The Bid (15 page)

The clutch of muscles seizing around him was so unexpected and so powerful that Vejhon gasped out in shocked delight. Of course, he didn’t know better, so he tried to withdraw for a better stroke. The sucking draw of a muscular vice that refused to release him sent his blood pressure skyrocketing. The sensation was incredible, striking every key nerve at the head of his already overanxious erection, and rippling along the thick shaft only partially submerged in her body. Desperate to move, to stroke, to fuck, he tried to move again and again, only making her clutch all the tighter and quickly jerking him to the edge of orgasm.

“No. No no no no no,” he groaned. “Hanna, gods, don’t…I need…why?”

“Still,” she instructed breathlessly for the second time. He was so overwhelmed he hadn’t heard her the first time. “Keep still a moment. Just for a few seconds. Don’t struggle…oh baby please, don’t move.”

He wanted to listen, but he couldn’t seem to make himself keep still. In fact, the draw of her body had him completely enthralled. There was a kind of rhythmic sucking to it reminiscent of being drawn on by an eager mouth and hand. He was being pumped and he couldn’t break out of the pattern. Again…and again…he fought against her, yet moved in tempo to her at the same time. She was whispering, panting something to him. But his head was humming with the crescendo crashing up into him.

He came like a rocket, the orgasm ripping up through the pathways of his body with a burn that made him feel like he was shooting pure acid into her. But not really into her. He was seizing with pleasure, gripping at fabric beneath his hands violently as he bucked and ground out grunts of obvious satisfaction. He shuddered with the effort it took to handle the impact.

Then he finally drew a full breath and let all his weight drop over her. He felt the bath of his own cum drenching him as it ran out of her resisting body. Vejhon finally opened his eyes, fighting the screaming sensitivity to the light so he could look down into her face. Her expression was unreadable, as though she were being cautious to react, and he was suddenly embarrassed for his lack of control and selfish behavior.

“No. Don’t think that way,” she said, her voice so breathily sexy it made the hairs on the back of his neck prickle. “We have a lot to learn about one another. That takes practice.” She smiled in a way that knotted up his nervous system all over again. “I like practice.” She grinned and nudged up a brow lecherously. He laughed, unable to help himself.

For about five seconds.

Then everything came rushing back over him. Like a second orgasm, only not nearly as much fun and nowhere near as welcome. Pain. He was sliced up along his skin in a dozen or more places and in his furor and haste to have her he had pulled open every single wound. The hurt was intense and sharp and he couldn’t imagine how he’d been able to ignore it. Even for the sake of sex.

The smell of sex was definitely all over both of them now. He was breathing it in with every breath, the musk and sweetness of her body hotly combined with the testosterone and spice of his. He’d marked her thoroughly and everyone would know she was his.

The possessive and distracted thought was so unlike him that it snapped him out of the tangent and sent his attention back to other details. His demanding senses were settling, although they still seemed to blare at him in a too-loud cacophony of information. He noticed Hanna was simply watching him, as if she expected something from him. He lifted his weight onto his palms, groaning a bit when the movement jarred his injuries, and looked down at their connected bodies.

He was naked, she was not. Well, mostly not. He’d torn her dress up to her navel, the fascinating cobalt blue indentation of it making made him smile when he saw it. They were in his bed. The bedding…

…was saturated in blood.

He knew it by its smell, shocked he hadn’t noticed it before. He jerked away from her, scrambling back to see her in her entirety, searching for injuries.

“It’s yours, Jhon.”

His. Of course. The wounds. From what? He stared at the slashes across his sides and thighs, over his back, hips, and buttocks. His skin was smeared with blood everywhere, and so was hers.

Clean her
. The instinct to clean and care for her was instantaneous and unquestionable. Uncaring of his own wounds, he swung himself out of the bed and scooped her up after him. One step into the tub later, and he was stripping away her ruined dress and waiting for the soothing heat of the water to cover them. It stung as much as it eased, but it was for the best, he knew.

Gently, after arming himself with soap, he began his task of bathing her. He was meticulous, cleaning every spot he could find, even making her giggle softly as she patiently withstood his obsessive need to see her skin spotlessly free of his blood. Handling her with far more care than he had a few minutes ago in bed, he turned her around so he could see to her back, moving the thick braid of her hair forward over her shoulder. He drew in air quickly when he saw, to his unending fascination, that she had stunning spots of silver blue running along her shoulders and tapering down her spine all the way into the crease dividing her gorgeous backside. He traced the rosettes’ pattern, seeking texture differences and finding none.

