Claiming Her Beasts #2 by Dia Cole
Lee
Not trusting Reed and Dominic to keep their promise, I flattened my back against the wall on the other side of them.
The roof protected me from the rain, but without Reed and my hormones keeping me warm, my internal temperature seemed to drop fast. It certainly didn’t help that the brick wall was freezing, and I’d had to tie up my shirt since Reed had torn off most of the buttons.
What were we thinking having sex out here?
As much as I hated to admit it, Dominic was right to chew our asses out.
What if a zombie had stumbled on us while we’d been out of our minds with lust? We couldn’t let our guard down and ignore our surroundings like that.
Well, I hadn’t totally been ignoring my surroundings. Somehow, I’d known Dominic was watching us. And I’d continued having sex with Reed anyway.
In fact, I’d enjoyed knowing Dominic was watching. God. That sounded so messed up. But some part of me really got off on having the sergeant there. Just imagining him joining in had made me orgasm harder than ever.
What’s happening to me?Just three days ago, I’d been a virgin and now I craved multiple lovers.
Maybe I was going crazy like Reed. Instead of hearing voices, I’d turned into a sexual deviant.
Rubbing my arms, I strained to hear the guys’ conversation over the drumming rain.
Reed’s laugh was deeper and colder than normal. “It seems my twin brother isn’t the only one with special abilities.”
Twin brother?Reed didn’t have any siblings. All he had was his mom and after she’d died in the car accident, there had been no other family to take him in. That’s why Gran had opened our home to him.
Dominic made a frustrated sound. “Your unconscious body has been lying on the office floor for days.”
His body?
Reed scoffed. “You can dispose of it.”
“You will return to it,” Dominic’s order was laced in steel.
“No.”
“You are my beast.”
Beast?
Reed’s voice dropped lower. “I’m going to kill you.”
It was Dominic’s turn to laugh. “If you were going to, you would have already.”
What?I was so damn confused.
Reed sounded defensive. “I’m not giving you a quick death. I want you to suffer the way I’ve suffered.”
Dominic let out a heavy sigh. “This is about Afghanistan.”
“Yes, it’s about fucking Afghanistan. You killed my brothers,” Reed shouted.
Afghanistan? Reed, like me, had never left Arizona, and he certainly didn’t have a bunch of brothers that Dominic could have killed.
Reed took a shuddering breath as if to compose himself. “But my revenge will have to wait. Right now I need your help keeping my mate alive. The city is FUBAR. I’ve gone over every mile looking for a safer place to take her and found nothing.”
“Wh-what?” Dominic sputtered. “How did you see anything? You’ve been lying on the floor—”
Reed interrupted. “I told you. I’m not bound to that body anymore.”
“You’ll return to it or—”
“Or what, Dom? You’ll kill this body?” Reed chuckled. “If I don’t die immediately, then I’ll jump into another. Maybe one of your Titan soldiers. Would you like to die by their hand? It’s more than you deserve.”
Are they both insane? It sounded as if Dom had drunk some of Reed’s crazy Kool-Aid.
A chill wracked me, and I had to fight to keep my teeth from chattering.
“Just tell me what’s going on out there, Hunter.”
Hunter?That was what Reed had called the voice in his head. The hair on the back of my neck stood on end.
Reed let out a sigh, “There are a few pockets of survivors, most of them holed up in buildings scattered around town. Hordes of infected roam the streets. Some hordes range in the hundreds. Others in the thousands.”
Dominic cursed.
“Alpha Diaz has been sending his enforcers to pick up survivors in the south.”
I inhaled sharply. Is Reed talking about Javier Diaz?
“That’s the bastard who killed Jen?”
Who’s Jen?
“Yes,” Reed confirmed. “He has a heavily fortified compound in the south valley and enough weapons and enforcers to take out the army base, not that he has to at this point.”
Dominic’s voice went low. “Why? What happened on base?”
“I have no fucking idea. But it was a bloodbath. All that's left are infected, and…”
“And?” Dominic repeated.
“These other creatures. I don’t know what the fuck they are. They looked like zombies, but they’re fast and loud. Base was covered with them.”
“Those must be the Howlers,” Dominic said slowly. “The colonel warned me about them during my briefing.”
“Well, the asshole should have taken his own advice—”
Dominic interrupted. “If they were overrun, the colonel would have gone underground. The bunker is designed to sustain an entire brigade for years. They’ll regroup with the rest of AMBER and take out the infected.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure. There were Titans among the dead.”
What are titans?The guys kept using that term.
“No,” Dominic said emphatically. “You must have been mistaken.”
“There’s no mistake. I saw the remains of Henris and Owsinski. Those things… those Howlers turned them into Sloppy Joes.”
Dominic cursed again. “I need you to go to the bunker.”
“I can’t.”
“That’s not a request, beast. It’s an order. Go back to your old body, shift, and find the colonel.”
