Лорел Гамильтон - Incubus Dreams

“Alright, but if she bites my tongue off, I’m going to be pissed.”

And he pressed his lips against mine, but I didn’t try to bite him, because his mouth was full of blood and tasted of meat. I’d already started this meal, all I wanted to do was finish it.

My beast was right there, under my skin, only Nathaniel’s hold kept it peaceful. The taste of fresh blood, of meat, and the feel of Jason’s mouth on mine, brought the beast like heat against my skin. I could feel my body cooking with the heat of it, as if my skin was a container for something so much hotter than human flesh. Something that was almost there, almost ready, almost…

Nathaniel raised his mouth, and only his weight and Jason’s hands held me down. He whispered something against the wound in my neck, I think he said, “Now.” But I would never be sure, because in that moment my beast rose.

It rose up the line of my spine like heat. It spilled out my mouth and into Jason’s, in a scalding, burning wave of power. It tore his mouth off of mine, forced his head back in a scream, and Nathaniel’s body bowed on top of mine, and he screamed, too. My beast was like a sword thrust through both of them. I poured my energy into their bodies, until their bodies burst with it.

I saw Jason’s skin split, and I felt Nathaniel tremble above me.

One moment they were there, and the next I was drenched in liquid, warm, so warm, like being dipped in fresh blood, but it wasn’t blood.

It was clear and viscous-that fluid that the shapeshifters leave behind when they pull their bodies from one shape to another.

I was covered in it, dripping with it, and because Jason’s claws were still pinning my wrists, I couldn’t wipe it away from my face. I blinked at the wolfman kneeling in front of me. His fur was dry, like it always is, like magic. I stared into wolf eyes the color of early spring grass. His fur was thick and shades of pale gray. He opened a jaw that was longer than a human’s, and full of teeth that any wolf would envy. He ran an impossibly long tongue over those teeth and stared at me with eyes that held things that I’d only begun to guess at.

A claw curled into the wet sheets on one side, and that claw was a black-furred hand. I turned back and did that slow, horror-movie take, where you know what’s behind you, but you just can’t keep from looking. You have to look, even with the feel and press of fur against your naked body. I knew what I’d see, and still I turned and looked.

Nathaniel’s face was a strangely graceful mix of human and leopard. The face shape was closer to human than the werewolf’s, but when I met those gray-blue eyes, there was no one home to talk to.

I’d gotten rid of my beast by bringing theirs, and now I was suddenly covered in warm liquid that mimicked blood, with two freshly turned lycanthropes holding me down. Nathaniel put his furred hands against the bed on either side of me, and he flexed those hands, and claws like white knives sprang out from his fingertips. Just seeing them, lying there, unused, made my pulse speed just a little.

I knew they wouldn’t hurt me. I trusted them. But part of me trusted Jason and Nathaniel more than I trusted their beasts. I tried not to be afraid, because fear is like spice for their meat. Fear excites a lycanthrope, it just does. So I lay very still and tried to calm my heartbeat, tried to think how to ask them to let me go, without sounding like a victim.

Nathaniel moved his hands so that they lay on either side of my body, with the fur of his thumbs caressing my skin. My heartbeat didn’t like it. Neither did I. He flexed his hands again, and the claws vanished into the fur. He caressed that fur down the sides of my body, and that brush of warm, warm fur brought my breath in a shuddering line.

His voice was more growl than anything else, when he said, “I’ve never had hands before when I shifted.” He put those “hands” back on either side of my body, so close that the edge of the fur touched the sides of my breasts. He pointed the claws downward, and I felt his muscles flex against the side of my body. His hands were right next to my breasts, and I felt his claws grip into the bed. He began to pull those claws downward. The sheet ripped, but it was the sound of the mattress tearing that brought a sound like a whimper from my throat.

The mattress made a meaty sound, as his claws tore through it, easily.

He moved his body so that he could trace the outline of my body against the mattress and sheets. He carved the outline of me with his claws. And I couldn’t not be afraid.

Jason laughed, and strangely that masculine chuckle translated just fine through the wolf’s throat. The sound made me look at him. He flashed fangs as he said, “Don’t be afraid, Anita.”

“Then let me go,” I said, and my voice was nicely calm, barely a tremor. If they’d been human they wouldn’t have been able to taste my speeding pulse, or smell my fear. But they weren’t human.

Nathaniel collapsed his body on top of mine, and he was taller, broader, more muscled, or muscled in places he hadn’t been before. It was like a different body pressed against mine, one I’d never touched.

The fur was thinner on his chest, stomach, groin, but the skin was warmer, almost hot against my naked body, as if in this form his blood ran hotter.

He licked my shoulder, and a sound very like a small squeal came out of my mouth. I closed my eyes and concentrated on my breathing, just my breathing. Not on the feel of his body, or of Jason’s hands with their not-so-retractable claws tickling my wrists. I breathed, breathed while a tongue that was rougher than Nathaniel’s licked in long, thick sweeps across my shoulders and upper back.

When I opened my eyes again, my pulse was normal, and I realized that Nathaniel was cleaning off the clear goop that he and Jason had gotten on me. He growled next to my ear, “We got you messy.”

“Yeah,” I said, and my voice was a whisper.

He settled his hips against my thighs and did a small, powerful movement, somewhere between a wiggle and a push. He was suddenly resting against my ass, and I could feel that he was different there, too. Bigger, it felt like, but I might just have been scared.

Everything seems bigger when you feel threatened.

He made a sound by my face, sort of a snuff, not like he was sniffing me, but like it was a noise that I should have understood.

“You’re hungry. Hungry like we are. I can feel it.”

I fought to keep my pulse nice and normal, my breathing even. I wasn’t going to do anything to escalate this, not if I had a choice.

“I’m not hungry,” I said.

He leaned harder against me, sliding lower between my legs, not inside, but moving that way. The thought sped my pulse, I couldn’t help it. He rubbed his furred cheek against the side of my face. “You need a shower.”

“Okay,” I said. At that point I’d have agreed to anything that would get me on my feet and out from under the two of them.

“We’re not going to eat you, Anita,” Jason said. “If that was really an option Jean-Claude wouldn’t have trusted me with you, you should know that.”

I raised my face and met those wolfish eyes. “Sorry, but you guys going all tooth and claw on me, makes me wonder.”

“We won’t hurt you,” Jason said.

“Then let me go,” I said, and my voice was even, normal, my pulse slowing down.

“Not yet,” Nathaniel said, with his face still pressed against my face.

Jason looked at him. “Why not?” he asked, before I could.

“Because she still needs to feed theardeur. ”

I wouldn’t have thought that a wolf face could show that much incredulity, but Jason’s did. “Anita doesn’t do furry.”

The leopardman on my back moved his hips another fraction of an inch down. He pushed against me, not inside, but knocking at that most intimate of doors. “You are empty inside, I can feel it. I couldn’t feel it before.”