“My turn,” she murmured over her shoulder before she turned back to face him. She made him sit back in the water, soothing him softly when he cursed at the stinging of his wounds. She found a bathing linen and chose a soap very carefully. Once she had soaped up the linen she slowly began to cleanse his every wound and all of his skin. The soap must have been medicated, because about halfway through he noticed a numbing effect and the scent reminded him of a kind of antiseptic.

“I don’t remember how I got hurt,” he mused absently.

“Do you remember meeting my family?”

Family? He would remember that, wouldn’t he? He’d been damn curious about them. Yet he had no recall. There wasn’t much making sense to him at the moment, besides the fact that she was starting to smell really appetizing again.

“Do you remember the special room? The one with the bellcats?”

“Oh hell yes,” he said, his body startling with surprise. “You said I was going to die. I thought you were feeding me to your pets.” He pulled back to stare at her, confusion furrowing his brow. “That’s how I got hurt.”

“That’s how you died,” she corrected. “Once my family approved of you, as I knew they would, they began to take you across to our world. You’ve come over to the Otherside now, Vejhon. You’ve become part of the family. Look…”

She touched his head and turned it until he was looking in the reflecting glass behind him. In amongst the scratches…the claw marks…was a pattern of spots just like hers, only his were a muted gold that almost matched his hair. He knew damn well he hadn’t had spots on his back before, and those sure as hell
were
claw marks all over his body. He’d been mauled by her cats. It looked like every single one had gotten a lick in. He whipped his head around and narrowed dangerously angry eyes on her.

“I’m a few chapters behind, cupcake. You want to explain all of this?”

“Yes. I wanted to explain it when you woke up but…” She trailed off, not needing to finish. He seemed to recall her asking him to wait. He also recalled the drive inside of him that had made him refuse to listen. Even now her draw on him was dynamic and really damned distracting.

Taking initiative, Hanna laid gentle, coaxing hands on his shoulders and made him rest back in the water. Her touch soothed, even as it stirred, but Jhon forced himself to focus on his need for information as opposed to the needs of his unusually hungry body. As she calmed him and continued to bathe him, Hanna spoke with full disclosure for the first time in a very long time with someone outside of Najir and the family.

“C
all it a blessing or call it a curse, but my family has carried it for hundreds of years. In fact, there was a time when many families were able to travel to the Otherside. The Otherside meaning the world of the beasts. A special world where we could live between here and there, as people or as beasts, trading from one to the other on command. Because of this skill, many people looked on my ancestors as gods. In time, that would change. A religious war targeted us as infidels and pretender gods. Though we are powerful, these fanatics hunted us to near extinction. This House is the only one to have survived with the ability mostly intact. When we go to the Otherside, we become the great and powerful bellcat.”

“Wait! Are you telling me that when you refer to meeting your family, you mean those
cats
?” Jhon was so aghast he hardly knew how to react. The concept she was proposing was preposterous…and not a little insane. “And ‘cats’ is too mild a term, Hanna, because they’re massive, lethal predators!”

Hanna didn’t blame him for his disbelief and took no insult in his descriptors. She realized she had such a long way to bring him yet. “After this genocide,” she continued, “in order to preserve our survivors, we left the jungles we once called home and became pretenders in the society of our destroyers. We hid in the safety of normalcy. If we use care, there are no outward signs of our heritage, except for the spotting down our backs which can be hidden under clothing or cosmetics if need be. In this way we began protecting ourselves; by gaining social status, power, and, unfortunately, with a great deal of inbreeding.

“Then the great apocalypse came and all but the strongest families of this nation were destroyed. Our ability to shift into the Otherside helped to protect some of us from that horrible time of cataclysm. Forty-four Houses survived in all, including ours, and each would earn a seat in what would become the Chamber of Masters and the beginning of a new world.

“Unfortunately, this meant our genetic pool became severely limited. Our need to stay hidden remained paramount, lest we be hunted again and destroyed, so breeding with outsiders was out of the question. Our numbers dwindled, and the ability to shift from the Otherside became limited.

“An example would be during breeding. Due to multiple fetuses, the risk forces females to spend all of their late pregnancy in the Otherside, living as our cat selves. When we give birth, we birth a litter of kits. In the past, even as little as a century ago, a few months after birth the kits would learn to shift out of the Otherside, becoming babies. These children would then have the power to become the cat at will for the rest of their lives.

“It’s believed that inbreeding is why our kits stopped becoming babies. It was a curse. They became trapped in the Otherside. Only the firstborn kit in a litter retained the ability to shift. The rest remained cats, with the intelligence of people, all their lives. There was only one exception. If the eldest of a litter met with death, it released the nextborn from the Otherside, and they would alter into the form of a person for the first time. Oh, it is a horrid curse, Jhon. The younger kits never know life out of the Otherside unless their sibling before them dies.”

