Wild Ones (2 page)

Oh, well, I
thought as I kicked my shoes off and shut the door behind me. It
was probably best that he left. That way I wouldn't have to worry
about him trying to take advantage of my very vulnerable position.
Not that he would, though. I hadn't picked up and sleazy vibes from
him during the drive, and my sleaze-ometer was a finely honed
sensitive piece of equipment.

I wandered
through the cabin, noting a small kitchen, a larger bedroom, and a
gloriously functional bathroom, complete with a very modern looking
shower. I grinned at this unexpected luxury, and peeled off my
sweaty clothes and stepped under the blissfully hot water. I used
the soap and shampoo hanging from a rack in the shower to was the
dirt and sweat from my body, and then stood for a few minutes with
my arms extended, leaning against the wall as the hot jets
pummelled my skin. I groaned with the pleasure of it, and then
jumped at the sound of a deep masculine chuckle. I whirled around
to see a man standing just inside the bathroom with his bare feet
set slightly apart and his arms folded across his chest. He was
tall, with hair so dark it was almost blue-black, and piercing
green eyes beneath thick black brows and eyelashes. There was a
stark beauty about his features that unnerved me. Mind you, I was
already unnerved by the fact that I was naked in a shower in front
of a man I didn't know. I was also a bit put out by how he stared,
not self consciously like the very few men who had actually seen me
naked, but with a lazy appreciation.

"Please would
you pass me a towel," I asked as politely as I could under the
circumstances. He ignored my request and just stood there, waiting.
Great. I opened the door of the shower cubicle and stepped out,
meaning to grab the towel that hung from a nearby rail, but he
stepped forward, effectively blocking my access. I stood in front
of him, our bodies almost touching, and frowned up at him. His eyes
glinted as he looked down at me, and then he curled his left hand
around the back of my neck and leaned down to kiss me. I had been
in similar situations in the past (apart from the nakedness, of
course) and I knew exactly what to do. I let him kiss me, and when
his tongue forced my mouth open, I bit it. Hard.

He pulled back
with a curse, and his hand tightened around my neck. I glared up at
him defiantly.

"There's
no point fighting," he told me in a low velvety voice that
resonated low down in my belly. Not the most reassuring phrase I'd
ever heard. No point fighting
what
?

I pushed
against his chest with my hands, trying to put some space between
us. He was making me nervous as hell with his deep voice. Plus his
smell - pine, wood smoke and overpowering maleness.

He released my
neck and grabbed my wrists, pulling my arms behind my back. The
movement caused me to stumble against him and he groaned as my
breasts were crushed against his chest. Next thing he had lifted me
up and carried me to the bedroom and deposited me, protesting all
the way, on the king sized bed.

"Hush, Maddie,"
was all he said in response to my protests.

"How do you
know my name?" I demanded suspiciously, suddenly sidetracked. This
was getting stranger by the second.

"I've been
keeping an eye on you for a while now," he explained in that same
low voice as he pulled his shirt over his head. I was momentarily
distracted by the sight of a tanned muscular chest and a hard flat
abdomen.

"What?" Oh,
great, another stalker. I'd had two in the past, one of which had
been a weedy guy I'd said hello to when I bought milk, and the
second was still a mystery man who sent me suggestive letters
littered with spelling mistakes. I had a few suspects, but the
culprit remained elusive.

"How do you
spell buttocks?" I asked the stranger who was now removing his
jeans with disconcerting speed. He paused, startled, one leg in mid
air.

"B-u-t-t-o-c-k-s," he told me, grinning, as he stepped out of his
shorts. I frowned at him.

"So it's not
you then," I said pensively. What kind of person has three separate
stalkers? I wondered, not for the first time, what was wrong with
me. Then I remembered the now naked man looming over me, looking
puzzled.

"So are you
going to rape me now?" I asked him in a matter-of-fact voice. He
looked taken aback, and I felt a glimmer of satisfaction. Then he
tilted his head to one side.

"It won't be
rape, Madeleine," he purred.

"Definition of
rape: carnal knowledge of a woman without her consent. Technically
this is rape," I said, waving my hand about to indicate the current
situation. "No means no, buddy." If I had a dollar for every time
I'd said that.

