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Chapter Twenty-Three

Roland

Admiring how well and thoroughly fucked Vanessa looks sprawled out across our bed is the greatest moment in my entire fucking existence. She’s a wreck. There’s cum absolutely fucking everywhere, and I chuckle at just how bad it looks. Sweet, composed Nessa with her library full of books all listed in alphabetical order by title and a spice rack that requires frequent visits from her label maker is now lying on her stomach, legs spread, one knee hiked up giving me torturously perfect access to her pretty pussy, that molten center dripping with the products of three of my orgasms and five of hers ... She looks perfect. Too perfect.

And I can’t help myself.

I’m barely awake, the urge to return to the bed and drop onto my knees right behind her too strong to ignore. From there I collapse forward onto my fists, my gaze trained on the snarl of her hair. I lower my weight onto her, feeling so damn ... good. Yesterday’s headache is gone, as is the subtle itching surrounding the cartography lines across my ribs and chest. My angry nail beds feel soothed. I am soothed as I surround her in the dark of her bedroom.

I kiss her shoulder. Her eyes are still closed, lips still slightly parted in sleep, and she releases a contented little moan.

“Gonna fuck you again, baby.”

“Mhmm,” she says, struggling to open her eyes.

“Keep ’em closed. I’ll be quick.”

She smiles. “Pervert,” is what I think she mumbles, but the sound breaks up over her cry as I slide inside of her. She’s hot as a brand, which doesn’t seem right at all considering that I’m the one made of fire. The feeling of her velvet heat closing around my cock is heavenly.

“There is a God,” I moan into the back of her neck. Laughter flutters from her lips, which I claim in a kiss.

“Mhm! Morning breath!” she squeaks. I laugh. I couldn’t care less.

My hand moves around her body, sliding beneath her weight until my fingers find her clit. Careful with my claws, I pop her hips up just enough that I’m able to massage that little nerve bundle in gentle, gentle strokes. “Oh my gosh, Rollo, I ... can’t ...” Her eyes are still shut, lids squeezing together, fists clutching the crumpled sheets in desperation.

“You come so fast in the mornings,” I laugh into her ear as her whole body starts to clench up and her core squeezes around the length of me. I don’t hold back but slam my hips forward, my hips meeting the lush curve of her ass. She’s boneless beneath me, so fucking beautiful.

I come deep inside of her body, my cock twitching in absolute rapture. My back muscles are bunched, the backs of my thighs rigid. My balls jerk up against my body, feeling her heat brush against them in places. My cock jerks and jerks, and a pressure somewhere along the top of my erection makes me worried that I’m gonna come again. The sensation passes, with some coercion from my brain telling me to get up and get off her, otherwise I’ll stay here forever.

My face tilts up toward the ceiling as I slide out of her, my cock tingling a little bit, feeling strange, but maybe that’s because of this feeling in my chest. This lightness and wonder. This desperation to want to breed her again. My torso wavers as I kneel above her. Restabilizing myself, I look back down at her beautiful body— mine —and spread her cheeks apart with my hands just to watch my cum inside of her body. I smile, filled with a primal male satisfaction.

“What are you doing?” she breathes.

“Enjoying myself.” I lean forward and bite her right ass cheek. She jerks, squealing a little, and when I pull up, I notice that my teeth have left indents in her skin. Strange. I didn’t think I bit her that hard.

I massage the space I bit, and when I glance to her face, I see her smiling as she settles back into sleep, sunlight peeking from around the dark curtains and stroking her face in shades of holiness. Satisfied, so fucking satisfied, I manage to actually back away from the bed, successfully this time, and head to the bathroom.

There’s a swagger in my step. Not sure if it’s a swagger so much as it is a lurch. My fucking bones ache with how badly I’ve wanted and needed her, and having her has just about killed me. Wrecked? Is that what I thought of her? Wrecked doesn’t come close to the male that she’s made of me. And it feels so fucking ...

... good ...

I swing into the bathroom, flip on the lights, and look up to see the creature in the bathroom watching me. Red skin, horns, and fucking huge . The thing looks like a goddamn nightmare. What the fuck is it doing in Nessa’s house? In our bathroom?

I jerk back, rage casting shadows over the pleasure still lingering in my chest. The fact that this massive thing has interrupted such a sacred moment of peace for me makes me burn even hotter.

“You dare ...” I roar. My eyes fill with fire, and I attack, a fist of flame launching from my mouth toward the creature standing right in front of me. How dare it come this close to my fucking girl ...

My fire hits the large mirror, which shatters in its entirety, shards raining over the vanity and skittering onto the white tiled floor.

My mind blanks, and I stagger backward into the bathroom door, the door handle punching clean through the drywall, loudly enough to wake a sleeping bear. In the bedroom, though, I don’t so much as hear her breathing change. Which is a blessing. Because my thoughts have coalesced into one stunning, crystal realization, one that I don’t want her here for.