The detail of her story was amazing to Jhon, and if it weren’t so wild it would be easy to believe those honest eyes of hers. “So you’re saying all those cats are your brothers and sisters, and you’ve never seen them?”

“I see them every day, Jhon,” she laughed softly. “I know and love them with all of my heart. They’re bright and funny, cranky and stubborn and all the things you expect your siblings to be. The only thing they cannot be is people. I spend a lot of time with them in both of my forms.”

“You mean you travel to the Otherside. As a bellcat.” He stated it, verbally searching it in a way that would help him to grasp it. Her nod of affirmation was unnecessary. Things, little details, started to filter out of his memory. The feline way she moved, the sounds she made, her speed and strength, her pointed nails, the spots along her back…it all fell into place. “That must be something to see,” he mused, the speculation a soft challenge.

“The feel of it is even more amazing,” she remarked with a small smile. “But Jhon, I need to explain your place in this story.” Hanna wanted to strangle him in a hug as he sat forward, his body language radiating full attentiveness even though she knew he felt doubt. “There seemed to be no cure for our genetic dysfunctions, although many in my family have pursued science and medicine in search of a solution. Meanwhile, cousins continued to wed cousins, and firstborns only knew their siblings as cats.

“Then, only a single generation ago, my mother, who was a firstborn kit, fell in love with an alien slave. He was tall and powerful, a warrior in his soul and by his trade.” Unable to help herself, Hanna began to touch the distinctive trademarks she numbered. “He was fair of hair and had eyes like a bellcat.” She settled her hand on his chest and frowned. “My family was infuriated and appalled at the idea of an outsider becoming a part of our covenant. It wasn’t even possible to breed with alien slaves, they thought. Not to mention the horrors of public disgrace and the illegalities of such a class crossing. You see, though we may breed with slaves here on PAN, we may not marry them or in any way elevate their status. My mother wanted to run away with her lover, to find a way to wed him. My grandfather, Master of this House and responsible for everyone’s well-being, saw no choice. He knew that the rash act she was plotting would expose the House to a public scrutiny it couldn’t afford. If she did this thing, their secret could be exposed, threatening them all to yet another act of genocide. The notorious narrow-mindedness of the PAN insured that.

“So, one night he tricked her slave into the room downstairs, setting all the members of the family on him. The slave knew my mother’s secrets, knew the creatures attacking him were his beloved’s sisters, brothers, and cousins, so he didn’t fight. He couldn’t bear the idea of hurting her by hurting them. So, he gave himself over to their will. They took mercy on him when they saw his nobility, each cat running a single paw through his flesh deep enough to allow him to bleed to death as quickly as possible.

“He died and my mother found him the following morning under watch of her family who’d committed the crime. Grief-stricken, she kept his body sealed away with her in her room, letting no one come near her for three days.” Here Hanna took a deep breath and made certain he would see the truth in her eyes by holding his gaze firmly. “On the third day, the slave opened his eyes and awoke, as if he’d only been sleeping the entire time. It couldn’t be explained. Everything was the same for him, and everything was different. He seemed to live, breathe, and bleed just as before, but he had also grown the spots of the family on his back. His senses became the high-powered senses of the bellcat. Eventually, he would even master the ability to shift to the Otherside.

“And as much of a miracle as that was? The day my mother and father consummated their mating while in the Otherside, my mother’s sister, the secondborn of her litter, suddenly shifted out of the Otherside for her first time. Don’t you see? They had found a new path to setting a kit free from the Otherside! It was a blessing no one could have anticipated. No one knew why or how it had happened, but it
had
happened!

“But, when they tried to repeat the act for my aunt using slaves from other worlds, they failed. Time and again, they failed. The slave would enter the room and once it died it remained dead. The magic would not repeat itself. It reached a point where my aunt refused to sacrifice any more lives, and the family agreed. My father’s shift to the Otherside, they felt, must have been a freak occurrence. Something was special about him that couldn’t be duplicated. Or perhaps…the sheer power of their love had been the cause.

“My aunt was murdered in the Feuds a few years later,” Hanna said, the contempt in her voice a very familiar song to Jhon. “The instant of her death, my uncle came out of the Otherside and into this one. By the time the Chamber of Masters passed down a moratorium on all feuding, the damage was done. Now there were no more cousins to marry. You see, while we can copulate in both forms, we can only conceive as people. The family trapped in the Otherside cannot reproduce. Only those who could shift could conceive. My father and mother had become the final breeding pair.

