More Than Friends Read online

  They pounced at the men approaching, who fired in self-defense. Bullets ripped through unstoppable feline flesh. Blood scented the air, making the cats go mad with bloodlust.

  Sickness churned her stomach. “Stand down. Tranquilizers only. We need these cats alive!” she screamed into her comm. unit. She was under strict instructions not to harm the animals—they had an enormous price tag on their heads. She had to get them back to the experimental facility they´d been released from or all their efforts would be in vain.

  The men ignored her, panic setting in when John’s luck finally ran out as a tiger took him down. His screams echoed around them, curdling her blood in horror. The five hundred pound beast covered his body and locked onto his throat, cutting off his cries and ripping out his throat before anyone could react.

  Mind-numbing terror washed over her. A split second felt like an eternity as her adrenaline fused brain tried to cope with the scene unfolding before her. Her ears rang and her eyes dimmed, making her mind feel that wobbling sound that meant she could easily black out if she’d just let herself go.

  And then probably be eaten alive with the rest of the men.

  Yvonne shook her head, aiming her gun. She’d never get the men under control if they all went into a panic. She didn’t want to die any more than they did. A scream lodged in her throat, refusing to come out. She fired at the man-eater, taking it down. It fell on the fallen man, asleep.

  She wanted to blow its brains out. The revulsion of the thought and what she’d seen the animal do made her want to vomit.

  She choked back the bile rising in her throat. “Goddamn it! They’re just animals! Use your brains,” she yelled, raising her gun and firing at the cats attacking her team.

  If they killed all the damned cats, they wouldn’t get paid. Some of the men ignored her and continued to fire their guns.

  “Use the fucking tranq. guns! We need them alive, not dead, you fucking idiots. Get a hold of yourselves!” she screamed, trying to get through their thick skulls.

  She took a cat down, and then another, and swore when she had to reload. She ran behind one of the trees to try to cover her back and fitted the cartridge as quickly as she could. Spinning to launch a tirade and make sure no one else got killed, she pulled up short as something snagged her vest. Her blood ran cold when she felt the pressure of a paw and the edge of claws digging through the thick material.

  The airspace was so awash with the sounds of battle, she hadn’t heard the fucking thing come up behind her.

  She twisted, trying to get a shot off before he could rip a hole through her. A great black paw knocked the weapon from her hands—lightning fast, faster than she could ever hope to react. She lunged for the weapon, feeling the beast move in sync with her. He was right behind her, his hot fetid breath on the back of her neck. Her legs dragged, her mind slowed. She couldn’t believe what was really happening, and in the back of her mind, she knew she couldn’t stop moving or she’d be dead. His great weight landed on top of her, and dimly, she recognized the sounds of shredding fabric as it clawed her vest.

  She ducked her head into her chest, felt the beast squeezing her, crushing her into the ground. Through a fog, she registered that the pheromone was leaking onto her chest—something on the canister had broken and its contents saturated her clothing. Her lungs couldn’t expand, she couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t reach her knife, her hands were trapped as the animal pushed her down. Dirt filled her nostrils, her mouth, preventing her from screaming for backup. Any second she’d feel teeth sink into her neck. She prayed she wouldn’t feel it when the animal ripped her spinal cord out.

  This was the end, and she was powerless to stop it from happening.

  Here’s an excerpt from Celeste’s alter ego, Jaide Fox from an upcoming erotic fantasy romance: Beastmen of Shadowmere 2: Seduced by the Beast:

  Shadowmere, Northern Borderlands

  Swan of Avonleigh had no knowledge of where she was and no memory of how she had gotten here. There could be only one explanation--dark magic.

  She nursed little doubt that the source of the dark magic, and the instrument of her torture by terror now, was the same—Morvere, the sorcerer who had cursed her to live by day as a swan, only resuming her human form at night, the sorcerer who had had clipped her wing so that she could not even fly away to protect herself when the spell overtook her and changed her into a swan.

