Elliot, page 11
part #3 of Anarock Shifters Series
Chimo’s wings caught the current. He pelted to a standstill above the chasm and narrowed his eyes at Elliot. Elliot crouched low and backed up to stand next to Aria. She couldn’t break out of her thunderous fury. She kept her behind crushed against the wall roaring at anyone who looked sideways at her. She rolled her lips off her teeth and bellowed.
Elliot shrieked at the young dragons, but no one engaged with Aria and Elliot again. The dragons backed away. Chimo fluttered down and rejoined his friends. He scanned the pair and ruffled his wings. “You will not escape us. You will both die down here. You can hide behind the Kin, but the end will come for you just the same.”
Aria couldn’t speak. She never could speak in her bear form and she didn’t want to. She half-regretted that the fight was over and even that she survived it. She wanted to kill and be killed. She wanted blood.
Elliot kept screeching at the dragons. He swerved his neck back and forth glaring at them until Chimo turned his back on the pair and soared off into the dark. One by one, the others followed. They zoomed into the tunnel and away.
10
Silence descended over the platform. Aria looked around at nothing. Those young dragons vanished and left her and Elliot alone. A cloud of blood still drifted in the ripples. The dragons left no other sign that the fight took place—nothing but the pounding of her heart in her chest.
Elliot twisted his neck around searching for any enemies that weren’t there. No one came. The darkness surrounded them, all except that eerie orange light.
Aria growled low. She couldn’t relax. The fur on her back and neck stuck straight up and her pulse hammered in her brain. Blood rage fueled her energy. She couldn’t back down even when she was no longer under attack.
She glanced to one side to discover Elliot standing there in his human form. His black skin and short, curly hair blended seamlessly with the dark. The light caught his smooth, glossy irises. A flash of moisture shone in his mouth when he spoke. “Easy now, girl. It’s all right. Come on back now.”
That voice called to her out of the primal depths. She had to answer it. Her fur lay down and a chill ran through her. In an instant, the bear vanished and she was a woman again.
He laid his hand on her shoulder. “Are you all right? You ain’t hurt?”
She shook her head, but she couldn’t speak. Catastrophic emotion and alarm still held her taut. She couldn’t relax to save her life.
His fingers gripped her. He compressed her shoulder and gave her a light shake. “Let’s get the fuck out of here. I can’t stand this place.”
He steered her to the tunnel. A few paces along, he let his hand drop and they entered the passage. They walked side by side under the dragon’s dance, up the long slope, and back to the Halcyon Coast.
Aria couldn’t feel her legs. She couldn’t feel anything but the residual buzz of her own ferocity. She still hunted everywhere for someone to kill, but the Coast was deserted. Everyone was down at the dance.
She stumped along at Elliot’s side. She would be dead right now if he didn’t show up when he did. She never doubted that for a second. He made an enemy of Chimo and all his friends. Elliot risked his own future to help her.
How he knew where to find her, she couldn’t think. He found her, though. He saved her life against those fiends.
She didn’t want to be with anyone but him. She didn’t want to talk to anyone, not even him. She just wanted to rest in this silence with him. She didn’t have to defend herself with him. She didn’t have to do anything. She could just be.
In the days since they came to this curious world, she lost everything but him. He was her only friend, her only safety. She relied on him as never before.
They arrived at their home chamber—their new one—and Elliot walked right past it. He continued on up the cliff and back to the upper range where they first stayed. The higher they got, the lighter it got. The unearthly gleam returned and she could see through the bluish walls. The upper surface glistened and shimmered. It was day out there in the world of air and sunshine.
Elliot strolled back to their old room and into it. She halted by her old bed. This chamber looked exactly like their new one, but it felt different. It felt comfortable. She and Elliot were outcasts. They would always be outcasts. Moving down the Coast with the dragons didn’t change that. Nothing could ever change it.
How fitting that he should understand it before she did. How appropriate that he should bring her back here, to the one place on the Coast where she could rest and be at peace.