“Until the day my uncle attended a slave auction. Our family never cared for the practice of flesh peddling after my father became my mother’s mate. It just happened that my uncle was with friends and he attended with them. There he saw a beautiful blonde warrior dragged out onto the stage. She was proud and powerful, fair of skin and hair, and had the eyes of a bellcat.” Hanna smiled whimsically, affection filling the retelling of a story she had no doubt been told many times as she’d grown up. “He claims he fell in love that very instant. He didn’t even have the patience to haggle over her. He stood up, offered an exorbitant sum no one would counter, and took her home. He gained her trust and affection, but he was forbidden to tell her his family secret. Yet, he had to convince her to put her life in his hands. He also had to convince
himself
to risk the life of the woman he had grown to love. He could have her, but she would be barren because she was not one of us, and he would be consigning his brother, the last kit, to a life locked in the Otherside.

“So, like before, he brought her to the family and she gave herself trustingly as the cats each made their mark. She died for three days, and when she awoke, she was part of the Otherside. And again, the instant they consummated their love on the Otherside, his brother was finally able to cross, living as a person for the first time.

“My parents are dead now, but my uncles are both mated. They spend time between here and our House in the country places. The isolation of the country allows them to live more freely as families. It allows them to forget their wives are slaves. To wed a slave is considered an abomination, Vejhon, but this family will break those laws for the sake of our loved ones, although it must be done in private only. Slaves do not exist in this House, except in the minds of others looking in. Appearances only. Otherwise, we are all equals. I told you I could give you freedom….”

“As well as you were able,” he finished for her. He sat there silently and thinking for a moment, studying her. “There were at least nine cats in that room. That can’t possibly all be from a single litter.”

“No,” she chuckled softly. “I was my parents’ firstborn kit from her first litter. My mother had two other litters besides mine. Four kits in each. I have a firstborn sister and brother who shift freely between worlds. We had hoped that kits from a better mixed genetic pool would be free to walk between the worlds, but I’m afraid it may take a few generations to undo the damage done. At the moment, the only way to free this family is through aliens like you, Jhon.”

“Like me…” Vejhon’s eyes, so much more like a cat’s than ever now, narrowed as he considered her words. It only took a moment for his entire countenance to shift into a dark wall of fury, and Hanna felt her heart seize with dismay. She tasted fear as she faced the possibility of his rejection, of his contempt for what she had led him into. It had been a part of the risk, but she’d had little choice. She’d needed him so very badly, for so many reasons.

Vejhon seized hold of her upper arms and surged to his feet. The violence was leashed, but it was like containing a deadly storm inside of a spider’s web. Any minute it would burst free to destroy her.

“Like me…” he hissed, drawing her up until they were face to face. “And like Najir?” he demanded roughly. “Is he yours? Am I intended for someone else? If so, why would you let me think…?
Why would you let me touch you
?” Vejhon was in a physical agony that had nothing to do with his wounds. Everything inside the center of his body was contorting with horrible pain. She’d asked him to stop and wait, over and over, and he hadn’t heeded her. Was he meant for her sister? A cousin maybe? “No. No! I won’t give you up! You’re mine, do you hear me? I made you mine!”

In an instant Hanna found herself out of the tub and on her back, water pouring off her body and into the thick carpet beneath her. Before she could draw breath, he was over her, his body covering her completely as he pushed her knees apart and settled himself intimately between her thighs.

“I did it wrong, didn’t I?” he asked in a coarse and frantic whisper, brushing the words across her ear. “I didn’t know your body, and I wasn’t prepared for that sweet trap you set for me. I can make it different. I can make it better. I can make you mine.”

Hanna knew he didn’t realize it, but he had begun to growl beneath his words. He felt threatened, felt his spoils were in danger of being stolen from him. His instinct now was to mark her again, deeper and more thoroughly than before. The idea gave her a little thrill and made her shiver, but she couldn’t let him upset himself due to a misconception.

“I am yours, Jhon,” she assured him against his ear to be certain he heard her through the haze of his new animal instincts. “No one else’s. Najir is not one of us. He’s not from the Otherside.”

Vejhon stilled, his thundering heartbeat rushing in his ears. He stared down at her and said numbly, “You bought him. He’s a slave. You said you don’t keep slaves. And he knows. I can see that he knows of the Otherside.”

“I bought him,” she acknowledged. “It was my first auction and I couldn’t stomach what they did to him…and what I knew his future would hold. I admit, I thought he was perfect for the transformation, but there were flaws and we never attempted transition.”

“Flaws?”

“His eyes, for one. The auctioneer had doctored the color using an injection, but they altered back within days. It turns out we make better companions than we would mates anyway. We love each other a great deal, but we both feel something is missing.”