Monsters & Guardians Read online

  “I’ll fight you to the death.” Chin tilted proudly, she met his gaze head on.

  “I think I’m beginning to understand that. Am I the only man lucky enough to see you like this, sweetheart?” He reached out and traced a fingertip over the plump rise of her breasts, sending a hard shudder rippling through her. Slowly, he hooked his fingers beneath the damp edge of material and removed the visual obstruction, setting her tits free with a little bounce. “If you let me, I can make you feel phenomenal now, Raine. Atone for what will come later.”

  An arm snaked over her breasts; her fist shot out and rapped into his nose with a pop that brought tears to his eyes for a moment. She wasn’t easy to deal with, but he needed to grin and bear it before she spiraled out of control. “I said no consent, Quinn. Just go. I’m sick of violence for one goddamn day.”

  Instead he dropped to his knees in front of her and began unfastening the laces on her ass-kicker boots. Took the knee in his face stoically and worked each boot off her feet as she stared down at him in confusion. “So stop using it. Fighting me, causing me pain, isn’t changing anything. Wouldn’t it feel nice to have your shoulders rubbed under the hot water, Raine? Have someone else’s fingers massage shampoo into your hair, take the weight off your shoulders? I can do that for you. I want to do that for you.”

  His fingers slipped the button on her pants free, slid down the zipper. With a thrill of excitement pouring through him already, he stripped her lower half with one quick push, removing pants and panties in one smooth move. With gentle hands he slipped them over her feet, leaving her completely naked and stunningly vulnerable.

  She looked mesmerized, gray eyes wide and uncertain as though she couldn’t understand what had just happened, why she had let it happen. Trembling, she hunched into herself, snapping out of confusion into horrified denial.

  “Sinking in now?” he asked gently, running his palms from her knees up long, sleek thighs. Brushing his thumbs over the neatly trimmed triangle of red hair between her thighs, he smiled, smelling faint traces of blossoming arousal and the ever-strengthening aroma of estrus. “Give your mind a rest, Raine. Switch it off and give your body the reins of control for a while. It will be so much better for you.”

  She shoved him away from her, scrambling back and bolting into the shower, into water that—if the billowing steam was any indication—was far too fucking hot, and slammed the door. She retreated until her back hit the wall, then simply slid down to the tiled floor and huddled in the corner, shielding her private areas as best she could.

  Over the thrum of falling water, Quinn heard her sobbing.

  He gathered her clothes and left, pulling the door closed behind him but leaving it an inch. He tossed them at Cabhan. “Put them somewhere safe.”

  “Holy shit, Quinn, you got her to strip? She’s naked in there?” Hungry delight filled amber eyes, and their other brothers turned from the destroyed wardrobe door as one unit, that same hunger rising in all of them. It was a heady feeling, one he was battling with himself.

  “Nobody goes in there,” he snapped.

  “Quinn?”

  “Nobody,” he repeated darkly. His face throbbed but he ignored it. “Let her have five fucking minutes by herself to cry things out.”

  “She’s crying?” Finn stepped forward; Quinn stopped him with a look.

  “Just do what you can with that door. It’s nearly time.”

  “Doesn’t matter what we do with the door. Dubhlainn fucked the job with his impatience. Raine took the time to build her nest without even thinking about it and he sauntered into the middle of it like a big half-assed bull and tainted it. Part of her was coming around to accepting her role as mate, that’s why she made the nest; now it’s violated, we won’t get that back without a miracle.”

  “Salvage what you can. The bed could do with being remade—don’t take the stuff out of the wardrobe, use some of the extra ones we got in. I’ll get her cleaned up and into bed. By the time she wakes...” Quinn didn’t need to finish the sentence. They all knew what would happen when she woke. “You’ve got ten minutes.”

  Cabhan immediately started berating Dubhlainn about his rash behavior, and before long Finn and Malachi were joining in. The eldest of them scowled as he held up the ruined door, blatantly ignoring his brothers’ rants. Leaving them to it, Quinn slipped back into the bathroom and just sighed.

