Training Tia Page 2
While my nipples reach a peak, I feel the snaking of something warm down my pants, searching with slow methodical movement until it reaches its hidden destination.
The softness releases the sounds of my ready need, and I arch my back to greet the familiar contact. The unseen bares my private spots, and I wait, begging for it to come with quiet whimpers. Gentle touches enter my channel, and within seconds, I am given the taste of myself as a treat. I suck greedily, but it isn’t enough.
Stripped of my clothing, I become a plaything for the invisible until it drives deep into my core, threatening to destroy me from the inside out. I squeeze my muscles to surround the hard intrusion, not to evict it but to grasp tightly until it completes its job.
With leisurely taunts, it slides in and out, bringing me to the edge that represents my sanity. Its goal is the only focus I can manage as the rest of my body becomes a distant reality.
When the last possible synapsis connects to my aching clit, I explode into the darkness. Waves of pleasure consume me as the electricity runs along thousands of nerve endings to focus on one goal, and my muscles involuntarily tense under the pressure. I cry out to gain another level of release.
The effects last until I fear I will never breathe with ease again. I collapse onto myself, comforted for only a moment before I am aware of my lonely existence and I return to my real world life.
“Fuck,” I cursed quietly and shivered against the chill on my exposed skin. Not exactly a nightmare, the recurring dream had been with me since my eighteenth birthday and always ended with my clothes an unnecessary part of the bedroom décor.
My T-shirt and sweats lay in a puddle against the bathroom door, but the tiny lace panties hung in their familiar location on the crank for my window. In my awake state, I couldn’t have hit that mark if I’d tried a thousand times. I rolled out of bed and grabbed the evidence before I had to accept the reality I’d stripped while sound asleep.
The bathroom mirror displayed a disheveled mess. My eyes were glazed over in a foggy confusion, and curly brown hair stood at odd angles. The ultimate insult was a small river of drool, which I wiped away with the back of my hand.
“Charming,” I muttered sarcastically. “How could any man possibly refuse me?”
It was only five a.m., but there was no use trying to go back to sleep. I took a hot shower and changed into clean panties, jeans, and a navy-blue sweater before I wandered into my tiny kitchen and started the cheap coffee pot. The results wouldn’t beat the bistro on the corner, but convenience screamed my name.
The familiar scent grounded my soul to some sort of reality, and I turned to my tablet to read the morning gossip while taking special care to avoid any images that could fuel my overactive imagination.
Kim found me a few hours later, and I was well into my third cup of coffee under a nice caffeine buzz. She groped for her favorite giraffe mug. “You’re up early.”
“Breaking my virginity again last night,” I muttered.
She was the only person who knew the embarrassing dream details. I’d never actually shed any tears over the effects of my self-stimulation, but I sure as hell didn’t put the information on any social media sites.
“Again? You really shouldn’t complain, you know. A lot of women would love to be fucked like that and never have to greet the face in the morning.”
“It’s not that I don’t enjoy the fun part,” I said. “It’s just…I must be really desperate. Maybe my heart knows the real thing isn’t coming, so I need to fingerfuck myself to nirvana for the rest of my life.”
I wanted to add that my dreams qualified me as the ultimate loser, but I didn’t like to hear the words out loud.
Kim raised an eyebrow. “An orgasm is an orgasm, Tia. Doesn’t really matter how you get there.”
Easy words for tall, blonde, and beautiful. Guys would line up outside the door if she’d let them, but she seldom brought anyone home. She liked her privacy too much to let a lot of people know where she lived.
Quickly lost in her own thoughts, Kim looked absently out the window. Simon jumped on the sill next to her, and they both stared at the busy street while she scratched behind his ears.
He rubbed and purred under her hand before Kim asked, “Did you see that van earlier?”
I responded with a negative grunt. Kim was my best friend, but she really did worry more about the big city than my elderly, Midwestern mother did.
She muttered, “Shit, look at the time. If I want to hold this job for another two weeks, I gotta get going. You’d better get ready, too. You still have your dream job.”
My part-time job at a daycare center was where I’d reached the conclusion that children were obnoxious and my education degree had been a waste of time and money.
Kim was gone before I could say goodbye. In an attempt to finish a few last-minute chores, I grabbed the cat food from the cupboard and made gentle clicking noises with my tongue.
The stupid thing just ignored me, so I yelled, “Simon, come and get your breakfast.”
