The All Encompassing: Shifter MC Novel (Pureblood Predator MC Book 1) (21 page)

“Please.”

I kiss the purple red head of his cock and tell him no. He twirls his fingers through my hair and this is what I love, because I can work the nice guy into this: he grips my head hard and demands I open my mouth.
 

I say no again.

“Open your fucking mouth,” Connor growls.

I do, just a little, and he slams his cock into me, my teeth raking along his length as he forces me deep onto him, then he holds me there and begins bucking his hips, fucking my mouth, holding my head while he works at me. My eyes are tearing up and I can’t draw a breath and my cunt is a white-hot ember of need as this gorgeous man what he wants. Then he pulls back, tearing his cock from my mouth. His eyes are bright and his lips swollen with desire and he says, “Say it.”

“No.”

“Say it,” he demands, urgent, needful, wrapping his hand around my chin and squeezing.

“Fuck me,” I whisper, breathless.

“What?”

“Fuck me. Please fuck me.”

Connor nods. “You want to get fucked? You want this cock?”

“
Please
.”

“Stand up.”

I do. Connor plunges a hand down my pants, runs his hand over my wet folds, slips a finger inside me. He’s forceful. Rough. I collapse against him, biting his shoulder.
 

“Please,” I moan.
 

Connor pulls his hand away and tells me to strip. While I’m taking off my jeans he drags the couch around so the back is facing the lake. “Get on the couch,” he says, his voice firm and commanding. “On your knees.”

I listen, feeling the cool, soft leather press into my knees and arms. My ass is in the air, waiting, ready. The lake stretches out before me. Connor presses his cock against my ass, slips a finger into my pussy, then pulls back and says. “You have a gorgeous little cunt, don’t you?”
 

“Please fuck me,” I say, wagging my hips at him and looking over my shoulder. Connor’s skin is slick with sweat, his lips swollen and red and the need in his eyes makes me squirm a little inside, because I love seeing him need me like that.
 

His cock presses against my cunt and in one swift, smooth motion he digs into me, stretching my tender folds wide, and I cry out and bite down on the leather couch, leaving an imprint of my teeth. His cock presses hard against my womb, buried deep, and he pauses there for a second, making sure I know he has me pinned between the sofa and his cock. I shuffle forward slightly, as if trying to escape, and he leans his weight into me, driving my chest against the back of the sofa. My nipples drag against the cool leather, sending me into shivers. His cock is throbbing and curved up, pressing against my g-spot.
 

A tremendous shudder wracks though my midsection.
 

Connor grips my ass in one hand and slides the other one under to rub and stroke my clit. I’m moaning now, soft moans rising into quick, shrill shouts as he begins fucking me, slow at first, drawing nearly his entire cock out, then driving it back down while rubbing my clit. His hips hit my ass with a perfectly obscene smacking sound. Then he reaches a hand up and snatches my hair, pulls my head back so it feels like my entire body’s being forced down onto him, and the pain of his greedy cock thrusting deep into my hot cunt and him pulling my hair makes me scream even louder.
 

The heat in my cunt radiates up my torso, through my chest and out my arms, and then the first come hits me, a deep, brutal wave of pleasure and pain that has me pushing back against him, begging for more.
 

Connor looses a loud moan and thrusts into me, his cock surging as his come races from his balls and then a liquid heat fills me, bringing a second not quite as deep but still sharp and intense come and I’m coated in sweat, sticking to the leather sofa and his cock throbs with each hot blast.
 

I fall against the sofa, gasping, spent, and Connor presses his cock into me one last time, hard, my cunt tightening around him, drawing out every drop of come, and then he leans down and kisses the small of my back, twice, and slips away.

T
HE
K
EEPER
’
S
MEN
secure my wrists and ankles to a cold steel table.
 

“You liked her, my Blood Giver?” the Keeper asks. “The blonde American bitch?”

“I would like to offer her,” I say while the doctor, a thin, reedy man with long white hair, sticks a needle in my arm and fills my blood with antibiotics and steroids and supplements.
 

