of privacy.
Diana groaned, almost a whimper, and held his wrists tight, preventing him from escaping. "God, that feels good. I don't know if it's the shower, or the adrenaline, or what, but whatever you're doing, don't stop." She leaned into him, her head and shoulder against his chest, but no part of her body came in contact with his iron shaft. He kept his motions as steady as possible, an automaton repeating the same action until she told him to stop, and his reward was an ever-louder series of gasps. "You are…oh, God, you are really good at this. Either you're a lucky beginner, or Olivia has you trained very well." He didn't answer; nothing he could say could possibly make either of them feel better. "Mmmmm, wow. I always knew she was a massive bitch, but that was before I knew she was keeping you under wraps. Nobody should have to deal with her every day."
"She's not that bad," he offered, a half-hearted attempt to defend his boss. Not even half-hearted. Eighth-hearted.
"The hell she isn't. She's a literal vamp. Struts around, dressed as some sort of fetish whore, like she wants to go full latex but knows she'll probably have to cut herself out of any outfit she manages to squeeze into." She purred into his arm, rocking her hips to take his finger deeper. "And yet, you never see her with an actual man, do you? All that sex appeal she thinks she has, and she can still only get a dick by kidnapping one. And she's not even using it! It's a shame you're stuck with her, especially when you could be putting your skills to use much, much more productively."
Christophe's heart stopped, and he saw his opportunity. "How so?"
"I'm so glad you asked." Diana pushed him back with only two fingers—even if he hadn't been too tired to resist, in the moment he would have done literally anything she told him to—and when he reached the wall, she pushed him further. He sank under her pressure, dropping to his knees, then to his back on the bottom of the tub, protected from the water only by the redhead towering over him. She smirked at him, an expression he barely recognized without malice, and eyed his crotch, clicking her tongue with appreciation. She grabbed a bottle from the edge of the tub, something he couldn't see through the steam, and squirted it into her hand. It dripped onto his crotch, a sharp bolt of ice, and she sank down to cover his cock in a thick layer of fruity-smelling gel. She crawled on top of him, kneeling over his hips. "Sorry I can't do this properly. It's not safe, you know. But I can show my appreciation another way." Her hand reached between her legs, rubbing her ass with the soap-covered hand, and she lowered herself toward his upright dick.
He could barely move, for several reasons, but as his fists clenched he couldn't avoid one final attempt at ruining everything for himself. "Are you sure that soap is safe to use like this?"
"Right now I don't really care," she groaned, and his head came into contact with her skin. She shifted and held onto him, taking the time to position herself properly, and when his tip rested against her anus she pushed herself down again. He felt a great pressure, almost enough to hurt, and then it gave way, replaced by an impossible tightness around the base of his head. Diana cried out, a sharp scream, and held steady, wincing as she forced herself to accept his presence inside her. He didn't move, he barely even breathed; no matter how much he wanted to pound into her, to make this perfect creature scream his name, he waited until she moved again. Her first action was to retreat, and he worried his fun was over, but she fell again, faster this time. A withdrawal preceded each penetration, just enough to give her the momentum she needed to take him deeper, and every time her vocalizations grew louder. It took her several excruciating minutes, or at least it felt like it to him, before her hips finally reached his, as her ass fully enveloped his cock and she thanked him with a pained, immensely satisfied scream.
His survival instinct, ever present, considered the wisdom of making a werewolf scream so close to her pack. Rather than do anything about it, though, he opted to enjoy her searing insides and tight hole while he could. He reached for her hips, but she batted them away, riding him at her own pace without his input. With nothing to do but watch and enjoy he lay back, resting his arms at his sides while she worked herself up to speed. Water cascaded down her hair and over her perky breasts, dripping into his stomach in thin rivulets. Her hands braced herself against the fiberglass wall and the edge of the tub, supplementing her toned thighs as they lifted her up and lowered her back down, over and over again. Her drank her in, from the grooves above her tightly-closed eyes to the stomach tensing with every thrust, from her soaked, swollen pussy to the pearly teeth locked around her lower lip in a fruitless attempt to muffle her high-pitches cries. Through it all her ass coaxed him forward, clamped around him like two tightly-clenched fingers, milking the last of his energy out through his cock.
His balls rose and his hips jerked, moments away from release. He tried to hold back, he truly did, hoping against hope for some way to let her finish first, anatomy be damned. But she saw him straining, and she bounced on him even faster, blowing away the last of his resistance with her steel legs. He inhaled and locked his eyes on hers, intent at least on not missing a second of response, and she rewarded him with a blissful smile as he emptied his load into her ass. Shot after shot left him, forcing their way through her ring, each drawing another satisfied squeak from her mouth. Before he had even finished he slumped, defeated and more than pleased, relaxing in a bath of steam and the pervasive scent of cucumbers and melon.
