The Reluctant (8 page)

“What the hell?” I said, completely
expecting someone standing there with a camera as a
prank.

My professor had illuminated the bed.
She stood, naked and glistening as if coated with oil in the
lamplight. Walking over the window, she raised the
blinds.

“We’ll need this extra light,” she
said lowly. I could see her body shaking, as if she fought
something internally. I thought she would shatter right before my
eyes with her effort. And then I saw it, while looking back and
forth between the two gorgeous women between me, my eyes blurry and
my imagination racing and open to all possibilities. Something was
different about Brooke, something I could see with the extra
moonlight pouring in. Her eyes, once a warm, liquid toffee, now
glittered with the same luminescent green of the professor’s eyes
that had once before fascinated me.

“What is this?” I asked, my
anticipation for the event coloring my tone. I’m not sure, at that
time, if I really even cared about Brooke’s eyes. What young man
could ask for more than two of the most beautiful women in his
acquaintance to take advantage of him?

“This,” the professor growled, “is
your last night as a human, love. Luckily you’ll get to enjoy it
almost as much as Brooke did,” she added, looking over at my
red-headed friend with something like pride.

Brooke smiled seductively and bent her
head to give a lick to my manhood that sent my body quivering
again. The professor’s words made no sense to me, and honestly I
had no desire to talk. Being naked and in the company of those two
did not exactly contribute to my thinking with the northern head. I
reached for Brooke, hoping that I didn’t seem too desperate for her
to keep going. No man wants to look reliant on a woman, even for
pleasure. She sucked harder and I felt the breath rush out of my
body as the professor approached, sleek and lean. She looked
younger in the shadows of my room.

She stroked my chest as her mouth
melted into mine. I thought I’d be done right then, but somehow I
managed to be caressed and kissed and last more than five minutes.
I couldn’t stand it anymore. I pushed Brooke away.

I could barely speak. “You’re going to
get something you don’t want if you keep doing that.”

She looked up at me with those newly
brightened eyes. “How do you know what I want?”

Well, that lowly spoken, sultry
question did it for me. She put her lips back on me and I exploded
in her mouth. The professor nibbled at my neck and ear as I came,
intensifying my pleasure. That event cleared any reasoning I had
possessed and I lay there dazed. Brooke pulled away from me and the
professor crawled on top, straddling my limpness. I
laughed.

“You don’t honestly expect me to get
it up again, do you?” I asked in my stupor.

“Not really,” she admitted. She
reached over to my nightstand and grabbed a pair of handcuffs,
dangling them over me. “But we can have fun trying.”

I had worn those handcuffs before.
Whenever she felt particularly brutal, she would make me wear them
during sex so that she could ride me and tease me. I smiled at the
memories.

“I thought you’d agree,” she said,
bringing my hands together and slinging the cuffs around the metal
frame of the bed to buckle me down. I squirmed slightly. She had
never cuffed me to the bed, and I felt uncomfortable being so
helpless. After all, we had parted in anger earlier. The
unfathomable thing to me was that she was here with Brooke, but as
I said before, I had no qualms about accepting it as my right as a
handsome guy. I watched as she rose up magnificently over me like a
dark angel.

She stroked my face lightly. “I’ll
miss your brown eyes,” she said softly. Then, more loudly: “Brooke,
get the knife.”

“What?” I cried. “What the hell are
you doing?”

Suddenly sobriety overtook me as I
imagined that she was going to cut out my eyes. I could no longer
operate in a drunken blur.

Brooke approached with a small,
ornamental knife. No longer than my hand, its blade looked
particularly deadly in that fiery red head’s grasp, and her wicked
grin gave me no additional comfort. “It only hurts for a moment,
Will,” she assured me while handing the older woman the knife. Her
tone turned deadly sweet. “Why didn’t you tell me that you were
seeing our dear professor? Did you think you could just use me as
your little plaything without consequence?”