  Not content with the misery he had already inflicted upon her, he had dropped her into this nightmare world, prey to the baying pack that now pursued her, where a horrible fate awaited her the moment she faltered.

  Terror surged through Swan’s veins, near deafening her to the sounds of the pack that surrounded her, almost seeming to toy with her as they herded her onward, closing in now and then to drive her in a new direction. Pushed almost beyond endurance, her muscles screamed in agony, but the threat of being eaten alive left no room for anything but the instinct to survive, to continue placing one foot in front of the other.

  Keening howls tore through the night, wolfen, yet strange. They surrounded her from every direction, closing in now for the kill. Ignoring the sharp nettles of underbrush slashing her arms and legs as she forced her way through them, tearing her naked flesh, Swan forged onward in desperation. Blood shivered in thin rivulets down her skin, scenting the air and driving the howls wilder, louder ... the chase faster.

  They were toying with her, she knew with certainty now, yet she could not give up hope that she would somehow elude them.

  Something crashed through the brush a short distance behind her but she dared not look--could only forge ahead and pray she could evade the monsters in pursuit.

  Her heart choking her with its thunderous beating, the air burning her ragged lungs, she darted around a tree, ducking under its slapping branches as she passed. The hair rose on the back of her neck as she sensed something close, something bearing down on her. She whirled around, looking frantically for an avenue of escape, but everything was black in the night shaded forest. Movement caught the corner of her eye--death close at hand. She twisted away from it in vain hope.

  The scream she’d held back for so long tore from her throat as a dark shape lunged for her. Jerking away from its grasp, she lost her footing.

  Leaves and dirt churned as she crashed to the ground. She screamed again as hands grasped her arms and a heavy body rolled with her until she lay beneath it, her arms trapped behind her back against the cool earth. Bracing her feet against the ground, Swan heaved upward, desperate to escape the ravaging blows she expected momentarily.

  A leaden weight settled over her, tight against her thighs. Hands pinned her shoulders to the ground. She was trapped. Thoroughly bested, unable to move the slightest inch, exhaustion forced her to collapse and cease her struggles. Breathing harshly in the overwhelming silence, Swan braced herself mentally, expecting to feel curved talons rake into her flesh, slicing down into her heart.

  No attack came. No bestial growl broke the stillness. Quiet had descended around her. The howls had receded into nothingness, and the forest was still save for her own pounding heart and ragged breath. When no death strike fell, her sanity returned, and she realized a man lay atop her instead of a beast as she’d feared. The touch of him scorched her own feverish skin, the sheen of perspiration doing little to cool her unnatural heat.

  Blinded by the darkness, she could see nothing of him, his shadow eclipsing what meager light made its way beneath the thick foliage of the forest. Hard muscles clamped tight against her hips, their grip strong and unforgiving, but still human. He seemed as human as she, someone she could face and hope to win against ... if she could just gather her strength. A deadly calm settled over her.

  “Why come you to these lands?” a deep voice rumbled above her.

  Startled, Swan looked up at him, too surprised to do anything but blurt out the truth. “I know not where I am, nor how I came to be here.”

  He was quiet a long minute, weighing her wor
ds. “I think you do not speak the truth, but I will humor you for the moment. You lie in a forest of Shadowmere, on the Northern Borderlands. You have ventured far from your home, little bird. Now--who opened your cage?”

  Gooseflesh rose on her skin, chilling her despite the hint of amusement she detected in his tone. Morvere had more power than she’d ever dreamed. If such was truth—and she held onto little doubt that it was not—then she could not hope to defeat the sorcerer on her own. It would take someone of equal power, someone versed in magic ... someone from Shadowmere.

  An insane possibility, spurred by the sheer hopelessness of her situation, occurred to her. She ignored his question, voicing one of her own. “Are you going to kill me?”

  “It is not often we attract spies of your ... ilk. I would not have you die so soon.” He leaned toward her and sniffed her throat as if he would taste her.

