Chapter 27

Richard had taken a taxi to the church, so we went home in my car with him driving. I rolled down my window and let my hair blow in the breeze, taking gulps of fresh air to clear my head and dry the tears that streaked my cheeks.

We pulled up in front of the house, and I tried to get out of the car, only to find myself still dizzy and a little weak—probably more from the emotional scene I’d just been in than the lingering aftereffects of touching Charles. Richard saw how I was feeling and put a hand on my arm to stop me.

“Hold on,” he said. He came around to my side of the car and swung me up into his arms. Then, without a trace of irony, he carried me over the threshold and shut the door.

Once in the bedroom, he helped me strip out of the confining white tulle wedding dress and the ruined remains of my nylons and panties. It occurred to me that we were right back where we’d been a few hours before, but I was too worn out to care. I glanced in the mirror as Richard got me undressed and saw that I looked like a raccoon. All of Charles’s mother’s perfectly applied makeup seemed to have pooled around my eyes very unattractively.

“I’m a mess,” I said, pointing at my face. “I need to wash all this goop off me. Come to think of it, I want to wash Charles off me, too.”

“Not a problem.” Richard disappeared into the bathroom, and soon I heard running water and a cloud of steam began to float out the door. He came back in a minute, and this time he was naked. He scooped me up in his arms again and carried me into the bathroom.

Ignoring my weak protests, he stepped into the shower, still holding me, and got us both wet in the steaming spray. The hot water on my skin seemed to revive me, and I got him to let me down, insisting I could stand on my own. Richard held on to me, just in case, his large, strong hands planted firmly on my hips while I lathered my face with a washcloth and scrubbed off the makeup.

I wanted to wash my body too, but Richard took the washcloth out of my hand.

“Let me,” he murmured, and for some reason, I did.

He added a big dollop of my favorite peach body wash to the cloth and began to wash me with long, slow strokes, looking in my eyes the entire time. I shivered at his intense gaze and the warm, sensual way he was washing my body. Now that the water had revived me and we were in close proximity again, I could feel my body wanting his once more, and it was obvious he wanted me too. I tried not to notice the water droplets beading on the muscular planes of his broad chest, running down his rippling abdominals and pointing the way to his erect shaft. I tried not to see it, but it wasn’t easy when my eyes kept wanting to return to it again and again. My mind kept showing me quick glimpses of the night before in the cage and that morning when he had healed me with his tongue. It was an X-rated slide show that wouldn’t stop. But as much as my body wanted him, my brain still wasn’t sure. I knew I had better tell my body that in a hurry because in a minute it would be too late.

Richard had dropped the washcloth and started soaping me all over with his bare hands. He turned me so that my back was to his front, and I was leaning against his broad chest. I felt his hard cock digging into the back of my thigh and gasped as he cupped my full breasts in his hands and then plucked gently at my tight nipples, shooting sparks of desire down to my wet sex. Then his hands traveled lower, tracing a path down my lower belly to cup my mound.

“Spread your legs, Rachel,” he murmured in my ear.

“Richard,” I tried to protest, but his name caught in my throat. Instead, I found my legs parting. I moaned as one slick, soapy finger slipped between my swollen pussy lips, washing me gently, tracing my aching clit as he dipped into my liquid depths.

“Just relax, baby, and let me wash you,” he whispered. “I love how wet you are—how wet you get when I touch you. Can you feel how much we need each other? Can you feel how ready you are to take me?” He sank two long fingers deep into my cunt and fucked me with a slow, hypnotic rhythm I felt helpless to stop. They felt so good—so right in me. But not nearly as right as his cock would have felt. I needed it in me, filling me. Needed to feel his knot swelling inside me once more to join us completely. But no—I pushed the thought away.

“Richard,” I gasped, even as I spread my legs wider for him. “Richard, please…”

“There, now I think you’re clean,” he murmured in my ear after what seemed like an eternity of his thick fingers stroking inside me. “Let’s rinse you off.”

I bit back a gasp as he spread me open, parting my cunt lips and baring me to the hot, pounding spray of the shower. My tender clit throbbed at the rhythmic stimulation, and my legs were getting so weak with pleasure that I was afraid they wouldn’t hold me up.

“You have such a sweet, soft little pussy, Rachel,” he growled softly in my ear as he touched me. “I know I just tasted you this morning, but I want to do it again. I want to taste your sweet juices mixed with the water and feel you grab my shoulders while I put my tongue deep inside you.”

His words made me moan with desire, and I knew I had to stop him before we went too far. If I let him taste me again, then I would certainly let him fuck me—breed me—again too. Because if he made me come and those waves of needing and lust came back, if my body demanded a second breeding, I wouldn’t be able to deny him this time.

