Dark Obsession Read online

  “You sure you can handle it, big boy?”

  Maximus peered at her through slitted eyes.

  No one ever talked to him like she did, with all her provocative insouciance and sultry playfulness.

  And those damned nicknames!

  He’d show her. As soon as his limbs obeyed his will again.

  In reply, he simply growled low in his throat.

  Bring it on, female.

  She gave him such a feral grin he should probably be worried. Instead, his cock leapt wildly in anticipation.

  “Remember what I said about my favorite body parts?” she asked him in a purring growl.

  “My mouth. Around your cock.”

  She reached down a hand to squeeze him in emphasis.

  His chest heaved with deepened breaths.

  “I’m going to eat you up, tiger.”

  She smacked her lips and licked her tongue slowly around them.

  “Hours and hours. I won’t let up. You’ll be so raw and hurt so good afterward, you won’t even have the strength to beg for mercy.”

  Maximus jerked in her hand, his pre-cum weeping out of his engorged head.

  With impressive bravado, he tucked his hands beneath his head and communicated through their link, do your worst, pussy cat.

  She did.

  Oh, she fucking did.

  He was raw after hours of her sucking, nipping, licking, kissing, lapping, squeezing and deep-throating him until he couldn’t see straight. And he hurt so good, everywhere, he could barely draw breath.

  There was nothing left. She took it all.

  And still she worked him, now gnawing teasingly along his shaft like a starving squirrel who’d been given a sweet cob of corn, humming and sighing approving noises as she went along. As if she’d just begun this long-awaited meal and was settling in for the duration.

  She was right. He didn’t have the strength to beg for mercy. He was a fucking wreck.

  But there was a languid looseness that settled in every muscle and tendon, relaxing him, funneling a healing energy into every pore. Guess all the endorphins his countless orgasms released were doing their trick.

  He was both enervated and invigorated. And what do you know? His limbs were obeying his will again.

  So swiftly she was caught entirely by surprise, he flipped them over until she was pressed into the furs by his heavy weight on top of her.

  While she lay trapped beneath him with the breath knocked out of her, he grabbed hold of both wrists, opened her thighs wide with his knees and rammed the full length of his hard cock into her in one long thrust.

  “Uhn.”

  Was all she uttered before he shoved his tongue inside her mouth, shutting her up as he stroked her deep.

  His thighs kept hers immobile, splayed wide open as he pounded into her, stretched so far apart she was almost doing the splits. With his hand shackling hers, his tongue plunging into her mouth, his cock fucking her pussy so hard her body jolted and quaked with each powerful thrust, he had her entirely at his mercy.

  He reveled in it. Drowned his cock in her hot juices, punished and worshipped her small, soft body with his brute animal force. The only thing she could do was lie there and take his pounding.

  But she always found a way to take back.

  She worked her pussy hard, squeezing him strongly every time he surged inside her. Her greedy mouth sucked and pulled at his tongue, her teeth trying to catch his lips. She growled and purred and whimpered, begging him to give her release, to take her higher, deeper, harder.

  The only sounds in the cave were their mangled breaths, the wet noises of his sex grinding into hers; of hers clenching relentlessly around him, desperate to hold on. Of their bodies colliding in slick sweat on steaming skin.

  He caught the silent scream of her climax in his mouth, swallowing the guttural sounds as she shuddered and convulsed endlessly beneath him, her core clutching him so hard, his own orgasm crashed upon him like a tsunami, pulling him under until he was drowning in bliss so acute it was almost, but not quite, pain.

  His body shook as he jetted his seed in scalding gushes into her womb, filling every crevice inside her body with his cum.

  Her legs finally got out from underneath his weight and wrapped tightly around his hips, ankles crossing at the base of his spine to hold him to her, as deep inside her as he could go, her pussy eating him up in voracious gulps, milking him harder the more he gave.

  When the last shivers subsided from their bodies, he pulled slightly away from her mouth, giving her a lingering, almost chaste kiss against her pouty lips.