  Still curled in the corner, Raine looked like a drowned rat. Hiding behind a dripping curtain of long red hair, she had the posture of a woman already broken. Making herself as small as possible wasn’t going to work for her.

  Quinn muttered under his breath and stripped. This wasn’t how he’d wanted Raine to see his body for the first time. He’d wanted to take her, to get the worst over for her before she saw just what she would have to take into her body. Once he gave her an orgasm or two, he’d been convinced his—their—anatomy wouldn’t scare seven bells of shit out of her.

  From head to foot, Quinn knew his body was good. Strong, muscled, lean, and appealing to the females, human and otherwise. His cock however was another thing entirely. The thick shaft and heavy balls were normal enough by anyone’s standards, he supposed. The main differences were the tapered head, currently turning purple as Raine’s proximity affected him, designed to drive deep into the heart of a bitch, spreading her wide so the other anomaly in his physiology could do its job.

  That was the only real indication of his wolf in human form, the knot that formed at the base of his shaft. From experience, he knew it was best to rut a female hard, encourage the cervix to spread for his crown so her pussy enveloped the entirety of his shaft and the knot before it fully developed.

  From experience, he knew just how hard it was to do either.

  Stepping into the shower, under the fucking scalding water, he cursed and adjusted the temperature. Their mate was a stubborn thing, unafraid to cause herself pain if she could sit there in the steam and the boiling water.

  Gray eyes took him in from head to toe from beneath her hair, and he saw her stiffen, watched realization flash over her face with a healthy dose of fear before she just...he supposed the only way to describe it was she shut herself down. Bit by bit, she hid herself away until nothing remained but a living, breathing doll with hauntingly empty eyes.

  Quinn crouched in front of her, risked his hand reaching out for her. He needn’t have worried—Raine was gone, without a word, leaving a pitiful shell in her place. “Sweetheart, you don’t have to hide. I promise.”

  Water sluiced over her pale skin, her hair. Quinn rose and bent, lifting her to her feet where she stood as docile as a lamb. He suspected if he held a gun to her head and told her to move, she’d still be stood there an hour later.

  “Do you like vanilla, Raine?” he asked stupidly, wanting to hear her voice again instead of this killing silence. He’d take her bitching at him, ranting at him, over this toxic quiet. “Or would you rather something else? We’ve got blueberry, coconut, raspberry and some weird yellow crap in a bottle with no label.”

  Nothing. He turned her to face him beneath the water and studied her eyes. Open but vacant. Shit. Shaking his head, Quinn grabbed a random bottle and dumped a shitload into his hands. Coconut assaulted his senses.

  He worked the shampoo into her shoulder-length hair, calming his ever-frantic beast by massaging her scalp with firm fingers, maintaining the connection his wolf craved. Then he started on her neck and shoulders, digging into the clusters of knots crippling her muscles.

  Down her back, her limp arms. Between her legs where she was dry and completely unreceptive. He cleaned every inch of her while she stood with those goddamn empty eyes and slack face. He loved seeing the life in those gray depths, it was one of the biggest physical attractions for him.

  Switching off the water, he reached out and snagged a towel big enough to wrap three of her in. He dabbed and patted her skin until she was dry, roughly scrubbing her hair until the flyaway curls were only damp instead of wet,
then dried himself quickly.

  Testing her, he took her hand and led her back into the bedroom. Some kind soul had left food on a tray at the end of the freshly-remade bed, and Quinn approved of the simple meal of eggs and what smelled like venison bacon. One of Cabhan’s specialties.

  “Come on, sweetheart, come sit down.” When he tugged her hand, she followed without question, shuffling along on bare feet, sitting where he indicated. But when he tried to feed her, she refused to open her mouth despite her stomach growling like a demon dog. “Raine, you need to eat!”

  He tried again, but only achieved the same results. Even forcing her mouth open didn’t work—he shoved food in, but it just fell out when she wouldn’t close her mouth and chew. “Goddamn it, don’t do this, Raine.”

