Wild Ride Read online

  Wild Ride

  Willa Okati

  All rights reserved.

  Copyright ©2007 Willa Okati

  Warning: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in federal prison and a fine of $250,000.

  ISBN: 978-1-59596-610-0

  Formats Available:

  HTML, Adobe PDF,

  MobiPocket, Microsoft Reader

  Publisher:

  Changeling Press LLC

  PO Box 1046

  Martinsburg, WV 25402-1046

  www.ChangelingPress.com

  Editor: Crystal Esau

  Cover Artist: Karen Fox

  This e-book file contains sexually explicit scenes and adult language which some may find offensive and which is not appropriate for a young audience. Changeling Press E-Books are for sale to adults, only, as defined by the laws of the country in which you made your purchase. Please store your files wisely, where they cannot be accessed by under-aged readers.

  Wild Ride

  Willa Okati

  Strange dreams tell Nikos that he is more than what he seems. They promise him that he is meant to be more than a Secret Keeper, one who can track the predatory Nightlings. That he is more than an arranged mate to Rand, chief of the Hunters, a cruel and careless man.

  When Nikos hunts a persistent and dangerous Nightling named Alexei, he finds the answers to all his questions. Alexei is a time traveler from the past who has come to find Nikos -- and take him back to the year 2007, where he insists Nikos is meant to be.

  It’s going to be a wild ride…

  Prologue

  “Keep up, Nikos. This is the rise you said you saw in your vision. Has to be -- there’s the double pine on the top of the hill. The Nightling’s so close I can smell him. Damn fool.” Rand hooted. “Bet he thinks he’s oh, so smart, hiding in plain sight in the sunshine. As if anyone escapes the Hunters.” Rand wiped his jaw and grimaced when his fingers met the two-day growth of stubble on his chin. “Let’s go ahead and bag the ba-tar. The sooner I get out of this forest the happier I’ll be.” He snapped his fingers, impatient as ever for the kill. “Nikos! Are you with me?”

  Nikos used his walking stick, a sturdy length cut from an oak tree inherited from his father, to plant on the rocky slope and haul himself up. “Shh, Rand,” he hissed as he glanced warily from side to side. There was no telling what might come out, curious, to see what a human wanted in the Dark-Lands. These forests didn’t belong to the humans and everyone -- everything -- knew that. They’d fight for what belonged to them.

  When the Dark-Lands beasts fought, everything died. No man could stand up to the weapons they boasted.

  Rand rolled his eyes. He tapped his right foot in its boot, the leather worn shiny with age. He’d taken off the decorations he’d earned -- the bear teeth, the porcupine quills, the agate beads -- so he wouldn’t make any noise and alert the Night Creatures.

  And then what did he do? Yell. Sometimes Nikos wondered how Rand had made it to adulthood alive, much less the top of the ranks of Hunters. It didn’t seem possible for someone so short-tempered and careless… but what did he, Nikos, know? Things didn’t always make sense in their world.

  Rand grinned at Nikos, drunk with cocky assurance. “What, are you scared? Worried about the big, bad Nightlings? I thought you were a bigger man than this. Are you going to let me down?”

  Nikos counted to ten. “I hadn’t planned to, no. I just figured that it would help if the Nightling we’re after didn’t know we were on his trail.”

  Rand rolled his eyes. “Nikos… still so naive. Of course he knows. Probably got our scent the minute we stepped into the woods. You know how they sense things real men can’t, the unnatural freaks.” Rand spat to the left and drew a spiral in the air to protect himself. “You’ve got to do better than this, Nikos. Now that your father’s dead, you’re set to be the next Secret-Keeper. That means knowing these ba-tar in and out, up and down and sideways. If we come back from this Hunt and I have to tell the Clan you failed…” He held his hands palms up and shrugged. Nikos didn’t need to hear anything else. A Secret-Keeper who lost his quarry was no use to anyone.

  And only a Secret-Keeper knew how to find the Nightlings in their lairs. Hunters could get lucky and they could track the man-like creatures. Only a Secret-Keeper could reach into their heads, read their dreams, and know exactly where to find them, the strange and shadowy men who drank blood and stole people of the Clan from their beds.

