Shifters, Beasts, and Monsters (14 page)

Chapter Ten

Kate was dreaming once again of silky seas and
tentacles. Many tentacles, large and muscular. They reminded her of cocks, but they
were infinitely more flexible. The ways they could turn, twist, curl, even
double up upon themselves were amazing. They could suck, too, with different
pressures from gentle to brutally intense.

One wound itself around her chest, pinning her arms to
her sides. Another lifted her off her feet while a third lashed her butt like a
whip. A fourth stimulated her breasts, exciting her so much that she was
pleading as yet another snaked up her bare thigh and fed itself into her dripping
pussy. It was so damn hot. So damn thick. She moaned and rocked and bucked, but
she couldn’t seem to reach a climax. She needed something else, something more.
Dear god, she was so damn
hungry
.

 She woke up suddenly, aroused and unsatisfied, her skin
damp and an ache in her core. No orgasm in the maze, she remembered...Ross had
been eager to please her but he hadn’t been able to stop that mystical glowing.

Tentacles again. This time she didn’t even think they’d
been attached to anything, but they sure were erotic. Was
that
what the
Zrakon did to those girls on Midsummer’s Eve? There was no way they could
report it later as a pleasant experience if he had actually thrust into them
with his monster penis. That would have killed the poor girls. No, he must be
all about the tentacles. Maybe that’s why the girls refused to talk about their
experiences, other than to declare the Zrakon the superman of lovers? Admitting
to the tentacle thing would be embarrassing.

Kate closed her eyes and tried to sleep again. Run
that dream by me again, she thought, smiling as she settled more comfortably
into the downy mattress.

*
* *

In his own bedchamber, Ross was awake and sweating,
too, but from a far more ominous cause. He had been jolted out of sleep,
overcome with the type of fiery lust that always consumed him at this time of
year. In other years, though, he had satisfied it with the ritual and the monster
had gone back to sleep for another twelve months. This year the Zrakon was
roaring because he hadn’t been permitted his annual grope fest with whichever
one of the village girls had won the lottery.

The sea dragon was pissed. He was not going to go quietly
back down to the depths of Ross’s consciousness, or wherever the hell he dwelt
for the other months of the year. Especially now, with Kate so near. Kate, whom
the Zrakon had marked as his lover and his plaything. She was his destined
partner, and he needed to mate with her. Really mate. As in stick that gigantic
cock between her thighs and fuck her brutally.

Christ. Ross’s own cock turned steel hard at the
thought. He could easily find his way to Kate’s bedroom in the dark. It would
take but a minute or two to reach her. Even if she had locked her bedchamber
door, he had all the keys.

He saw it in his mind, the whole thing. His fucking
balls were aching and his dick so hard that even the brush of his t-shirt
against the head of his cock felt like fire. He needed to cool himself, thrust
himself into moistness, feel the smooth walls of her pussy gripping him tightly
as he ripped into her with tentacles and his gnarled and thorny cock.

He felt something crack and split apart and terror
swept over him for a moment before it was banished by something even stronger.
The Hunger. Fuck. Once again he was changing, shifting. Head growing monstrous.
Skin rippling over with scales. A huge muscular tail sprouting and beating with
rage.

It happened swiftly this time. The Zrakon was not
about to be lulled into quiescence again with a lecture on molecular biology.

He was going to go to her. Here, in the keep.
But
if he did so...if he went to her in such a state...he would surely break her.
And if he broke her, he would be alone forever.

 The last rational thought he had was the memory of Cam’s
warning:

You’d better figure this out fast, bro, or both you
and your honey might be screwed
.

Chapter Eleven

Kate had been unable to fall asleep, after all. She’d risen
to use the bathroom. She was just climbing back into bed when she heard a loud
racket in the hallway outside. Her door burst open with the crack and splinter
of wood and a huge, unimaginably bizarre creature thundered into her room.

Even though she cried out in surprise, she knew
instantly who he was. The Zrakon. He looked exactly like the creature in her
dream.

He stepped closer. “You must come,” he said, the words
coming out in a strange sibilant tone that sounded anything but human.

