Chapter 8

His scent was all over me, washing away everything that I couldn’t remember.  A sense of calm came over me, and everything seemed right in the world.  Nothing could go wrong in the darkness here, the soft material beneath me a sigh of content on my back.

There was a small pressure on my lips, soft and confident, parting them, and moulding them against a textured silk.  I sighed, tasting the sweet tang of a similar action in my mouth.  It felt nice, a tender caress on my plump flesh, my senses drowning in that sweet breath that fanned all over my face.  Into my mouth.

My oxygen was cutting short, but exactly at that moment the warmth disappeared from my mouth and transferred to my jaw, wind tickling my ear.  A moan escaped my mouth and I felt something shift above me, pressing down on me.  I felt engulfed in pleasant warmth, revelling in the hard quality of the form embracing me, shivering when something ran up both my thighs.

Not able to resist, I brought my hands up, curious to feel the form above me.  My fingers encountered something smooth and warm, altogether hard and firm.  The skin warmed even more beneath my palms and I ran them higher, discovering broad shoulders and a muscled neck.

The lips that had been nuzzling behind my ear stopped when I moved my hands over his skin, his breathing speeding up as I touched the first baby hairs at the back of his neck.  Marvelling at their silky texture, I wrung my hands in them, liking at how soft it was, like down.

His lips left my neck and appeared back on my mine, pressing more firmly, taking my breath away when his tongue probed my lower lip.  I opened my mouth and he swept inside, caressing my tongue with his.  Slowly, leisurely, he made my heart pound excitedly, shivers squirming over my skin.

His lips were soft and hot, altogether masculine-thin and wet.  Everything was spicy sweet to my senses, making me slightly dizzy, as if I was drunk on him.

We broke away for air, but still, his lips were only millimetres away, brushing lightly against mine.  Teasing me.

“Azalea,” he whispered, his breath making my pulse flutter.  I felt him smile against my lips when he heard it.

It had to be my name he was saying.  My eyes cracked open, only to be met by darkness.  I blinked slowly, my eyes taking a long time to adjust.  He brushed his lips against mine again, and I closed my eyes and sighed.

Opening them once more, I found that my vision was finally clear enough for me to see the shadow of his face.  His eyes seemed to be glowing slightly, his irises soft with the colour of crushed spring leaves, captivating me into a stupor.

“Azalea.”  His voice was deep and rough, vibrating through me, enchanting me.

“Yes?”  My voice was strangely husky, bordering on gravely.  When the word left my throat, it burned, my vocal cords throbbing with a sting.  I tried clearing it but winced with pain, and for a second the moment was shattered.

His fingers parted through my hair, running along my scalp until he reached the back of my head.  He gripped the thick hair, tilting my head up, running his nose right under my ear, inhaling deeply.  My bones melted, letting him take control, pulling strings from deep within my body.

“Sleep.”  His tone had gone deeper, almost indistinguishable, as if he was holding himself back.

I ran my tongue over my lips, found them damp from his kiss.  I struggled to comprehend his unexpected, albeit soft demand.  Disbelief made me sag further into him.

“W-what?”

He growled mutely, his chest vibrating against mine.  “You need to sleep.”

I squinted.  “Why?”

He didn’t answer, instead pressing me even closer to him.  I bit back a moan, my hands running over his shoulders, which stiffened.  I pressed my fingers into his muscles, trying to make them loosen up, but paused when his hand left my head and joined the other to slip around my waist, crushing me against him.  It made it harder to breathe, but I didn’t complain as his heat sunk into my bones.  It also made me more aware that his chest was covered with material, abrading my skin, irritating me beyond measure.  I tugged at the material, slipping my hands around him to reach his back.  He was much bigger than I’d realised, so my arms struggled to encircle him.  I grabbed the hem of his shirt, dragging it upwards, and his breathing hitched, ending in a low rumble in his chest.  The sound excited me even more, sending warmth licking over the stoking fires in my stomach.

I couldn’t resist.  I released the hem to splay my hands over the exposed skin of his lower back, my fingers curling into claws from pleasure.  He hissed in pleasure, but seemed to catch himself.