"You haven't
said no yet," he grinned and before I could say anything else he
had leaned his body across mine, and pressed his mouth against my
lips. I bucked, trying to get him off me, but he shifted his
position so that he lay alongside me with one heavy leg across my
hips. His hands found my wrists again and he pulled them above my
head. I lay motionless for a while, and he lifted his head to look
down at me.

"No!" I shouted
at him. "Let me go!"

"Sorry,
Maddie," he said, lifting his body up on one elbow. I looked up at
the soft expression in his eyes and I felt a glimmer of hope. "I
guess it
will
be rape,
then."

And just like
that, my hope was shattered.

I tried to
fight him off at first, but he was simply too big and too strong.
He held me down with his weight and his hands and he used his mouth
to tease my skin until my body started responding. I shut my eyes
and tried to fight the excitement building in my lower belly as he
parted my thighs and buried his head between them. His tongue found
my clitoris with frightening ease and he teased and licked it while
I lay panting with the tension gripping my muscles. The unwanted
orgasm ripped through my body, and I lay there on that bed, my eyes
tight shut, hating him, but hating myself more for responding to
those relentless attentions.

His mouth
travelled up my body, licking and sucking and nipping, until his
hips lay over mine. I had clenched my thighs together as soon as he
had finished making me come, and I held them closed now as he tried
to nudge them apart with his knee.

"Open up,
Maddie," he whispered in my ear.

"Fuck off," I
told him through gritted teeth.

"Fuck indeed,"
he said, and his expression hardened. "Why are you fighting this? I
can feel how much your body wants me. It recognises me as its
mate."

"I do not," I
said. "Get off me, you raping bastard."

His expression
became even stonier, only his eyes conveying his rage, his mouth a
tight line. His hands tightened painfully around my wrists, and he
ground his knee into my thighs, forcing them apart. He settled his
pelvis between my legs, and used one hand to guide his cock into
me. I felt myself tear slightly as I resisted the penetration and I
flinched with pain.

"Stop fighting
it!" he almost roared with frustration. "I don't want to hurt
you."

"Then stop," I
pleaded. I could feel the tears running down my face, and I cursed
my weakness.

"I can't. If I
don't do this now, then you become fair game for the rest of the
pack, and that I cannot and will not have. You belong to me, sweet
Maddie, and I must claim you this night under Law or lose you
forever."

"Please stop,"
I begged, sobbing now.

"I'm sorry, my
love, I can't," he murmured as he buried his face in my neck, and
slowly forced himself the rest of the way inside me. I realised
then that any further resistance was just going to hurt, so I made
my body go limp and shut my eyes and tried to pretend that this
wasn't happening, but the sound of his pelvis slapping against my
thighs and the feel of him moving inside me made that impossible. I
concentrated instead on the image of me burying a knife deep in his
gut, and twisting it, and seeing the terrible pain etched on his
face and feeling the blood spurt over my hands. In my mind I
twisted it over and over, working my way down the skin of his belly
until he was almost eviscerated. It helped to pass the time.

Eventually I
felt his cock contracting as he came, shuddering against my
body.

My wrists were
released, and I used my hands to push his head away from mine.

"Get off," I
said tiredly.

"OK," he said
and I felt him withdraw, and his weight lifted off me. He stood up,
took my hands, and pulled me to my feet. I felt sick with rage and
frustration, and I refused to look at him, jerking my hands out of
his. I felt his semen dribbling down my inner thigh as I stood.

He twitched the
bedding back. "Lie down."

"No," I said
shortly.

"You need to
sleep, Maddie." He smiled ruefully down at me when I glanced up in
surprise. "I promise not to touch you for the rest of the
night."

"Yeah, and I
trust you completely," I said sarcastically. "Dickhead."

"I can't let
you leave, Maddie. You're mine now." He gazed down at me, his
expression harsh and forbidding. I stared back, taking in the size
of him and the muscles bulging under his skin, and I knew I didn't
have a hope of hell of fighting my way out of this. Play along,
Maddie, I told myself, inwardly seething.