The Keeper likes to boast I am his greatest investment.
 

The long shot that paid off.

“I’d like to bet large on that offering ceremony,” the Keeper says, grinning. He’s a balding, narrow-faced man with heavily lidded eyes and an expression that never seems to match his words. I love him like a father and brother and more. He brings me the offerings so I may appease the Night Wind.
 

I owe him everything.

“But I saw how you looked at her, my son,” the Keeper says. “You wanted to do more than offer her.”

Heat builds in my chest as the doctor finishes emptying one syringe into my arm and reaches for another. Is the Keeper questioning my devotion to the Night Wind? Have I fallen in his eyes? Will he stop bringing me offerings? Sweat breaks out on my brow. Without the offerings I am nothing.
 

The Keeper studies me intently for a moment, then places his hand on my bicep. His touch is cool and removed, like he’s prodding a prized object instead of a living thing. He smiles in a way that makes me look away, then says, “The American bitch gave you something?”

“Yes.” I open the hand to show him the black stone amulet. The Keeper plucks it from my palm and lifts it close to his eyes. His brow tightens. The grey-black stone catches the cool fluorescent light and turns it smoky gray.

“The Smoking Mirror,” the Keeper says, so quite I can barely hear him. Then he clears his throat and says, “What did she say to you?”

“She called me many names. Some familiar. Some not. She claimed she was a hunter, like me. She said we’d meet again.”

The Keeper’s expression darkens.
 

“Have I angered you?” I ask, suddenly afraid.

“No. Not you.”

“Her?”

My Keeper nods to the doctor, who begins tattooing a yellow and black rosette on my shoulder. “Three more,” the Keeper says, with a touch of awe. “Soon you’ll earn your most recent nickname. The Spotted Stalker. Tell me, Rodas, how many men have you offered to your Lord?”

“Fifteen thousand two hundred thirty-six.”

“Yes. The longest unbroken death match record of all time.”

“The Night Lord raises me.”

“Oh, I think he should,” the Keeper laughs. “An average of three men a day for fourteen years.”

“You remain displeased.”

The Keeper smiles, but he is not happy. He takes a long breath, then says, “The trouble is…after so long a reign, it’s become rather difficult to secure…proper offerings.”

“Sir?”

“No one wants to fight you, Rodas. No one qualified, that is. Sure, there will always be fools like that Russian Maul asshole you murdered today, who fight to pay for their next drink or hit. But the true fighters? The ones who would provide…a
lucrative
match? Their handlers won’t even return my calls. And worse, no one wants to bet against you anymore. There’s no thrill in wagering on a sure thing, and no joy in throwing one’s money after the fool who challenges you.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You’re too
good
, son. You’ve been too good for too long.”

“Does this mean the offerings will stop arriving?” I ask, fear thickening my voice. The Night Wind only calms when the offerings are made.
 

The offerings must not stop. Ever.

“Not necessarily,” the Keeper says. “It only means…we have to even the odds a little.”

“How?”

“I’ve thought about this for a long time, Rodas. Years now. I’ve waited, wracking my mind trying to think of another way. Because you’re so important to me. But it’s the only way.”

“How?”

The Keeper nods at the doctor, then says to me, “Would you like to feel pain? Or no pain?”

“Pain,” I say. “Always.”

The Keeper smiles. “Pain it is then. Close your eyes, Rodas. This won’t take long.”

I listen to my Keeper and close my eyes. I must trust him. He brings offerings. He is the living link to my Night Lord.

The doctor rubs something wet and cool against my right ankle.
 

I hear the Keeper shuffle to the side.
 

A sound like an electric saw.

Then pain unlike any I’ve ever experienced makes me strain against my bindings.

The acrid smell of a spinning blade biting into bone.

O Night Lord, raise me.
 

I am filth. I am excrement. I am stillborn. Raise me into the night sky.

Lay me on the reed mat.
 