She scanned the landscape. The Halcyon Coast echoed with silence. No dragons swam around. She and Elliot were entirely alone. How strange it felt to be alone, to have no one watching her even out of the corner of their eyes. A few fish flickered by, but nothing else.
Elliot crossed to the other side of the room. His bed appeared and he did something to it that she didn’t see. He sighed and sat down. He kicked off his boots.
Aria turned a complete circle looking at everything, but she couldn’t figure out her own thoughts. She had to work to make sense of everything that happened. She took longer than she expected to come back from the brink of death.
She came to a stop regarding Elliot. He looked different to her now, too. He looked deeper, more human somehow. She studied the tight ringlets of curly hair on his scalp, the scruff of whiskers on his neck and jaw. His shoulders sloped under his shirt. A faint lawn of black hair ran down his forearm to his wrist.
He pinched his boots together and set them aside with another heavy sigh. “Well, I guess we’ll find out tomorrow what the upshot of tonight will be. I wonder who put him up to it or if he came up with that on his own. I should have known he would try something like this. He was way too friendly for my taste. These last couple of days, I got a weird feeling he wasn’t being nearly as sincere as he pretended, especially not when everyone else was giving us the cold shoulder.”
She didn’t answer. The words deflected off her. They sounded like they came from somewhere far away. They didn’t come from this world. They didn’t make sense here. They belonged to something human, something alien to the dragon consciousness that pervaded the Halcyon Coast.
Why didn’t she sense it before—this reptilian presence all around her? It seeped into her blood through the water. It poisoned her. It would kill her if the dragons didn’t get to her first.
Elliot’s head shot up and he cocked an eyebrow at her. He stared at her, but even that felt like a distant echo from somewhere far away, some reality she could no longer contact. He didn’t exist for her anymore, either. Everything outside was foreign and different. Even everything inside her was foreign and different and unknown. She didn’t know herself.
He stood up and sauntered toward her. He stopped in front of her and lowered his head to examine her. “You sure you’re all right?”
She nodded. She couldn’t stop looking around at everything. “I just…I can’t think.”
His hand drifted toward her and he touched her arm. “What’s going on in there? What’s wrong?”
“I….” She opened her mouth, but no sound came out. She couldn’t form words. “I…..I’m a bear.”
“Yeah? You’re a bear. You’re a big, beautiful bear. What’s wrong with that? You always were a bear. Are you worried I saw something down there I didn’t know about? I knew all along you were a bear.”
She shook her head. She couldn’t explain it even to herself. “I can’t come back from it. I can’t think.”
He contracted his chest to peer into her eyes. He scrutinized her, but she didn’t see how he could understand when she didn’t understand herself. Nothing made sense. She couldn’t stop thinking like a bear and feeling like a bear and hating like a bear and killing like a bear.
Out of nowhere, he cupped her chin and lifted. His eyes caught her in their dark sway and he kissed her. He bent down and his lips touched hers in a feather-light brush. He pulled back and examined her.
“You’re beautiful,” he murmured. “You’re more beautiful than anyone else down here. You’re beautiful when you’re a bear. You’re beautiful when you fight. You were even beautiful when you were walking around over there picking your mushrooms or whatever you call ‘ems.”
He nodded away toward the distant plane. She heard him, but not even those words touched her bear consciousness. Nothing could.
He gripped her chin and kissed her again, longer this time. He let his lips dally on her mouth. That satiny softness of his thick, full lips compressed into her brain. His warmth and his presence didn’t dispel the ursine fury of her soul, but at least he was here. He was trying to get through to her. That meant the world.
He straightened up and inclined his head one way. “I want you back. I want you back the way we used to be—not the way we used to be. I want you like this. I want you right now.”
She couldn’t answer. She could only stare at him. Want her? He wanted her? She didn’t know what that meant even though she understood exactly what he meant. He wanted her body, her heart, her spirit in a way he never wanted her before. He understood her better now than he ever did in Anarock. He saw her. He helped her. He supported her. He never did any of that before.
