Beast of Dreams Read online

  Karrick hoped she’d enjoy the breakfast he was making for her. He knew she’d love some hot homemade food, the kind that had never seen the inside of a preserve wrapper. He worried that he might have been too rough with her last night and she’d see things differently in the light of day. A flash of indulgence crossed his face as he thought that regardless of how mad she might be at him, her will to resist a home-cooked meal would be nonexistent.

  Amanda emerged from her tent wearing dark grey slacks and a matching long-sleeved shirt, impatiently striding over to the campfire to sit opposite of him on the cool ground.

  “I hope that’s my food you’re scraping onto the plate,” she said, tossing her hair over her shoulders in a gesture of cheekiness.

  “It’s still coming up. I thought you’d want it hot right out of the pan.” He cracked several large dark brown eggs into the skillet, adding salt and a pinch of the herb powder. He stirred the mixture vigorously in the pan as it sizzled in the fire. Amanda sat transfixed, absorbed in the mouth-watering aroma. He tried not to smile at her obvious obsession over the food.

  Soon the fluffy egg mixture was done and Karrick flipped it out of the pan and onto a plate already holding four thick strips of bacon and a large biscuit. He handed Amanda the plate and a large fork, both carved from wood. “Enjoy, Amanda. The biscuits are made from wheat flour, a variety of wheat that grows well here, but the eggs and bacon are from native species. The eggs are from the White Jumbler Hen, a large Eridani bird that we’ve been domesticating and using for a poultry source, and the bacon is from the Husking Boar, which we still have to hunt but hope to eventually domesticate and raise for food.”

  Amanda looked at him, seeing an answering confirmation in Karrick’s eyes. It was his way of telling her that he and his pack had been here for quite a while. She wondered if there had been another wolfan attempt to colonize Eridani, unsanctioned by and unreported to the Conglomerate.

  “You’re not part of an expedition are you?”

  “No, Amanda. We’ll talk about this but just not now, okay?”

  She sighed and accepted the plate he offered her. Amanda’s eyebrows raised as she took her first bite. She couldn’t help the moan that escaped as she bit into the eggs, savoring the delicious flavor. “Oh my god, this is good.” She picked up a piece of the bacon and pure rapture washed over her features as she bit into it.

  Karrick’s eyes widened, wondering if she was going to have an orgasm on the spot.

  “Anything to drink?”

  “I have some kujah wine. It’s made from the native Kujah Berries found in this area. The wine is pretty fruity, but good.” He smiled, pulling out a leather bag filled with wine. “I don’t have any cups. You’ll have to drink right from the spout.”

  Amanda held up the bag and tilted the end, pouring wine from the spout in a steady thin stream into her mouth. She closed her eyes to savor the flavor, a soft moan of pleasure escaping her lips. She opened her eyes and felt her flesh color at the open amusement in his. “Um, this is excellent… Thank you. This is the first home-cooked meal that I’ve had in nearly three months. Are the flowers for me?”

  “Of course.”

  “You pass the test. This is indeed a date.”

  Karrick lifted his plate and both ate in a companionable silence for several minutes.

  She was about the broach the subject of how long Karrick and his pack have been on Eridani when he surprised her.

  Karrick rubbed a finger under her chin to bring her gaze to his. Staring intently into her eyes, he asked, “How do you feel today, Amanda?”

  “Wonderful. However, I have to say that I’m not used to having men sneak into my tent in the middle of the night to have sex with me.” She pulled his finger to her mouth and gave it a quick bite.

  Karrick yelped, and then grinned. “It was fun, wasn’t it? By the way, you have kind of a glow about you today.”

  “What do you mean?” she said helping herself to more eggs from the new batch he’d just made.

  “That special glow women have when they’re expecting.”

  Amanda started choking and her face turned purple. Karrick got up and ran behind her. He wrapped his arms around her and pushed sharply inward between her navel and ribcage. A plop of scrambled eggs flew out of her mouth to land on the campfire, sending up a small swirl of smoke.