  “How was that for payback?” he rasped, looking into her sleepy and thoroughly satisfied golden green eyes.

  “Mmm,” she replied, clenching her core muscles around him in tight, wet pulses and arching up slightly to pull his lower lip between her teeth.

  That all you got, tiger boss?

  A short bark of laughter erupted from his chest at her shameless audacity.

  He smiled down at her with his eyes, his body, heart and soul so full with joy he could barely contain it.

  He loved this female. Loved everything about her.

  He loved her sass, her intellect, her badass attitude.

  He loved her passion, her competitiveness, even her over-the-top possessiveness.

  He loved the way she pushed him, the way she partnered him, the way they fit together like two halves of a whole.

  “Ariel,” he murmured, staring deeply into her golden green orbs.

  He loved looking into her eyes when they did this, when his body came inside hers like this. When the closeness he felt to her emotionally perfectly reflected the intimacy of their flesh.

  He let go of her wrists so that he could grasp her hips with both hands, holding her at just the right angle to receive his deep, throbbing thrusts as he slowly began to love her anew.

  Her mouth parted and her breath shortened as she held his gaze, as he ground upon the hard knot of her pleasure with every stroke.

  So slowly. So painstakingly. So maddeningly.

  Her nails clawed impatiently down his back, making him hiss, then carved into his ass cheeks and held him tightly, feeling every contraction of his muscles as he pushed agonizingly slowly inside her and just as torturously pulled out.

  In. Out.

  Azure blue on golden green.

  Deeper. Harder. Hotter.

  But not faster.

  He just kept stroking her with the same insanely slow pace.

  She squirmed and bucked and twisted beneath him, but he didn’t change the rhythm. He could go on for hours. Pleasuring her endlessly with his cock. Branding her pussy forever his.

  Somehow, staring into his eyes made it so much worse. The ecstasy he wrought upon her was infinitely more acute. Her sensations exponentially multiplied.

  “Maximus,” she moaned, as a deep, rosy flush spread from her sex throughout her body, electrifying every nerve along the way.

  His lips parted, and his breath hitched.

  His pupils enlarged until she could see straight into the unfathomable, beautiful depths of his soul.

  “I love you.”

  As if his gruffly rumbled words set off a chemical reaction, her entire body went up in flames. An orgasm the likes of which she’d never known was possible shot through her like white hot lightning, making every part of her tighten and strain to the point of pain.

  Only to release a hurricane of euphoria at the moment of agony, crashing through her on wave after wave of ecstasy.

  He followed closely behind, a harsh roar torn from his throat, his great body shaking with the force of his passion.

  Even then, he held her eyes, let her see him come apart with his love for her.

  Ariel knew then and there—she’d follow this male to the ends of the earth.

  She opened her mouth to return the words he said, because she finally knew what they meant. She finally understood and felt with everything that she was.

  But
she didn’t get the chance.

  *** *** *** ***

  All hell broke loose.

  Ariel didn’t know what to focus on first. The sudden cacophony that surrounded her was deafening.

  There was a familiar churning and whirring in the ink-black skies outside. She didn’t have to look out to see the Bell UH-1Y Venom transport helos swarming rapidly to their location.

  There must be more than five of them. Perhaps even more on the way.

  Long-range rifles were fired at intervals, but they sounded different. It wasn’t bullets that were used, but something larger, resulting in a deeper echo when fired, a louder aftershock.

  The cries of various animals were added to the mix—growls, roars, hisses, screeches.

  Ariel and Maximus shifted into their animal forms on instinct, charging out of their cave and bounding off the rocky ledge.

  Ariel had never seen Maximus leap so far. He funneled all of his power into his hind legs, stretched and elongated his body as he catapulted into the air in his giant tiger form, grabbed hold of one helo’s landing skids, and used his momentum to send it rolling belly over rotor blades through the air like an out-of-control spinning top.

  The pilot had no hope of recovering, and the helicopter crashed into a rocky cliff in an explosion of flames and screeching blades.