Still, his body and his lips and his eyes existed somewhere apart from her. She couldn’t feel him. Her own being couldn’t feel anything.
He kissed her one more time. His lips locked on hers and his eyes floated before her. His heat infused her veins. Did the water dampen her senses? Was that why she couldn’t feel him? She wanted to. She wanted to burn with passion for him, but her system wouldn’t respond. She couldn’t even try to respond.
Their eyes remained entwined. Their lips explored each other, but still she lingered in a netherworld where sensation didn’t impinge on her. Would she ever come back from this?
Without releasing her mouth, he circled his arm around her waist and picked her up. Her legs dangled lifelessly and unfeeling. She couldn’t even lift her arm to touch him even when she felt him holding her against him.
He searched her mind for any trace of her, but she was lost, gone, undead. He lifted her and walked backward to his bed. He sat down on it and pulled her legs around his hips. He sat her straddling him, kissing her all the time. He studied her to the center of her being while he kissed her.
Her body recognized that position. She should feel some arousal to be straddling his lap like that, to feeling his prick harden between her legs. His hands glided up her back under her jacket and pushed it out of the way. He raked his fingernails over her t-shirt and tugged her bra aside.
His lips plucked off her mouth and he breathed in her face. “You’re Aria Slaughter of Anarock. You live at 2514 Willow Street in New Orleans. Your father is Tom Slaughter. Your mother is Hilda Manning. Your older sister is Gianna. Your younger sister is Amaya. You went to Booker T. Washington High School, but you didn’t graduate. You quit to help your mother when she got sick. You got a job waitressing at Royce Wilcox’s bar and you’ve been working there ever since. You gave up your dream to become a doctor because your papa said you could never go to college. He told you it was too dangerous, that you might shift and the humans would kill you.”
A stab of agony hit her in the chest. The whole horrible ordeal down in that chasm came rushing back. In a flash of excruciating pain, she experienced the fear and dread and murderous fury. She tasted blood. Chimo’s scales raked her tongue. She felt the frigid rock behind her that wouldn’t let her retreat.
Tears stung her eyes and a lump stuck in her throat. She tensed for a second. Then all that horror spasmed through her and she thought she would die of it. She howled out one long plaintive scream of torrential anguish. She wanted to die. She didn’t want to be alive feeling this.
His arms closed around her. She could feel. She could feel him strong and warm against her. She could feel his cock between her legs and her breasts collapsing against his chest. She felt his lips and his fingers digging into her hair.
She didn’t want to kiss him. She didn’t want to feel all of this longing at once, but he wouldn’t let her go. He wouldn’t release her into death. He kept her alive with his arms and his presence. He rocked her on his lap so she had to suffer that awful desire eating her up inside. She wanted to hide from it, but she couldn’t.
A tear streaked down her cheek at the soul-shattering intensity of it all. He covered her mouth. She could sob into him. She could cry and be okay. He made it all okay. He kissed her and he didn’t care when her tears got in his mouth.
He ripped up her shirt and his palms made contact with her back. She erupted in a hurricane of sensation and emotion all mixed up together. She needed him even though she wanted to run from him. She needed to feel this. She couldn’t tell if it would kill her or if hiding from it would kill her. She couldn’t cope with this.
His tongue glided into her mouth and washed warm wetness down her stomach to her crotch. Her flesh swelled and oozed against his bulging prick. She rode down on it and an agonized howl ripped from her throat. Was it pain or fear or desire? Maybe it was all of them.
He pulled up her shirt and burrowed into her chest. His teeth closed around her nipple and she couldn’t hold back anymore. She nailed her pussy down on his hardness and cried climaxing in excruciating despair. Her insides gushed into her panties.
He pulled her shirt and jacket over her head. Her breasts fell into his mouth and his fingers tightened in her hair. He pried her head back and exposed her heart and her skin to his ravaging mouth.
