Wild Ones (3 page)

I slid it back
into the wallet and picked up the stolen coat and my bag, and
headed out, locking the door behind me. I dumped the wallet and
keys for the pickup in a nearby drain, and gave the coat and twenty
dollars to a homeless guy that hung around a couple of corners down
from my flat. Then I set off towards the bus stop in the centre of
town as the sky began to lighten and the birds started their
morning chorus.

This kind of
stuff doesn't happen to me. I've never been abducted by aliens or
bitten by a shark or shot or beaten up or any of those shocking and
terrifying things that have happened to other people. I'd never
been in any actual danger before in all my twenty-three years.

Up until now,
of course.

I've always
considered myself to be a good girl. Not in the Catholic school
virgin sense of the word - ha! that would freak my liberal parents
out no end. But I have always tried to be kind to people, and do my
job to the best of my abilities. I'm a barista, which basically
means I make a lot of coffee. Not the most glamorous of jobs, but
it was a steady income, and I met a lot of new people. I lived with
my cousin Maddie, in a two bedroom flat a few blocks from where I
had grown up, and where my parents still lived. Maddie had arrived
on my doorstep a few weeks back, pale and exhausted, and I had
welcomed her with open arms. We had been best friends since we were
five, though her life had always been a lot more interesting than
mine. Her mother and mine were sisters, so we looked fairly similar
- we both had long dark hair and blue eyes. But Maddie's parents
were wild and crazed (according to my mother) so Maddie had come to
live with us when she was five, and had stayed with me until about
six months ago. She had set out to find her wayward parents, and
from the sounds of things had found a lot more than that. Maddie
was a natural born shit magnet (her words, not mine). I was the
cautious, boring one.

Ah,
you're thinking. I was too trusting, too naive.
I climbed into a stranger's car
. Well, no I did
not. I am neither trusting nor naive. I climbed into no cars,
walked down no dark and empty streets, swam in no shark infested
waters (I'm not sure why the sharks keep popping up - maybe it's
because I am currently staring at a pair of incisors that would
make an adult lion sob). I did none of these things.

This shit came
out of nowhere.

I should have
known something was up when those two stunningly gorgeous guys came
into my little coffee shop and ordered two lattes. Firstly they
looked seriously out of place. This was strictly a student hangout,
and those two men were not only jaw droppingly beautiful (yes, I
said beautiful) but they were very well dressed too. I'm talking
expensive fitted suits that looked like they were moulded to their
bodies. And what bodies. Broad shoulders, narrow hips, but not like
those beefy guys who spend their lives in the gym guzzling 'roids.
These two had more of a swimmers build, fit and strong. I was
instantly appreciative both of their attractiveness, and of the
incongruity of their presence amongst what could only be called the
scruffier elements of student society. Always the professional,
however, I smiled politely, tried not to drool, and served them
their coffees. The second thing, which seemed a bit odd at the
time, but not nearly as odd as the explanation for it which is
currently staring me in the face, was that they didn't actually
drink the coffees. They just stood there and held them while they
glanced around the room at the motley collection of grubby
intellectuals and drunken thugs that seem to attend university
nowadays.

It was almost
closing time, and I was looking forward to a soak in a hot bath and
a glass of wine, and not necessarily in that order, so I started to
tidy the the place up for the guys on the next shift, who would
start at six in the morning. The twelve 'til ten shift suited me
best, which was why I always seemed to be washing cups and wiping
counter tops. I hated waking up early in the morning - it spoiled
my whole day.

When I looked
up from my labours the two men had disappeared. I felt a minor
twinge of disappointment, but shrugged fatalistically and started
herding everyone out of there. I struggled a bit with Norman, one
of my more regular customers, who had settled into one of the
armchairs near the fire and had fallen asleep. He was a big guy,
and snored loudly as I buzzed around him like an ineffectual fly
trying to wake him up without throwing water in his face, which I
did last time, and which had earned me a written complaint to the
boss. Norman was not my favourite customer.

Next
thing the two men were there, smiling in a friendly way, and
grabbing my arms in an either
very
friendly way, or not a friendly at all way, depending on how
you looked at it. I objected by screaming loudly, and noted with
satisfaction that this appeared to be an excellent way to wake
Norman up. The darker of the two guys reached out and squeezed
Norman's neck for a couple of seconds, and he went straight back
off to sleep, or unconsciousness, hard to tell with Norman.
Meanwhile the the blonde smirked at me as he placed one hand over
my mouth, and held both of my wrists together with the other hand,
pulling me up against his body. I tried to knee him in the goonies,
but he moved his hips sideways and chuckled at me.
Bastard.

"This one's
feisty, Julius," he said to his buddy, who grinned and put a hand
around my neck. I remember the smell of expensive cologne and the
way my body just folded up as I lost consciousness.

I woke up in a
normal looking bedroom. No chains, no padded walls, no bloodstains.
Phew. No windows either. Not so good. I climbed off the bed and
looked down at what I was wearing and my relief evaporated. A white
terrycloth robe loosely fastened in front with a bow. And no bra or
panties underneath. Creepy. So somebody had taken all my clothes
off and dressed me in this thing. Had they taken liberties? My skin
smelled clean and appeared to have been covered in a very expensive
smelling moisturiser. My hair was damp. WTF?

I walked around
the perimeter of the room, again noting the absence of any windows.
There were a couple of ventilation thingies, but no discernable way
out apart from the obvious wooden door. I banged on it in an
experimental fashion and tried the handle. It seemed solid, and it
was definitely locked. Bugger.

My activities
had reassured me of one thing. I had not been raped while I was
unconscious. There was no after-sex ache, and no wetness on my
thighs. That was reassuring. Sort of. I wondered what the hell was
going on.