  The Clan was counting on Nikos to help them survive.

  “Fine.” Nikos straightened the hang of his leather vest. Too hot to wear anything else. “How much farther does the forest go on? I think I saw him behind a tree in the vision, but…” He hesitated, catching his lip between his teeth. “I can’t be sure,” he admitted. “The old Secret-Keeper never said the foretellings could be so vague.”

  Rand shrugged. “They weren’t, for him. It could be that you haven’t bloodied your spear yet. Maybe they’ll clear up once you’ve made a kill. How should I know? Hurry up before you lose the trail you did pick up on. We -- shit!” He vaulted backwards in a huge, clumsy leap, knocking Nikos down.

  Nikos slammed to the floor of the forest. “Rand, what the hells are you doing?” he demanded -- or started to. The Nightling loomed over Nikos, blocking his view of the sun overhead, and grinned with a mouthful of sharp white teeth. Nikos yelled and kicked at the beast. Too late.

  “There you are, dreamer. I’ve been looking for you for a long, long time. Nice of you to drop by, right on the doorstep of my camp. You’re making this job so much easier.” The Nightling seized Nikos by the collar of his vest and hauled him out from under Rand, who was still gasping like a fish out of water. “Let’s go.”

  “Not with you.” Nikos seized the Nightling’s wrist and twisted. Ha! So they were vulnerable. The Nightling snarled with pain as his grip broke and Nikos darted back. “Rand!” he shouted. “Rand, get up.” A Secret-Keeper could track. Only a Hunter could kill. “Rand!”

  The Nightling recovered fast from Nikos’ attack. He grinned as he placed a finger to his lips. “Shh. Rand isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.”

  “What did you do to him?” Since words weren’t working, Nikos shoved Rand’s shoulder with his moccasin-encased toes. “Rand, if you don’t get your ass up off the forest floor right now, I’ll --”

  “You’ll what?” the Nightling mocked. “Try to kill me yourself? Here, if you think you can do it.” He backed off, arms open and chest exposed. “You’ve got a good walking stick there. I’ll just bet it’s been treated with salt and oil. No chance it won’t kill me. So go ahead. Take your best shot.” He taunted Nikos with goading twitches of his fingers. “Kill me if you really think you can.”

  Nikos stopped, shocked, for a single beat.

  One too many. The Nightling moved faster than any other Nikos had ever seen. Between one blink and the next, he had crossed the space between them and held Nikos pinned to him, chest to chest. Black, black eyes sparkled and the Nightling grinned.

  Nikos couldn’t breathe. This close, the Nightling looked and smelled like a man. Handsome as a dream, with his strong jaw and sensual lips. The kind of man another man would see in his sleep, and when he woke up he’d be covered in his own sticky semen, pulse pounding in his groin, still remembering what the Nightling’s lips and tongue had felt like on his cock.

  Except his heart didn’t beat and his lungs didn’t expand. He was a monster.

  But this close, unable to break the hypnotic hold of the Nightling’s eyes, Nikos understood why they were so powerful. The Nightlings made you need them. They lured men and women with their beauty and then… they disappeared. No one ever heard from the Nightlings’ prey again.

  Nikos knew, now, that all their victims must have wanted to follow their captors. His lips parted and his breathing quickened. He knew he’d been caught in a trap but he burned to feel the Nightling’s mouth on his. Claming him.

  “You’re everything I thought you would be,” the Nightling murmured, his voice pitched low and husky. Nikos shuddered as a burst of arousal poured adrenaline through his muscles. His cock hardened fast enough to make his balls hurt. “And so responsive. Just look at you.” His hand, encased in fingerless leather gloves, palmed Nikos’ erection through his canvas hunting pants. Nikos gasped and rocked into the touch, unable and unwilling to stop himself. “I knew you were the one.” The Nightling cupped his cheek, his grip iron hard. “There’s no escaping me. Don’t fight.” He squeezed and rolled Nikos’ cock, fast replacing small pain with explosions of fire and lust. “Let go for me. Let me feel you come over my fingers.”

  “I can’t,” Nikos found enough breath to protest. “Rand… I’m promised to him as his mate in bed and on the battle fields. Secret-Keeper to the chief of the Hunters. That’s the way it’s always been.”

