August 8, 2008
Portsmouth, England

Nobody I knew could ever have predicted that a twenty-four-hour cafe with a night-long happy hour would be this … quiet. 

I didn’t mean quiet as in empty, the place was packed. I meant quiet. Imagine a library, add alcohol, bean bags and a lot of hipster hats and skinny jeans and voila. Near total silence, disturbed only by the never-ending clicks of keyboard buttons and computer mice. 

Three months on the job and it had been like this every night without fail. I spent my shifts silently pouring drinks for people too engrossed in their screens to even make eye contact with me. 

I had thought that this gig would be a nice wind down from my normal routine of picking up bartending gigs and nightclub positions. I tended to circle with the local shifter clans of whatever city I decided to spend time in, but this was too down. 

My fingers twitched with the urge to do something to liven the place up.  I’d take drunken karaoke at this point. Anything to drown out the sea of fingers clicking away into oblivion. 

The highlight of the hour, every hour, was listening to the night manager fapping away in his back office, if you could call that a highlight. 

Having heightened hearing wasn’t always a good thing. I not only had to listen to him, but I knew exactly which patrons were porning out on the floor, or watching cat videos, or, and this was my favorite, very depressing self-help lectures. 

I could use some self-help right about now.

Time slid by as slow as it could possibly go. Yes, I’d taken the job as a change of pace, and I was regretting it, but the decision had been driven by the desire to spice up the other areas of my life. The usual routine had gotten … stale. 

I’d thought this would make it harder, more interesting. I wanted him to work for his prize. 

I’d aimed too high. 

After three long months if he hadn’t found me yet then he wasn’t going to. This was too outside the scope. 

I was a clubber. 

He was a clubber. 

We’d met in a club. 

We both practically lived out of them. 

I’d travel, set up in a new city, a new country, and he’d track me down. No hints or clues, usually. He had to figure it out on his own. Or I did. When one of us finally found the other, we’d have our fun, then we’d hit the road and do it all over again. 

Sometimes I found him first, but I liked it better when he found me. 

It was the ultimate game of hide-and-seek. Winner fucks loser and everybody got pancakes the next day, with bananas. 

There weren’t going to be any pancakes this time, because I’d fucked up, and I had more than a little bit of frustration stemming up from the thought of it. Just thinking about him, even if I was angry, made my skin run hot and my body tighten to an almost painful point. I had to run to the restroom and pad my panties just to keep from soaking through them. 

He affected me that much. 

Distraction, at this point, was key. I wiped down the bar. Reorganized the display cases. Tried to keep myself as busy as possible in this bottomless slush pool of boredom. 

I had already thought once or twice about ditching the cafe and heading to the biker bars on the other side of town, or even one of the naval bars near the docks, but at this point it would be a mistake, and it was my own damn fault. 

When I’d arrived in Portsmouth, I hadn’t declared to the local shifter council that I was there. 

Big no-no. 

Nomad or not, you had to declare yourself when you entered a new territory. Humans were lucky that they didn’t have this second set of underground laws they had to follow, that changed depending on which border you crossed.  I’d wanted to fly under the radar this time. If I showed up now after three months of silence then it was a coin toss on whether they took it well or decided to dole out punishment. 

The thought of that was enough to make my vagina dry right up. Like the Sahara Desert. 

Fuck it. 

One week. I’d give it one more week. That was long enough to collect my wages and get my stuff together to hit the road. Maybe it was time to start tracking him down instead, because this level of incompetence was unforgivable … even if it was kind of my fault. 

That was it. That was the plan. I passed the next few hours by planning out exactly what I intended to do to him once I got my hands on him, and traced out the most optimal route to London on the map I kept in my bag. 

Once in a while, my old brick of a phone buzzed and I checked it, a little too hopeful, but each time it wasn’t him. I give up, call me. Yeah nah, that message wasn’t going to come through anytime soon. They were almost all messages from my step-brother, but since there were none from him there was no point in answering Declan because all he wanted to know was what kind of kinky shit we’d gotten into this time. 

Sorry Decky, nothing to report. 

A tall skinny geek with glasses, a top-knot and a laptop sauntered up to the counter. He didn’t speak, he didn’t even look up from his little computer. He just slid his empty glass across the bar. 

I refilled it. 

Silently. 