He could talk? Somehow she knew that, too. Not only could
he talk, but he could also reach her mind. She wasn’t even sure whether his
voice was being conveyed through the air or inside her head.

“Come where?” She tried to keep her own voice firm and
steady.

“I am the Zrakon. I am your mate.”

He sounded a bit like Ross, who had also declared
himself to be her mate. What was going on? Maybe she was still dreaming? “I am human,”
she countered. “I can’t be your mate. Aren’t you supposed to be in the water?”

 “He is trying to take you from me.”

“Who is? Ross?”

“He made you forget. He doesn’t want you to know that
you are already mine.” The creature shimmered the way Ross had done earlier in
the night when the aura around him had spread and enveloped him like a flame. “Look
at me. Look closely. Look.”

His enormous bulk compressed before her eyes. His long
neck shortened and his legs straightened and grew slender. Heat poured off him
and he began to glow. Kate shrank back against the headboard of the bed, unsure
what she was witnessing. She heard groans and cracking sounds. His long tail
shrank away to nothing as he shifted his physical form. His scales became
flesh. He turned into a man.

And the man he turned into was Ross.

Kate yelped. What the fuck? And yet, somehow she knew
it. Somewhere deep inside the transformation made sense. That must have been
what had happened in the maze. That heat, that crackling sound. Ross had
started to change. But that meant—God, she couldn’t fathom what it meant.

Staring wildly at him, she sprang from the bed and
made a mad dash for the bathroom door. Maybe she could lock herself in there?
But the creature—the human creature—gusted like fire across the
room and was there before her, his back against the door. He looked like Ross,
but he moved like the magical thing he was.

He was hindering her escape, so she attacked him with fists
flying. She seized a lamp from the top of the bureau and cracked it against his
head. Totally stupid thing to do. The lamp smashed, but his head took no damage
that she could see. She knew it was crazy to fight him, but she felt trapped
and confused and she couldn’t help herself. She completely lost it. She whirled
and kicked and screamed as she did battle. But she couldn’t seem to touch him. He
had that glowing, sparkling aura all around him now, like a shield, and every
time she encountered it, she felt heat and static and saw jewel-like sparks. She
could not touch him as Ross. The creature was preventing it.

“Kate, stop. Calm the fuck down. Please.”

 “Get away from me, you crazy beast!”

He opened the golden tunnel into her mind. She felt it
happening; she threw up her mental walls. He glided past them even more easily
than he had the first time.

Catriona. Kate. It’s me. It’s Ross. The Zrakon is
bound to the Malloch heir when his father dies. It has happened that way for
centuries. But it’s still me.

She tried to shove him out, but he hung on.

I need you. The Hunger is indescribable, and it’s
getting worse. You must submit.

He not only looked like Ross, he sounded like him.
People had an individual voice, and whether it was transmitted in sound or in
thought, it sounded the same. “Are you truly Ross?”

Aye, truly I am.

“Why is this happening? Why can’t you touch me?”

I’ve waited too long, and now I can only touch
you in Zrakon form. Last night, in the maze, that was incredible, but it has
pushed him over the edge.

“But what are you?”

I’m a shape shifter. You know, like a werewolf?
I’m the Zrakon and he is me. That is why you can touch both my mind and his. We’re
the same.

Kate struggled to make sense of this. Like a werewolf?
Were they real, too?
“So, you and the Zrakon are one being?”

Not exactly, but close enough.
Kate.
Listen to me. You don’t have to be afraid of my Zrakon side. You and he are
already friends. I gave you a command on Midsummer’s Eve. I told you to forget
everything that happened that night. It was for the best, but there’s no longer
any point in it.

“What are you talking about?”

Catriona. Remember. Remember it all now.

Kate felt something shift inside her head, and a host
of images rolled before her like a film. No, it was far more intense than a
film because everything that she saw had happened to her. Time sped up as she
relived the events of Midsummer’s Eve: on the beach freeing Effie, her
encounter with the Zrakon, the strange yet magical swim through the cold
Scottish sea, sheltered against the beast’s body, wrapped up in his warm
tentacles. The mental communication. The intimacy. The sensuality. The
sparkling cavern where he had taken her. It must have been
that
cavern—the place of legend that Ross had declared unsafe and off limits.

