Reluctant Mates - 21 Paranormal Romance Stories (Werewolf, Vampire, Minotaur and Monster collection) (25 page)

I took a deep breath and opened my eyes. He stroked the side of my face with the back of his hand. “Gina need to clean up Kalak mess.”

“Oh I do, huh?” I purred. “I need to clean up your mess? Kalak wants me to lick up all this hot...” I lowered my head to his groin and tasted my cunt juice on his balls, licked up between them and all the way up his still-twitching shaft. “Cum? You want me to clean it all up?”

He nodded.

I popped his dickhead back into my mouth for a second and sucked him hard enough to drain the last little drop before sliding my tongue all the way back down. His scent – the smoky, leathery smell of his skin and his sweat filled my nose, and his beautiful skin glistened from all the moisture that came out of me and covered him.

Taking his cum inside my mouth felt like I had swallowed a part of him – a part of my lover. Two times, then a third, I stroked my tongue over his rock hard belly, and let his fluid drip down the back of my throat before I nestled beside him, my head resting on his arm.

“Why Gina do this?” Kalak whispered.

“Do what? What we just did? Because I’ve never felt anything like you before. Because you make me feel like you really care about me. Love, I guess, but you probably think that sounds stupid.”

“Not stupid. Kalak love Gina too. She make him feel safe and happy. But Kalak mean why you do this – why you help us?”

“Oh.” I stretched out, using his arm as a pillow. “I guess it’s because when I’m with you I feel alive. I feel free. There’s other stuff, but that’s most of it.”

“Huh. Feel alive?”

“Yeah, that’s right. Alive.”

“Don’t Gina feel alive all time?”

I laughed. “Nah, it’s a little different. I just feel right here, if that makes sense. Feels right to be with you guys.”

He seemed to accept my answer with a grunt. I pushed off the floor, sad to leave Kalak and the furs, but well aware that there was another beastman needing my attention.

“Where go Gina?”

“Gotta go patch up Kel. Krizik was torn up way worse, but I’m sure Kel’s got a few scrapes that need cleaning.”

He nodded, rolled over, let out a heavy sigh and was asleep before I pushed out into the morning air.

*

M
y mind was still rattled from the brutal release I’d given my savage lover. He needed it, I knew. With everything that happened, Kalak needed me more than ever before and, if I’m being honest, I was more than happy to help. If it had been three months ago, my legs would have collapsed underneath me the instant I tried to stand. I was nowhere near as physically large as Kalak, or anywhere near his strength. But, in the few short weeks we shared, he made me crave the feeling he’d just given me.

The entire world was different, I knew, and probably it would never be the same. After his primal, terrible lust; his hunger and his power, I wanted no one but Kalak. The ache between my legs was deep and sweet. It reminded me of the first time he speared me in the woods. How he shared me first with his sons, and then took me for himself. Looking across the small area separating his tent from the rest of the camp, I noticed that the larger of the two young beastmen had bedded down near the fire, and the other, Kel, stretched his long, lean legs out and warmed them by the fire.

As I wandered over to the camp fire, licking the remnants of Kalak’s love from my lips, and relishing his still-warm essence, a thought dashed through my mind. Since that first night, my lover had not shared me again, but looking at the two figures by the fire, it was hard not to imagine them both inside me. Both of them grasping, clutching and squeezing my tits, working their cocks in my body like rough, hard pistons. I wanted them to pump me full of that hot, sticky juice they covered me with when we first met.

As I drew near the fire, I realized that even though Kalak shook me to the core, my cunt was ready to be pleased again, already slick, already hot and wet.

“Kel is fine without Gina. He is not hurt so badly as his brother.” The stiff, oddly formal voice of the beastman stretched out by the fire shook me out of my daydream.

“Are you sure? No cuts?”

“Cuts, Kel has, but they are small. Not much chance of fever from them.”

He laughed and my mouth snapped shut. I don’t think I ever heard him speak before then.

“I’m sorry, it’s just that-”

“No, no, Gina does not need to apologize. Kel does not speak like the others.”

“You use articles, for one thing.” I sat beside him on the log and let out a drawling sigh. It was hard underneath me, and uncomfortable. At least it was smoothed out though, and it was warm from the fire. That part was nice.