He balked at the dry food. A pitiful yowl followed as he hurled his body at the refrigerator to demand the tuna fish he preferred. The mini hunger strike wasn’t too disturbing. I almost never actually saw him eat any cat food, but it disappeared every day, and he was a chubby little thing.
Taking my frustration out on the cat, I added, “Come on, stupid. If you get any fatter, we’ll have to start you on diet pills. Eat the dry stuff and stop complaining.”
Simon hissed with a show of his sharp teeth, and I wondered for the umpteenth time how the damn cat knew when he was being criticized.
I mumbled under my breath, “Maybe I should have your balls taken off. A neuter job might calm you down.”
Before I could react to the creepy, feline stare down, an explosion shook my walls and my teeth in simultaneous action. Where our living room wall once held a large collection of 1950s rock and roll record albums on proud display was now a pile of sheetrock and splintered two-by-fours. Elvis Presley stared at me from the floor in confusion, and I stared into the hallway toward my neighbor’s apartment door.
I shook my head in an effort to stop the ringing in my ears when the ugliest thing I’d ever seen emerged from the dust. Either it wasn’t human or it was the scariest Halloween costume ever created by some evil genius.
Red eyes focused in my direction, and dangerous sharp teeth hid behind a drooling snarl. Terror-driven screams filled the room, and his pointy black ears twitched at the noise. It took a second before I realized that the screams were actually mine.
When my cat charged the creature, I was truly frightened for the little shit. Simon had always believed he was the size of a German shepherd and guarded my front door with a diligence worthy of the FBI, but this was a creature that really should have chased him under the bed.
I made a move to kick him to the relative safety of another room when he dodged my foot and a blurry haze settled over his tiny body. Before I could register a reason, my cat morphed into a very large black man who wore tight jeans and a black T-shirt.
Robot-inspired movie trailers played in my imagination, and I blinked with what was likely an incredibly stupid expression.
Simon presented a challenge the creature clearly didn’t expect. Since Simon was my cat and I didn’t expect it either, I really couldn’t blame anybody for a brief period of confusion. Without a huge list of possible responses, I continued my ear-piercing scream, but neither my cat nor my opponent found the noise to be a deterrent.
The creature grabbed my wrist and pulled me toward the dust. His gray skin was creepily warm and dry, but his powerful grip made my attempts to resist seem like play. The force made me lose my breath, and my scream was choked for a brief second before I got my second wind.
Simon hit him in the back of his head with both fists, and I swear I heard something crack. When the thing released my wrists, Simon pushed me behind his back and turned his attention to the slightly stunned creature.
Simon the Man took a breath, but I couldn’t stop screaming. He muttered without looking at me, “Tia, could you shut the fuck up for a moment?”
My brain struggled to process the simple request. But since he wasn’t really my cat anymore, the instruction seemed easier to follow from a human.
The room grew strangely quiet, but small particles of dust still billowed from the wreckage of my wall. I sneezed rather ungraciously and wiped my nose with the back of my hand. Simon rolled his eyes and handed me a tissue.
Not one word came out of my mouth. I stared at the man who used to be my cat and tried to find something familiar but got nothing. He was, however, a powerful looking human. His T-shirt was a tight fit and accented the silky-smooth ebony of his freakishly huge biceps.
He sighed while rubbing his forehead. “Come on, kiddo. We have to go.”
“Go. Fucking. Where?” Each word spat from my mouth with a force of its own.
My whole body still shook, but he was frustratingly calm. “You should watch your mouth. Owen would wash it out with soap and paddle your backside if he heard you talking like that.”
Remorse hit before I remembered that my pet was scolding me, and I made an attempt at control. “Let’s go back to the fact that you’re supposed to be a cat. And what am I going to tell my landlord? I don’t think I’m going to get my security deposit back.”
Simon looked at the dust-filled, gaping hole and muttered sarcastically, “That insight is worth a two hundred thousand dollar college degree. I can see that right now.”
Attacking the abandoned career expense was a cheap shot, and I reacted appropriately by changing the subject. “You started this. Don’t pick on me.”
“I didn’t blow the hole in your wall, but whoever did has probably gone for some friends. If you thought he was ugly, you should meet his cousins. What do you say I take you to the safe house, and we talk there?”
As much as a house that was classified as safe appealed to me, I remained obstinate. “I’m not going anywhere. What about Kim? It isn’t safe for her to come back to this.”
“Kim is probably already at the safe house. She knows the drill.”
Without waiting for another argument, Simon picked me up. I kicked and fussed, but my former cat was amazingly strong, and he held on tightly. “Close your eyes. The light’s going to be bright.”