The door opened
a fraction and a middle aged woman entered, followed by a big
hulking monster of a man. He stood just in the doorway with his
arms folded menacingly, and stared at me in a threatening way. I
scowled at him and then ignored him as best I could. The middle
aged woman carried a tray and placed it on the bedside table.

"Eat up," she
said. "You're going to need it."

What the hell
was that supposed to mean? Before I could ask her to explain that
little remark, she disappeared back through the door, taking her
goon with her. I glanced down at the tray. Sandwich and juice. I
wondered what the time was, and decided it must be the next day,
because I was suddenly very hungry. I swallowed my pride and then
swallowed the sandwich and juice in quick succession. Two minutes
later she was back to collect the tray. Muscle Man lurked in the
background.

"Good girl,"
she said, and then she was gone.

I must have
fallen asleep on that bed out of sheer boredom, because when I woke
up I had a bad case of bed hair and those two guys were standing in
the room watching me. They were wearing towels wrapped around their
waists and appeared to have just stepped out of the shower. The
blonde smiled.

"Good morning,
sweetheart," he purred in a velvety voice.

I couldn't help
it. Something in that voice and the way his tall powerful body
leaned against the wall reached in and tugged at my core, and I
felt a tingling in my nether regions. His smile widened and became
a delighted grin.

"You smell
that, Julius?"

"I think she
likes you, brother."

"Mine?"

"That's what we
agreed. I had the last one."

"Yes, you
did."

I stood there,
watching these two casually discussing whatever it was that they
were talking about, and I started getting very nervous. My eyes
darted around the room, looking for an escape, even though I knew
that the only way out was through the door, which was tight
shut.

"Hold her down
for me Julius? I don't want to hurt this one."

"Anything to
oblige."

Their
conversation was starting to scare the bejeezus out of me. The tone
stayed casual, but the words sounded pretty sinister to me. Hold me
down for what?

That's when the
incisors came out. One minute the blonde guy without a name was
standing there with a mouth full of normal teeth, next thing these
nasty spiky things appeared out of nowhere. I looked around for a
hidden camera, thinking I must be on some weird reality show where
they play pranks on random people, but there was nothing to be
seen.

Obviously. Because it was a
hidden
camera. I decided to spoil their
fun.

"OK, OK, I get
it," I said aloud, directing my gaze to somewhere on the ceiling.
"Your viewers want to see me scream when the nasty big vampire
comes toward me gnashing his fangs. Well, it's not going to happen.
I figured it out, see."

"There is no
camera, sweetheart," the blonde guy with the fangs purred. I
wondered how he managed to speak through those things without
lisping. Practise, probably. The thought was not reassuring. I was
just pondering the ramifications of this when he dropped his
towel.

That's
when I screamed.

Julius moved
faster than any normal man should be able to. I tried to run for
the door and ended up face down on the bed with my arms pulled back
behind me, and my thighs hanging down over the edge of the bed. I
kicked out behind me, hitting nothing but air. Julius had settled
on his knees at my head, with his hands around my elbows, holding
them together in a vice-like grip. I turned my head sideways and
tried to clamp my teeth on his naked thigh, but he moved away just
out of my reach.

"Hurry up,
Atticus. She's trying to bite me here."

Atticus
chuckled, and I felt the fabric of the robe being pulled up to
expose my naked buttocks. I squealed in indignation, and tried to
wriggle away from the hands that parted them. I felt something cold
and thin slide into me, and I wriggled even more. A nozzle was
depressed and then suddenly I was released. I stood up and bounded
to the opposite side of the bed from those two psychos, who were
both completely naked and watching me with interest. Atticus held
what looked like a small spray can with a long nozzle, and I felt
as its contents oozed out of me, wet and slippery.

"It's for your
own good," Atticus grinned at me, exposing more of his fangs than I
wanted to see.

Seriously? For
my own good? I'd heard a lot of lame for-your-own-good stories but
this one blew the rest right out of the water, and then some.

"It will help
your tissues to relax, and it will lubricate them too. Human
females aren't built to accommodate vampires. We're too big."

I looked
down. Well, that was pretty bloody obvious. Wait, did he say
vampires
?

"Unfortunately
there are no female vampires, so we have to breed with humans.
That's probably why our reputation is so sexualised. We tend to
make something of an impact." Julius smirked. "We don't want to
damage your tissues any more than we absolutely have to, though.
Scarring can lead to a difficult childbirth. Also, if we hurt you
too much internally you won't be able to conceive."

What. The.
Fuck.

This was
getting weirder and weirder. Childbirth? Seriously, where did these
two fruitcakes come from? I stayed on the opposite side of the bed
and tried my best menacing stare. I needed to get out of here
before these two weirdoes lost it completely. I thought about
trying to reason with them, like they did on TV. There was the fang
thing though. Were they really vampires? If those were prosthetic
teeth, they were damn good. And there was the other issue of how,
er, well endowed they both were. I looked down again. Jesus. No
human male ever had anything like that between his legs.

"Any minute
now, brother," Julius said, sniffing the air.

"Any minute
what?" I wanted to know, panic seizing me as Atticus grinned
hungrily.

"You're going
to ovulate," he told me huskily.

Ten seconds
later I found myself flat on my back on the bed, with Julius
pinning my wrists above my head and Atticus leaning over me,
supporting his weight on his hands, his knees either side of my
hips. He closed his eyes and inhaled through his nose, his nostrils
flaring. Then he opened his eyes and gazed down at me, his pupils
dilated, his gaze intense.

"It is time,"
he said slowly. Then he reached down and untied the belt of my
robe, and pulled it open like he was unwrapping a goddamn gift. I
kicked up at him, but he dodged easily, and next thing he was
between my legs, his hands on my bent knees forcing them open. God,
he was strong. I tried to move, but I couldn't, not in a million
years. So I screamed.