Page 3

Chapter

Three

A bby followed the manticore through the long cavern hall and around the bend, enjoying the warm bath of golden light as it intensified enough that her eyes were able to adjust to it. The cavern that it emptied out into, however, struck her with wonder. This was no mean lair of a beast but was plush with furnishings and brightly colored rugs, and there over a fire burning an enormous hearth, was a kettle.

“Coffee or tea?” the manticore repeated in its deep, gravelly voice and Abby jerked to attention, a blush of embarrassment rising to her cheeks that she had been caught gawking.

“Uh, tea, please,” she replied. She wasn’t about to tell him she hadn’t a clue what coffee was.

He turned toward her, his heavy leonine brow raising. “Do you care for mint?”

A flicker of a smile tugged at her lips before she squelched it. “Yes. I love mint actually.”

The tip of its dangerous tail curled, and she swore she saw a hint of a smile on its face. “You will enjoy this. Green tea and mint. I do not have sugar, but it is pleasant enough without it for the human taste, I believe.”

“Thank you,” she replied automatically and then gave herself a brutal inward shake.

What was she saying? She was tasked with killing it and she was thanking it as if she were taking tea with a lonely neighbor. She frowned as she watched the manticore move toward the hearth with a clay pitcher. Fur covered its entire body, but its hide was very much like that of the lion it resembled, which meant she had more than eyeful of the darker sac and genital sheath as the manticore turned that brought a blush to her cheeks. She tore her eyes away and stared at the kettle.

“I really don’t understand what we are doing,” she pointed out to his back as he passed her on his way to the hearth.

“We are being civil,” he replied. “We may be designed to be enemies but there is no reason to let civilization slide further into the abyss than it already has.”

Removing the lid from the kettle, he tipped the pitcher in his hand and a stream of water filled the metal vessel. She shifted impatiently on her feet.

“Right. I’m going to be honest here, I wasn’t exactly trained for… this,” she countered helplessly, drawing the manticore’s green gaze back to her.

His furred brow rose once more. “Not trained to take tea? I did not realize that it required such aptitude.”

She scowled back at him. “You know that’s not what I mean,” she countered. “Right now, I’m supposed to be finding a way to murder you and chop off your stinger so that I can take it back to Dezia and claim my reward. Not having tea.”

His tail swayed menacingly. “If it makes you feel any better, I can simply kill you now and spare you the duress of the unfamiliar.”

“No,” she amended quickly and the corner of his feline-esque mouth pulled up as he nodded to a thickly upholstered chair.

“Then, please, sit,” he rumbled, turning his attention back to the kettle. “I dislike hovering guests.”

“I can’t imagine you having many to worry about,” she muttered in reply but quickly took a seat in a deep purple chair embroidered with gold thread in a tapestry of exotic floral designs that bore just a hint of the geometrical.

To her surprise, the manticore chuffed his amusement and inclined his head, granting her sally as he turned and settled into an enormous wingback chair in a similar shade of deep plum. He stretched out comfortably, the firelight casting heavy shadows over him. He regarded her with luminous, slitted eyes and seemed to smile with a hint of mockery.

“I have more guests than you might imagine, but none quite as charming, and all were fleeting visitors.” His head turned and she caught a glimpse of skulls stacked neatly in a corner as he glanced over at them casually. “They failed to be polite.”

Her mouth went dry as she stared at him. That was one detail that Zayman Bibal had failed to include. He didn’t say anything about the manticore keeping trophies of his kill.

“Oh,” she said weakly. “I suppose you can’t have that.”

“No. I cannot. I despise poor manners,” he retorted.

Abby wasn’t entirely sure how to respond to that, so she fell silent, her eyes following his every movement. It was strange, although he bore a humanoid face, there was very little about him that resembled a human beyond that. His build was too massive and too predatory, bulky in ways that a human was not, and he was lean in places where a human and those species similar in shape to humans would be a bit more filled out. The odd position of his shoulders and shape of chest aside, his hips were exceptionally narrow and his belly almost possessing a caved-in appearance with its sudden and extreme dip from his chest creating a strange slope of his abdominal muscles.

He was built like the perfect predator and possessed a sleek, powerful presence that she was very aware of. Certainly, his legs were better suited to a quadruped predator giving him a unique design for speed and agility and had a distinctly leonine appearance. Unlike his hands, his feet were wide, padded paws with large claws that pressed randomly out from their sheaths as he pensively regarded her in turn. Even the fingers on his large hands were thicker than those of humans with wide fingers that likewise were padded and lethally clawed.

Truthfully, the velvety pads on his palm at fingertips were slightly distracting and Abby found that her gaze returned to them frequently as he stroked the fur along his jaw and absently played with his long mane. She was mesmerized by their movement and the power within his hands that made her mouth go even drier yet as they conjured fantasies of what they might feel like stroking her skin in that same way. Her belly trembled with a hint of rising arousal and the kettle whistled, breaking the tension of the atmosphere between them and he sighed as he stood and walked back to the hearth.

“If I had any sense at all I would destroy you as I do any other intruder who comes here to kill me,” he pointed out, pouring the water from the kettle into an ornate little teapot. “The human king who believes himself master over the great expanse of this desert was clever to send a female. No doubt he thought it would lure me into a false sense of safety, allowing you to easily slit my throat.” He huffed with grim amusement. “As if I am that easy.”

“I doubt it,” she replied with a hint of annoyance. “I was hired because I was the only member of my family who happened to be there. My brothers and parents were occupied. And I’m hardly a seductress.”

“You give yourself far too little credit,” he purred, and the sound ran up her spine with an odd tingle that sent a strange sensation down between her legs.

She clenched her thighs together and flushed.