  Well. Maybe she should have stayed and learned a thing or two from the Tiger King as well.

  Not to be totally outdone, she bounded in a zigzag streak down the mountainside from their cave, avoiding the aim of snipers leaning out from two of the helos fast approaching from the north.

  With one of the lead helos crashed and burned, two others hovered over the animals’ hidden plateau, ropes out, soldiers dropping down by the dozens, some armed with guns, others with crossbows and old-fashioned weapons like swords and chains.

  A couple of nets were thrown down too, and from the way they crackled with electricity when they found their targets, those weren’t ordinary trapper nets.

  The closest tangle of soldiers and claws was four against one, with Roark in giant lion form fighting back vampires who’d already pumped a couple shots of tranquilizer into him.

  They weren’t here to kill. They were here to capture.

  Maybe.

  Ariel leapt into the fray and tore the head off of one bloodsucker while clawing another one so badly his internal organs poured out of his gaping abdominal cavity before he disintegrated into dust.

  Roark finished the other two, but was flagging quickly from the tranqs. His sides heaved with exhaustion as he shook his head to clear it.

  No, don’t slow down!

  Before the thought was even transmitted, an electrical net dropped on top of the lion. Ariel just barely managed to avoid getting trapped too.

  Roark roared in pain and fury as the net fried his hide upon contact until he smoked and sizzled like a piece of meat on a grill. Involuntarily, he changed back into his humanoid form, and the net automatically conformed to his shape, cinching him so tightly he could barely breathe.

  Ariel didn’t have time to try to help him because a rapid series of shots hit the ground near her, one of the tranqs catching the edge of her tail.

  She bounded behind a large boulder to avoid another hail of rifle shots. When she edged slightly to the side to see what was happening, she was well and truly frightened.

  A few of the caught animals in their naked, defenseless humanoid forms, were being reeled into the helos in their nets. Four helicopters hovered above the plateau while three more were coming upon them fast, two clicks out.

  There were dead bodies too, in various forms, as well as piles of ashes and pale dust that wasn’t indigenous to the land.

  Their enemies comprised of both Pure and Dark Ones then.

  Ariel leapt over her boulder in a sneak attack as one of the black-robed soldiers aimed his rifle at Luka just as the giant snake was coiling to strike.

  The vampire swung toward Ariel, catching her in the corner of his eye, and fired just as she swiped a massive paw across his throat.

  Before she landed on all fours back on the ground, he’d already turned to dust.

  But his tranquilizer had hit its mark, the metallic end sticking out of Ariel’s shoulder.

  Shit. This was bad.

  There must be enough sedative in that thing to knock out a herd of rhinos, because almost instantly she wobbled on her paws, listing to the side.

  Gotta keep moving. Can’t slow down. Maximus and the others need me. Can’t let them down!

  But her body could no longer keep up with her mind, sluggish and hazed over though her brain was. She fell to her side, her head lolling back.

  High up above in the pre-dawn skies, she saw Apolla dive toward one of the helos, talons extended. But a couple of shots into her wing and chest made her lose momentum and fall awkwardly in a desperate tangle of feathers, right into another helo’s churning blades.

  A screech of agony, and she dropped like an anvil to the cold, hard ground. Disintegrating into stardust upon contact.

  Ariel choked on a gurgled sob and rolled her eyeballs to the right, no longer able to move her head.

  Kayne was caught between two helos in a kamikaze maneuver. He caught the tail of one in his talons and swung with all his might, his giant wings straining so hard Ariel thought she heard bones crack even from where she was on the ground.

  The helo spun off course directly into the other one, but Kayne couldn’t avoid getting caught in the collision. All three crashed together into the rock walls of the plateau.

  Only Rhys remained in the sky, faltering on a half-healed wing. There were still two helos left, and one more coming around another mountain peak.

  Christ. It was impossible odds. Three helicopters against one injured giant eagle.

