Читать книгу Really Unusual Bad Boys - MaryJanice Davidson - Страница 11

“Aw, son of a bitch!”

Lois wasn’t sure if she shouted it, or if it was just a thought. She could feel warm hands running over her limbs…

(checking for injury?)

…stroking her stomach, shoulders, even her breasts, and something warm and tickly on her lips, almost like a kiss, but of course that wasn’t—

She was afraid to open her eyes and look. But she was afraid to keep lying there, too.

She wasn’t dead. Ergo, she was alive. Ergo, she was in a hospital somewhere. Ergo, she’d have to go through Psych and treatment and T-groups and then try again sometime when they weren’t watching her so carefully anymore. Dammit!

She opened her eyes. And instantly assumed the overdose had driven her insane.

She wasn’t in a hospital. She wasn’t even in her house. She was lying on the ground, in the middle of what looked like a desert—there was hard-packed sand everywhere, and one or two scrawny trees, and dunes in the distance. But it wasn’t hot—it felt like a perfectly pleasant seventy-five degrees or so. And the light tickling on her lips was actually a raspy tongue. A puma was standing over her, and the sky was lavender. She wasn’t sure which was more startling.

She blinked, then slowly rose to a sitting position. Yep, that was a purple sky, all right. She was in a desert that wasn’t hot, and the sky was the color of an iris petal. She had definitely gone crazy. And the puma was backing off but still watching her. Her cheek still throbbed from its rough tongue.

She stared at the big cat, which was staring right back. It was enormous—probably two hundred and fifty pounds at least. Its coat was the color of the desert sand and—weird!—its eyes were the color of the purple sky. Its paws were huge, easily as big across as her hand if she spread her fingers wide.

It was sitting up very straight beside one of the stunted, twisted trees. Its tail—at least five feet long, and as thick around as her wrist—switched lazily back and forth. It seemed tame—it hadn’t killed her in her sleep, after all.

She thought about standing up, rejected the idea, then reconsidered. After all, why was she being careful? She’d tried to commit suicide and now she was worried about a predator? What in God’s name for?

She stood, slowly, never taking her eyes off the big cat. It was only when she was on her feet that she realized the last thing, the most shocking thing—her knee didn’t hurt. Not even a tiny bit.

She flexed. She crouched. She jogged in place. Nothing, not a twinge, not a whimper.

“It worked!” she cried, forgetting herself for a moment. “I’m dead and—and somewhere else.” Heaven? Hell? Some weird place in between? Who cared? She was out of pain for the first time in a long, long time. “I’m okay! I’m here and I’m okay! Do you hear? I made it and I’m okay!”

The puma was strolling toward her. She was so elated she forgot to be afraid. “I’m better now,” she told it. “Isn’t that great?”

“What was wrong with you?” the puma asked. Except it didn’t really speak—its jaws never moved. But she heard the question in her head.

After the purple sky and the painless limb, nothing was going to faze her. “Plenty of things, believe you me,” she answered. “But I guess things are finally looking up.” She cleared her throat. The puma was standing no more than two feet away, looking up at her. “You’re—uh—not going to eat me, are you?”

“I was thinking about it.” Something was wrong with the cat’s coat. It was shedding—no, its skin was rippling—no, it was sick—no, it was shrinking—no, it was growing—no, it was a man, a darkly tanned man with shoulder-length tawny blond hair and purple eyes. A man standing where the puma had just been. He grinned at her. His teeth were incredibly white and looked sharp. “Yes, I was definitely giving it some thought.”

“Aaaaaaaaaa—”

“Are you all right?”

“—aaaaaaaaaaaggggggggg—”

“My lady? What’s wrong?”

“—gggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhh—”

“Um, well, I will just change back, then.”

“—hhhhhhhhhhhhh—what? No, don’t do that. Just give me a minute.” Panting, Lois sat down before she fell down. The puma man, who was splendidly nude, sat down cross-legged across from her. He was tanned, with the sleek muscles she had noticed before. His stomach was a washboard, and his forehead was creased with concern.

“Perhaps you need a healer,” he suggested.

“Perhaps I need the department shrink, followed by several Budweisers. Um—what are you?”

“I am—a man, as you are a woman.”

She snorted. The world—this strange new place—had stopped tilting, that was something. For a black moment, she’d thought she was going to faint. And that would be just too damned embarrassing. “Sure. Just a run-of-the-mill fella. Who can turn back and forth into a puma—”

“What is a poo-muh?”

“—and walks around naked and is magically delicious, besides.”

“I know no magic.”

“Never mind.” She was trying not to stare, but couldn’t help it. He was probably the best-looking guy she’d ever seen. He was big, but not bulky—his muscles had the lean definition of a swimmer’s. His hair was gorgeous, tumbling around his shoulders, thick and wavy. His eyes were enormous, the palest lavender framed with darker purple lashes. His pubic hair, thank God, wasn’t purple, but rather two shades darker than the hair on his head. His shoulders, legs, and arms were lightly furred, and his nails were longer than hers. Since she was a nail-biter, that wasn’t much of a trick.