She couldn’t stop cumming on him. She needed to crush herself on his package. She needed to feel him now or never. She couldn’t know when she would sink into that lifeless malaise where nothing existed. If that happened, she needed to know this, to hold this, to feel this.
He took his hands away only long enough to slide his own shirt off. When he closed her in once again, her nipples grazed his bare chest. She almost lost consciousness at the raw sensitivity of touching him, of feeling his heat burn her soul. He was there. He was alive, even if she could never be. She clung to him craving him and praying for him.
When he kissed her this time, her eyes drifted half-closed. She couldn’t see him. She could only feel the bottomless reality of him right there next to her, touching her, drawing her back to life. He embraced all that she was with those chocolate-brown arms.
He nuzzled into her chest nipping and biting and sucking everywhere. He nosed into her neck and his breath seared her skin. Somehow or other, her hands found him. She stroked his neck, his ears, his head. She traced his movements in a swoon of wonder. How did she get here? How did she get in his arms and mouth and eyes?
He scooped under her arms. He stood her on her feet and unbuttoned her jeans. He slid them down to her knees and his tongue squirreled into her pussy lips. Her juices dripped onto his tongue and a flush of heat rushed up her neck to her eyes.
Her hand massaged his neck of its own free will. She observed it from afar moving with his rhythm. His mouth sucked ecstasy from her slit. His tongue forked her pussy lips aside and grazed her clit.
Wave upon wave of orgasmic rapture rushed through her, but she couldn’t scream. She couldn’t collapse on top of him. She could only stand there and undergo this catastrophe rupturing her out of her trance and forcing her to feel.
His fingers drilled between her legs. Her cream poured into his hand and he dug deep to find her. She rocked on her heels and her breath rasped in her throat, but she still floated somewhere apart from it all. She needed him. She felt him. She smelled her essence on his face and hands, but something was still missing.
He lifted his eyes to lock on her. He kissed her belly with his cheeks all smeared with honey. His eyes smoldered with lust…. or was that love? She couldn’t tell.
He took hold of her jeans and held them while he lifted her feet through the holes. He tossed them aside and stood up before her. His eyes kept her enthralled rising, rising past her face to hang suspended above her. His chest strained with every breath. He pushed his pants down and moved in on her.
His lips took hold of her mouth. His arms folded around her waist, but she couldn’t stop staring at him. His being radiated molten power into her. He commanded her to rise to his level. He didn’t have to enter her. He already had her. He already occupied her. He compelled her to make herself his.
He lifted her and strapped her legs around his waist. His rigid cock touched her engorged slit and she froze. He was going to fuck her. He was going to take her beyond the limit of her own endurance. He would make her into something else, something she couldn’t understand yet because she hadn’t gone there. That firm touch told her so.
He swiveled around and dropped to his knees. He thumped her spine against the bed, but he didn’t put her down. His chest nailed her in place still holding her with his eyes. He crushed her. His stiff member stabbed through the veil of heat to her insides.
She gasped in astonishment. The next minute, he was inside. His thickness stretched her wide and his length bored to her center. She stared in shock at nothing riding that thing to the ends of awareness.
He ground upwards to drill her deep. He pumped her up the side of the bed and let her sink when he withdrew. He blasted wetness splitting her tightness asunder. She sucked through her teeth with every wicked intrusion. He propelled her out of her mind to somewhere beyond reason.
She couldn’t grasp it. She couldn’t comprehend what he was doing to her. He filled her with himself and left her in pieces. She dangled on tenterhooks above a vacuous gulf of the black unknown.
She was down there in the dark. She couldn’t find herself. She could only hold onto him and hope to High Heaven he carried her back to sanity when this was all over.
A broken shriek sounded somewhere. She recognized her own voice, but not the sensations that made her cry out like that. She experienced an explosion of raw lightning. One rupturing scream followed another echoing in her ear.
