The Bid (19 page)

“Hard. Fast!”

He heard her demand somehow, but it didn’t matter because he was already way ahead of her. He withdrew and began a plunging cadence into her that immediately took on a force of its own. She braced against him, but eventually her knees came up off the floor with each connecting crash of their bodies. He was so thick and full inside of her and she felt like she was going to burst apart. The position neglected both of her sensitive clits, but as he neared climax he reached for her. He needn’t have bothered. She felt his orgasm rushing up on him and the pitch he took into her body combined with his frenetic pace set her shaking.

She came because he did, because they were connected like that now. She moaned in deep, long coughs of pleasure as fire raced through his body and jetted into hers. She heard him roar, the primitive sound all cat as it echoed off the walls of the empty room. She wanted to answer, but she could hardly keep a breath or stay steady. At least she stayed conscious. At least this way she could feel him gathering her close and rolling over until she was sprawled over him as he lay back along the floor. Her dress shimmied halfway down her body and he smoothed it over her backside in assistance.

“The damn door is open,” he groused when she queried him with a lifted brow of amusement.

“
Now
you’re worried about that?”

“
Now
I realize it,” he countered with a chuckle. “I was distracted right up ‘til then.”

“Mmm,” she agreed with a pleased sigh as she nestled her cheek against his chest. “People rarely come up here. My offices are here and the storerooms. I come to this room to think or calm down when I am peeved. It helps to see the size of the city, to see what I am partly responsible for.”

“Why put that pressure on yourself?”

“Because it’s true. The votes I cast in the Chamber of Masters change people’s lives, sometimes for generations. Hopefully for the better, but I have seen what badly conceived laws can do, and how hard it is to get them reversed after the fact. Every last one of the Masters should feel that pressure, but I know they don’t. So many look on it as a boring duty of their station they are forced to attend to. Between them and the ones who would abuse the power given them, those who take these matters most seriously are double burdened. When I look out there, I have to be certain I see everything.”

“The big picture.”

“Yes.”

“Tell me something?”

“Sure.”

“What did Asha do specifically that has you so upset with her?”

Hanna sighed the weary sigh of a much-put-upon guardian. “She instigated a fight. She was out with friends, crossed paths with a rival House, and broke the laws of the Feud moratorium. Frankly, she is lucky I am the one who banished her. An act of feuding can get the entire House banished from the cities for fifty years. However, in this case, she was a lone female facing down six males. She beat the hell out of them, so you can imagine they didn’t want to press charges and announce the fact to the world.”

“Of course not,” he chuckled, very familiar with the male ego.

“But the worst part about what she did was that she showed off her speed and agility. She accessed her cat to draw out the savagery she needed and the extraordinary strength she used. Jhon, she might as well have shifted into the Otherside right there in public.”

“I can see why that would upset you.”

“The only saving grace sometimes is that we in this House remember the massacre of our people far easier than anyone else does. The Apocalypse took care of that, really. We are now just a vague reference in the history books, not even worth a lesson in the city schools.”

“Then why so much fear, Hanna? Why would anyone ever connect a young woman who fights like a demon with a race of beings long thought extinct, if they are even thought of at all? It is far more likely they think your House trains for all eventualities, especially when the Feuds are, from what I am gathering, so recently ended.”

“Eight years past,” she agreed. “And I know you are right, Jhon. But so am I. Erring on the side of caution cannot hurt, but carelessness can.”

“I realize that.” But Jhon couldn’t help but think of all that her family had given up in the process. They no longer lived in the jungle homes that protected them, no longer lived with the wild things, and were forced to live side by side with a society they feared every minute instead of living and running free. Even their right to live in the world of people had, in essence, been taken from them, because of their fear of being hunted. Perhaps if they had remained hidden in their original homes after the massacres, they would not have lost the ability to shift out of the Otherside.

Fear had its place, but what she spoke of was paralysis. Any warrior who froze in fear was as good as dead in the end.

“I think,” he said instead, “it’s time you showed me what you look like as you change to the Otherside.”

She lifted her head and laughed. “I think it’s high time I tended these wounds. Then we can go play with my brothers and sisters.”

Jhon made a face. “I’m not sure I want to. Playing with them is how I got like this in the first place. And might I say they don’t exactly play fair. Some of those cats are almost twice as big as I am. Nine to one was extremely unfair.”