I had no time to argue with her. She
had known that there would never be anything more serious between
us. Besides, the professor had a knife at my crotch! Where would
your attention be?

“She’s right about it only hurting for
a moment,” the professor admitted. She pivoted reverse-cowgirl
style on me and continued over her shoulder, “But after that,
you’ll be mine. Forever. And I have a lifetime to hurt you if I
please.”

I bucked and twisted, trying to get
away from those two pairs of steel-like hands that held down my
thighs to the bed. I yelled, screamed, begged. No one came.
Everyone was at the party or too drunk or sleeping off their
drunkenness somewhere. I was alone in the world at the hands of two
women who wanted nothing more than to get revenge for my using
them. The struggle against their attentions proved
inadequate.

The knife scraped lightly against my
thigh, sending a shock up to my brain. Then, as it came closer to
my favorite limb, the pressure became greater. I yelped as the
blood ran from my thigh. Brooke leaned down to lick it, following
the trickle up to the wound, a visible tremble running through her
body as she did so. She moaned, trailing the knife as it cut its
way towards me. It wasn’t the worst pain ever. Imagine how your
tattoo felt: that stinging feeling as the air hits the open flesh
before the ink sinks in is pretty similar to how the knife felt. I
could not see her, but as Brooke covered my wound with her mouth,
kissing the crimson path, I hardened involuntarily. There is
something captivating about a woman willing to swallow my bodily
fluids—even blood. The knife stopped shy of my balls and I exhaled.
I realized then that I had been holding my breath.

The professor chuckled wickedly. All I
could see of her was that smooth backside and her long brown hair.
The tension and the terror still dominated me, but I could not help
but be aroused again. The phrase that promises “you can’t rape the
willing?” Well, sometimes the body betrays its owner and the
willing can be raped. I had made love with both of these women
before, but now I was being turned on against my inclination. And I
must admit, I never asked for them to stop pleasing me. The knife
was the only problem area thus far. I hoped their threats would
turn out to be just that—threats.

Brooke ran her tongue up and down my
stiffness; I threw my head back and closed my eyes, intent on
enjoying it and accepting the knife as a kinky prop. I felt the
professor climb off. The cold steel now kissed my neck. My eyes
flew open. She stood over me.

I said her name, hoping that she would
remember all the nights we had shared in less violent lust. She
backhanded me with a force I had not known she possessed. “Don’t
speak my name,” she commanded harshly. “You know nothing of
me.”

“I never meant to hurt you,” I said
truthfully.

Brooke laughed. I glared in her
direction. She leered at my hard dick before meeting my
eyes.

“God, Brooke, what is wrong with
you?”

She rocked back and forth in the
moonlight with her laugher. She became a flame-haired demon to me:
her eyes blazed more intensely than before, melting into two bright
points of green that really did glow in her partially shadowed
state, her hair a deeper red, and even though her body was divine,
the smear of my blood on her face disturbed me. She ignored me,
wrapped up in her own mirth.

I looked to the professor. “What the
hell is wrong with her? Especially her eyes. What’s wrong with her
eyes?”

Knife still my throat, the woman
leaned down and cooed, “She’s mine now. I Changed her. You’re going
to be mine, too. Her mind is trying to accept what’s taking over
her body. It’s working through the madness of the rejection of
herself. She has to accept her new form.”

“What new form?” I shouted, anger
overtaking me. “What the fuck are you talking about, you crazy
bitch? What the hell did you change her into?”

A word of advice: do not speak in
anger to a woman holding a knife.

“I’ll show you how much of a bitch I
can be!”

She slashed the knife downward,
severing my jugular. My vision started to fade from the corners,
but the last thing I saw before I blacked out made me believe
whatever madness infecting Brooke had jumped to me. And to some
extent, I was right. Waking up on New Year’s Day was not only a
shock, but the longest thing away from death that I could possibly
imagine.