“Richard, stop,” I said as he turned me to face him. “Stop this now. We…we need to talk.”

“What’s there to talk about?” he growled softly. “Our bodies need each other, Rachel. By denying me, you’re only denying yourself.”

“I…I realize that,” I said, still trying to make my brain work when it wanted to just shut down and let my body take over. “But Richard, just because I’m not with Charles anymore doesn’t mean I want to be with you. Maybe…maybe I need a little time to recover. Did you ever think of that? And I still have...issues with you. Deep ones that I don’t know if I can ever resolve.”

“All right.” He sighed and turned off the water. “But can we at least ~try~ to resolve them? Will you at least talk to me instead of running away this time, Rachel?”

“Yes,” I nodded, knowing that I owed him that much at least. “Yes, Richard, I will. But not here—I’m freezing!”

He frowned. “You’re shivering. Here.” He grabbed some towels hanging on the rack by the shower, took one for himself, and handed one to me.

I rubbed myself all over and wrapped the towel securely around me, knotting it under my arm. Then I squeezed the water out of my damp hair and stepped out of the tub. Richard looked like he wanted to help me, but I was feeling stronger now and in more control of myself. I knew that if I let him touch me again, the balance of power might shift. So I kept my distance as we went back into the bedroom and sat on opposite sides of the bed.

“Now.” Richard had draped his towel around his lean hips, and he sat easily at the foot of the mattress, staring at me.

I stared at him in incomprehension. “Now what?”

“Now tell me about these issues,” he rubbed a hand over his face wearily. “Is it the whole brother-sister thing again? Because I swear to you, Rachel, there’s not so much as a drop of common blood in our veins. We’re not even fourth cousins twice removed.”

“No,” I said, curling my legs under me carefully and smoothing down the edge of my towel. “No, it’s not that exactly.” I didn’t want to tell him what it was—didn’t want to tell him in the worst way because it was so embarrassing I could barely think about it, let alone talk about it.

“Well then?” He looked at me questioningly. “Is it that you’re still having problems accepting how I dealt with my curse before I found you? Because honestly, Rache, I didn’t just pick people at random. I actually researched their lives. I followed them—watched them beating women and selling drugs to kids and a hundred other horrible things. No one I killed to free myself from my other form was a saint by any stretch of the imagination.”

I bit my lip for a moment and thought of the bloody bodies of the mafia wiseguys he’d killed. No saints indeed. Maybe I could bend my ideals on this one—at least a little. “I believe you,” I said at last. “I do, Richard. It’s hard for me to take but I guess…I guess I can accept your past as long as you promise never to do anything like that in the future.”

He nodded gravely. “As long as you stay with me I can control the curse. So I’ll swear never to kill again as long as I have you by my side. If you leave, all bets are off, though. I don’t intend to spend the rest of my life as a beast.”

“I guess that’s fair,” I said, nodding. But when he scooted up the bed and reached for me, I still pulled away from him.

“Rachel,” he looked at me sternly. “There’s something else. Something you’re not telling me. Whatever it is, I need to know because it’s standing between us.”

I could feel my cheeks beginning to heat up. “I…I don’t like the way I feel when I’m around you,” I said, trying to think of a way to say it without saying it. “I mean…the way I seem to lose control. The way I can’t say no to…to anything.”

“Anything?” He raised one black eyebrow at me and frowned. “Or something specific? Tell me, Rachel. I need to know.”

It seemed like I was just going to have to say it. “Richard,” I said, looking down at my hands and speaking slowly. “You made me want you. Even when I thought of you as my brother. Even when you took me while you were…while you weren’t even human. While you were an animal.” I looked up at him, feeling my cheeks heat to burning with my shame. “What does that say about me?” I asked him. “What kind of person am I to want to have that kind of relationship? It’s sick—~I’m~ sick.”

“No, you’re not.” He stroked my cheek gently. “You’re Amon-kai and we are a different breed. There’s nothing wrong with wanting me to take you. With your desire to give yourself to me.”

“Yes, there is,” I insisted. “Especially when I…I enjoyed last night. Well,” I rushed on. “I don’t know if ~enjoyed~ is the right word but…but I wanted you. Wanted you in me even though you were…were an animal. I spread my legs for you willingly and even though part of me hated it, part of me loved it. Part of me wanted it. I don’t want to be like that. I don’t want to be that person.”

“I think I see the problem,” he scooted closer to me and put a warm hand on my bare knee. I shivered but didn’t try to move it. “The problem is that you’re still thinking like a human,” Richard said. “But you’re ~not~ human—neither one of us is. We’re Amon-kai.”