“Come on,” she laughed as she climbed off of him and offered her hand down to him. “Get dressed before I start to ravish you again.”

Vejhon paused in rising to his feet, seeming to think about that possibility.

“Forget it. Not until after you get bandaged up,” she laughed.

“You had three days to do it,” he groused. “You could have done it then.”

“We do nothing different than the way it happened the first time for fear of altering the process. You came awake and for that I am very glad.”

“That makes two of us.”

J
hon had no idea what he had been expecting really, but it wasn’t what he saw. He stood in the rear gardens, the area Hanna liked to call “the enclosure.” There wasn’t very much enclosed about it. It was a run that started in the enormous family room in the House, passed through a large conservatory with a perfect replication of a humid, tropical atmosphere, and then opened up into acres of free-growing gardens. The grasses, shallows, and brush in this area grew thickly and without rule, since no gardeners were allowed to tame it in any way. This was where Hanna’s family ran free, or as free as they could with eventual walls to cage them.

To the guards and the neighbors, Hanna had the most exotic collection of wild bellcats anyone had ever dared to gather as pets. It was considered one of those fashionable eccentricities of the rich. Hanna had amused Jhon with stories of other Houses trying to imitate her collection, only to find themselves in over their heads and asking Hanna to take the creatures off their hands. In those instances she would ship the animals back to the wild. She was saddened enough by her family’s captivity. She would hardly wish to perpetuate it against wild things.

Jhon enjoyed the open air and wildness of these gardens. He stood with two large cats on either side of him, both females and both leaning their heavily heated bodies against his legs. Felina and Sylvi. Hanna’s sisters. Felina had a darker gold coat, the shaggy length of it spotted with streaks of beige and rosettes of tan. The texture was as soft as clouds. Sylvi was covered in gold and white fur, but hers was short and close to her lithe, light skeletal structure and felt like the dense bristles of a good brush. Sylvi was a light and spry smaller cat, made for the chase and the ability to run her prey to the ground, unlike Felina, who was muscular and heavy, made for the hunt and battle.

But as unique as all that was in its own right, none of it compared to the amazing sight of Hanna shifting into the Otherside. She had come out amongst her crowding family, speaking to them as if they had actual points to make to her. When he questioned that she laughed at him.

“Of course I can,” she had laughed, patting him on the shoulder as if it were a silly concept that she couldn’t talk to her own family…and he supposed it was. “Soon you will figure out how to do it as well. We can sense thoughts with power behind them. It’s easier among family and animals, but with people, too. A highly emotional thought will radiate like…like a marquee. It announces itself.”

“You can read my mind?”

“Better now than before, but not like a book or conversation tool. Only things you focus and project, or project with emotions like shock, delight, or fury. You act like a burst transmitter, and if I’m awake and focused, I should catch it.”

“Good to know, really. I think we need to go over all of these new details a little more thoroughly.”

“Ideally, that was exactly my plan. However, you are the one who keeps injecting sex and lust into the whole thing, messing up my good intentions.” She’d grinned when he had growled softly in agreement.

After hearing how hard it was for her family to move freely through the shift, he had expected Hanna’s shift to be difficult and maybe even traumatic. Instead, she had simply found an open space in the family room, taken a power step or two for a push off, and then leaped forward with arms outstretched through the air. As if she was trying to launch herself into flight, actually. But as she hit the arc of her jump a golden line of light appeared at the tips of her fingers and widened rapidly to accept the size of her body as it passed through.

Except when she came out on the other side of the light just as fast as she went into it, she wasn’t Hanna the woman any longer. Appearing front paws first, finishing her leap, was a sleek gold and black coated cat with stunning outset eyes of bellcat green. Left behind to fall to the floor, as if it had all suddenly fallen from her body, was her silky brown gown and the jeweled clasps she used to bind her hair.

Astounded by how fast and easy the change appeared to be, and by the nature of the rift she had seemed to pass instantly in and out of, Vejhon had crouched to touch the dress for a moment. Hanna grew quickly bored with his examination, though, and she’d let him know with a head butt in his side powerful enough to knock him over. She was changed now and she wanted to romp and show off. And frankly, he had wanted to watch.

So they were in the gardens. Hanna was playing with her brothers and sisters in some sort of game of bellcat tag that involved a lot of chasing and sudden tackles. They ran full bore after each other, and then into each other, tumbling over the ground. He noticed the males would get into scuffles sometimes, asserting dominance.