  “Sorry, I thought you said something about me expecting,” she said, catching her breath.

  “I did. Chances are that you’re pregnant by now.”

  “And just how the hell do you figure that?”

  “You were in estrus last night when I came in you.”

  “Excuse me. Animals go into estrus, not humans.”

  “Women go into estrus; it’s just that it’s undetectable to standard human men. Wolfan men, on the other hand, have the ability to easily tell when a female is in estrus. We can smell the pheromones.”

  She gaped at him. “I can’t believe this. I finally meet a man I really like and you talk about smelling estrus in females. It’s enough to drive a woman crazy, but worse, are you saying that you deliberately tried to get me pregnant last night?”

  “Yes. Aren’t you pleased?”

  “No!”

  “I thought you were attracted to me?”

  “I am. That doesn’t mean that I want a baby right now. Hell! Why am I even having this conversation? There’s no way you can get me pregnant, anyway. I get an annual contraceptive shot every year and I still have a month left before I’m due.”

  “Are you sure?”

  She looked at him sharply then stared off in space backtracking to when she’d had her last shot. “January, February… Well, I should have actually had it done last week, but it doesn’t matter. The shots are good for about thirteen to fourteen months.”

  “The shot isn’t doing anything if you’re in estrus.”

  “Karrick, do any of the women you know use contraceptives?”

  “I suppose a few might but I really have no idea what they use. Usually, our women want to get pregnant unless there’s a health reason not to do so.”

  “What I use allows me to have normal menstrual cycles, I just don’t ovulate.”

  “What do you do if you want to get pregnant?”

  “I guess I’d just have to wait until the shot wore off.”

  Karrick sat down and sighed. “I’d hoped you would become pregnant so I could make you my mate.”

  “Your mate? That’s very sweet; but Karrick, I think you’re approaching this all wrong. Maybe in your culture that’s the way to land a female but it’s not acceptable in mine.”

  “Are you saying I have no chance with you?”

  “Actually you do. I’ve never been attracted to anyone like I have you. I’ve always hoped that I would meet a wolfan man and get to know him like I know you.”

  “What should I do, Amanda? I really want to have a relationship with you.”

  She pondered his question for a few moments before she answered. “Respect me. Give me time to get to know you. Don’t sneak into my tent and decide that it’s time to make a baby wolfan without asking me.”

  He watched her walk around picking up the dishes and then crouch down to dump the pile of them in his lap. She looked him straight in the eye and said, “Here’s another clue. I’m happy to pull my weight but don’t think for a minute that I’m a doormat. I’ll take care of taking down the camp but you’re washing the dishes and the sleeping bag you messed up last night.”

  Pushing up off the ground, she got up and walked away in a huff. Karrick watched the angry twitch of her hips, wondering what he should do next. She stalked into her tent and dragged out her sleeping bag, swinging it over her shoulder. She stalked right back to where he was sitting and dumped the bag at his feet.

  “Here it is. Last night you said you’d clean it; now it’s your job. Take the bag over to that pool over there and wash it. You’ve got ten minutes to do it because we leave in a half hour and the bag will take tw
enty minutes to dry.”

  Karrick stood and blew her a kiss behind her back as she began dismantling the tent. She had said, “We leave in a half hour,” and he took that as a good sign. With a spring in his step, he carried the dishes and bag over to the pool to wash them.

  * * * * *

  Karrick washed the bag in the pool they had bathed in yesterday, while watching Amanda take down the campsite. He admired how efficient and quick she was. Every now and then, she would pause to stare at him and point to the bag, like he was working too slowly for her. She wasn’t just an alpha, he decided; she was a mega alpha. He dragged the water sogged bag onto a nearby boulder.

  “Hey, Amanda, how the hell is this going to take twenty minutes to dry? It’s soaking wet.”

  “Click on the dehydration control.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “On one of the corners. Just look for it, for god’s sake.”

  “I can’t find it,” he said, impatiently.