I felt him withdrawing but I clutched at him as if he was a lifeline, ultimately causing me to rise with him when he sat on his knees.  I was now clinging to his neck, mumbling incoherently in protest.

“Love,” he said gently, though it seemed like an effort to make his voice so calm.  “You’ve had a rough night.  You have to get some rest in.  It’s already dawn.”

Confused, I nuzzled into his neck, refusing to check if what he said was true.  Dawn?  The concept suddenly ceased to have meaning to me.

“Rough?”  I remembered his words.  For all I could muster, it wasn’t a memory of the night before.  All I could remember was arriving here, after wolves attacked me…

He sighed, his hands coming up to pry my hands gently from his neck.  I growled in frustration, but he leaned forward, placing my back against the softness of the mattress again.  He brought my hands up to the headboard, manacling my wrists with his hands.  He kissed my jaw, a feather-light touch, and I arched myself, trying to bring my body closer to his.

I forgot about my question, revelling in the feeling of his lips against me.

“You had a nightmare.”

I was so blown off track by his random statement that I froze, frowning at him, my buzz fading.  “No.”

I was certain I didn’t have a nightmare.  I would’ve remembered it, and I wasn’t one who easily got nightmares.  Being half animal gave me a lack in creativity to generate dreams.  It was always memories in my sleep, running in my animal form.

“You don’t remember?”

My frowned deepened, and he let out a breath.  “Good.”

Before I could protest, my mind beginning to grind back into existence, he silenced it with a deep kiss, his tongue sweeping into my open mouth.  I melted, my mind slowing down until it was pinpointed, focussed only on him and his every breath in my mouth...

A monster, mother of headaches pounded in my head, and I imagined tiny, sharp rocks pressing into my brain, making me bury into the pillow and groan loudly.  My lungs constricted for a moment, my whole body tensing as the pounding got worse.  It was worse than what you would guess as a hangover, and it made me want to curl up and die in a pit of despair.

A little dramatic, I admitted, but I truly wanted to bash my head and fall unconscious again.

A knock on the door made me jump up, only to grip my head and yelp as another bout of throbbing roared in my ears.

“Azalea?”  His voice screeched in my head, and I moaned distressingly.

“Shut up,” I muttered, desperate.  I didn’t even know it was Rick until I heard his sharp voice bark out a laugh.

I hissed at him and sprang up, now taller than him as I tried to balance on the soft mattress.  “It’s not funny,” I growled.  “It really hurts!” My voice was like venom as I shouted that last part and I knew I sounded like a lunatic on her way to the mental hospital, but I couldn’t help it.  It felt like my head was splitting open!

“Calm down,” Rick said, still sounding amused, and I gave a sinister growl.

His grin faltered as he looked at my dishevelled appearance.  “Damn, your eyes are bloodshot, girl.  And you are stark naked!  What did you do last night?”  His expression became wary and suspicious, and I fumed when I realised he was making assumptions.

I sprang down and he cried out when I grabbed him at his collar and crashed him into the wall.  The breath went out of him as I held him there, his eyes widening when I pressed my face into his and snarled.

“You think I don’t know what I look like?  Fuck you!  I can fucking feel it, you moron, and every time you talk with your irritating voice it grates on my ears.  So just shut the fuck up!”  I screamed, baring my teeth as I felt my eyes begin to throb.  The pain increased, and I released him to let out a piercing yell, clutching at my eyes.  I was so mad that I punched the wall, everything to distract me from my internal pain.  Agony shot up my knuckles to my wrist, travelling all the way up my arm to curse in my brain.  I yelled again, but it wasn’t from the physical pain.

In fact, I punched the wall again, this time with my other hand.  More pain ricocheted through me, but it wasn’t as intense as before.  I bit down on my lower lip, piercing the skin, blood flooding my mouth.

I heard shouting, but it was faint in a background of water rushing, making me dizzy.  My legs felt weak and gave out beneath me.  My skin was burning, and all I wanted to do was burst.  It was that need, a feeling that came over you, telling you everything will feel better when you could just shred your skin into shreds.  Break your bones, shatter your skull.

The feelings of desperation and pain churning inside of me scared me, making me whine as my whole body enflamed into a cocoon of pain.