  Immensely frustrated and not entirely sure how to handle her in this state, Quinn did the only thing he could. He arranged the covers on the far side of the bed so he could slide her into it, and cradled her against him as he carried her. Setting down her dead weight, he stroked her cheek with his fingertips and pulled the covers up to her chin. “Get some rest, sweetheart. I’ll be back in a couple hours.”

  That blank expression didn’t change, but when he reached the door and turned to check on her one last time, his heart broke as she eased out from under the quilt, as stiff and unyielding as a robot, and dropped to her knees. From there, she crawled beneath the bed and disappeared from view.

  “Fuck,” he muttered as he left the room and gave Raine her privacy.

  She would soon learn there was nowhere to hide.

  *

  Raine

  Time dragged by very, very slowly after Quinn left the room. Frozen both in body and mind, she huddled against the wall with the claustrophobically low base of the bed pushing down on her and tried to decipher when her life had decided to throw her this curveball and when exactly she’d gone from person to plaything.

  Quinn hadn’t left her any clothes after the shower, and her skin was still faintly damp, picking up the chill rising through the floor. Even the carpet seemed cold, offering no warmth or comfort. They’d rebuilt the bed, piling more cushions and throws on it, but she wouldn’t stay there, no matter how many times they tried to make her. Sleeping on the bed where they’d rape her and hurt her seemed too much like offering herself like a willing sacrifice, and she was neither.

  From where she lay, she could see the open door to her nest, gaping like a rotting, busted tooth. They’d taken that from her, like they wanted to take everything else. She was betting the big bastards couldn’t get their shoulders far enough under the bed to reach her.

  Shivering, she cast her mind to her parents. Not that they were of any comfort. Memories of them were just as harsh as the ones building of the brothers. Useless at being parents, dispassionate and generally just not giving a fuck, they’d left her a few days before her sixteenth birthday, taking off on a road trip and disappearing—for a few days initially, then a few days turned into weeks, into months, and now into years.

  Raine had been left to her own devices and stumbled across a small...cult was the wrong word, she decided. Community. Community held the familial connotations she was looking for. She’d stumbled across the small community of other lost and abandoned children and been drawn in by love and companionship she’d been starved of since birth.

  The community was where she’d met and befriended Halie, a petite young blonde in her early-twenties who instantly sucked Raine into her personal vortex of friendship. Where there was Halie, there was love, laughter and life.

  Three years they’d spent together. The community growing in size and emotion, becoming a beacon for lost souls. If you could work or contribute to the community, no matter how big or small, you were welcome. That was how it worked and work it did for a long time.

  Until Fredrich.

  Fredrich the prick, Raine thought furiously. Rich, privileged boy with daddy’s money in his pocket to buy his way free of sins. Rapist. Murderer. Wolf shifter.

  He’d been her first interaction with something...other than human, and he’d terrified her with his molten amber eyes, not dissimilar to Cabhan’s. He’d smirked every time she was near him, making her uncomfortable and her skin itch from the dirty sensation he awoke in her.

  Had he known what she was? What she would become?

  Raine tucked her legs closer into her chest and closed her eyes. Didn’t matter what he did or didn’t know—he’d been dead not six months after he came slumming in the community, using the young girls and their naïve fantasies as fodder for his cock and his wolf.

  Sixteen girls had died at his hands—Halie included—before Raine had figured out where he was taking them to fuck and rip their throats out. She’d found him in a section of woodland well above the town, a trek to reach by foot. He’d turned it into a wolf retreat, complete with cave and bonfire, and pussy at his disposal.

  She’d been too late to stop his final kill. Had just reached the clearing, easing around the supporting wall when the high, horrible scream scorched the air before fading to bloody, wheezing gurgles and then silence.

  Aside from the chomping and crunching of bones in a canine mouth.

  Fredrich was her first kill, her first wolf shifter, her first real wake-up call to the reality of being an adult. Life was Fredrich—privileged for a select few, death and terror for a few unlucky select ones, and a smorgasbord of sins for the rest.

  She had killed him with a knife to the throat, repeatedly. It had taken her more physical strength and mental courage than she thought possible, especially when faced with six-inch claws, bigger teeth, and the body of a wolf several times larger than she.