  Amanda, with irritation marking her brow, marched over to him and looked at the bag, shaking her head. “You were supposed to just wash the stain off, not soak the damn thing.” She reached under one corner and lifted it up to show him a small panel with five buttons on it. Each button was marked with a symbol to show what it was for. Universal symbols marked the buttons as dehydration, cooling, heating, inflation, and deflation. She pressed the button for dehydration and Karrick watched in fascination as water wringed out of the sleeping bag from one end to the other, followed by steam coming off the bag.

  “Thanks. By the way, you didn’t say, ‘dab the stain,’ you said, ‘take the bag over to the pool there and wash it,’ okay?” Karrick commented, a bit put out by her criticism.

  Amanda bit down the grin that was fighting to come out. “Well…I was thinking that I wanted you to just wash the stain. I thought you were so good at reading minds, Karrick. Why didn’t you just do what I wanted you to do instead of what I asked you to do?”

  “I don’t read minds. I just communicate via dreams like the other wolfan in my pack.”

  “So you only can do that when you’re all asleep?”

  “Actually, we can put ourselves into a kind of waking dream state, which allows us to do it anytime as long as we cooperate with each other so we’re in the same state at the same time.”

  Amanda drew a deep breath and plunged into asking the question that had been bothering her for the last ten minutes. “Tell me the truth. Do you often go around invading other women’s dreams at night to have sex with them?”

  “No. Well, at least not since I was a teenager and got caught at it. It’s considered extremely bad manners to do that unless it’s with your mate.”

  She gaped at him. “It’s bad manners? So what’s the deal here, Karrick? What makes it okay to practice bad manners on me?”

  “Because it’s not bad manners with you.” He reached over and pulled her into his arms, giving her a quick kiss on the lips. “You’re my mate.”

  “Not yet, but if you behave yourself, there’s a small chance I might consider it.”

  * * * * *

  Two hours of hiking later, Karrick and Amanda were heading to the crash site having traveled in relative silence, other than Karrick offering to carry some of her items, including the package with her environmental suit. Amanda’s thoughts churned since Karrick announced that he would like Amanda to become his mate.

  Amanda decided to approach the topic head on. “What makes you think you want me for a mate? I’m not wolfan.”

  “You’re human, and so am I. We’re nearly identical in the DNA sense. Wolfans are just humans with a bit of wolf DNA to give us enhanced survival characteristics for rough environments. Wolfans and humans, standard humans, that is, have bred together for centuries.”

  “But aren’t you attracted to wolfan females?”

  “I’m attracted to all females. Young, old, wolfan, human…doesn’t matter.”

  “Why me? Why not some other female?”

  “I’m far more attracted to you than any female I’ve ever met. We also have a disproportion of males to females right now, at least to females over twenty years of age. The ratio is three to one. But more important, at least to me, is that you’re an alpha like me. We have very few alpha females in my pack and they’re still teenagers, too young for me in any case. I’m naturally attracted to alpha females because I’m an alpha male. It’s the way of the wolfan.”

  “So you like alpha women, better. Have you ever met any standard human females, before?”

  “No. Why?”

  “Maybe you’d feel this way about any human female, as long as she was an alpha like you.” She was surprised at how much it hurt to say this to him.

  He stopped, found a large boulder to sit upon, and looked at her. His eyes were hot with passion and the features of his furred sensuous face turned very serious. “So, you think I got this thing for human alpha females, huh? Perhaps I have some kind of fetish to stroke their soft skin?” Karrick reached over, grasped her hand and pulled her to him. He used the other to softly stroke the bare skin of her arm. “Or maybe I like the taste of their soft flesh?” he said, huskily, as he pushed his knees wide apart and tugged her close, lowering his head to nuzzle her neck. “Or maybe,” he growled softly, reaching down to stroke the area between her pant legs, “I just like the feel of their hot, wet sex.”

  Amanda felt the strength leaving her legs at the sudden invasion of his stroking hand. She felt the heat building within her. She put her arms around the big wolfan’s neck while he unfastened her slacks and reached within to rub her vulva and clitoris with the pad of his index finger, helping her build toward an orgasm.