I felt a cold hand on my head, icy against my feverish skin, and through my confusion and fear I opened my eyes to brilliant green eyes.

I was crying, my vision blurry and burning, but still, I could see when his eyes started glowing.  The world suddenly dumped into a pit of silence, and I got the impression that he was yelling at me, but his lips were too fast for me to read his words.

All that I knew was that I was tearing apart inside, images of my skin bursting open, bones splintering, blood flowing fuelling a moving movie behind my eyelids every time I closed them.  My whole body was shaking, hitching as my stomach heaved, but refused to let anything come out.  My whole body pitched forward with every sob I took, and I couldn’t help but think I was dying.

What I didn’t think was fair was that I didn’t even know why.  Did someone poison me in my sleep?  Or was it something more sinister, something inside of me that wanted out?

Those green eyes disappeared, and I wailed, feeling alone and abandoned to my own misery.  I could feel my instincts churning; urging me to turn into my cat form, but when I tried, something blocked me.  It felt like being staked in the gut, a weight grinding me into the earth so that I couldn’t breathe.

Oh fuck…

Something blurred in front of me, and I heard a faint shout of alarm.

“What the hell is that?”

Rick.  He was still here.  It was funny, that I regretted yelling at him even though I was dying.  By this point, I was sure that I was.  I could feel it, as though the term itself was a meaning my body understood.

“Something that will help her,” a low rumble said from in front of me, but he was just a blur now.

“Is that… is that…”  Rick didn’t seem to know what to say, and even though I couldn’t see him, I knew he was going into shock.

“Yes,” the rumble said, just before I felt a prick in my arm.

It felt like I was just injected with lava.  I screamed, and Rick yelled obscenities.

"What the fuck are you doing to her?  What's happening?" I could hear the panic in his voice.

"She's fighting her body."

"What do you mean?  She wants to shift into cat form?"

A pause.  "No.  It's something else.  Something is forcing her to shift, most probably her own body."

"Why would her own body betray her?  And that was... why did you inject her with your own fucking blood?"

I've never heard Rick in this state before.  I knew his words should have alarmed me, but my body felt like an inflated balloon under too much pressure, about to burst like a volcano with lava.

"If I don't, she'll die!"

I heard a scuffle and Rick grunted.  "I have to inject her with more!"

"How will your blood help her?" Rick yelled.  "If she's dying, we should take her to the hospital!"

"You moron!  Something is forcing her to shift, and it isn't her cat.  Actually, it's her cat that's preventing it!  My blood will shut off her instincts and make her calm down.  Hopefully it'll have the same effect on the creature that's trying to break free."

Rick went quiet and I heard the other person sigh wearily, right before I felt another prick, this time in my neck.  I felt too paralyzed to scream, or to even feel the pain.

A door slammed and I knew Rick had just left.  I didn't care.

The pain was fading a little, but now fire - a whole other pain -  was taking its place.  It was almost as if it was burning away the poison in my system, whether it was the poison of my own doing or not.  My muscles unclenched, my limbs turning into liquid.  It felt like I was drugged, my mind slowing and settling into a peaceful rhythm of thoughts.

What was going on with me?

I felt myself being lifted up, the airy feeling in my head intensifying, my last thoughts jumbling into indiscernible mush.  The lava thriving through my system didn’t feel so warm as I'd first thought, growing into an intense burning that appeared more bearable.  It was a low thrum in my blood, my pulse beating steadily, echoing another rhythm that seemed to reverberate in my chest.  From the arms holding me.

It felt right.

I sighed, my eyes fluttering open, half-mast with tranquillity.  The pain was just a memory now, swamped by the scorching presence around me, inside of me, and my eyes focussed on the green eyes I’d seen earlier.  Followed the line of his strong jaw, over the juncture of his neck, towards his broad chest.  With each breath he took I exhaled, and my eyes finally took in my position.  In his arms, I was enveloped and safe, held tightly against him, so I couldn’t escape even if I wanted to.  And I didn’t want to.

I became aware that everything was silent, and I realised that he’d been talking while I took him in.

