Page 22 of Warped
CHAPTER 21: BINX
“I’ m coming to get you, Bianca…”
The message sends a shiver up my spine, and it’s not the good kind of shiver. The words seem to be whispered not into my ear, but within the very center of my brain, and they are accompanied by the distant howl of a wolf.
Somehow, I know that the whisper and the howl are the same.
The landscape through which I am running is dark—dark hills and valleys cloaked in a faintly luminous fog. The terrain seems to shift and writhe beneath my feet, and no matter how fast I pump my legs, the ground keeps pulling back to where I started, like I’m running in place on a treadmill. Is this some kind of earthquake?
I stumble and fall, but the ground yields beneath me, soft, not like mud or loosely packed soil, but like flesh, warm and smooth. The land is not land at all, but a mass of tangled bodies, immense and writhing. An orgy of titans, their muscles like dark mountains shifting behind the many layers of fog.
“I’m coming to get you…”
Once more, I hear the howling, but this time it is closer than before. It is not the cry of some wild animal, not a wolf or coyote, but the baying of a hound who has caught his quarry’s scent.
I run as fast as my legs will carry me, down the slope of a gigantic buttock, up the valley of a spine. It is no use. The fog closes in around me so thick it feels like I’m running underwater.
The hound cries again, much closer now.
I know I shouldn’t look, it will only slow me down even more, but I can’t help myself. I turn to face my pursuer. The hound is loping after me, a great shadowy beast with gleaming fangs and glowing eyes. Behind him, following close on his heels, are three men. His keepers. Two of them I don’t recognize, but the third one is Stanley. My ex. The rotten piece of shit who got me into this mess in the first place.
“You might as well give up, Bianca!” he yells. “It’s already too late…”
The fog isn’t fog anymore. It is smoke, thick and choking, laced with drifting ashes like flakes of black snow. The giants’ bodies erupt around me. Breasts gushing fountains of molten lava. Phalluses ejaculating rivers of fire.
The hound leaps.
I wake up.
The bedroom aboard the Nomad is dark. No wall-imager illusion of a castle bedchamber. No crackle of a fire burning in an imaginary fireplace. That’s probably for the best, considering the nightmare I was just having.
Only a dream, I tell myself. Only a dream.
It was so vivid, though. Far more vivid than any dream I’ve ever had before. Especially that creepy voice echoing inside my head— I’m coming to get you, Bianca, I’m coming to get you —and that awful baying of the hound. The memory makes me shudder.
Only a dream.
When I fell asleep, I was naked, and I still am, but now my body is at least covered by the satin bedsheets. Another body is lying next to mine, big and warm and masculine. Instinctively, I nestle myself against it for comfort.
Rek.
Even in the darkness, I can tell it’s him just by the shape of his body and the sound of his breath. He is sleeping, and judging by the stiffness of his cock, his dreams are more pleasant than mine. I wrap my fingers around him and stroke him gently, taking care not to rouse him from his slumber.
I remember the game we played last night, and all the pleasure Rek and Traven gave me. Pleasure like I’ve never experienced before. I lean in close and press a kiss to the sleeping warper’s lips. Then I turn over to give Traven a kiss too, but his side of the bed is empty. He got up early to cook breakfast, I bet. What time is it, anyway?
I sit up and look around the bedroom, but it’s too dark to see anything.
“ Nomad ,” I whisper. “Increase bedroom lights ten percent.”
A faint glow suffuses the space, providing just enough light to see by. I throw off the sheet and start to climb toward the edge of the bed when a voice from the side of the room almost startles me out of my skin.
“You’re awake. Good.”
I let out a sharp squeal and spin to face the voice.
Traven is lounging in a padded chair by the wall. The same one he used when he watched me and Rek have sex for the first time. He is naked, with one leg flung casually over the arm of the chair, and his manhood is on full display, hard and throbbing with desire. My mouth waters at the sight of him. My heart leaps.
Then I see what he’s holding in his right hand, and my blood goes cold.
It’s my datastick.