Lone Wolf (Shifters' World 1) (2 page)

Now, they sat on a rocky ledge by where the spring emerged
from a crack in the ground. Rock against their backs, it was a relatively safe
vantage point with a good view of the pool.

“So how long have you been in these parts?”

She shrugged. All the days blurred into one, a repeated
cycle of get through the day, get through the night, start all over again.

“Anyone else about here?”

Another shrug. “Not in a long time,” she said. “Apart from
the wildlife.”

A wry grin from him, at that. “I hadn’t seen much sign of
wildlife about here,” he said. “So I guess I dropped my guard a little. Me, I’m
just passing through. On my way from someplace worse in the hope that I’ll find
me some place better.”

“You got a destination in mind?”

He shook his head. “Just not there,” he said softly, and
left it at that for a time.

Then, unprompted, he said, “I was in a camp for a time. Too
many sick people for my liking, though. If you don’t go to a refugee camp with
an illness, you’re sure to pick one up.”

An illness. One of the plagues. The viruses.

“You get ill?”

His silence was answer enough, and she couldn’t help but
feel herself shrinking away.

All this time, she’d stayed clean, and now...

“It’s okay,” he said, in response. “It was a time ago and I
ain’t dangerous.”

“How do you know?”

“You know. I seen it often enough at the camp. There’s sick
and then there’s...
that
.”

“The changing plagues?”

He nodded, then said, “They say it isn’t a natural thing.
They say it wasn’t always this way, but then who can remember much, our heads
are so screwed up...”

“How do you mean, ‘not natural’?”

“The plagues. I got in with the medics at the camp. They
remember some. They remember coming in from outside to help clean up and then
things got worse and they were abandoned. They say outside is just as bad as
here now, that there’s nowhere safe from the plagues and they’d been fools to
ever think it all could be contained.”

His words made sense of some of the jumble in her head. It
seemed right that there had been a
before
and that there had been an
outside
.
That humankind had clung onto the hope that these plagues they had unleashed on
themselves in their petty little conflicts could be contained. That...

“This is all there is now?”

She didn’t know when it had changed but she realized that
this stranger was in danger of becoming something else now. If he was the last
man on Earth, then she could have done a lot worse.

She pulled herself up. There was a reason why she sat a
little apart from him, the handgun still cradled in her lap. While his story
made sense, there was nothing in his words that should make her trust him.

“How do I know you’re not one of them?” she said, twitching
the gun to remind him of its existence.

“Same as I know you’re not,” he said.

“And how’s that?”

“Animal instinct,” he said, with a sudden, brief smile.

§

“So?”

They’d talked for what seemed like much of the day. About their
world, about the things they knew about how to get by, about Outside and
Before, and what little they could remember. “I think we’ve all been ill,” he
had said. “All of us damaged to some degree or another, not just the beasts,
the changers.”

And now, he looked at her, an eyebrow raised, and waited for
an answer to his question.

One word.
So?

Where to from here? Join forces or go their separate ways,
her to her ruined home and him to his journey to who knew where?

She looked at him, and saw the gap there had been in her
existence before today. She didn’t know if it was something about him, or just
that he was here, convenient, reminding her of what had been missing.

She reached for him, buried her fingers in that shaggy black
hair, and pulled him towards her, pausing as their faces were almost pressing
together. His eyes were blue, with dark flecks, bright islands in a face dark
with beard and shaggy eyebrows.

His mouth was hard, his lips dry, the taste bad like hers
had been this morning. She kissed him hungrily, and their tastes merged until
they were one.

He twisted, tried to swing his legs round and then she
pushed him back down onto the rocky floor, her knees catching the hard surface
painfully as she kneeled astride him.

One hand still in his hair, she ran the other one down over
his chest, knuckles dragging through coarse body hair until her thumb found the
hard stub of a nipple and started to flick at it with the nail, making his back
arch and his pelvis thrust upwards, sharply, in response.

She could feel him growing hard against her now and she
ground down onto him, sending sharp bursts of pleasure shooting through her
body.

His arms around her pulled her hard against him, squashing
her breasts against that hard chest, and then he was pulling at her top,
tugging it free and over her head until her skin was against his, her hard
nipples thrilling at the touch of his body.

He pushed up then, scooping her into his arms and flipping
her, so that her back was suddenly against that rocky floor and she was pushing
up against him, his face buried at her breasts, tongue and teeth licking and
scraping across her skin.

Hands free, she fumbled at his waist, freeing his pants,
reaching inside.

Damn, but that shaft was fat! She pulled his dick upright,
so that most of its length was free of his pants and then she started to grind
the heel of her hand against him, making him gasp aloud and throw his head back
in ecstasy.

Curling her fingers around him, she started to pull and
twist, the skin gliding over its hard core, and its wetness sliding against the
soft skin of her wrist.

He pulled away, kneeling between her legs and surveying her,
and suddenly he had an animal look about him, something wild. She knew she
should listen to her instincts, that right now she should be reaching for that
handgun and putting it to good use.

Instead, she reached down and untied the cord at her waist,
grunting – in fear? excitement? – as he swiped her hands aside, took hold of
her jeans and pulled them free, exposing her to his hungry gaze.

Now, with his own pants around his thighs, he lowered
himself slowly until the swollen head of his manhood came to press against her
wet opening.

She pushed up, impatient, hungry for him, and she felt that
first, delicious pressure as he opened her up, entered her, and then he was the
one doing the pushing as he drove his length into her, filling her until she
thought she could take no more and then pushing yet deeper into the pit of her
being.

As deep as he could go, his pelvic bone pressed hard against
her clit, he started to roll his hips, staying deep inside her, using his wiry
strength to play her with his body as he rested on his elbows, gazing down at
her.