I offer you my heart and bones and blood.
 

I offer you all I am.

***

That night I dream of a world where the Night Lord has inverted the heavens. The sun rises in the east and sets in the west, and its light shines weak, like they say the sun shines in the months-long northern twilight: pale and without warmth.
 

In my dream I am not in my cell beneath the tall building of glass and concrete, and I am not in the Cloud Temple atop the building.
 

I am Elsewhere. Lost.

Running down a dark street.
 

Something is hunting me. No, many things. Creatures with jaws that open wide enough to swallow a man. Creatures with hooked beaks to tear flesh from bone. Creatures with many-colored wings and creatures with tails ending in poison-filled stingers.

All are chasing me.
 

I turn a corner and nearly slip into a dark chasm rent in the earth. The chasm falls beneath me, endless and black. The creatures, seeing me trapped between them and the bottomless chasm, cackle and screech and howl.

I’m about to leap into the chasm to save myself from being eaten alive when a figure rises from the murky depths. A magnificent creature with broad, feathered wings like an eagle and the body of an enormous silver wolf. Something whips by my head, and I notice the creature has a long, armored scorpion’s tail.
 

The creature rises from the chasm, its lupine eyes glowing bright white.
 

With me
, the wolf-eagle says without sound.
 

The creatures behind quicken their strides, driven by hunger and bloodlust.

“Night Lord?” I say while the wolf-eagle settles onto the ground beside me.

“If you wish.”

This creature is a she. And she’s not the Night Lord.
 

She’s something different.
 

Something…like me.
 

Hurry
, the creature says.
There isn’t much time. Soon you’ll be strong enough to stand against them. But not now.

I leap onto the creature’s back, gripping her silver fur between my fingers and as the fastest of the beasts reach us I feel their claws rake into my leg, and when I wake I’m screaming, my face pressed into the painted concrete wall of my cell, clutching the deer’s foot and the smoking stone amulet, and accepting the pain radiating from the bandaged stump just above my severed ankle.
 

***

This morning’s offering is different in many ways.

It is the first offering I will free without my right foot. The stump is wrapped in gauze and still seeping and sore and swollen. The doctor gave me something to help me sleep, but the drug only brought those terrible dreams.
 

The audience is the largest I’ve seen in a long while.
 

Two dozen or more.
 

The Keeper smiles in a way that makes me think he’s actually smiling. I hear him introducing the guests, drug lords to industrialists, princes to presidents, army officials to dictators. An audience member requires two things to enter this sacred temple: money and power.
 

Cigar smoke hangs heavy in the air, and the champaign flows freely.
 

I’m sitting in my corner, naked as always, focusing on my breathing, clutching the deer’s foot and the smoking stone amulet.
 

The amulet feels warm in my hand.

The elevator dings in the hall, and when the doors open I scent the air and know this morning is different for another reason.
 

Today is the first day I fight to offer one who is like me. One who has been gifted by the Night Lord.
 

“O Master, O Lord of the Far, O Lord of the Night, O Night, O Night Wind…” I mutter quietly, calming my breathing in preparation for death.
 

Is today the day I will join the Night Lord in the wind that never sleeps?

“Pray permit me join you, O Lord of Night. Raise me from this life as excrement, as waste, as wretch, as stillborn, as stricken, as deceiver, as—”

“Ladies and gentlemen,” the Keeper begins as the cage door clanks open, “permit me present this significant occasion, an event that arrives only once in a generation, when two esteemed athletes, the legendary Blood Giver and the newcomer the Iron Incisor, battle one another for the ultimate prize: life. I would like to remind those in the audience that everything you witness today is real. The contest will commence at the sound of the bell and will finish upon death of one or both athletes. Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen. I sincerely hope you enjoy the show, and remember: do not approach the cage!”

The audience applauds the Keeper’s welcome. He’s dressed in a black tuxedo he reserves for special offerings. This is truly a momentous day…perhaps, if I am most fortunate, even the day I am freed in death to join the Night Wind.