Begrudgingly.

The only challenge was remembering everyone’s preferred drink because they wouldn’t bloody talk. If they did, it would be in a tiny whisper. Normally I wouldn’t have a problem remembering everyone’s orders, but they all looked the same to me. 

I didn’t fit here. 

These fucking kids didn’t know their asses from a hold in the ground, and they all had mommy and daddy to hold their hands. My mommy and daddy threw me out when I was barely five because I turned out to be one of the monsters. A Therianthropic shifter, a shifter who was just born with the ability. 

They couldn’t handle their perfect family being tainted in such a damning way. To this day I had no idea what they would have done with me had my aunt not been there. She didn’t give a shit what I was or wasn’t, and she’d adopted me on the spot. She forced them to sign me over and she took me to Ireland. She also made sure I adopted the accent. 

It was the little things that mattered. 

Thank god. 

The geek with the top-knot took his drink and went back to his beanbag. 

I pulled my map out again and went back to work. From London, whether I found him there or not, I could travel up to Scotland. Nomads like me had an easier time trailing up there. The country’s High Council of Shifter Affairs kept an online registry of Nomads. Very modern. 

If you were on it, you could travel unhindered and didn’t have to declare yourself everywhere you went. It helped us avoid situations like the one I’d gotten myself into here in Portsmouth. You just had to be able to prove you were on the list and keep yourself updated, which was really simple, except I didn’t have a computer. I didn’t even know how to use it. All I knew how to do was play solitaire. The son-of-a-bitch who wasn’t here was the one who made sure my information was current. 

Decky kept insisting that I learn. I just hadn’t gotten around to it yet. Maybe it was time to get around to it. 

Maybe nicking a certain someone’s credit card and buying myself one would be an adequate enough punishment. There had to be more places like this in London where I could convince someone to teach me how to use it properly … without wasting my life working for them.

I watched the clock tick away into the wee hours of the morning in slow motion. I knocked back more than a few shots of my own during that time. It was only against the rules if I got caught, and if you couldn’t catch me you couldn’t stop me. 

Shifter speed, beating surveillance systems since day one. 

Eventually, the skinny guy from before appeared before me again. This time his eyes were locked on his phone with a strange intensity. He had one earbud in with the other dangling against his chest. I wanted to yank it out. 

He set his glass down in front of me and I sighed. Here we go again. The lack of proper interaction was going to kill me. 

I refilled the glass. 

Boring. 

He took it. 

Boring. 

He didn’t walk away. 

Annoying. 

He looked up at me. 

Holy Shite. 

I felt my eyebrows disappear into my hairline like a magic trick. He started at me, and I stared right back. The seconds stretched out between us. Make a move, Top-Knot. 

“Is your name Cosima?” He finally asked. 

I drummed my fingers along the bar. He was so obviously nervous to be speaking to another living creature that I couldn’t decide if I should feel sorry for him, be amused or just fuck with him. 

The alcohol said to fuck with him. It wouldn’t take much to give him a heart attack. Just touching his hand should be enough, but I wanted my paycheck. Wrecking the patrons was a good way to get that taken away … 

I finally tapped the name tag on my chest. Cosima. 

“Um …” he stammered. He looked down at his phone and back up at me and let out a breath. “You’re a bad little cat.” 

“Excuse me?” I’d expected a half-hearted attempt at a dinner-request, but he was skipping formalities and going straight to foreplay.

His face turned bright red. I could actually feel the heat coming off of his face. “A naughty little ocelot,” he choked out. 

The hair on the back of my neck stood up and a cold shiver ran through my legs. 

Even if the local clans knew I was there, it would be highly unlikely they knew my species. Ocelots were few and far between. We weren’t mainstream. In the space of five seconds my brain started running a million miles an hour trying to decipher every scenario that could have led to the few words that had just come out of that kid’s mouth. 

It could be him, the bastard, or it could be the local shifters had been watching me and I hadn’t picked up on it … or someone who disliked me very much was here too and had ratted me out. 

“Would you like to run that by me again, lad?” I asked, leaning across the counter. I watched his throat convulse as he tried to swallow. 

“A … wicked … um,” he stopped and stared at the screen. 

“Go on,” I said. Another tremble ran up my spine and goosebumps blossomed along my arms. There were too many different directions this could go. 