His eyes ensnared mine again, and I was trapped there, unblinking, my mind still slow while it processed the golden flecks in his irises, the slight deforming of his pupils.  I squinted drunkenly at them, trying to make out their shape to no avail.  My eyes began to burn with the intensity of my concentration, which was broken with a jerk when a hand touched my cheek out of nowhere.

“Azalea,” he said gently, and I suddenly remembered his name.  Keith.

He repeated my name again when I continued to stare at him stupidly.  “That’s my name?” I mumbled like a moron.  Of course it was my name, someone snapped at the back of my head.  You’re so stupid.

I heard him laugh softly, the sound sending tingles all over me.  “Are you feeling well?  Is the pain gone?”

Huh?

“Sort of,” I replied, my voice hoarse.  The sound grated on my ears, but at least my head wasn’t splitting open anymore.  In fact, the mother of headaches had vanished, leaving behind that exhausted, lazy residue feeling.

"My blood's burning..."

“Good,” he murmured, and I was shocked when he pressed his soft lips against my forehead, pausing in that position as I heard him inhale my scent.

Blinking, I took him in, the very essence that made him recognizable.  His scent seared a memory into my brain, one that lingered at the forefront of my brain, breaking down the basic components that made him who he was, something I shouldn't have been able to do in human form.

Peppermint crushed with pepper, touched with a hint of masculine musk and another hint I couldn’t quite recognize.  In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever smelled something like it, even though this small, unknown component was swamped and mingled with the others.  Scents, muddled together in a dizzying display of colour to my senses.

My nose was useless at scents as a human, but I was not completely unaware of another shifter if they were close enough.  Always I received a dull impression - an imprint - of a scent for my brain to analyze and store for near future recognition.  Being so attuned and accustomed to the vanilla quality of a human’s scent, it was still a shock to smell the presence of shifters again, especially the wolves and this mysterious stranger.

My wits finally became my priority when I slowly realised that I should not be so comfortable in Keith’s embrace.  I wiggled a little, gasping when he tightened his arms around me.  Tingles ran over my skin, and I couldn’t stop myself from inhaling him again, the world becoming a lush sight to my sleepy mind.  It felt so nice being in this position, with him holding me, rubbing slow circles on my back.  I didn’t understand the tugging I felt in the core of my lower stomach as his other hand came to rest on my upper thigh, thumb moving on the inside of it, sending a jolt of pleasure through me.

“What’s wrong with me?” I stuttered a little over the words, not really focussing on the words as much as on the confusion I felt.  “What happened?”

He seemed to hesitate, and my eyes met his again as I tried to sharpen my dull thoughts.  I waited, patient as the strange drug in my body lulled me, and I had to fight to keep my eyes open.

Finally, he chose to reply.  “Last night, while you were sleeping, your body seemed to go into a seizure.  Can you remember what happened in your dreams?”

I furrowed my brow and tried to be serious.  I mean, I’d asked him to explain, right?  So why did I want to bask in the tingles that ran over my skin wherever we touched?

My brain was slow, and I had to concentrate hard on my answer.  “N-no.  I mean yes.  I was, um… I think I was running in cat form.  Just running, until the pain started.  I…”  I swallowed, tears suddenly in my eyes.  “I don’t remember what happened to me then.  It was just pain, all over my body, and I just wanted it to s-stop.” My voice broke on a sob at the last word, and he squeezed me against him.

I began to cry as he caressed me and soothed me, and I felt safe.

The memories of that dream – nightmare – faded into the background and I hoped it stayed away.  I never wanted to go through such pain again.

“What happened with me?” I asked, my voice deep and wavering from the tears.

“Shh,” he whispered.  Later I would realise that he'd avoided answering the same question I'd asked twice.  “Just go to sleep.  You’ll feel better by noon.”

And I don’t know how, but before his sentence ended, I was already asleep.

Vote and comment!  Tell me if the details are too vague or if you think I should explain more what's happening to Azalea, though I'll prefer to have Azalea find out for herself what just happened to her.  I'm not too sure either, but I'll figure it out!

Please, it's thrilling to see that I get more readers every day, but it's sad when they don't vote or even comment.  Pleeease make the effort, pretty please!  I'll e-mail you a chocolate :p lol if that's even possible!

Love,

AuroraSwan