“But no,” he rumbled thoughtfully. “I do not think you came here with that in mind or else I would have already killed you. But you did willingly enter my home on your own accord—gifting me with your life however I see fit to use it since you failed to accomplish your means.”

“What are you going to do?” she asked, her fingers biting in the thick upholstery of her chair.

He grinned at her lazily. “First, we have tea. Afterward, you will have one chance to escape my den. If you succeed you return home and live your life as if this encounter never happened with the provision that you never return and seek to hunt me again.”

She swallowed hard. “And if I fail?”

His grin widened into a feral, hungry expression as he looked at her over his shoulder and hung the kettle back over the fire. “Then you will remain here as mine. It has been long since I enjoyed a female’s company. Your soft little body will be mine and you will spread your thighs, little human, as I can scent that you wish me to do, so that you may be filled completely with my cock.”

Abby choked on her own spit, shocked and horrified that he could so easily determine her body’s willingness and need. If anything, his words sent a dark, forbidden flame scorching low within her belly. He chuffed again as he took in her expression, his nostrils flaring as he prowled toward her, teapot in hand.

“Oh yes, I will fuck you long and hard I will fill you with every drop of my seed. I will breed and rut and you will know my pleasure while you scream for your own release and beg me for more. And I will continue to fuck you. If you are to escape this fate, then you must successfully find your way out of my den before I catch you. If you cannot, then you shall be mine and pinned on my prick. And you will be pinned for certain because you will find that it is not so easy to dislodge a manticore buried within your tight, hot cunt,” he rumbled, turning toward her.

Her eyes dropped and widened. His cock had extruded within those brief moments, and the shaft rose upward as a slightly curling angle, the tip of it broad and triangular in shape but bearing a number of rising bumps that continued in greater number down the length of his cock. A clear bead of precum welled at the tip and dripped from it and he hissed softly. Wrapping his hand firmly around his length, he squeezed, sending a stream of precum trickling free.

“Tea first,” he rumbled as if to remind himself and pressed his cock back into his bulging sheath as a deep growl rolled through his chest.

That growl did something to her. There was something so primal within it that something achingly raw within her responded instinctively to it. A wet gush dropped from deep within her, her arousal trickling steadily into her panties. She shifted in place at the sensation and squeezed her thighs tightly together as her eyes followed his every movement.

The manticore shivered in the grip of his own desire but he managed to walk calmly back to her with the teapot. Despite the tight control he was displaying, it was all she could to keep from springing to her feet and fleeing. He clearly had nerves of steel that allowed him to ruthlessly toy with her, but she was terrified that she was coming close to embarrassing herself with an inescapable demonstration of just how lacking her own self-control was. She was mortified and confused at her strange, uncontrollable response, and suddenly very sympathetic to cats in heat. Was this the same sort of suffering? Just the idea of being rammed full of all that dick made something within her clench with an instinctual excitement.

Gods she was sick, she knew she was, but she couldn’t help it. Caught helplessly within in a tidal wave of desire, her eyes followed him as he leaned forward and set the teapot among the teacups on the small table between them. His nostrils flared and he shivered again, this time more violently. His eyes pinched close for a moment and then sprung open, their green depths suddenly far more luminous than before as his pupils constricted tightly and then flared wide.

“Tea can wait,” he snarled, and his tail lashed, the stinger slashing through the air. “I can scent your desire. Fuck civility. I will have you now.”

He lurched forward causing Abby to spring to her feet with a squeak. Spinning away from the chair so that she was certain to keep the furniture between them, she pivoted toward the entrance and sprinted for it. An embarrassing flood of arousal wetted her panties as she ran, and the cotton of her underwear rubbed against her clit as if excited by the chase. Even with her mind screaming in denial, her body was priming itself to be fucked… to be rutted by a monster… to be pinned beneath him, her ass up in the air and filled up and stretched with the primal slam of his hips.

Her arousal was insane. It was as if her body was trying to incite the monster even as her mind attempted to secure her escape. She could hear him, his roar chasing after her through the winding cavern tunnel as she fled blindly through them, with not even her scarab to light the way since the magic had since dissipated while she had endured her capture. She could hear his claws scraping as he charged after her. She could nearly feel the fanning heat of his breath upon her as her pussy continued to weep with its own primitive eagerness.

Abby turned down another corridor and her eyes widened in shock. Just ahead the path terminated in a smooth wall. She had somehow gone the wrong way and was now trapped. Skidding to a stop, she slowly began to turn but a large body barreled into hers, sending them both crashing to the ground. She landed on her belly hard but didn’t have the time to push herself fully onto her hands and knees before one large, clawed hand slapped against the ground within view and she felt the other wrap around her waist, hauling her back as a growl vibrated through the air between them.

Despite the shocked screech of her mind, her hips instinctively went up and she moaned out loud when something large pressed frantically against her crotch as he panted and growled. She shivered blissfully as she felt her sex pulse and open further in preparation for him. Her hips did a needy little jump so that the crotch of her pants slid along his length from its tip to his pelvis in a way that made him snarl with pleasure. The fabric must have somehow weakened because she heard the first sound of fabric shredding as he gripped it with his claws and pulled. The fabric yielded and she felt him more acutely through the rapidly splitting material separating them, every strike against her clit sending stars shooting behind her eyes.

Gods she wasn’t even trying to fight him off. She didn’t want to. The logical part of her that cared about the fact that this was considered unnatural among those of her profession and strictly prohibited—and would get her expelled permanently—had shut down in surrender to the pleasure and need that was coursing through her as his flat, textured tongue rasped gently against her neck.

This was it… she was going to let herself be defiled by a monster, and she wasn’t the least bit sorry. In fact, she wanted nothing more. It was a forbidden sort of excitement that rose within her demanding to be embraced. And gods help her, embrace it she did.