I climbed into
the bed, reaching to pull the covers over me, when he put his hand
out and touched my thigh. I looked down at the hand and the thin
line of blood that had drawn his attention. "You said you wouldn't
touch me," I reminded him coldly.

"I'm so sorry,
Maddie," he said softly.

I drew the
covers around me and rolled over to face away from him. The lights
went off and I felt him lie down on the other side of the bed. I
lay awake until I heard his breathing become deep and regular. I
stood up then and dressed in my sweaty running clothes and went
into the kitchen for a glass of water. I rummaged through a few
drawers until I found a wickedly sharp filleting knife, which I
tucked into my right hand, lying the blade along my forearm. I
climbed back into the bed. I could tell from his breathing that my
exploration of his kitchen had woken him.

"I can smell
the knife," he said in the dark.

"Just
keeping you honest, buddy," I told him, wondering how the hell
anyone could smell a
knife
.
He'd probably deduced its presence, and was trying to be a
smartass, I thought darkly.

Eventually his
breathing slowed again. I waited about ten minutes until I heard a
couple of gentle snores, and then I sat up and looked at his
outline under the covers and plunged the knife deep into where I
judged his belly to be.

He shouted with
pain as I scuttled backwards off the bed and out of the bedroom. I
grabbed a coat I found hanging on a rack and picked up a set of
keys lying on a handy shelf, and I was out of that door and running
for the pickup parked in front of the house. I dove into the
drivers seat and shoved a key in the ignition and twisted it, and
the vehicle coughed once before the engine started. I flicked the
lights on and put it in reverse, and as I pulled away, I saw the
dark haired man leaning against the doorway, clutching his abdomen
and watching me steal his car. I opened the window and gave him a
cheery wave, and roared off into the night.

It was
pretty rough going over much of the track back up to Brown's Creek
Road, almost as if a grader had never seen this place. Fucking
hillbillies, I thought, even though I knew the man I had just
stabbed was no such thing. Too big, too pretty, too well spoken and
too well dressed. It was a late model Ford I drove with
concentration through the ruts of the dirt track and it was tidy
inside, and smelled clean. I reached the track where the bikers had
been ambushed and was surprised to see no evidence of their
existence anywhere. The bikes and the, uh, remains had disappeared.
Oh, well, I hadn't been planning on reporting any of this to the
authorities, especially as I had just added assault with a deadly
weapon and grand theft auto to my repertoire. I saw the gate with
the no trespassers sign up ahead and gunned the engine, adding
further charges of malicious damage of property and reckless
driving. I laughed out loud as the gate slammed open, and the
pickup lunged through and swung around onto the dirt road. My whole
being felt vibrant, enraged and triumphant and
alive
. I drove down into town, slowing as I
approached the perimeter.

I parked the
pickup a couple of blocks from my flat and used the sleeve of the
jacket I wore to wipe down all the surfaces I had touched. Then I
climbed out, locked the car, and walked barefoot back to my flat. I
glanced around at the sparse furnishings, and decided there and
then that I would be leaving for a few weeks, maybe even months. I
wasn't sure if the man I'd stabbed would live, and if he didn't I
could be in a heap of trouble. I had left that knife with all my
fingerprints buried to the hilt in his belly. Talk about your
smoking gun. I also didn't feel like explaining the extenuating
circumstances to the local police who would probably get some cheap
vicarious thrills and assume that I had been asking for it.

On the other
hand, if he survived, he was very likely going to be pissed off
with me, and he was a big scary guy, so making myself scarce seemed
to be my only viable option right now. I showered hastily,
scrubbing my skin, and dressed in jeans, t-shirt, trainers and an
olive green duffel coat. I packed an overnight bag with spare
undies, hair brush, toothbrush and toothpaste, a few more t-
shirts, and a spare pair of jeans. My eyes fell on the discarded
coat I had stolen during my escape, and I went through the pockets
and found a worn leather wallet with a drivers licence and over
five hundred dollars in cash. I hesitated for a few seconds, then
pocketed the money. The drivers licence told me the name of my
assailant-slash-victim. Cade Grantham.