  But dripping in his blood, staring at the result of his killing spree, Raine had vowed then and there not to step back from danger when innocents were involved. She was no longer unaware of the alternative life that revolved around the mortal plain, and so she would take it upon herself to help defend the uninformed masses.

  And in doing so, ended up...here.

  Ended up with a man whose cock looked like it was designed by nature to drill into a woman’s womb without mercy. She shuddered hard. All five of them would be the same, she concluded. Fate wasn’t kind enough to give her just one mutant wolf cock to deal with.

  She wasn’t going to cry. She wasn’t going to make a goddamn sound.

  When the key turned and the door opened, she folded her arms over her head and whimpered. Pulling herself into a tighter ball, ensuring her limbs were tucked in as close as possible, her stomach dropped as she watched big bare feet pad around the bed. They moved away again and she watched him place the tray with untouched food next to the door. When he came back, the mattress squeaked and dipped as he sat heavily.

  “Raine.” Quinn’s voice was several octaves deeper, throatier, more commanding than it had been when he’d washed her in the shower only a couple hours ago. “I’m sorry, sweetheart, but it’s almost time. I can smell the estrus growing stronger. Would you please come out from under the bed?”

  No. Raine shook her head, closed her eyes, and prayed he’d just go away. That some divine intervention would swoop down and cut this nightmare off at the source. But divinity and fate were not celestial beings who listened to the likes of her—prayers and pleas went unanswered, just as she expected.

  “Raine, please.” The mattress moved again, and there was a long, pained growl followed by a primitive grunt. Quinn’s face appeared in the gap beneath the bed, lost in shadows. He offered her a hand. “Come to me, sweetheart. Please don’t make this worse than it has to be for either of us.”

  She edged to the opposite side as he wedged his shoulders into the small space. Suddenly realizing that if he lifted up that end of the bed, she’d be trapped, Raine shot forward and squeezed free in case he upended the bed completely in his haste to hunt her down.

  Scrambling, body stiff and barely responsive from hours in a cramped position, she hobbled toward the bathroom, breath already wheezing in
panic. This wasn’t her imagination, this was happening right now, and her soon-to-be-rapist was stalking her across the room with unhurried strides.

  Slamming the bathroom door, she sank to the floor and used her body to hold it. Wouldn’t last long, but it was the last thing keeping her in one piece before the monsters destroyed her.

  Slowly, inch by inch, her bare ass slid over the cold tiles as Quinn pushed the door open and her out of the way. One big hand caught her wrist, hauled her to her feet and then over his shoulder. She hung limp as he carried her to the bed and dropped her gently onto her back.

  Raine looked up at him, shuddered at the semblance of a man watching her with hungry, hungry eyes. Eyes that looked as though someone had set a drop of black oil into chocolate water and sent it swirling until black overrode brown.

  Until lust overrode sanity.

  Quinn appeared to be more wolf than man, teetering on a dangerous line. That powerful body, constructed from sheer muscle, vibrated with whatever pulsed through his blood. Hands fisted, the muscles in his arms and thighs corded, he was the picture of barely-restrained violence.

  There was the faintest light of humanity glowing in his eyes, the last link between him and her and pain. When it extinguished...Raine quaked inside. Of its own volition, her body crawled backwards up the bed, away from the animal in front of her.

  He drew a deep breath and in a choked voice said, “It will be better if you don’t struggle, Raine. I’m sorry, sweetheart, I can’t...I can’t...” One big hand wrapped around his cock, squeezed until the tapered tip grew dark and leaked clear fluid. Quinn growled, the sound almost agonized. “Don’t struggle.”

  The light in his eyes died and the most terrifying expression came over his face. Black eyes, straight from hell, locked onto her mound, protected by tightly clenched thighs. The sound he made was...not of this world.

  Don’t beg. Don’t beg. Don’t beg.

  Raine rolled when he lunged for her, barely able to force her body to move. Fear froze her limbs, seized her heart, then catapulted her into action when his fingertips grazed over her arm. She rolled again, toppling off the mattress with a yelp, and gained her feet as Quinn pounced.