When they spoke, it was simultaneously.

“Where am I?”

“How did you come to be here?”

She laughed. “You first.”

He smiled. She nearly flinched back, but restrained herself in time. His smile was much wider than a normal person’s. She figured he had, at rough count, about a thousand teeth. “As you wish. This is my home. It is the SandLands. And you just appeared. Between one breath and the next, you appeared. I stayed, as I was curious. You slept for a long time.”

“Well, thanks for not chomping me in my sleep.”

He looked offended. “I would never.”

“Oh, take it easy, I was only joking. As for your question, I have no friggin’ idea how I came to be here. I tried—back at my house, I was drinking a lot and—never mind. Anyway, I passed out and the next thing I knew, I was here.”

“You must be a sorceress of unimaginable power.”

“Ah—no. No, don’t think so. I think being here was a big-ass accident. A good accident,” she said hastily when his forehead creased again. “But it was nothing I did on purpose. Um—what next?”

“You will come with me to my home. I wish my father and brothers to meet you.”

“Oh. Okay, then. Doesn’t exactly sound like a request, though,” she added in a mumble.

He rose in one fluid movement while she gaped in admiration, then extended his hand. It was almost twice as big as hers, and she wasn’t exactly a shrimp.

She put her hand in his and let him pull her to a standing position. She sensed that he could have tossed her thirty feet if he wanted to. She tried not to stare below his waist, but couldn’t resist peeking. He was long, thick, and semierect, which was flattering.

As if reading her mind, he looked down into her face and said matter-of-factly, “You are extremely beautiful.”

She laughed at him. She hadn’t meant to, but it was an absurd comment. She was built like a fire hydrant—dense and practical, but hardly the curvy, willowy blond specimen so popular in American society. She had no waist, and her legs were too long, and her tits were only so-so—she’d been a B cup for years. Plus, she had multiple scars from years of street scuffles—knife wounds, bullet wounds, even a permanent rope burn a junkie, high on acid and Jack Daniel’s, had given her. Her hair was the nicest thing about her, and it was too curly, too wild, too out of control in humidity, and the color of a tar pit.

He put his hands on her shoulders and turned her around. Even through her shirt, she could feel the heat from his hands, and his erection brushing against her back. This was alarming, yet delightful. She was facing the sun—a small, white orb—and in the distance she could see a castle.

“My home is there. May I keep you?” he asked, leaning down and speaking softly into her ear. She shivered and felt her entire left side erupt into goose bumps. She leaned back against him and felt him drop a kiss to the tip of her ear, then nuzzle the side of her neck. He was definitely an affectionate fellow, no doubt about that.

“Ah—nope. But I’d sure like to see where you live.”

“As you wish, my lady. And about the other, we shall see.” Before she could puzzle out what that was supposed to mean, his hands were abruptly gone, and when she turned to look at him, he was a puma again.

Out of pure curiosity, she stretched out her hands. Even when she put her hands thumb to thumb and spread her fingers wide, his head was still wider. He was truly enormous, bigger than any cat she’d ever seen on her own world. Even the lions on her world were smaller.

“My lady, what are you waiting for?” She could hear him laughing in her head. “Mount, if you please.”

She blushed all the way down to her toes at the mental image that phrase conjured up, then awkwardly clambered on top of him with many grunts. “You mean I have to ride you to the castle-thingy?”

“Most citizens would say, ‘O good lord, you mean I, your humblest servant, am allowed to ride atop you?’”

“Yeah, well, I’m not from around here, pally.”

He laughed in her head again—God, that was so weird!—dug into the sand with all four paws, and they were off like a shot. She shrieked with surprise and joy and nearly fell off. She gripped him tighter with her knees and clutched his fur, which was coarse and soft at the same time—like rough silk. The stunted trees were whizzing by, his paws thudded into the hard-packed sand with the regularity of a metronome, and above her the lavender sky whirled and twirled. She laughed aloud and felt truly, deeply happy for the first time in a year.

“Oh, faster, can you go faster?” The wind was rushing in her face and the dust was making her eyes water and she was probably going to get a bloody nose if she let her face bang into his shoulder but she didn’t give a tin-shit. All she knew was that she wasn’t dead—or if she was dead, it was pretty swell—she wasn’t in pain, and she was enjoying the first puma ride of her life with the most intriguing man she’d ever met. “Faster!”

She could hear the delight in his voice. “Most ladies—and lords!—would be yetching all over my coat by now.”

“Yetching? You mean puking, barfing? Throwing up? Ha! I haven’t thrown up since I was eight,” she said scornfully. “And that was because I ate all our leftover Halloween candy.”

“Hallo’een? You mean Spirit Night?”

“Hmm, that’s interesting. Looks like your home and my home have some interesting parallels. And the reason I’m using words like ‘interesting parallels’ is because you’re not going fast enough.”

He snorted, then poured it on. She didn’t talk anymore. She concentrated solely on hanging on. She had never been happier in her life.