  “But you don’t love him.”

  Nikos stared. “How did you…”

  “I know many things about you. His mate? Not anymore.” The Nightling traced his lips over Nikos’ cheek and slowly made a path to Nikos’ mouth. “I know what you are, Nikos. Secret-Keeper, I know the secret you’ve been hiding from your Clan.”

  Nikos drew up sharply, unable to hide his instinctive reaction.

  The Nightling laughed under his breath. “You’re like me, Nikos. You’re one of us. Did you think we wouldn’t find you?”

 
“No,” Nikos tried to protest. “Those are just dreams. Ordinary dreams.”

  “But you see yourself with us,” the Nightling insisted. “You know you don’t belong here in this place or this time. Sometimes dreams come true, Nikos. You were taken from us and now I’m taking you back. More than that, Nikos, you’re mine.” He rolled his hips, letting Nikos know exactly what he meant. “You’ll understand soon.”

  “Like hells he will, ba-tar.”

  Nikos groaned, not knowing if the sound was borne of relief or dismay. “Rand.”

  “Get away from him,” Rand warned. “Let him go.”

  The Nightling laughed. “Since you ask so nicely. But first…” He pushed up on Nikos’ prick and closed his fingers. It should have hurt. Nikos did scream, but with unimaginable ecstasy as his hips bucked and the climax shook him to the core. “You can have him for now. I’ll be back soon, though, and then he’s mine.”

  The Nightling’s warmth faded in an instant. Nikos’ legs refused to hold him upright. He collapsed to his back, staring and gasping at where the Nightling had been. Had been. He was gone now, gone as if he’d never been there in the first place.

  “Remember, Nikos,” Nikos heard him mocking, his voice filling the woods. “Soon.”

  Chapter One

  Time passed. The Clan believed the story Rand had spun for them about a Nightling so powerful he had refused to die when they speared him through the evil black heart. They shuddered and made signs against evil, and soon enough, let the matter pass when they should have raised an uproar and had both Rand and Nikos deposed.

  Nikos didn’t understand why they’d forgotten, or how they could. All the same, he was grateful they had. If they had cast him out, the Nightling could have taken him, and then…

  He dreamed, every time he slept, that the Nightling had captured him. But rather than growing sick with horror, he languished for want of the beast’s hands on him again. Rand’s touches, awkward fumbles in the middle of the night, rough fucks without enough oil to ease the way and never any attention paid to whether or not Nikos enjoyed the sex… they weren’t enough.

  Nikos stared at his reflection in the river that ran past the Clan’s encampment and saw he’d gone pale and grown thin. He hungered, day and night, for the taste of the Nightling’s kiss.

  Rand bragged about how he’d rescued Nikos. Only Nikos knew Rand hadn’t saved him at all. He belonged to the Nightling now, and the Nightling would come for his prize.

  It was only a question of “when”…

  * * *

  It was no time at all, and yet far too long to wait, when the Nightling made good on his promise. In the middle of a cold, dry night when Nikos was the only one awake to guard the Clan, the Nightling came.

  He announced himself with the clattering of rocks underfoot. Nikos knew, in his heart, that this was the end. All the same, he raised his voice and called, “Hello?”

  “Nikos,” a deep voice replied with the crisp accent of the Nightlings. “I’ve been waiting for you.”

  Oh, fuck, Nikos thought, hiding his wince.

  “Now, that’s not very nice, Nikos. You’ve waited for me too. Aren’t you glad I’m here?” Nikos peered past the yellow light of his sentry fire and flinched, startled to see the red gleam of the Nightling’s eyes beyond the encampment. “Come join me, Nikos,” the Nightling coaxed. “It’s time.”

  “There’s nothing I can offer you in trade? No price to pay for your leaving me -- us -- alone?”

  “Now why would I be tempted by your offer? Especially when I know you want me as much as I want you. When you know I can help you. When you know they’ll find out soon, what you really are. A creature like me, hungry for what you won’t let yourself feed on. Enough of this, Nikos. Come.”

  “I can’t -- I’m not --” Nikos clamped his lips shut. “All right. Where are you?”