“A wicked little Irish witch,” he blurted out. 

Bingo. It was him. 

I hooked the front of the kid’s shirt with my finger and pulled him across the bar and his eyes bugged out of his head. 

“You tell that little son-of-a-bitch that I am going to—”

“You broke the town charter.” He rushed the words out and held up the phone so I could see the text on it. “You’ve failed to declare yourself after ninety days. The offense can no longer be ignored.” 

I let go of his shirt. 

“The local council has demanded your presence immediately. If you refuse then your compliance will be forced.” 

Shite. 

The politics in this fucking world were deadly. 

“Hey,” the kid said. “Are you like, a real shape-shifter? I’ve never met one. I thought it was a weird joke, someone online paid me to deliver the message.” 

“Take your happy ass back to your sad little bean bag,” I hissed at him. He flinched, but did as he was told. 

Now I had to figure out what I was going to do. 

Shite … 

My first instinct was to call Decky, but he would call our Mum and then she’d worry. They were both in Ireland. They couldn’t help me now if they tried.

He couldn’t help me either, not if he wasn’t here. 

There were too many factors at play here for me to get a solid read on the situation.

You’d think one little cat slipping through and not causing any trouble wouldn’t be a big deal. Wrong.

I tried to think fast, and calm. Freaking out was a good way to get yourself into more trouble. A level head was tactful. Life-saving. He’d taught me that.

There was no telling what the punishment was going to be if I ended up in front of that council. In my experience, it was as likely to be a slap on the wrist as it was to be sadistically twisted. Or deadly. Or both.

Well, they couldn’t punish me if they couldn’t catch me, and they’d have no rights to me as soon as I left the territory.

I pulled the calculator out of the drawer and tallied up with I was owed by the café. I could still hear the night-manager fapping away to his cartoon porn in the back, which meant that he wasn’t watching the cameras or marketing the place on social media like he was supposed to.

I needed to learn how to do that job. 

I took my dues from the register and left a written receipt. I was a lot of things, but a thief had never been one of them. 

I went through the motions. 

I cleaned the bar. Counted the till. Arranged the fridges. Cleaned up. I also got my shit together in my bag under the bar. I always kept my important stuff with me wherever I went. Paperwork, passport, money. At the end of the day that was all you needed to survive. The rest was replaceable. 

Where did I slip up? I’d been careful. I’d steered clear of any place that was owned or operated by any shifter, that I knew of. I was a Thero shifter, not a Lycanthrope, so I wasn’t forced to change with the full moon and I’d avoided shifting at all in three months to make sure I didn’t get caught. It had been difficult. It wasn’t natural to suppress that instinct, but I thought it was worth it because even if I walked into one of their places by accident I should have been able to fly under the radar. 

Wrong. 

Wrong on so many levels. 

The most logical explanation that came to mind was someone had ratted me out. 

I finally put the closed sign on the bar and grabbed my stuff. The top-knot who had delivered the message watched me from over his laptop. If there was more time I would have taken him out back and made him regret leaving his mommy’s basement. 

I knocked sharply on the door of the back office and disappeared through the back door before the manager could even get out of his chair. 

The air was surprisingly cool when I pulled the door closed behind me. 

I took a deep breath and let it out. 

Calm. 

I had a handful of enemies that I’d collected over the years, as morbid as it sounded, and they had friends spread far and wide. The digital age had made the world a lot smaller. I really needed to get in tune with it. 

It was almost four in the morning. A fine time to ambush someone. They’d sent their message through the kid, so they knew I was here, but I had no intention of getting caught

One little ocelot in a town of wolves and other very big predatory creatures …

I was a snack.

The alley was empty save for the garbage and the rodents. No lights, because the owner couldn’t be bothered to replace them. No working cameras for the same reason.

I scanned the top of the buildings around me, and the windows and the ledges, searching for a pair of eyes that would be looking right back at me. A hawk on a power line maybe? A big fat wolf skulking in the next alley over? A badger in the bin?

Somewhere, someone was watching. 

My boots didn’t make a sound on the pavement, even as I traversed over gravel, but I couldn’t stop the wind from blowing my scent around. I was careful not to run. Walking calmly with a purpose could keep you alive longer than running. Running was a dead giveaway, and I had one hand to play to get out of town unscathed. 

