The Reluctant (2 page)

I hungered, as a beast and as a man.
It took two days for me to become human again, agonizing over how
to obtain you in the confines of my house.

Thank whoever you believe in for lucky
things that the monster in me retrains himself in my animal
form.

However, I found you irresistible, and
as a man I am not so good at controlling my passions.

Emily

Even with the new treadmill, I felt
trapped at the house. I wanted to run where I could smell the
grass, so I disobeyed my parents in the usual fashion and left for
a run along the lonely park path again. After all, the police had
said that an animal killed the man. Then, just this afternoon, a
cougar was found prowling that spot of the park. Case
solved.

Stopping at my usual quarter-mile
cool-down spot, I took a swallow of water. My friend the owl cooed
his approval of my break. The night’s heaviness felt good compared
to the chilly sweat on my body. I did a few stretches to get the
kinks out of my hamstrings. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught
the bright green eyes of a handsome stranger running towards me. He
was dressed in running shorts and a tee, jogging along from the
other way. Well built, massive across the shoulders but lean in the
waist, and a rugged, sculpted face that would make Brad Pitt’s
aging jaws look like sagging pottery on a wheel. As he approached,
he slowed to a stop, not saying a word, not even smiling at a
fellow runner.

“Can I help you?” I asked with no
inflection, taking another drink and looking straight into those
bright, burning eyes.

The phrase seemed appropriately
sarcastic for a man who had said nothing.

He had been staring at me for a solid
moment, and it began to grate on my nerves. Appreciation is one
thing, ogling quite another. I did not let my glare falter, and he
did not look like he would speak. His eyes never left my face, not
even when my hand slipped into my pocket to grab the extremely tiny
can of Mace kept there for such creeps.

It was over in minutes and done
wordlessly, and not worth space to explain in detail. Really, I
recall it as if I experienced it through someone else’s
body.

He came closer, whipped out a syringe,
and ignored my cry of protest. I tried to stop his actions by
spraying him with mace, but he swatted away my attempts, injected
an unknown substance into me with the syringe, grabbed me by the
waist, then swung me over his shoulder like some piece of luggage.
I didn’t even feel when the rhythmic trot towards wherever
began.

The unused Mace on the grass melted
into soft waves of black and red that swam over my fading vision.
It had only been two days since the murder in the park, and my last
thought was that I had stupidly made myself the next
victim.

I woke, I guess like most victims of
crime do if they wake at all, in the dark. My body had a strange
lightness about it, as if my muscles were too bored to awaken with
my mind. A voice leapt through the darkness.

“Good evening.”

The voice flowed out, a rich, light
tenor, nonthreatening with an undertone of a very slight Spanish
accent, lazy but fiercely intelligent. I wondered If it was indeed
the green-eyed stranger from the park speaking so softly in the
darkness.

A tremble raced through me despite my
flaccid muscles. The tiles cooled my bare feet and the air closed
in comfortably around me. Prickles of apprehension cascaded across
my flesh, and with a start, I realized I was naked. It’s strange to
suddenly be aware of myself like that. And even with the night
between us, I felt he could see me. I hugged my body close, using
my arms like a shield. Finally the fear set in. The murderer from
the park stood a few feet in front of me, unclothed and
disoriented. His heavy breathing came out in even streams, but
almost too even, as if it were controlled by mechanics.

“My name is Will,” he said to the
silence between us. The breath tickled my breasts and I realized
just how close he had come. My throat felt tight and hot. I could
not speak. How does one respond to her potential killer?

It did not matter if I spoke,
apparently, for there were suddenly hands on my upper arms,
squeezing hard and desperately. He pulled me towards
him.

My body exploded into a frenzy of
motion as I cried out and threw my arms forward, throwing his
embrace off me. I stumbled backwards in the darkness, hoping to
find anything to use as a weapon. Instead, I backed sharply into a
wall.

“Don’t touch me,” I said. Terror had
quickened my breathing, and my chest rose and fell with the great
gasps. If I could only see him, know what was coming. And I could
not even hear him move. He took no shuffling steps across the tiled
floor, nor did he flee the room at my words. All I heard was that
steady breathing.

His silence shifted to movement,
caging me in with his arms against the wall, pressing his body
against me. Oh God, he was naked. His harness rubbed insistently
against my sex and I felt a thrill shoot through me. My body became
a traitor in that very moment. My skin drank in his touch. I was no
innocent, but surely my body should have fought at my motivation
instead of wetting itself like an experienced whore?

“Tell me your name,” Will
breathed.

I looked in vain for his face. Even
though it was less than two inches from my mine, our noses
touching, the darkness had swallowed and enfolded us in its womb.
It unnerved me.

“Don’t hurt me,” I blurted
out.

Lips found my neck, meting out rough
kisses and buffing the tender skin. Electricity raced down my spine
and to my thighs, making me instantly wet. When his mouth made it
to my ear, his quick and fumbling hands traced me, his manhood
pressed unrelentingly at the crevice between the thighs that
tingled with suppressed excitement. He reached around and grabbed
two handfuls of me, pinching hard and slightly lifting me to nudge
his swelling member between my legs.

“Tell me your name,” he said again, a
harsh and urgent whisper in my ear.

Then the tears started. I felt so
helpless with his roughened hands gripping my backside and his
teeth at my throat. I couldn’t even get my own body to obey me at
this point!

“Please,” I whispered.

He growled at me—literally growled! I
tried to jerk away, terrified that this noise signaled a more
violent assault, but his hands went to my hips and pushed hard.
Pain shot through me as my hands fell limply to my sides over his
muscular arms, trying in vain to make him see I would not fight
back. All of him was hardness, sleek, heated skin. He gathered up
my arms and pressed them against my chest, constricting my breath.
A hand crept up to my throat and he applied a faint amount of
pressure. I could feel the strength of his hands. He could crush my
windpipe if he chose.