  “Just beyond the fire. I won’t hurt you, Nikos. You know I won’t. Come to me.”

  Nikos squeezed his eyes shut and whispered an invocation to protect him against harm, for all the good he thought it would do. “I’m coming.”

  “You will, if I have anything to say about it, and I know you’ll taste oh, so sweet.” The Nightling chuckled, patient and amused. “Take my hand, Nikos.”

  Nikos held his chin high as he stepped past the guarding fire and blinked in the utter darkness beyond. He’d heard stories that, once upon a time, men had known how to capture fires in glass and light up the night as brightly as if it were day. That they’d had horses shaped like metal boxes and been able to cross the Land in less than a week. They found old roads of cracked black rock sometimes, some of them still bearing yellow stripes down their middles.

  They said the Nightlings knew how to travel those roads. That they were old enough to remember the metal boxes and understood the secrets of bottled fire. Nikos didn’t know whether he believed the stories or not, but as he took the Nightling’s warm, dry hand, a jolt of the creature’s power shuddered through him and he realized there wasn’t much the beast’s kind couldn’t do.

  “What do you want?” Nikos tried to brazen. Up close, the Nightling’s dark eyes lost their ferocity and seemed almost… loving. He hadn’t expected that. He knew the Nightlings craved humans as lovers, but he didn’t understand how any human could lust for a monster.

  He got it now. His prick and balls burned with the need to have the Nightling inside him.

  “I’m not an animal,” the Nightling said as he touched Nikos’ lips. “You don’t believe me, I know, but I’m a man, and I was sent to find you.”

  “How? Why?”

  “You don’t need to know that yet, Nikos. First, you’re coming with me. Close your eyes.”

  “Why should I --”

  “Because this is your destiny.” The Nightling kissed him. “My name is Alexei, and I’ve come to take you home.”

  The world disappeared.

  * * *

  Thud! Nikos landed on what felt like cold, unforgiving stone. He rolled to avoid as many bruises as he could and came up with his fists clenched. “What did you do?”

  The Nightling laughed, teasing Nikos. “I brought you halfway to where you belong, and here we are. You can open your eyes now. Did I scare you?”

  “Where are you?” Nikos tried to feel for the Nightling -- Alexei. “I can’t see you.”

  “Really? Well, I’ve heard that happens. Here. Take my hand.” Fingers brushed Nikos’. “It’ll be all right.”

  Nikos summoned up his best memory of Alexei’s hand. Long fingers, not artistic but efficient, the kind that could hold a spear to a doe without flinching or sign a man’s death stone without a drop of regret. Shocking him, he didn’t see Alexei’s hand doing either of those things in his mind’s eye. No, instead, as tangibly as if it were actually happening, Nikos saw Alexei’s fingers wrapped around Nikos’ thick, dark cock, squeezing hard enough to hurt and milking out sticky pre-cum. He saw Alexei lifting his thumb to his mouth and slipping the digit inside for a taste.

  And then, beyond his wildest dreams, Alexei made it real.

  “Stand still,” Alexei ordered, lowering himself to his knees. He braced them wide apart and leaned forward to nuzzle at Nikos’ groin. He mouthed the outline of Nikos’ cock and stroked his tongue over the barrier of cloth. Nikos groaned, unable to stop the soft sound somewhere between shock and passion.

  He knew what Alexei wanted to do. He’d heard about the act before, and even wanted to try it out with Rand. Rand had staunchly refused to consider anything of the sort with Nikos, and eventually Nikos had let the request drift away.

  “Are you…” Nikos got a tentative grasp on Alexei’s hair, damp with perspiration and thickly rough, like the mane of a great cat. “Here? Now?”

  Alexei didn’t answer in words. He deftly opened Nikos’ trousers and drew his cock out; the avid admiration in the touch of his fingers stunned Nikos. Unable to see Alexei, he didn’t catch what must have been the Nightling’s dart forward to swallow his cock.

  Nikos shouted and bent as far toward double as he could, curled over Alexei. The Nightling worked his cock with deep suction, a busy tongue and just the smallest hint of teeth scraping the sensitive length. Almost too much sensation; not enough. Nikos swore and tugged Alexei’s hair until some came out in his grasp.