  Even with her brain fogged up, Ariel saw their defeat clearly. Worse, she was conscious enough to watch it unfold before her eyes.

  Aerial attacks were their weakness, as most of the animals were earth-bound. They’d already lost two giant eagles; only one remained, struggling just to keep himself aloft. From their higher vantage point, impervious to attacks, the sharpshooters in the helos could pick off the animals one by one.

  There was no hiding, not even in the caves. Because one of the helos just launched a couple of guided shoulder missiles at the hollow mountain side, exploding their enclave in a deafening eruption of rocks and stone.

  Some animals were crushed beneath the boulders, including Cassandra and Azad, the rest darting out of the caves, injured and disoriented.

  Easy pickings for the electric nets.

  A screech in the sky brought Ariel’s eyes back to Rhys, just as he plunged his talons into the cockpit of a helo, snatching the pilot out and hurling him directly into the tail rotor.

  The helo went down, but so did Rhys, his right wing no longer able to hold him up.

  He crashed to the ground twenty yards away, landing on his already torn-up wing.

  Two enemies advanced immediately upon him, tranq guns at the ready. Another soldier hefted a larger rocket gun, likely the contraption that fired the electric nets.

  Rhys tried to roll to his feet, but he could barely move.

  When the enemies raised their guns, Leti in her giant snake form launched herself between them, spitting venom directly into the face of one soldier, and knocking another down with her whip-like tail.

  The third fired the rocket at her, pushing her back with the velocity of the net. Immediately, the electricity fried her into submission, forcing her to transform.

  But she wouldn’t stay down. She was desperate to get free. Not for herself, but to protect Rhys, who was also strapped down under an electric net, naked and broken.

  Her struggles made the hot metal of the nets burn into her unprotected skin. The more she fought, the higher the voltage of the electricity.

  Stop! Ariel shouted to her in her mind. Stop before you kill yourself!

  But Leti was too far gone, f
ighting and hissing with everything she had, as two soldiers dragged Rhy’s body away and loaded him onto a hook that reeled him up into the awaiting helo.

  And then a shot was fired directly into Leti’s chest.

  Instantly, she crumpled to the ground.

  But it wasn’t a tranquilizer that hit her, because Ariel saw her blood pool and spread beneath her body.

  “Dead or alive, the Mistress ordered,” the soldier who fired the shot muttered from a few feet away. “This one is definitely better off dead. Not worth the trouble.”

  And that was when Ariel’s eyes rolled into the back of her head.

  Light’s out.

  *** *** *** ***

  Maximus had his claws full, tearing into enemy soldiers that swarmed around him like cockroaches, one after another, an endless plague.

  Both Pure and Dark, his foes were well-trained, battle-hardened ancient warriors. Likely on the list they’d retrieved from Medusa’s secure archives. The ones the Chosen and Elite couldn’t get to in time.

  With their weapons and numbers, they were well-matched against two giant Siberian tigers.

  Maximus and Goya tag-teamed against the enemy, coordinating their strikes with seamless precision. But they both sustained heavy injuries already, their fur coated with streaks of their own blood and that of their foes.

  Maximus knew that many of his kin had already fallen, either dead or captured. He couldn’t afford to mourn them in the heat of battle, but he felt each lost life keenly like a dagger to his heart.

  When Rhys fell from the sky and Leti rushed in to defend him, Maximus saw Goya lose his concentration slightly.

  One millisecond was all it took.

  A warrior holding crescent moon blades let fly his weapons at an angle, catching Goya in one hind leg as he ran toward a vampire soldier, about to take the enemy’s head off.

  The Tiger King compensated for the hit by adjusting his course and sharply rebounding off a rock wall, pouncing back at the warrior with claws fully extended.

  Amazingly, the warrior took the entire weight of the giant white tiger unto himself, grabbed one of Goya’s front paws and swung him into a jutting boulder while the tiger was still mid-flight.

  Goya slammed into the boulder with a crack of his back, landed shakily on his paws and shook his head to clear it, before reengaging the warrior.