And then he dropped his head, dragging his teeth across the
side of her neck, a delicious mix of hard, sharp teeth, tongue and coarse
beard. His hands clamping her wrists above her head, she was completely
overpowered now as he started to thrust; long, hard strokes as he pulled back
and then slammed into her, each impact sending shudders of incredible pleasure
through her body.

Each time he thrust, she pushed up to meet him, reveling in
that mixture of wetness and hardness, in that sense of being totally possessed.

Just when she thought it could get no more intense, he
started to thrust faster, hips going like a piston and she felt on fire, about
to explode, to erupt...

When she thought she could take no more his whole body went
rigid and there was a sudden wet rushing sensation deep in her belly. He held
himself deep, not moving, and suddenly all she could feel was the pulsing of
his long dick inside her as wave after wave of orgasm took him.

That sudden focus on the slightest of sensations took her
over, too. The wet heat in her belly, those slight movements of his shaft
inside her, the hard weight of his body bearing down, pressing her into the
unyielding rocky floor...

Her belly tightened, then her entire body, as she clamped
around his softening manhood. This was the explosion, the eruption, this was
when her body, briefly, felt as liquid as the sound of the spring letting
itself out into the pool, when all dissolved and then came back together again,
and when she realized there was the taste of blood in her mouth from where she
had bitten down onto her own lip in the throes of orgasm.

And then there was that long, delicious subsidence, as their
two bodies relaxed against each other, into each other, and a kiss that had
been wild and intense was now the tenderest, sweetest thing.

§

She took him back to her ruined home as dusk stretched its
lazy way across the forest.

Somewhere out in the wilds, a beast howled and was answered
by another from across the valley.

“It’s not much,” she said, indicating the broken walls, “but
they’re not climbers. Not at night.” Not at night when they were on all fours.

She eyed him carefully, then. She would keep the gun close
to hand, just to be sure. Despite what they had shared, who knew just what kind
of person he might be, beast or human?

They ate strips of dried meat he produced from his pack; he
didn’t seem to mind that she had nothing to offer in return, other than board
and a share of the blankets she’d spread on a bracken bed in a corner of the
building’s one intact room.

After an afternoon of talking, their words had run out. She
was fine with this. Her throat hurt from all the talking, and so without a
further word between them they lowered themselves onto the rough bed.

She was in control now. This was her place. Her territory.

She kneeled between his legs and took him in both hands,
feeling him grow hard in her grip and then, when he was full, she started to
pull along his length, twisting as she did so and then sliding the palm of a
hand across the wet head of his dick when she reached the end.

Lowering her head, she started to lick at his balls,
fascinated by their movement, and how that changed as his sac tightened and
then relaxed. Taking one ball into her mouth prompted a sharp gasp, the feel of
her teeth another.

And all the time, never relenting, her hands worked his
length, steady and sure, pulling and twisting and sliding.

Releasing his balls, her long tongue flicked downwards,
running lightly across his sac and down to the sensitive skin just beyond.
Teasing him there with the tip of her tongue, she started to pump harder with
those hands and now his body writhed and twisted from side to side, until he
could take it no more and hot wetness jetted from him, across her hands and up
over his belly and ribs.

Still licking, she slowed, her touch becoming firmer, more
languorous and then moving up to lap along the length of his shaft as it began
to ebb.

Taking him briefly in her mouth there was a salty wetness, a
delicious softening, and then she licked up his belly, following lines of
slippery semen through that coarse body hair. Up over his ribs, a flick at the
hard stub of a nipple, and then the hardness of his mouth, a brief, dry
pressing of lips and then he was away, sleeping the way only a man can sleep.

§

She settled back on her haunches, hungry for more from the
sleeping man. But no... she couldn’t stay. She knew the signs, knew when the
thing she could normally keep under control had become too much and she could
contain it no more.

She rose, stretched and it was as if every joint in her body
popped.

There was a darkness in her vision now, and she knew she
must leave. Turn. Flee.

They weren’t climbers. Not in the night. Not on all fours.

She found the door, just as her joints shifted and clicked
again.

Pulled at it, starting to panic.

Looked back. The man, so pale and vulnerable. So tempting!

The door gave and she tumbled out into the night, heaving it
shut behind her, and finally giving in, falling to her knees, to all fours.

Looking back. The door, the walls, so frustratingly intact.
To get inside you would have to be able to manipulate the door, or to climb to
where the walls were broken.

Her body shifted again, and she was on all fours still, but
no longer on her knees.

She shook herself and then paused.

Her body ached, her mouth was dry and tasted bad. Salty bad.
Man bad.

He was there still. She could taste him on the air. She
could read his scent like a forest trail.

Frustrated, she ran first one way, then back the other, as
if confined by a cage.

She had to go.

Had to flee, lie low.

She had to see this out, and hope that, when dawn broke, the
world would be right again.

Ruby Fielding is a British author,
currently living in the heart of a New England forest. She travels widely, and
has lived in England, Scotland, the US, France, India and Australia. Wherever
she happens to be living, you’re likely to find her at the nearest wifi hot
spot with her laptop and a large mug of coffee.

She writes mainly paranormal erotica and romance, sometimes
in collaboration with her old friend Polly J Adams; their joint stories are
published separately and collected together into the single volume,
Seduced
by Moonlight
.

You can find out more about Ruby and her writing on
her website
,
and on
her Facebook page
.

Join the Ruby Fielding mailing list for all the latest
news and offers:
www.rubyfielding.com/about.php

She’d known it was a mistake to let the stranger into her
lonely existence. She had been safe, in a world where safety is the most valued
of prizes. She had shelter at night, fresh water, food.