  Swan held perfectly still, unwilling to give him cause to attack. The plan she’d only begun to formulate fled. No man behaved this way, this animalistic. She’d jumped to the wrong conclusion--a mistake that could easily make her life forfeit. He was not her kind. It had been foolish to think so--to believe for a moment that she had been rescued.

  Inches away from her ear, his breath hot and invasive, he whispered, “My question remains unanswered. I may be tempted to ... eat you, little bird ... if you do not satisfy me.”

  Swan swallowed hard, ignoring the unfamiliar trembling that flickered through her. “I don’t understand it. What spy of any worth would get caught?”

  “One who had allowed it? Do you aim to disarm us with your charms?”

  It was an intriguing question, provoking a spark of renewed hope. He would not have mentioned it, surely, if the possibility had not existed. “I’m no spy. You are mistaken.”

  “Rarely.” He seemed to study her, if his silence was any indication. “We have ways of making men talk. I can think of much more pleasurable methods to ply on a woman.”

  She would die before she allowed an unnatural to touch her, let alone use torture to gain information from her, even if she’d had information to withhold from him, which she most certainly did not. With an effort, she hardened her will. “You cannot gain information I do not have, nor wield any force that could pry it from me if what you suppose were true. You don’t frighten me,” she said with a bravado born of ruler ship.

  “You should be.” He chuckled darkly, pushing himself up so that he no longer lay fully against her, though he still held her pinned to the cold ground. His knowing laugh crept over her with the intimacy of a caress. She couldn’t escape the feeling that he could see every inch of her body, despite the darkness, that he invaded even her thoughts and knew her as no one ever had.

  A callused thumb brushed the edges of her collarbone. Her skin tingled with heightened awareness, near burning at the points of contact. She shivered. Never before had she considered her nudity a danger. In her world, no man would dare touch her. And though the dark shielded her, here ... there could be no guarantees of safety in old illusions. Swan jerked away from his invasive touch. His gall was unbelievable.

  “I did not give you permission to touch me.”

  Despite her command, despite her certain knowledge that in her own world he would not have dared so much, would have instantly begged pardon for a presumption that could easily have been a death warrant, she knew very well that she was powerless in his world.

  He was an unnatural, of that she was certain, yet what powers did he possess? She could not know, nor even their extent, but even if he did not possess night vision, he would certainly have felt her nakedness, pressed against her as he was. Would he dare to press his advantage, to take what had not been offered?

  Meager as the tattered robe had been that had covered her nakedness, even that had been lost in her mad dash for freedom ... snatched away by a tree’s groping fingers. Nothing protected her now but her own tangled locks and the dusting of dirt clinging to her skin.

  She should have felt frightened, or revolted. Instead, her sudden awareness of him as a far different sort of predator sent a strange kindt of expectancy humming through her blood.

  “I did not ask it.” He’d noticed her reaction, his senses uncanny. “Most women would welcome finding themselves in your position.”

  “And what is that, as a meal?”

  He laughed. At another time, Swan might have thought the sound pleasant. Now, it only made her more uneasy. “There is more than one way to eat a woman. I would gladly demonstrate.”

  Strangely, although she had no very clear idea of what he referred to, her heart quickened, heat gathering in her loins. It disturbed her that he could command a reaction from her body with no more than his words. Irritation surfaced. “I never knew beasts were so obliging. I thought your kind only raped and destroyed.”

  His hands tightened on her shoulders. “It is humans who cannot be trusted. You break the pact coming here. Death has been dealt for less,” he said, his voice deadly soft.

  “I face it gladly,” she said slowly. Her jaw clenched with the effort to remain calm, but her heart drummed in her throat with the new threat.

  The man was silent a long moment, studying her, building the tension strumming through her aching muscles. At last the vice of his hands relaxed. “You lie, little bird. Your fear is as potent as a perfume. You would do well to remember where you are. I tire of these games. Why have you come here?” he demanded again, quietly. “The scent of prey is sweet ... and you have ventured where you don’t belong. I will have my answer.”