“Stop saying that,” I said irritably. “What does it even mean?”

“It means that your body has different needs and desires and there’s nothing wrong with acting on them. Look,” he said reasonably. “You’re upset because you wanted me to fuck you—to breed you—even when I was in my beast form. Right?”

I nodded briefly, not meeting his eyes.

“But that’s normal for us,” he told me quietly. “In fact, back at the beginning of our race it’s how prospective Lanor-zors found their Lana-zeels.”

I looked up at him. “What do you mean? I thought they were bound as children—the way you said we were.”

“That’s a fairly recent custom,” Richard told me. “It used to be that when a female became fertile she was taken to a stone altar in the middle of a large field on the night of the full moon. Then she was stripped naked and bound on her hands and knees with her legs chained wide apart so that she was helpless to resist what happened next.”

I looked up at him with wide eyes, captivated by the story against my will. “What…what happened next?” I asked, biting my lip.

Richard stroked my knee gently. “All of the prospective Lanor-zors came to circle her in a pack—and this was ~after~ they had changed and were in beast form. One by one they each mounted the steps to the altar. They breathed in her scent and tasted her nipples and pussy as she knelt there, vulnerable and exposed.”

“And then?” I knew what was coming next but I wanted to hear him say it. For some reason the story was making my sex feel swollen and sensitive. I could just imagine the poor girl, bound in the moonlight on her hands and knees, forced to submit, just as I had been forced to submit, while the hot, wet tongues of her prospective mates lashed at her nipples and lapped at her open cunt.

“If her scent was attractive enough, the male who was tasting her would breed her,” Richard said matter-of-factly. “And if she was attractive to more than one male, then she got bred more than once. Sometimes the same female would be bred by four or five different males.”

“My God!” I blurted out. “How…why…?” I had barely survived my own ordeal the night before. I couldn’t imagine going through it four more times. “Why, why would they do that?” I finally managed to get out.

“To learn which one of them was her true mate—her Lanor-zur,” Richard said patiently. “You see, her body would only open all the way to the right male. And so the male that was able to get his knot all the way inside her pussy, to join himself to her and shoot his essence more deeply into her body than any of the others, was her mate. That’s where the instinct to breed hard and deep comes from—it’s a biological imperative. And it’s also why the body of the Lana-zeel—your body—sometimes craves a second breeding almost at once. To strengthen the bond with the right male.”

“You said you wanted it to happen,” I said softly.

Richard leaned closer and looked in my eyes. “I did, Rachel,” he murmured. “I wanted your lust for me to be so strong you couldn’t help yourself.” He laughed ruefully. “But I didn’t count on you being so bull-headed and stubborn.”

I lifted my chin. “I don’t want to do something that doesn’t feel right to me, that’s all.”

“Is it beginning to feel at least a little more right?” Richard asked me. “At least now you understand why your body craved mine even when I came to you as a beast—it’s in your nature to crave being bred by the beast.”

I looked down at my hands, my heart pounding. “Does that…does that mean I’ll want you again that way?”

“You may or you may not,” Richard said neutrally. “My essence is stronger when I’m in beast form—more concentrated—and your body will probably crave it at some point. Possibly at every full moon when it’s easiest for me to change completely.”

“So if I stay with you I’ll…we’ll do it that way again?”

“Only if you want to,” he said soothingly. “And even if I change completely, I’ll still retain my human consciousness—my sense of self. You do that for me—our bond tethers my mind to my body. So I can be as gentle or as rough as you want me to and you won’t have to be afraid.”

“I’m not,” I said, and was surprised to know it was true. The idea that I might want to have beast sex with him again still made my cheeks hot but if the urge was truly a part of my genetic heritage…well, I would have to think about that. About whether I really believed wanting something so strange could actually be a biological urge rather than an emotional disorder.

“Can you do it, Rachel?” Richard asked me, lifting my chin to look into my eyes. “Can accept me for what I am and yourself for what you are? Can you let go of your human ideas long enough to embrace your Amon-kai heritage?”

“I…” I searched his eyes, those pale green eyes that were so like my own. Amon-kai eyes. “I don’t know, Richard,” I said at last. “I need a little time. A little time to think about it.”

“All right.” He nodded and stood up from the bed, careless of his nudity as the towel dropped away. “I’m going out, Rachel, and I won’t be back until after dark. But when I do get back, I want your answer. Understand?”

“You’ll have it,” I said quietly. “I promise you that, Richard. One way or another, you’ll have it.”

“Good.” He reached for his clothes and left me to sit on the bed and try to decide how I would spend the rest of my life.