It just couldn’t be possible that
where once two dazzling women teased me, two wolves now began to
lick my wounds and nibble at my flesh.

Shortly later, I came to with a pussy
in my face and a throbbing so deep and overwhelming in my balls
that I felt I would be ripped apart by my desperate need. A hot
mouth laved my cock and I thrust my tongue up to that wonderfully
wet patch above me, intent on quenching the desire that tormented
me by releasing some energy on it.

The woman’s head went up and down, her
actions quickening as she realized I was conscious and returning
the favor. I did not care who she was, only that she continue to
suck. She stopped for only a moment to loosen the handcuffs so that
I could fully experience her.

I fucked her several times that night,
unable to stop the twitching rise of my cock again and again.
Equally, her attentions did not wane. And right before the moon
set, when the gray expanse of dawn invades, my body did what I
feared: it began to stretch and rip into new proportions. The
muscles twisted grossly as they reshaped themselves underneath my
skin. My head pounded in agony as my skull thrashed against the
wall repeatedly in attempts to knock myself out to escape the pain.
I could not fathom the Change overtaking me; my mind came unhinged.
I cried tears of anger, laughed at my own distress. Finally, the
pain ended as I adjusted to my new skin.

But it was no use. I could now smell
the sex in the air as a pungent overthrow, hear my dorm mates
fucking down the next hall, the wet slap of skin on skin and the
moans. I could practically taste the density of the air. I flexed
my toes, watching the claws scrape the carpet, ran my long tongue
against the back of my teeth.

The professor stroked my head. “Now
you are beautiful, strong. Be proud, for you are Lycanti, and you
are mine. Forever.”

My memory rushed back with the
repetition of those words. Red washed over me. I would not be owned
by this woman who had done this to me! I hated her, hated myself,
hated tasting the sweat of strangers at the back of my throat. The
emotion drowned my senses and I could see nothing but
death.

Two minutes later, there lay a dead
Lycanthrope at my feet. Of course, I did not know what she was
then, but then again, I, a newborn Lycanti who knew nothing but I
had changed somehow, did not stop to think. Overcome by so much
blood in the air, I could not help myself. I savaged the body as if
I had not eaten in days, licking the blood from every surface and
devouring the meat and gristle with relish. The salty sweetness
blanketed my tongue. Sometime later during the feeding, another
wolf joined me. I know not where she came from. I barely
acknowledged the gray but willingly shared my kill. Her gleaming
green eyes mocked me as we ate.

After feeding, I fled. Everyone slept,
too hung over to listen for or watch for a huge wolf capering down
the halls. Thankfully, Luka had been attracted by the scent of
Lycanthrope blood, curious as to who had killed one of the Clan. If
not for him finding me at the edge of campus, I’d be dead, a bloody
carcass for some opportunist scavenger to find. As it was, the
revulsion of my actions shamed me. I had become a killer, a true
monster straight from my own nightmares.

Emily

I awoke that very night to shouting. I
immediately noted Will’s absence from the bed. My first thought
went to Brooke and her not-so-subtle threat about “knowing where
Will kept me.”

But a male voice argued with
Will’s—Luka? I crept to the back of the house to hear the muffled
shouts as words, leaning against the doorpost of the den. Will and
Luka argued on the back porch directly in front of me.

“You’re fucking insane, man,” Luka
yelled, his accent overwhelming. “How can you ask me to do this?
The Clan will hunt me. You know they do not allow Lycanti to take
human mates.”

Will mumbled something unintelligible,
but Luka felt no such restraints to keep quiet.

“I hope she fucking wakes up. Does she
even know what you have planned for her? The blood? Gods man, the
blood loss could kill her.” His voice dropped to speaking tone.
“What if I can’t save her in time? Or worse, what if she turns into
one of those mutant freaks? Then the Clan and the Children of Dacre
will hunt her for a different reason.”

“I trust you.” Will spoke evenly and
calmly.