As Dominic’s shout rang in my ears, I surrendered to the impossible truth. Reed was possessed by someone else… this Hunter. And he and Dominic knew each other. My hands shook as I tried to process what that meant.
“Fuck you, Dom,” Hunter-possessed-Reed shouted. “I really fucking can’t. I’m… stuck in here.”
Dominic asked the same question on my mind, “What the hell does that mean?”
“It means I’m trapped. Initially, I could jump in and out of Reed. But after my last soul jump, I got locked in here.” His voice climbed a few octaves. “Ah… shut up, cocksucker. I’m sick of being in your body, too.”
“Are you talking to the hippie?” Dominic asked.
“Yeah. We’re taking turns being in control, but if he doesn’t shut the fuck up right now, I won’t give him his turn.” It sounded as if Hunter-possessed-Reed smacked himself in the head.
“So, you can’t jump into your old body,” Dominic mused.
Hunter-possessed-Reed made a noise of agreement.
“But earlier you said if I killed you, you could jump into a new body,” Dominic said slowly.
“It might free me, or I might die too,” Hunter-possessed-Reed said, before shouting, “I didn’t say we were going to kill you, cocksucker. Just be quiet and let the adults talk.”
“We have to risk it,” Dominic announced. The sound of one of his knives being unsheathed chilled my blood.
“No, Dom. Losing Reed would devastate my mate. I will not cause her pain.”
“But you’ll wear her lover’s body like a damn suit?”
Hunter-Possessed-Reed sniffed. “That’s different. And they aren’t lovers. I’m the one mating her, not him.” He cursed loudly. “Shut the fuck up, cocksucker. She belongs to me. It doesn’t matter how long you’ve known each other.”
“It sounds as if the hippie disagrees with you,” Dominic said dryly.
“Whatever. We’re working our shit out. The take home here is that Reed lives, Lee is mine, and you’re going to help keep us all alive.”
“No,” Dominic said in a clipped voice.
“Motherfucker, you owe me—” The sound of a man shouting in the distance interrupted him.
Dominic cursed. “Corporal Shaw needs assistance reinforcing the gate.”
“I can help.”
I missed whatever else was said because the men’s voices faded out of earshot.
Shaken to my very soul, I made my way around the back of the school. My sneakers squelched in the mud and rain poured down my face, but I didn’t even notice.
My brain felt as if it was going to explode as I tried to make sense of what I’d heard. A lot of it was too confusing to understand, but what I got was that Reed wasn’t crazy. He was possessed by Hunter, who was Dominic’s beast. Whatever the hell that meant. And Dominic wanted to free Hunter by killing Reed. And that was something I couldn’t allow to happen.
But how can I stop him? And how can I stop Hunter from possessing Reed?
I didn’t even know what I was dealing with. Is Hunter a demon?Do I need a priest to do an exorcism or something?
As I stumbled through the rain, my heart ached for Reed. I felt terrible that I’d assumed he’d lost his mind when in actuality he’d been battling a demon.
A demon I’d had sex with.
A sick feeling washed over me as my mind played back every intimate moment we’d shared in nauseating high definition. It’d been the demon who’d kissed me, gone down on me, and screwed me like a wild man. Not Reed.
Bile rose in my throat as I realized it’d also been the demon who I’d fucked in the locker room and the demon who’d taken my virginity three nights ago.
Oh, God.
I should have known. The way Reed talked and acted was so out of character. And even his eyes had looked different.
I stopped outside the door to the gym. Someone had closed it. Probably Dominic who’d likely enjoyed watching me being railed by his beast.
My breath came faster as revulsion and shame turned my stomach. Tears welled in my eyes, but I blinked them away along with the disgust and self-recrimination. Instead, I focused on the raw burning emotion radiating from below my rib cage up to the center of my chest.
Rage I could handle. Rage I knew well.
Reed and I had been violated. The demon had taken something from us we could never get back. And I didn’t know how, but I was going to make it pay for that. Dominic was a co-conspirator as far as I was concerned, and he was going to pay too. Just as soon as I figured out what we were dealing with.
I clenched my hands into fists and pounded on the door.
It flew open, nearly smacking me in the face.
“Finally. I’ve been waiting for you, hooker,” Darcy said with her signature sneer.
“And you can wait a little longer, bitch.” My anger gave me the strength to shove past the taller, far more muscular woman.
Darcy’s expression turned deadly. “What did you just call me?”
“I’m pretty sure you heard me the first goddamn time since you have excellent hearing.”
Her fingers tightened reflexively along the sniper rifle she carried. “Dominic and I should have left you to die.”
“Maybe you should have,” I muttered, stalking by her. I didn’t have the emotional bandwidth to fight with her. Besides, there was something I needed to see. Leaving a puddle of water in my wake, I marched across the basketball court, yanked open one of the double doors, and stalked down the hallway in search of the demon’s body.