Hanna was truly beautiful as a cat. That gold-black fur coat accentuated her muscular body with gleams of light and shadow. Then, if she rolled over, golden rosettes spotted her underside and were just blended enough into the black that you couldn’t see them unless she went belly up. Jhon had no doubt it was Hanna. Her eyes were exactly the same, sharp and honest and full of that thoughtful intelligence. Her claws were tipped with her favored polish, a detail that made him chuckle. What really fascinated was the long sweep of her tail and the way it always found a place tucked or curled around her when she sat, an act of refined elegance…and how much it reminded him of how neatly she kept her hair against her body.

He figured he now understood why they called it the Otherside. They entered into some sort of dimensional gateway and came out on the other side transformed. The concept intrigued him and he looked forward to learning how to make that passage himself. He wanted to know what it felt like, what it looked like, from the perspective of one who changed. Again, his curiosity reared up voraciously as he tried to think of what could possibly allow this family to make that passage, and why some of them could not. Hanna claimed it was an issue of inbreeding and genetics, and maybe it was, but it almost seemed too select, too purposeful to Vejhon. It was as though they were being denied permission to use the shift until a certain condition was satisfied. Like the taking of a mate outside of the family who could be brought over to the Otherside.

And what made his type able to be transformed and no other? Was it the physical details, or was it because he came from Wite? Was there something genetic within him that allowed his body to make this drastic change? Hanna said he had died, and he had no doubt he’d come close to it with those wounds, but what if it were more like…a coma? Or a metamorphosis state? It was clear by the functions of his body and the fact that he bled that he wasn’t dead. If nothing else, he thought with a grin, his sexual appetite alone proved he wasn’t dead.

All this intrigued him. He’d never had a penchant for anything but soldiering, and he’d loved what he did for a living, but what he was seeing here was enough to make him want to devote total time and energy into learning everything he could about it. There had to be explanations. He knew others in her family—maybe even Hanna herself—had probably tried to learn them, but he also felt his was a unique perspective. He was practical and partial to logical points that didn’t have fear or the dire love of a family attached. Nor did he have the reverence of over a millennium of heritage when he watched the change Hanna had made. She did. They all did. No doubt they all knew every story, every ounce of awed history attached to their long-lived line. Their fight for survival had imbedded it in them.

He would have no such partiality, no such prejudice. And while he was no scientist, he was a tactician. He knew purposeful maneuvering when he saw it, and the Otherside was being very purposeful in its manipulation of her family…as though it in itself were a consciousness in control of them.

Hanna ran toward him, the muscles of her fierce and powerful physique rippling all along her big body. When she opened her mouth he saw the pink of her tongue settled behind enormous canines and rows of equally intimidating teeth. One bite into someone’s neck and those long, ivory teeth would puncture all major arteries on both sides. One strong shake of powerful neck and body muscles and the cat could disconnect a victim’s head right from its spine.

Jhon could appreciate why control and discipline were necessary.

Hanna leaped at him through the air and, just when he thought he was going to end up with a few new scratches, she hit the top of her arc and the golden white light flashed blindingly, spitting her out in the form he was more used to. She landed against him and toppled him to the ground, but he was little worse for wear. So Jhon found his arms full of a naked blue-limbed beauty, her loose hair tumbling all over him and her bright eyes laughing down at him.

“Isn’t it wonderful?” she declared with delight. She scrambled up onto her knees and, straddling the width of his chest, threw her arms up toward the bright sky and breathed deep. “It’s so freeing to be the whole cat,” she confided. “I go through every day with half the cat inside me, seeing and feeling and listening to everything, even reacting a little with those instincts, but when you become the bellcat…oh, I can’t wait for you to see for yourself!”

“Neither can I,” he agreed.

Najir stood back and watched as his beautiful Master moved with steady ease through the Chamber of Masters, selecting whom she wanted to speak with very carefully and with obvious sincerity of emotion and objective. He always liked watching her work. She was so passionate about her causes and used her power and influence with the greatest of care and skill.

But Najir also kept his eyes in a few other places.

Leaning slightly to his right and keeping his voice low, he imparted information to Vejhon, who was attending with them for the first time. “There is the Baron,” he pointed out softly, knowing Jhon would follow his eyes easily.

“The one who almost bought me,” Jhon mused.