I looked over and saw Kel staring at me, his eyes scrunched up like he was thinking.

“Articles – like ‘the’ or ‘a’.” He responded with a “Huh.”

“You do speak differently, is what I mean. Where did you learn?”

“Kel learned from the same place as his father. The man with the shiny rocks. Kel just paid more attention. Well, and from Kel’s uncle. He’s gone, though. At least that’s what Kalak tells us. Kel doesn’t remember him. Very long ago, when Kel was very young, last time he was here. Went off into the woods.”

“You’re the youngest, huh? Between you three?”

His eyes, soft and pale until I asked, hardened. Kel stared into the hot yellow at the base of the fire. “No.”

Immediately, I understood. I put a hand on the bulge of muscle that was Kel’s shoulder. “I’m sorry,” I said, “I shouldn’t have asked.”

He raised his eyes and met mine. Such a strange color, I remember thinking, that blue. Icy, cool, and very different from the rest of them, even Makel, who was taken from another tribe in a sort of youth exchange program. Flexing his toes, he pushed a stick that hung over the fire pit’s side. A few sparks shot up, got caught in a breeze, and flitted away. Fireflies made of ash.

“No, Kel is not the youngest. When we got Makel, father made a deal. Two of his daughters – my sisters, both older – went.”

He turned and straddled the log. Taking my hands in his, Kel began to massage my palms, the way people jingle change in their pockets. “What happened to them?” I asked.

“We don’t know. Makel’s tribe vanished. Something to do with the man and his shiny rocks. Before him, life for Kel, Krizik and everybody else was the same as it was for our ancestors, and their ancestors. But, no, we don’t know what happened. All we know is that after that crooked man found the shiny rocks, the tribes started to disappear.”

I searched his face for hints of sadness, or despair, but there were none. His temper was even. So even, I thought, that it was a little unsettling.

After sitting silently for a few more moments, Kel squeezed my palms. “If I see him again, he will not live.”

There was that emotion I wondered about. Around us, in the blue-gray morning, the forest began to come alive. Birds – toucans, from the sound of it – began to bleat and chirp. Monkeys stirred overhead, too far up to see. Kel looked away, back to the fire.

“Let me see your cuts,” I said, “make sure you’re okay.”

He didn’t respond. He just sat, a sullen-eyed giant, but still the smallest of his kind. Four cuts needed attention, but as he said, they weren’t anything like his brother’s injuries. Still, they were jagged and needed attention. It didn’t take long to pack the sappy, sticky, rank, yellow paste into the wounds and close them up.

I squeezed his muscular neck between my thumbs, kneading at the most obvious knots through his thick, wiry hair. He let his head relax forward, his chin almost touching his chest.

“Do you remember where they attacked?” I asked, remembering my promise to Kalak that we’d find Makel before the day ended.

He nodded. “Two hands from here. Toward the sun.” The way they measured distance was how many hand-widths the sun travelled while walking. About a two hour walk to the east, then.

“Something was different about them, though. They had markings Kel has never seen.”

“They were another tribe, right?”

Kel’s eyes did not move. Straight ahead, into the fire, he stared.

“Other tribe, yes,” he said. “But that wasn’t all we saw.”

“What do you mean?”

“It wasn’t just our kind. Two were like Gina.”

“Did you recognize them? The two like me?”

“Mmm.” Kel grunted. “They came with Gina. One of them tall, with short-pants. The other one tall and thin, with a tail on his head.” Kel made a gesture behind his head.

Straight into the fire, he stared. His eyes never moved from where they were fixed.

“A... wait a minute, you can’t be serious. My camera man, my producer. I thought they were dead, or at least that one that got his throat punched was dead.”

That first day, when we were dropped off for what we thought was an innocent day of filming, my ponytail slipped out of my hat, the four beastmen went wild and I ran. My cameraman and producer didn’t make it – or so I thought. Apparently, they caught up with one another.

“That doesn’t make any sense. Why would two guys I came here with attack you? They must have recognized you.”

Kel shrugged. “Might have, Kel can’t say. But if they recognized us, not much they could do. Boros had them...” He broke off and put his hands around his neck, pantomiming a collar and a chain.

“Were they tied up? They had collars on?”

