Mated to the Jaguars - Paranormal M/F/M Menage (13 page)
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Michelle used Max’s debit card to order three things from Amazon, and then paid for same day drone delivery.
She hadn’t asked Max, but she knew he’d approve.
Her idea was brilliant.
She wanted the business with Caquix over as soon as possible.
There was so much to deal with just between her, Max, and Votan.
Having to save the world was complicating her love life.
All she wanted was to be a normal human girl with two studly lovers who were happy to share her.
That wasn’t so much to ask for, right?
She didn’t have the stomach for battle anyway, and she suspected this was true in all her lives.
It took her hours to rationalize away her guilt at maiming Cabrakan.
Votan assured her he’d grow a new foot, which finally broke her from her guilt.
She sauntered into the kitchen to breakfast on yogurt and granola.
A sickening feeling of dread swept over her.
Then there was a pounding fist at the door.
Holy fucking shit!
It’s Caquix!
She stood hugging herself in the middle of the kitchen.
Votan and Max had left twenty minutes ago.
The bastard must have known she was alone.
She took a few steps in the living room with her wide eyes fixed on the curved door handle.
There was another pounding knock.
“Go away, you creep!”
“Ah, good,” Caquix said from the other side of the door.
“You’re still here.”
Her heart thudded in her chest.
It’s locked, right?
He can’t get in, right?
“Break it.”
There was a boom that made the floor shake.
Michelle saw a crack on the thick wooden door.
Fuckfuckfuckfuck!
“Don’t come in here!”
She screamed with the full strength of her lungs.
“I burned your son’s foot off yesterday!
I’ll kill you!
I swear I’ll do it!”
The door exploded open.
Four men came through holding a battering ram with three more following behind.
Michelle transformed and growled at them.
She began to see red.
Caquix peered past the shoulders of his men.
“Control yourself.
These are mortal men under my power.
Kill them and you commit murder.”
What?
She scrambled away from them.
There was a stab in her rump that made her yelp.
Someone had darted her.
But how can they see me?
She turned back into a human and yanked out the dart.
A thug leaped on her and covered her face with a wet clothe.
One breath and all her strength left her.
When she woke she thought she was having a nightmare.
As her senses acclimated she knew it was real.
She was back in the underworld, tied once again to the post.
This time she wore the street clothes she’d had on in the mortal world.
That favor did nothing to hold back her anger.
A red lava haze began to float around her head.
“Calm yourself.”
Caquix walked around the post.
“I’ve only bound you so that we can—”
She erupted like a true
Yucatan
volcano before him.
The lava melted off his face then disintegrated his body.
Rubber goo from his boots was all that remained on the dusty terrain before her.
Michelle stared at it while gasping.
The horror of her situation in the mortal world was collapsing in on her.
Caquix had her unconscious body.
He had a hostage to use against Max and Votan.
He’d fucked everything up for all of them.
“You took the foot of my son.”
Caquix’s sober evil voice boomed all around her.
“Would you like to have both your feet when you wake up?
Then stop attacking me and listen!”
She screamed into the empty desert.
“What the fuck do you want with me?”
Caquix stepped around the post once again, in a renewed spirit form.
His normally bone white face had a red flush of anger.
He seethed through clenched teeth for a moment, then forced a malevolent smile.
“All right.
I’m glad you got that out of your system.”
He tipped up his chin.
“Perhaps I even deserved it.”
Her eyes narrowed to slivers.
“Want another?”
“I think you should consider the vulnerability of your mortal form.”
“You better not touch me, you perverted freak!”
Caquix formed a smug expression.
“I obviously can’t do anything to you while my spirit is here.
As for my henchmen, they’ve been ordered to keep guard over you.
Nothing more.”
“They’re your demons,” she said, with venom dripping from every word.
“They are men who joined the cult of Vucab Caquix and allowed my demons to inhabit them.
They’re pathetic dregs of society who could find no meaning in their lives, and hence, sought it from me.
Did they truly think they’d lose control of their own minds when they took part in the ceremony?
I doubt it.
But surely you don’t believe they should die for their foolishness?”
Michelle kept her lips sealed.
She wanted to spew threats about how she’d kill them anyway, and him too, but she knew he’d see through her.
He’d made a shield out of idiots.
She had to respect the sanctity of their lives.
“I don’t want a war with you, or your mates.”
She glowered at him.
“Uh huh.”
“I shouldn’t have touched you before.
I apologize for that.”
“Not accepted.”
“I am…so desperate for companionship.
I’m alone in this world.
There’s none of my kind here with me.
My desire for you grew so strong that I couldn’t control myself.”
“I can transform and get the fuck away from you at any time.
If you want me to listen you better stop spewing this repulsive bullshit.”
He took a deep shuddering breath.
His cruel eyes betrayed him, Michelle thought.
He was attempting to be charming but could barely hold back his fury.
“My wife.
Chimalmat.
I miss her.
I need her.”
“I don’t care.”
“I want for you to break the seal of the underworld just enough for her to come through.”
She turned away from him with a scoff.
“Oh my God.”
“I’m not asking for you to break the seal completely.
I just want to enjoy a mortal life with my beloved.