  “I have told you what you asked. You don’t want the truth. I have no one to turn to, nowhere else to go.”

  Morvere had sent her here, of that she had no doubt, though she could see no advantage to telling him of a man he would not know for his treachery. She could see no way to make him believe her tale, and it was possible that mentioning the sorcerer might only convince him that she and Morvere had formed some plot together, to use sorcery to get her beyond the border for some dark purpose.

  In her homeland, it was well known humans were killed in Shadowmere on sight. Those few that survived its horrors turned mad. Morvere had sent her because he wanted her death and torture. He knew the unnaturals horrified her. To be made one and thrust into their midst to die was a vicious revenge for denying him.

  He could not even be brought to pity and end her life quickly. How long had he conspired to claim her and her lands? She’d trusted him with her life, with the lives of her people, and he’d betrayed them all.

  That reflection did much to steel her purpose. She would survive, if only to see him fall.

  “Shadowmere is not a haven for your kind.”

  Despite his assurances to the contrary, it occurred to her that it could be, if she could convince him. Dare she pin her hopes on the people of Shadowmere? They had fought for so long, it was unlikely she would gain anything but a swift death. Still, she had nothing more to lose and everything to gain by asking. “I require your assistance.”

  The demand caught him by surprise. “You do not know me, and I feel I must point out that you’re in no position to make any sort of demands. I fear I must refuse.”

  In some long buried sense, she felt he reserved a softness toward women--many men did. He had rescued her, after all. Of course, he might only have saved her for some darker purpose, but instinct told her she was right. “You have not heard my needs and I am not accustomed to being refused.”

  His eyes narrowed. “Arrogant. And naive. Obeying a woman’s demands is beyond my experience.”

  “You cannot possibly refuse me help,” she said, astounded, her voice tinged with doubt. What would she do? She could not go forward unassisted, and most certainly not back to Avonleigh. Morvere would likely do something worse, perhaps kill her on the spot for not having the grace to die the first time.

  He shook his head, intrigued despite what he’d said to the contrary, to find his beautiful captive making demands upon her captor.
But was it strength, or nothing more than a lack of understanding of the dire situation she found herself in?

  “I could, far more easily than you seem to think. I am bound by nothing from your world, not the position you held in your own world, certainly not your notions of chivalry. It’s obvious you have no clear notion of your peril. Did not the pack fill you with terror at their call? The hunters answer but to one master ... and worse terrors roam these lands.”

  If had he meant to frighten her, it had worked. The blood froze in her veins as his words sank in. Why had she not realized what it was that pursed her the moment she learned where she was?

  The hunters. Borderguards of Shadowmere. The pack was the essence of nightmares. They’d chased her, endlessly it seemed, but she had thought them beasts of the natural world, drawn by the scent of blood, not… the hunters.

  Still, she lived. If what he said was true, why was she not dead?

  It occurred to her then that there could be only one answer. “Who are you?” she whispered fearfully.

  “I am Raphael, Lord of the Hunters.” His hands shifted to grip her upper arms as he dragged her to her feet with ease. “And you are my prisoner.”

  They were surrounded in the next instant, wolfen men melding from the trees as though summoned with a thought. Some growled in the language of wolf. Others spoke in muffled tones, guttural, their menace palpable.

  Knowing instinctively that to stare at them was to provoke them, Swan kept her gaze trained on the man who held her, Raphael, though she felt more than saw him. She’d baited one of the most powerful men of Shadowmere, but she couldn’t dwell on that. Her initial fear faded, replaced with a sense of purpose.

  She lived because he willed it. Whatever his purpose might be, she saw at once that he was a potential ally capable of defeating Morvere. And while she would never have considered allying herself with such as he, under ordinary circumstances, desperation made strange bedfellows. She was not so haughty that she couldn’t recognize this “man’s” worth. She had only to convince him to help her.