Not even the bathroom door opening broke him from his bliss, not until the shower curtain slid to the side and Megan leered down at them. "Are you almost done in here?"
"Jesus, Megan!" Diana sprung to her feet, and only the blessed lubrication kept her from tearing his favorite part clean off. "Get out!"
"This is my bathroom, remember? I should be ordering you out. That is, if you're done playing with each other."
"No, actually we weren't!" Diana stormed out of the shower, still sopping wet, and Christophe pulled himself to his knees and at least tried to cover his soap-covered shame. "We were doing perfectly fine, until somebody had to burst in and interrupt a private moment!"
"Right," Megan snorted, "private. Anyway, we have things to do, so let's move it along."
Diana crossed her arms. "No, thank you! We'll be continuing our well-earned shower, if you don't mind."
Megan glanced down Christophe, who tore his gaze away from Diana's rear long enough to look sheepish. She grinned, and he regretted moving at all. "Alright, fine. You can stay in the bathroom."
"G-Great. Perfect." Diana nodded, and nothing happened. "Well?"
"Well, what?"
"Can we have a little privacy?"
"No, I think I might just stick around. Call it payment for using my shower without my permission." Those last three words came with a tinge of bitterness, and Diana had the good sense to shrink. "In fact, I think the three of us can have more fun than two. You don't object, do you?"
Diana considered Megan's facial expression and saw no room for protest. "I guess that's fine."
"And Chrissy? Any objections?"
"I honestly feel like my consent isn't relevant here."
"There, see, he's fine. He's already being clever again." She started unbuttoning her shirt, showing a deep valley of skin. Christophe did his level best not to look, not with Diana right there watching his ever move, but when a woman with breasts almost the size of her head undresses, it's almost impolite tonotstare. Or, at least, that's what he told himself. She left on her bra, a black number straining against her chest even more than her shirt had, until she'd shimmied her pants and underwear down her thick, round thighs, and only then did she unclasp it and throw it off with all the gusto of opening a stage curtain. Her breasts pulled his stare to them like they had their own gravity—and given how little they sagged, they might well have—endless mounds of flesh capped by darkened skin the size of a silver dollar and the roundest nipples he'd ever had the pleasures of witnessing first-hand. Diana was a perfect being, a divine creature sent from the heavens to give him a scant moment of happiness, but Megan was one hundred twenty percentwoman, a temptress far greater than any succubus.
He lay still, relishing the sight of her well-developed body as she stepped into the massive shower. She hovered over his head, one foot on either side of his shoulders, peering down at the bit of his legs she could see over her chest. As good as unobserved, he craned his neck, trying to ogle her backside through the thigh-length hair already starting to cling to her skin. He almost didn't notice when the object of his affections came closer, not until the blonde locks tickled his face. He brushed them aside, giving him a full view of the space between her legs, and still she fell until her pussy pressed against his mouth.
Christophe went to work, lapping up Megan's insides and rubbing his lips against her folds. He heard her squeal with delight, a less interesting gesture than the way she shook her ass against his face. He leaned forward until her weight pushed him back down, his nose sandwiched between her cheeks and his jaw hanging open to take in any air he could. Her scent overpowered the fruity soap, a thick musk enveloping his brain and reviving his flagging erection.
"Watch this," Megan said, and he had to assume she wasn't speaking to him. Her hands swept his thighs, tucking under his knees and pulling his legs up. Then she continued until his hips left the ground and his legs fell to her sides, leaving him supporting all of his weight on his shoulders. He splayed out his arms for additional stability, even more necessary when a very distracting finger prodded his ass. It circled his entrance, caressing the skin under his balls, and after gathering a dollop of soap it pushed inside. He moaned into her pussy, at a volume that surprised even him. Her finger teased him in places he barely knew existed, massaging his ass and beyond, scratching an unknowable itch somewhere behind his crotch. Despite his attempts to focus solely on the woman pinning him down, when she wriggled a second and third finger inside he turned his head away to gasp aloud.
He heard the bathroom door open and a rush of cool air washed over him. "Don't worry," Megan cooed, "she'll be back. I think she just wasn't expecting that sort of reaction. I mean, we knew you'd like it. Olivia told us all about your backdoor adventure." Christophe groaned again, this time from embarrassment, remembering his shameful display pressed face-down into Olivia's bed. "She told anybody who would listen, and then some. I think she was proud of you, in a weird, sadistic way. Now, I'm no expert, but to me it sounded like she didn't use the situation to its full potential. Just laying you down and taking turns on you? Not very creative, is it?" Her fingers twisted, grazing every side of his ring, and he instinctively spread his legs to give her even better access. "You need somebody who isn't stuck in how sex worked a couple hundred years ago. Somebody who's not a soulless harpy with skin like ice and the sex appeal of a blow-up doll. Somebody who knows what you want, even if you can't say it, and happens to be super into it."