The monster in the bathroom? That thing standing there so threateningly? It’s me .

My legs move faster than my mind, carrying me back into the bedroom, where she still has yet to move. “Come back to bed ...” I hear her murmur. She’s asking me, and I’m so fucking moved by the soft trust in her tone and so fucking pissed to let her down. Fuck my claws, there’s no way I can touch her— again —knowing what I do now. I look down at my own dick as I step into the walk-in closet to the small section where I’ve thrown my clothes. I choke. I put that inside of her?

I shove my legs through the extra-large sweatpants she bought for me and throw on the hoodie that matches it. I haven’t worn either before; they’re both too big for me, but not anymore. They were too big. Now they’re tight around my ass and thighs, my shoulders and biceps.

I leave the bedroom, head into the bathroom, pad over the scattered glass with bare feet—bare feet, can I even call these things fucking feet? The glass doesn’t bother these things hanging off my legs at all. I throw open the bathroom window and squeeze my body through it, lifting my phone to my ear as I take off into the sky.

It rings once ... twice ... “Roland, I’m surprised to hear from you. Talk of the town is that you cussed out the president and told everyone to fuck off until next week ...”

“Doc, we’ve got a problem.” My voice breaks. I don’t know if she hears the urgency and the panic choking my throat over the sound of the wind because her voice is chipper in a way that makes me want to punch something.

“You wanna come in? I’m at the clinic now. It’s actually great you called. I was looking at the sample I took from your claws the last time and noticed something strange ...”

Strange? Strange! Did she just have the audacity to say strange to me right now? I’m fucking shaking. For the first time in my life, I’m a little terrified. Nessa may be cool with the claws, but this is something else entirely. Will she even want me after this? Who would? I’m a fucking menace.

I glance down at my hands. “The claws are not my problem ...” And then I remember. “Wait. I don’t have my badge. I can’t get in.”

“They’ll recognize you.”

No, they won’t. “Meet me outside. The alley between the compound and the next building block. Street side.”

“All right,” she says, sounding confused. “Well, it’ll take me a few minutes to get there.”

“I’ll be there in five.”

I’m at the COE in three, standing in the dark alleyway, my hands shoved in my pockets, my hood pulled up so high, it stretches the material of the hoodie tight up and down the back of my neck. Because the top of my head doesn’t touch the fabric of the hood anymore. Not with my brand-new fucking horns in the way.

I fiddle with my phone nervously in my pocket. It feels like a goddamn kid’s toy now. I yank my fist out of my sweats and look at the shape of my claws—long and thick and dark and curved and bloody sharp and surrounded by red skin.

It’s sunny today. It’s always fucking sunny here. And when I lift my hand out of the sleeve of my hoodie and tilt it toward the light, I can see slightly darker runes carved all over, forming the same pattern as the marks on my ribs and collarbones. Now the repeating pattern is everywhere.

“If I’d known my patients would prefer meeting me in dingy alleyways, I could have saved a helluva lot of money on office space.” Emily’s voice is pleasant and light, and the stress that’s consumed me is only exacerbated by it. I’m nervous ... I was shit scared of Nessa seeing me like this, and though I don’t care about Emily like that, I’m still nervous. “I brought the sander in case you need a top-up.” She revs it. “It’s electric. Why, uh ... don’t you turn around?”

I still don’t move. She stops walking.

“Roland, you’re making me nervous ...”

I hear her take a step—probably backward, if she’s smart—and I exhale heavily. I turn and glance up at the buildings, triple-checking that there’s no one at any of the windows and no one walking on the sidewalk, and, relieved to know we’re alone out here for now, I drop my hood back. Exhaling shakily, I carefully lower my gaze to Emily, who stands so much shorter than I now do. I must be a foot taller than I was when I went to bed last night and fifty—eighty—pounds heavier of solid muscle. I feel like a dense goddamn boulder.

Emily looks at me and sees me, and the sander tumbles from her grip. It hits the ground powered on, the sound grating as the sander revs against nothing. She doesn’t reach for it. She just stares up at me, frozen.

“Well,” she finally says, smacking her lips. Her gaze moves up and over my face, my hair ... my horns.

“Well?”

“This is unexpected.”

“No shit.”

“Why don’t you come inside, and we’ll have a ... Roland? Roland, are you okay?”

No. I’m not. I shake my head.

My vision starts to darken around the edges, and when I take another step toward her on feet that have elongated and flattened out at the front, thick pads like a dog’s forming on their undersides, decorated by massive talons that scrape over the concrete, I fall.

Darkness wallops me, but it doesn’t last long. Because in its stead come images, pictures, sounds ... memories of a life that was once mine from a world far, far away from this one, and I remember ... everything.

Who I am.

What I was.

Why I’m here and the horrors I’m meant to cause.