He grunted, nodded. “Collars. Around the neck. Chains. Both of them chained together.”

“Did they see you? Wait, I thought the others – Boros and his men – I thought they dove out of trees on top of you.”

“No. Just said that.”

“But why? Why lie about it?”

“Us three went looking for something Kalak told us never to try to find. We found them. Found where the shiny rocks come from. Found something else, too, before they took Makel and we escaped.”

“Kel, we have to do something. We just have to. Kalak is-”

“We will, and soon. But Gina – what we found... we found man with shiny rock. Krizik saw him with Boros. Lots of us, lots of our people, all chained. Around the neck, just like your people. Kel thought Boros just a legend. But there he was.”

In front of us, Krizik stirred, rolled over, snorted, and drew a fur over his head.

“You rest,” I told him, “let your wounds set. I need to rest too. We’ll think of something.”

I wandered back to Kalak’s tent and bedded down with him under what seemed like a foot-thick layer of animal skins. Something, I knew, had to be done, not only for their people, but for my friends. Something had to be done. And besides that, I had the feeling – and they did too, I’m sure – that if we dealt with this, there might be a few answers about the diamond miners, and everything else. But answers came later. First, we had friends to save.

*

C
runch.

Crunch.

The forest broke under my feet, twigs snapping, leaves crackling and popping. I looked down and realized that things weren’t like they were the first time this happened. Barefoot, wrapped in tight-fitting fur leggings and a tunic tied off with leather, I was one with the forest, one with the night and the shadows.

Bark on what looked like an ash tree, but somehow wrong, like it was twisted, scratched the skin on my neck when I hid, scouting the camp below with a crude spyglass made from various bits and pieces of camera equipment I had with me all those weeks ago when my whole world changed.

I shot a glance to another tree when Kel cracked two pieces of flint together, signaling with a spark. He clicked his teeth together and drew a circle in the air. Kalak drew close to me, crouching in the inky dark. Krizik, with his terrible wounds, stayed back to guard the few supplies we had, but more than that, to make sure no one tried to find us. Escapes from what Kalak called “shiny holes” – what turned out to be a surprisingly sophisticated diamond mine – were not uncommon, he said. And, where there were escapes, there were men looking for them.

It was time for me to wait. Our plan was simple, but had a free-form element to it that was uncomfortable to someone as painfully Type-A as myself. The basic idea was for Kel and Kalak to scout the camp, find the prisoners, and then make a giant distraction while I snuck in and released the slaves, which would hopefully include Makel, and my two friends. The ensuing riot was to destroy the camp, and hopefully kill the diamond miner. Or at least cover our escape.

“This big camp,” Kalak had said, “be lot of slave? That word?” When I nodded, so did he. “Yeah, a lot of slave. Work them to death then throw in pit then catch more. Shiny rock man be there maybe. Kalak can’t believe...” He shook his head and crept silently away, circling the camp in the opposite direction as did his son.

There we were, and there I was. Kel was going to signal from beside the prison cages when he found them. Two strikes of flint, and then my part began.

We had no fall back plan. Again, horrifying for someone like Type-A Gina. I just needed faith both in Kalak and Kel, and in myself, to make it work. Somewhere in the back of my mind I realized that these ancient creatures trusted me. They believed in me enough to make me a part of the plan to get back their brother, their son. No one had ever trusted me with something like that before. Not even myself. Back in reality, I regularly got nervous, threw away pilot scripts and refused to pitch them. That was the old Gina who had the courage of a half-dead fish. This new Gina was crouched behind a tree waiting for a signal like a fur-trimmed black ops agent. Then she was going to sneak into a crooked diamond miner’s camp and free a clutch of slaves. How could I go back? How could I ever live with being some TV show host that never broke a three-point-two rating? Here I was someone. I mattered. I was about to do something important.

On the edge of my vision, two sparks flew out of the darkness. I swallowed hard, pushing my fear to the back of my mind. “Time to go, Gina,” I said through gritted teeth.

Three steps into the camp, the smell of soot, of smoke and machinery, hit my nose. It had been weeks since I smelled anything mechanical, since I smelled oil. It jarred me a bit when it struck my nostrils. It stung and then burned my eyes, did the low-hanging haze in the diamond camp.