The Zrakon had taken her to his lair, and then he had
made her forget.

Okay, not much freaked her out, but this did. She retreated
to the bed and sat down. She pulled her knees up to her chest, wrapping her
arms around herself. She had swum with the Zrakon. She had breathed the air
from his lungs. His tentacles had been wrapped around her. They had kept her
warm in the cold sea.

It had been an amazing experience, but it had been stolen
from her.

Something hot and wild uncoiled inside her. Ross had
lied to her. Worse, he had controlled her mind.

“You fucking bastard. You stole a whole night of my
life. How could you do that? How dare you invade me that way? Where do you get
the power to erase part of my experience? Damn you! Get out of my room! Take
your sea dragon and go straight to hell.”

He had the grace to look ashamed of himself. But what
he said aloud was, ‘I can’t let you go, Kate. I’m sorry. It’s too late for that
now.”

“You lied to me!’

“I was just trying to protect you. I wanted to break
it to you slowly.”

“Break what to me?”

“You know—the whole mating with the sea dragon
thing.”

“You can’t seriously expect me to fuck a beast.”

“Couldn’t you close your eyes and try? It’s me on the
inside, and that big ugly beast has sensitive feelings. If you would just relax
I’m sure I—we—could make it nice for you.”

She laughed wildly. “It’s not physically possible.
That Zrakon is too big—and there are barbs on his dick. Have you looked
at yourself when you’re in that form? That’s something that no human woman
could possibly endure.”

“There’s a solution to that.”

“Really. And what would that be?”

“Maybe the spiny things, uh, retract or something. I
don’t know. Damn. I have medical journals of all types in my office, but not a
single scholarly paper on the sex life of sea dragons.”

Her eyes blinked rapidly. “It is you, isn’t it? This
isn’t another freaking dream.”

It’s no dream.
You
can hear me when I speak to you telepathically.

“Yes, I can hear you! But you and your Zrakon want to
use me for some mysterious purpose that has nothing to do with me. So don’t
attempt to beguile me with illusions of human feelings. And get the fuck out of
my head!”

In a sudden concentration of pure, raw power, she
flung him out.

He must not have liked that, because there was another
flash, another crack, and his body bent over and bulked up again. It happened
fast. The human Ross melted away and exploded into the giant form of the
Zrakon.

His lust must have exploded, too, because he came at
her with that huge scary cock thrusting forward as if its only purpose in life
were to slake its lust in her flesh. She shrank away from him, sick about her
own helplessness in the face of male rage and physical supremacy. The Zrakon
was bigger than ever. He filled and dominated the bedchamber. He dwarfed the
sturdy old bedstead where she was cowering.

 What had happened to the gentlemanly monster who had
kept her warm with his body in the freezing Scottish sea? This Zrakon wanted to
tear her apart.

Woman
. The Zrakon forged
the mental link again; it seemed she couldn’t keep him out when his energy and
determination were so strong.
You must surrender. That is the ritual. The
females of this island have served the Zrakon since the world began.

This is the Way: Go to the cavern where the sacrificial
stone is. You and the human will go together. He will bind you to the rock for
the sacrifice. He must give you to me. And you must be willing, you must
consent. Do you understand?

“I don’t consent, dammit!”

If you do not make the offering willingly, I
will hunt you down and take you by force. There is no way to avoid your destiny.
It was written long before you were born. You have until the full moon to prepare
yourself.

He whirled, smashed through the doorframe as if it
were made of straw, and stalked out of her room.

Kate stared at the wreckage around her—the
cracked door, the broken lamp, the sea water soaking into the oriental
rug—and, for the first time in years, she burst out in sobs. After a
couple of minutes, though, the absurdity of it all struck her, and, with tears
still pouring down her cheeks, she began to laugh.

“Be careful if you ever return to Scotland,” Gramma
Molly had said to her before she’d died. “‘Tis a lovely, mad, unruly place that
will surely set your brain awhirl.”