The local clans all congregated at a string of biker bars at the other end of town, closer to the rural areas, which was why I’d set up closer to the city center. My hostel was between here and there, and so was my bike. All I had to do was get to it and make it to the freeway and I’d be in the clear. An ocelot that wasn’t there wasn’t a problem. 

Maybe. 

Probably. 

There was only one way to find out for sure. 

I couldn’t keep my heart from thudding in my chest, or the cold rush of blood urging me to run as I padded silently down the foggy streets. 

You’re just a midnight snack. 

Not even a fancy one. 

Thank you, brain. Just what I needed. 

I kept to the main roads. They were mostly empty at this time. Only the early morning risers and those who hadn’t made it home yet were out and about. Maybe a few meatheads hunting a little cat were among them. Skulking through the alleys would be a sure way to disappear without a trace. 

The piercing screech of my ringtone sliced through the silence like a knife and put my heart in my throat. 

It was the night manager calling. 

That sounded like the start to a bad horror film or a mediocre porno. 

Given the situation, it could go either way. 

I fumbled to silence the ringer and kept walking. I was close. I had some clothes in the hostel, but going in after them would cost me time.

It wasn’t worth it.

Fog started to form over the city. It descended thick and wet and brought with it the scent of an impending storm. I could feel the air shift and start to turn with the promise of rain. 

Every time something bad happened in my life, it rained. 

I crossed one last road and had no choice but to duck down another alley to get around to the back of the hostel where my bike was parked. 

I pulled the cover off and the silver paint of my custom accents glinted in the dimly lit lot. It was nothing fancy, just a little café racer, but it got me from A to B, and today I needed it to take me all the way to L for London. This was going to be a non-stop-one-way-trip.

I dug my keys out of my bag and pulled up the lock and chain I had laced through the back tire and stuck the key in.

It didn’t twist. 

I pulled it out and tried it again. 

It didn’t budge. 

I checked the keys and tried one last time. 

Nothing. 

I turned the lock over in my hands and ran my fingers down the chain. The metal was shiny and clean and smooth. 

It wasn’t mine. 

Sometimes you found yourself in a moment where you realized what you thought you’d been feeling wasn’t really what you’d been feeling. I was in that moment. 

I thought I had been afraid before. I wasn’t. I knew that now because pure, unadulterated terror crashed over me right then and there and shook me to my very core. Real fear was white and cloudy and cold. It swallowed your mind and your vision and every other part of you it could and it squeezed until your breath caught in your lungs and any logical thought you may have had, vanished. 

This was that moment. 

This was that moment, but I couldn’t let it win. 

My fingers trembled. My knees were weak, but I grasped at the chain and pulled. 

I only needed to break one link. 

Just one link and I’d be out of here. 

I pulled as hard as I could, but the chain must have been made of iron. If it had been any other metal I could have snapped it like a twig. Fuck silver. It was cold-forged-iron that was the downfall of any Aberrant, including shifters. 

The wind picked up. The first few drops of rain fell and I felt each droplet hit my skin like a full-blown punch. 

The chain was iron. What were the odds that the lock was as well?

Behind me, against the wall and propping up a green garbage bin was a cinderblock. 

That was all I needed. 

I stumbled when I lunged for it, and the bin crashed loudly to the ground when I yanked the block out from underneath it but it didn’t matter. 

I hefted the slimy black block in my hands and drove it down as hard as I could against the lock. Once, twice, three times and handle of it broke. 

Yes. 

Triumph. 

Triumph was warm. Triumph helped me push back the suffocating fear far enough for me to get the lock and chain off the wheel and swing one leg over the bike. 

I slammed my keys into the ignition and then I felt it. 

Movement. 

A new scent. 

It flitted across the air. It danced over the scent of rotting rubbish. 

It hadn’t been there before. 

I had been so consumed with the chain that I hadn’t been paying attention to what was happening around me. I didn’t look back. I waited a few extra seconds, listening to their near-silent approach, to the rain pelting off their body. I felt them reach for me from behind. My body still felt weak from fear, but this was a fight then flight moment. 

I reached back over my left shoulder with my right hand and grabbed their wrist. I yanked them forward and drove my left elbow back and up into their throat as hard as I could. 

