The Beast That Was Max by Gerard Houarner Page B

the trunk, arms stretched above her head, fingers spread, tips pressed against the inside trunk hood. The arc of her body across the opening was a bowstring waiting for its arrow, a line daring to be crossed, a question without answer, a bottomless void demanding to be filled. The scent of her sweat caught at him, sharp as a hook. The embodiment of appetite, he realized. Like him and the Beast within him, destructive, dancing on the boundary between fulfillment and self-destruction. She was giving in to her need even if it meant a return to Rithisak's service.
    Despite having fought her off, he still felt vulnerable to her, almost like prey. He was sure if Lee could know all that had gone on, he would have considered the feeling kinky, and encouraged him to surrender to his hunter. Shreds of their intimacy clung to his thoughts. Her voice, her need, echoed in his head, reinforcing the Beast's raving cry for her. And a part of him reared with jealous rage at the idea of Rithisak's importance for her. He wanted to be the sole object of her appetite, the center of her life.
    The most frightening aspect she had awakened, or planted, in him wanted to protect her and the baby she carried. As strong as his drives to protect the twins and kill everybody else, this mewling newborn desire spun images of a human baby that inspired him to care and provide for it, teach it all he knew, and replace Rithisak as its father.
    The Beast tore the ghost desires apart and fed on the carcass of kindness and caring.
    "You're not scared of Rithisak," Mani said.
    Max slung the bags over his shoulders.
    "You want to know how I can enter you, and men like you? Because I understand the elements which make us."
    The Beast screamed as Max took up the guns. He drew comfort from the cold steel in his hands. Through the fog of his rage, he found the outline of a sewer manhole near the street intersection.
    "I'm water," she whispered, drawing him closer so he could hear. After he took a step in her direction, she said, "Rithisak is like you. Fire."
    "You're drawn to fire." He fumbled with the tire iron. The Beast wanted him to swing for her head.
    "But I'm not strong enough to put it out."
    "You wouldn't survive my fire."
    Mani laughed, brought a leg up, and hugged her knee to her stomach. Her body broke the spell it had woven. The Beast did not care and brought Max a step closer, and another, until his crotch was jammed against her raised foot. His cock was as hard and unyielding as her heel. Her left shoulder dipped, and then her right, as she swayed from side to side between the car and Max. Her hips rolled. Pressure increased, decreased, on his cock. He smelled the stale, sweat-ripe air from the long plane ride from Asia in her hair, the incense mingled with jungle blossoms lingering on her skin, and the musty leavings of a man's sex rising from between her legs. Rithisak's scent. The Beast leapt to attack a rival's presence, and Max let his inner rage chase the lost trail of an old territorial marking. He was not supposed to kill her. He did not want to kill her.
    She closed her eyes and put her head back, but the gesture was the closing of a door, not surrender. After drawing him in, she was shutting him out.
    He put his free hand over her knee, passed the tire iron through her hair. Fueled by her denial and his hunger, the Beast lost Rithisak's trail and screamed itself into a storm sweeping back on a bloody path to Mani. But like the faint wail of a horn in the fog warning him away from dangerous shores, a woman's voice rose out of the storm to tell him there were other things Mani had to give him, other appetites she could fulfill. The Beast rejected the offer with a shriek that made Max's metal-filled hand shake. Her voice grew louder, clearer, becoming a siren song luring the Beast from its death focus on Mani. The voice tuned itself first to Max's thoughts, and then, settling into a deeper resonance with truth, to the Beast's roar.
    A promise of