“The worst enemy our House has,” Najir corrected. “This man killed my Lady’s parents with his own hands. What’s more, he did it the eve before the passing of the Feud moratorium. He had several Masters assassinated who were going to vote for the sanctions, but he took personal pleasure in slaughtering my Lady’s mother and her favorite slave…my Lady’s father. The vote passed anyway because those like my Lady took up their parents’ mantles immediately, putting aside their mourning to see it get done.”

“She is a courageous woman,” Vejhon agreed softly, consciously uncurling his fists as he thought of the pain she must have suffered at the Baron’s hands. “Her enemy is my enemy,” he murmured. “Why has no one punished him for his crimes if you all know of them?”

“It was part of the moratorium law. All acts before the moment of that law’s passing were to be pardoned by all people. It only put in place punishments for future transgressions. The Baron knew that he would win either way the vote went, in a sense, so he simply enjoyed himself trying to swing it his way.”

“Sick bastard.”

“Exactly. And that merely scratches the surface. But he is not the only one to have a care for. Master Deyadou, there in pink, is infamous for his tantrums if he loses a vote that is important to him. Master Curro, with the russet hair, likes to buy votes, favors, and illegal things like the services of slipknives…assassins…and anything that will improve the wealth in his coffers. Master Gernat has a penchant for kidnapping slaves for either his own uses or ransoming. He’s not the only one, but he is the best at it.”

“Thus your advice to always watch my back,” Jhon recalled grimly.

“Your newness makes you a target because you are most likely to want to ‘run away,’ but your size will discourage as well. You wouldn’t be easy to take and transport without witnesses.”

“It’s like watching her walk through a damn minefield,” Vejhon said with gruff concern as his eyes swept the room and tried to follow Hanna at the same time. “That one, in yellow with the strange hair and darker blue skin: I don’t like the looks of him.”

“Mmm.” Najir tried to press the smile from his lips for a moment. “That is Master Fardes, and he craves my Lady greatly. Since she is unmarried, he thinks he might get her to become his wife one day. So he plots and plans and watches her with covetous eyes. And he isn’t the only one. Our Lady is considered quite beautiful among her people. Her wealth is an attractive asset. And then there is her power.”

“Tough luck for them. She’s taken.” Vejhon growled low through his teeth. Then Jhon recalled whom he was speaking with and he stiffened in discomfort. He wasn’t the sort to gloat in the face of another man, and he and Najir had developed a careful sort of friendship as the more experienced slave taught Jhon how to be a slave without being a slave.

Najir saw his discomfort and raised a hand to dismiss the matter. “You should be proud. And you must be protective of her. Take your glory in the prize you have earned, Jhon. She is one of a kind and needs someone who treasures that with voracity. The insult would be to take her for granted.”

“To be truthful, I do not feel that I have earned anything. Fate and fortune played strange hands and luck alone landed me here. I do very little for her, and she provides everything for me. I am kept without earning my keep.”

“An idea that chafes at men like us,” Najir agreed understandingly. “But give it time. My Lady leans on others a great deal in times of trial and we are all that supports her. Our strength and advice move her to make the daring strides she takes. Your value goes well beyond playing courtesan and stud. Believe me.”

“You know, if we weren’t in public right now I think I’d belt you for that remark.”

Najir chuckled. “I’m certain you would. I meant no insult. I merely know how you feel, is all.” He leaned closer. “Jhon, pray she never has serious use of your other talents. That would mean she was in danger, and with her brother missing…that will mean Ashanna becomes Master. Asha is spoiled and selfish, like many of these others. She is not ready to be here.”

Jhon knew it was very true. Over the past days he had encountered Asha far more often than he had wanted to. The young woman was shameless in her behaviors and her appetites. When she wasn’t out catting around, she was constantly trying to catch Jhon and, he suspected, Najir alone so she could try out her charms on them. Najir was free to do what he liked as Jhon understood it, although he didn’t think he’d quite gone so far as to bed the chit yet. However,
he
was not free and she knew it. She was purposely trying to bait him to provoke her sister’s jealousies, though to what purpose he couldn’t quite figure out. Was it a heavy-duty case of sibling rivalry? What was fascinating about it was that Vejhon couldn’t be less interested in the minx if he tried. Now, he’d never been a one-woman guy before, never even having had a real relationship, but with Hanna…