It was a man. That much I knew now. He grunted and gasped, and I slammed my elbow into his throat one more time and he crippled forward, almost on top of me but I let go and rolled off the other side of the bike. 

I ran. 

No thinking. 

No looking to see who it was or how much I’d hurt him. I just ran, heart thundering. Regardless of the damage I’d done I heard him behind me, catching up. 

I twisted and turned down every alley and street I found. Left, then right, around that corner and over a fence. The rain beat down over me and filled the streets. I could run in silence but I couldn’t stop the splashes of the puddles I ran through. The only highlight was the rain could help cover my scent if I got far enough away from him. 

The problem with that is it also helped hide the guy that was on my tail. Stopping to look behind was never a good idea … 

I turned another corner and skidded to a halt. Another fucking alleyway. 

My phone started to vibrate in my pocket but I ignored it. 

It didn’t matter who was on the other end. They couldn’t help me now. 

Not a good idea. I pressed myself up against the wall and crept up to the corner so I could look back. It was stupid, but I was stuck in a maze of back alleys and I needed to get back to the main streets if I stood a chance. Somewhere on the other side of the buildings I was stuck between I heard the distinct hiss of a bus rolling to a stop. 

A bus. 

A public bus. 

That’s what I needed.

From here to anywhere. I’d take it. 

The way I’d come was empty. Nothing stirred, but I couldn’t see very far through the fog either. I could shift. I could stash my stuff down a gutter and just slink off until it was safe to come back for it. 

I cursed myself for being so stupid. Again. 

If I lost my passport and paperwork I was screwed. There were too many things that could go wrong with all of this. Too many factors. Too many stupid decisions. 

Fuck this whole fucking thing. 

I took off back the way I’d come, retracing my steps the best I could. This really was the perfect time to go after someone. There was almost no place to hide in public. I listened to the bus roll off, and I knew the next one wasn’t going to be by anytime soon. The trains weren’t running either. It was dark. It was rainy. 

I turned another corner and I could see the grey-blue paint of the hostel down at the end, but it no more than graced my vision before a large callused hand clamped down over my face, an arm wrapped around my waist and I was pushed up against the wall. 

He pressed his body against mine, trapping me flat against the rough bricks. His chest was pressed against the side of my face and he ground his hips into my ass, pushing hard. I pushed back against the wall but he was strong.

Really strong. 

He grabbed both of my wrists and pinned them above my head.

I struggled to get my breathing under control and my lungs burned with the effort. 

He buried his nose in my hair and inhaled. 

“You. Little. Shit.” He said. “Did you really think I wouldn’t track you down?” His voice was deep and rolled with a French-Canadian accent, and then I got a mouthful of men’s cologne laced with citrus. 

A low mewling rolled up my chest and spilled out of my throat. I threw my head back into his chin and pushed back as hard as I could. 

“Rurik! You piece of shit!” I screamed at him. I kicked him. Whatever piece of him I could reach I kicked and slapped and he just knocked my blows away, laughing, drenching wet, handsome.

“You. God. Damn. Piece. Of. Shit. I fucking hate you right now.” I threw my bag at his head and he caught it, still laughing. Snort laughing. I only pissed me off more. 

“Ooh you’re a naughty little ocelot,” he taunted, bopping my head while I tried to ward him off instead. “Your compliance will be forced, ‘cause you’re in trouble now you little Irish witch.” 

“How much did it cost to get that kid to deliver the message?” I grabbed my bag away from him and smacked him across the head. It only made him laugh harder. 

“A lot more than it should have,” he admitted. “He was terrified. You are very intimidating to look at, apparently.” 

“Good. I hope you don’t eat for a fucking week.” 

“Is that any way to talk to the man who fixed the broken headlight on your bike earlier today?”

I pushed him, but he grabbed my arms, spun me around and had me back up against the wall, face forward like a criminal about to be arrested. 

“Besides,” he said, planting my hands up high over my head, “I won the game, and now I get to claim my winnings.” 

He shoved his knee between my legs and pushed them apart so I was spread-eagled against the wall. He slid his hands around the contours of my body, down my hips, my legs, and curled his fingers under the hem of my skirt and yanked it up. 

I pushed it back down. 

“It took you three bloody months to show up,” I said over my shoulder, “I don’t think you deserve it.”