I’ve no ambitions that are any worse than your Maximon’s, and I’ve realized I can’t endure in the mortal world alone.”
“Then go back!”
“I can’t!”
He took rapid breaths through his nostrils.
“I tried.
The seal keeps me out.”
“You can go back by dying.”
“I won’t do that.”
“You won’t have a choice.”
He turned his face to the side.
Michelle saw his shoulders rising and falling.
His jaw was tense, no doubt from him clenching his teeth.
She felt satisfied.
The creep deserved to unravel.
“Chimalmat.
Let her emerge in mortal form from the underworld.”
His words were blunt and stilted.
“Once she’s free I’ll let you go.
I’ll enjoy this mortal life with her without causing you or your mates any trouble.
When I die I’ll return to the underworld, sealed away once again.”
He looked at her.
“All I’m asking is a chance, just once, to experience the lives you all take for granted.”
“First:
no.
Second:
I’m well aware that if I crack the seal every demon in the underworld is going to come up—not just your wife.
So third, to reiterate, no.”
All the feigned charm disappeared from his face.
Michelle saw the true Vucub Caquix.
His red eyes glowed like fire.
His cheekbones made dark wells on either side of his face.
When he pulled back his lips to speak, she saw rows of pearly pointed teeth.
“Do it.
Or you will wake up without legs.”
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Votan searched the entire condo while screaming her name, despite the fact it was obvious Caquix had taken her away.
Max could not propel himself toward any kind of action.
He stood in the kitchen with his arms crossed and his chest quaking.
He won’t kill her.
He needs her.
Max squeezed his eyes closed.
But what if he rapes her?
He already assaulted her before.
“Damn!”
Votan punched his wall.
“I’ll kill him a thousand times!
I’ll claw his eyes from the sockets!”
Max emerged from the kitchen and kicked the battering ram on the floor.
“He didn’t come alone.
He had help.”
“I’ll kill them all too!”
He bent down and picked up a tranquilizer dart.
“Look!”
“Shit.”
Max closed his eyes.
Votan was raving and he was unable to think.
How could they rescue her when the fiend saw every move they made?
“What do we do?” Votan said, still in a fury.
He pushed his hands through the thick hair of his scalp.
“Do we call the police?”
“You want the police involved when we mean to kill him?”
He shook his head.
“No.
You’re right.”
“Damn that demon!”
His wall suffered another blow.
Max stepped into the circle.
“Come on.
Let’s stop letting him watch us.”
Votan growled but then stomped to the arm chair.
Michelle’s computer was sitting on the coffee table.
It hadn’t been there when they left that morning.
Max sat before it and got it out of sleep mode.
“Maybe she left us a message.”
He stared at the images on the screen.
After a few mouse clicks he understood.
“We have to go back to his home,” Votan said.
“What else can we do?”
“We wait,” Max said.
Votan stood.
“No!”
“Get a hold of yourself.
We can only beat him if we work together—remember?”
The large man ground his teeth, but then dropped into the seat once again.
“Michelle ordered something for us.
It will be here this evening.”
He spun the computer for Votan to see.
“She was one step ahead of him.”
***
Michelle climbed up a craggy mountain in her jaguar form.
All along the rocks were skeletons of demons, several shorn in half.
Caquix flew as a bird above her.
He landed on a ledge, then transformed back into a human seeming.
When she approached she realized there was the mouth of a small cave behind him.
It was sealed by solidified lava with red twinkling magic.
She scrambled onto the ledge and became human again.
“This is it?” she said.
“Just a cave in a mountain?”
Caquix gestured around them.
“All of this is form to that which has no form.
It’s symbolic, but it’s the seal nonetheless.”
Michelle ran her hands over it.
“Get to it,” Caquix said through his teeth.
She scowled at him.
“Look you—yesterday was the first time in my life I’d used my magic.”
Her eyes went back to the seal.
“I don’t know what it’s going to take to open this—but it’s not going to be easy.
I see the spirits of the hero twins surging in here.
They’re protecting it.
I have to hunt out an open place to work on.”
“Bah.”
He strode away from her.
“And I’m only going to open up a crack big enough for a tiny woman to crawl through.
You better hope your wife’s on a diet.”
“You’ll open it as wide as I wish, or you’ll be missing limbs when you awaken.”
“Shut up!
I can’t tap the magic when I’m frightened.”
Caquix scoffed and sat on the ledge with his legs hanging downward.
Since he had his back to her she did nothing.
Like I would ever open this fucking thing for you, you piece of shit.
Caquix turned back.
She rubbed her palms over the rock and pretended to be concentrating.
After a half hour of this she heard him draw breath to chastise her again, so she started chanting nonsense.
This bought her another twenty minutes.
She heard him climbing to his feet, so she dropped down to the bottom corner and let a little red magic pour from her mouth.
Caquix turned into a bird.
‘I’m fetching my wife.’
“I’m getting through, but it’s going to take a few hours.
You’re just going to have to be patient.”
‘Stop stalling!’
He flew away.
Michelle kept faking until he’d flown out of view.
Then she sneered in the direction he left.
“Fuck you.”
She sat with her back against the rocks and her arms crossed.
Then she sighed.
Please hurry, guys.
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