“Now,” he said softly in that fluid
accented voice. “Tell me your name.”

“Emily,” I choked out. The pressure
immediately eased. “My name is Emily,” I repeated a little more
loudly.

“Emily,” he groaned, the passionate
rumble a faint echo of the earlier growl.

I began to sob. My body trembled,
probably a side effect of the syringe from earlier. The last show
of energy had completely drained my strength.

His breathing grew quicker, shallower;
one of his hands never left my throat as the other slid down to my
thighs. Hot needles prickled in my groin. Instead of reaching
between my legs like I thought he would, he reached behind me,
heaving me up. Pushing me against the wall, he forced himself into
me. Amazingly, I was slick and ready to receive him. His hand moved
to my jaw and palmed me roughly as he began to shove himself in and
out of me.

My cries only seemed to
excite him more. My head knocked against the wall as a
counterweight to his rhythmic thrusting. The dark only made things
worse. My sobs were becoming hysterical. The darkness enhanced
everything, including the fire that ripped through my loins as his
motions grew more frantic. My body hit the wall—
thump thump thump
—and my butt stung
as if it had been repeatedly slapped at with a leather thong. His
hands found my hair, pulling at it and adding to the force with
which my head hit the wall.

I had been fucked before, but never
like this. I felt like he would rip me apart. I refused to let my
body orgasm in response to him. The angle of my body made it
impossible to ignore the sharp jabs of the wall behind me, and the
man in front of me made it impossible to ignore the building fury
between my legs. Had he not been pressing me against a wall, I
might not have had a choice in my orgasm.

Finally, oh God, finally, he gave a
deep thrust and I felt the hot gush of him rush into me. I still
panted like an animal, my body feeling as if it had been raked over
hot coals from such mishandling, my tears making my hair stick to
my face, my sex pulsing and quivering with something akin to
disappointment.

He leaned against me and the wall,
supporting himself with the hand that had clutched so desperately
at my hair a moment before. He did not speak, just breathed hard
into my face. I inhaled and thought I could taste my own tears and
sweat on his breath.

I bit my lips to silence the hysteria,
but my chest still heaved with emotion. I finally closed my eyes,
shutting even the darkness out. Had there been light, it would not
have made me any braver.

I hung, suspended against the wall for
some moments while he collected himself. And suddenly, he gently
withdrew and cradled me as I slipped to the cold, tile floor. I did
not hear him walk away, and the shadows gave no clue if he still
stood near me. I did not care at this point. I sank completely to
the tile and allowed my head to rest on it. Now he will kill me, I
thought. The stickiness between my legs leaked out onto the floor,
my sense of self sliding out with it.

The air conditioning unit came on and
my body shivered without my consent. I heard the door open and
shut, but still no light came into this tomb. I never heard him
move.

Instead of thinking about all of the
things I had never achieved in my life, I thought about the owl in
the park. Now his sounds of mourning would be for me.

“Emily?”

That smooth, anonymous voice flowered
out of the artificial night some time later. The darkness suddenly
proved insubstantial to his whim for illumination. Light overtook
the room with the vengeance of the long denied as Will flipped a
switch that I had not bothered to look for. Sometimes I could be so
assuming; yes, Emily, surely all rapists and killers have a room
that has no electrical facility whatsoever like in Silence of the
Lambs. Geesh. Even my clothes were neatly folded and slung over the
arm of a particularly terrifying paisley-print sofa. My shoes were
still inexplicably M.I.A. though. To add to my discomfort, Will
turned out to be even more handsome in the light than he had ever
been on the ill-lit jogging trail.

I’m not one to dwell on tragedy. Maybe
that makes me a little shallow, but I hate those who seek out drama
through their own actions. I had moved from my fetal, cringing
position long before. The darkness had finally accepted me, and I,
it. I felt at peace in the warm room against the chilly tiles. I
stood, willing to put up a better fight this time if need be,
thinking that my past listlessness had been a shade on the
ridiculous side. I was not some helpless maiden who swooned when a
man sought to take advantage of her.

“There are things you should know
about me,” he announced as he picked up my clothes from the couch
and handed them to me.

My patience snapped as I yanked them
from his hands. “The only thing I care to know about you right now
is when the hell you’re going to let me go.”

I might have been naked, but damn it,
I was hungry, tired, a little sore from Will’s jagged handling, and
scared. Those things present in a woman do not make a good
combination. Nudity was the last thing on my mind.

He smiled smugly, not turning away as
I clothed myself. “When, exactly, is a good time for
you?”

I quirked an eyebrow at him while
pulling up my pants. Was he flirting with me?

“Now’s always good,” I answered with
the acidity of the annoyed.

His expression deepened to a deadpan
seriousness. “I’ll check my schedule.”

“You can’t keep me here,” I said,
emboldened by my realization that this room was not a prison. It
was, for all practically purposes, a generically designed
guestroom—bigger than most, with tasteful accommodations that
reminded me of an upscale hotel. Even with no windows, it still
proved to be a nice room. The bed was huge and the tiled floor had
a nice mosaic pattern. Very Italian. “You just can’t,” I
reiterated.

“I can certainly try,” he declared.
“Aren’t you interested in knowing whose attention you’ve
attracted?”

I mulled over his words for all of
about two seconds. “You’re insane, you know that? You think I want
to stay here with a murderer?”

He looked shocked. “You think I’m a
murderer?”

“You killed that guy in the park,” I
pointed out.