A crack of thunder sounded overhead and the clouds above chose that moment to release the full force of their reserved water in buckets. We were both fully drenched in a matter of seconds, but he didn’t let go. He grabbed the fabric and yanked it up again.

“Hands back on the wall.”

“Giving orders now are we?”

“Hands back on the wall,” he said, sliding one hand down the front of my body and between my legs. He pushed his fingers against me through the fabric of my panties. “Or you can wait until three months,” he growled the words in my ear.

I pushed my hips back against him but did as he said, because it wasn’t just the rain that had made that tiny bit of fabric wet down there. He pressed his leg between mine so it was snuggled firmly against my ass. It made me want to spread my legs farther, but with the precarious position, my movements were limited.

He ran his fingers across the skin of my stomach and up beneath my shirt to trace along the curve of my breasts while he kneaded firmly between my legs, cupping me, applying pressure exactly how he knew I liked it. Exactly how it made me crazy.

All I wanted right then was to turn around and wrap my legs around him. To rip those soaking wet clothes off of him take him. A dark alley in a storm was nowhere near the most obscure place I’d had him, but even had it been broad daylight I wouldn’t have hesitated to crawl on top of him then and there.

I didn’t turn around though, and I had to dig my nails against the rough texture of the wall to force myself to keep my hands there because he’d caught me, not the other way around, and winner takes loser. Those were the rules. There were no rules against being an asshole to win either, it only meant when I caught him next, he’d pay for it.

His fingers trembled as the grazed over my breasts and he buried his face against my neck and inhaled, holding me tightly against him. I realized that I hadn’t been the only one getting frustrated by the absence of the other. Our time apart had been just as unforgiving for him as it had been for me.

I ground myself down against his leg and turned my head into his to try and capture his mouth, but he stayed just out of reach.

It was frustrating.

It was agonizing.

“What took you so fucking long?” I asked him.

He slid his fingers beneath the fabric of my panties and a fine tremor ran up my legs and my body was clenched to an almost painful degree. 

“Because someone decided to go play with the geeks instead of the swingers,” he breathed. “An internet café? Really? I spent a good two weeks thinking you’d lost your mind and started searching the dating forums for a new kitty.”

He slid one finger deep inside me and moved it side to side instead of in and out over, rolling over that one sweet spot. He didn’t even have to search for it. The bastard knew every sweet little nook, cranny, and crevice on my body. He could take me to the edge blindfolded.

A warm tingling began to spread through my arms and legs, sizzling through me as my lower body clenched tighter and tighter as he continued to wind me up. 

My voice was barely a gasp because I couldn’t make it work right. “All those dating sites - and you’re here instead?”

He slid a second finger deep and my knees nearly buckled. His leg kept me upright, and he tightened his grip on my sensitive parts in just the right way to stop me from falling over the edge. He was going to draw it out.

“None of them wanted to meet me in an alleyway,” he said, and rubbed his fingers over that spot again, bringing me back up to the edge. His other hand disappeared from beneath my shirt and I felt him pulling at his belt. Finally. I pushed my hips back against him and he pressed his hand into the small of my back, bending me down and moving his leg away so my angle matched his height. He kept his fingers sliding over the front of me, keeping me on the edge but not letting me spill over it. I wanted to scream, but holding it would make that final release so much more intense.

I felt him then, pressed against me from behind, bare and hot and harder than chiseled marble. He slid himself against me, teasing at my entrance. I would have impaled myself, I needed to, but I was stuck now all bent forward and stretched with my hands still to the wall.

I could barely wiggle.

I just had to wait, my toes curling in anticipation as he slid himself around and around.

“None of them were as wet as you either,” he said.

He rubbed his fingers against me then, hard and fast, side to side and the swelling heat exploded and he slammed himself into me at the same time. Balls deep. My body was slick and open but clenched tightly around him, pulsing. He wrapped both of his arms around my waist and bent over the back of me and started pumping. Flesh against flesh, my body shook with the force of it and twitched and spasmed as he kept my orgasm going until it was too much, too sensitive, so blinding that now I could only scream with every thrust, where before I could barely breathe.