  Karrick watched the pink flush spread up her neck and face, knowing that if he were to completely undress her, he’d see the flush spreading from her torso upwards. He loved being able to watch the evidence of her arousal so easily. The sweet sexual perfume of her estrus was even more intense today than it was the night before, driving him to unfasten the stays of his breechclout and push Amanda’s slacks and panties halfway down to her knees.

  He boldly raked his eyes over her. “Amanda…” he said, gently angling her head downwards with his fingers, so she could watch his dark red lance jutting unmercifully from its furry sheath. He gripped his hand around the cock to pull the sheath back farther, exposing more of his turgid cock, enticing her with its thickness and the heavy veins surrounding the stem. A drop of pre-cum from the engorged head of his member smeared her stomach, and her nipples pebbled in desire. Because he was sitting on the boulder, his cock was level with her pussy. “Watch how hot it looks when I slide it between your cunt lips.”

  He grasped each of her butt cheeks, his fingertips sliding within the crack of her ass, and pulled her thighs as far apart as they would go with the panties and slacks only partially down her legs. The sight of her bright pink lips, peeking out of her crevice and swollen with passion, made him want to do more than just rub against her.

  Slowly, he pulled her closer, letting the head of his pulsing dark cock rub against her clit, smearing it with the pre-cum that was oozing freely from the head of his penis. Karrick held her tightly, rocking her hips back and forth so his crown gently rubbed against her nub. He let go of one butt cheek briefly to reach down and slather the tips of his fingers with some of the lusty juices leaking from her vagina, bringing them to his face to sniff the heady fragrance. Already highly aroused, the impact of her pheromones hit his blood stream and drove him over the edge.

  “Let me shove my cock up your pussy now and I’ll make us both come so hard…” Karrick growled into her hair as he dug his fingers into the flesh of her hips.

  “Yes…” she breathed, with what little control she had left.

  “It feels so good when your hot pussy grips my cock…”

  Amanda looked at him, her eyes smoldering, her fingers digging into the fur on his shoulders. “Now Karrick!”

  A flash of mischief crossed his face bef
ore his eyes took on sheen of purpose. “Very well, then,” he told her with quiet resolve, “but first I want you so hot you beg for it.” He pushed her thighs back together and slid his cock between her folds, the area well lubricated with the juices flowing from her pussy and the pre-cum oozing out his cock.

  Amanda felt the heat from the mushroomed head of his penis, dragging sensually back and forth across her vulva and clitoris. With his hands on her hips, he pushed the head deep within the vee of her legs, resting a brief moment at the opening of her vagina. Slowly, he teased the vaginal opening by rubbing the head around the circumference of the entrance, pushing the crown slightly in, just enough to make Amanda moan with the wanting of it.

  He kissed her, thrusting his thick tongue deep within, growling deep in his throat, plundering her lips, tongue, and the soft recesses of her mouth. He was penetrating her, fucking her mouth with his tongue, enticing her with the idea of him fucking her tight pussy with his cock.

  He kept up the friction of his cock sliding back and forth across the swollen folds of her vulva, pushing the fat head of his penis against the entrance of her vagina, again and again, making her tremble within his arms.

  Amanda, spellbound by the engorged cock wanting to push its way in, was soon so overcome with desire that the need to be deeply fucked was overwhelming.

  “Karrick…” she said, pulling her wet lips from his.

  “Yes…”

  “Oh god, Karrick…” she said, shuddering.

  “What do you want, baby…”

  “I want your cock…”

  “Yes?”

  “I need your cock in me…please…”

  His amber eyes blazed with triumph as he drove his cock as deep as it could go, his fingernails digging into the soft flesh of her buttocks. Amanda swooned in his arms, overcome by the carnality of his dark cock deep within her pussy, needing to feel his hot cum spill into her.

  Karrick felt the knot building at the base of his cock and nipping his teeth against her neck, said, “I’m going to shove my knot into you and fill you up with my sperm. Are you ready for it?”