The strength in his body was so immense and unyielding. His arms were like a vice around me. He could so easily just squeeze and crush me if he wanted to and the force of his every thrust against me was hard enough to break a human. My body jerked violently with every hit but it was so solid. So satisfying. The smack of skin against skin was so loud it traveled through the pouring rain. He stood up straight behind me but his rhythm didn’t slow, it sped up. He grabbed a handful of my hair and pulled my head back and I screamed then, ragged and loud he forced it out of me every time he slammed against my ass. My stomach muscled shivered, my legs trembled.

Fire and pressure started to build again and he pushed it. He knew how. He tightened his grip in my hair and slid his fingers down my spine with a soft tender touch that conflicted so harshly with everything else that my vision swam and spots flashed before my eyes. 

It was a total rush that you couldn’t imagine. You had to experience it to feel it. The delicate trace of fingers across my skin coupled with the hard pounding that made me feel raw, almost painful but oh-so-good. 

“None of them screamed like you do either.” He slowly slid one finger between my ass cheeks and pushed his way down. “None of them had an ass like this.” All he had to do was press against me and a second orgasm ripped through me and he cried out and grabbed my hips with both of his hands. His fingers bit into my skin and he thrust one more time, harder than before and held me against his groin, squeezing me against his body, trying to push himself even deeper even if it wasn’t possible. 

I gripped the wall. 

He held my hips. 

We both stood there, locked together, trembling with aftershocks and waves of endorphins. If he let go of me I’d fall. If he let go of me, he’d fall. 

I closed my eyes because I was still lightheaded and ditzy feeling. He eased his grip and wrapped around me, pulled me up to lean against him as he slid his body out of mine. The second he did my knees buckled from the sensation of it, but he kept me standing. It left me feeling empty. Bereft. 

Wanting more. 

Needing more. 

He hugged me from behind. Neither one of us cared about the weather. Neither one of us cared if anyone was watching. 

“I don’t know who the hell you dated from those forums,” I said breathlessly, “but they sound boring as shite.” 

“You have no idea how dull these people were. You’d think I would have learned by now to let you choose the extras.” He said breathlessly. “So how ya’ been? I mean, you don’t call, you don’t write, what’s a guy to do?”

“We could go for pancakes,” I said. I tried to push all of my clothes into a semi-normal state, but everything was so wet, and messy. “I’m sure there’s something open somewhere.” I tugged my skirt back down as well as I could. 

“We could,” he said. “But I think I’ll have to take a … raincheck.” 

It was my turn to snort. I let go of him and moved away.

I was still dizzy feeling, but I had to fish my bag out of the gutter. I didn’t even remember dropping it down there. 

“You think you’re funny,” I said. 

“The word you’re looking for is punny,” he said. “And I know I’m funny. All kinds of funny.” He fixed his jeans and leaned up against the wall, and god-damn did he make that one simple pose look so amazing. 

I could take him again. 

“We really will have to take a raincheck, however. You’ve got maybe, ten minutes to split town.” 

My gaze narrowed, as skeptical looking as I could be given the situation. “Why?”

He shrugged. “Well, after that little shit-fuck with the top-knot delivered my message to you, he might have sent another message off to the local charter, alerting them to an undeclared ocelot slinking around their town illegally.” 

“You didn’t,” I said. 

“I might’ve.” 

“Tell me you did not do that,” I snapped. 

He looked at his watch. “Time is a’  tickin’, Little Kitty. I’ll make it easy on you though. I’m heading back to London.”

“You shit head,” I hissed at him. 

“You better get going.” 

Shite. 

I was going to kill him. 

London my ass. 

I was going to kill him. 

I took off down the alley and slid around the corner. My bike was there, untouched. 

“You’re still a dickhead,” I screamed back at him. 

I jumped on the bike and kicked it to life. 

“You better get going, Little Kitty,” he yelled back. “Or I’m going to eat all the damn pancakes myself!” 

I maneuvered down the alley, past the hostel and out onto the street. Sure enough, standing there right outside the building was a big meathead looking motherfucker decked out in leather biker gear. 

He saw me, and I saw the look on his face. 

Yeah, he was looking for me. 

I revved the bike and sped down the street, and suddenly I was back in the same predicament I was in before Rurik nailed me in the alley. 

Same predicament. Same plan. 

I kept to the main streets and didn’t slow down until I was on the open highway and far away from the city. 

London was next. 

He was going to pay. 

It was my turn to chase him down.

PART TWO