Obedience was not my strong point, so I chose to ignore him, and he was right. The brilliant illumination left a pounding headache between my eyes, and a wave of nausea churned in my stomach.
My tiny apartment disappeared, and we began a motion that could only be described as flying and falling all at the same time. The surreal effect did not help my nausea.
I clung to Simon’s neck with a death grip while he mumbled a few concerns about choking. I whimpered softly but drew comfort from his large size and powerful arms. The whole procedure only took a few minutes, but it was long enough.
When the light dissipated, we were in a small hotel room. A single door led to an outside balcony covered with light snow. The late May date couldn’t reconcile the image, and I remained speechless.
Simon dumped me unceremoniously on one of the standard double beds where I sat in a dizzy confusion, and my stomach fought the rising nausea with quiet desperation.
Kim waited anxiously with Owen and Anna. She met my gaze but didn’t say a word. My grown-up world was long gone, however, and I collapsed into my mother’s comforting embrace to sob with a snotty vengeance.
I found my voice in her gentle arms. “It’s snowing? How the hell is it snowing in May?”
“There’s more than one hemisphere on the planet,” Simon answered with a sarcastic tone, “or were you writing notes to Jan Cassidy during that lesson, too?”
Hard to believe, but he was more annoying as a human than he was as a cat. My best friend’s name in ninth grade Earth Science only increased my agitation, and I glared at him through tears.
“That isn’t the first thing most normal people would think about.”
I’d spent a lot of time curled into Anna’s lap over the years. She let me cry and offered the same comfort I’d received after some elementary school playground disaster. Whispered reassurances slowed my blood pressure, and soon I could focus on my spinning world.
Anna was tall and elegant with an ageless beauty. She refused to give in to any make-up beyond occasional lipstick and always wore her long luxurious tresses pulled back from her face in a simple ponytail. Her short-sleeved, gray blouse with gently washed blue jeans blended perfectly with the sensible flat, black shoes.
My mother always focused on me with gentle and unconditional love. Her devotion was the foundation for my serenity, and she’d chased away any childish horrors that tried to attack my sheltered existence. I never saw her lose her temper, and I’d pushed a lot of limits over the years.
Owen, however, was angry. “How could this happen? You two were supposed to keep an eye on her. What the hell were you doing?”
That simple question brought a dozen of my own, but when I interrupted, he turned his full glare on me, and I shrank into Anna’s arms.
He was always the undisputed disciplinarian to my childhood transgressions. Under Owen’s control, my punishments were consistent, swift, and then I was forgiven. When he was calm, he was formidable in perfectly pressed khakis and pristine golf shirts, but I’d spent half a childhood working to avoid the pissed off Owen.
Despite his sternness, he was also my very foundation. He’d helped me with my homework, taught me to play cards, ride a bicycle, and provided strong, safe arms when I fought a nightmare. Anna may have been my serenity, but Owen was my safety.
“I don’t know how they found us,” Simon spoke with amazing calmness. “Kim had left. There was an explosion, and I saw a demon. I didn’t recognize him, and he didn’t leave anything behind. My presence surprised him, though. They must have been watching for Kim to leave.”
Kim nodded. “I saw a suspicious van out front, but when I went to check it out, they were legit. I didn’t know she’d been discovered until I got Simon’s message.”
My questions couldn’t come fast enough. “Wait, you’re both who again? And when did Simon have time to send a message? And when the hell did he stop being a cat?”
Nausea began its upward battle, and Owen glared again, so I countered with the one strategy that occasionally got me out of trouble as a kid. “You can yell at me all you want, but I think I might throw up.”
The threat settled him down. I was known to toss on his feet over the occasional dinnertime broccoli battle, and he didn’t like to deal with the mess.
“Hush, Owen, and let me talk to her,” Anna interrupted in her gentle voice. “Zane will be here any minute, and I need to explain things.”
I wasn’t done expressing my frustration. “And how the fuck did you two get here from Ohio this fast? Were you stalking me?”
I didn’t even know where I was but didn’t bother to correct myself. Within a second, I was off Anna’s lap and got a hard slap on the seat of my pants.
Owen pointed his finger at my face. “Watch your language, little girl.”
I hung my head, but I was pissed. He’d always been consistent with his expectations, but it had been a pretty rough ten minutes and he could have given me a break. Another frustrated tear spilled, and I didn’t bother sniffling it back.
Anna pulled me back to the bed. “Tia, look at me. There’s a whole world you don’t remember. You come from a very influential family, and you’re mated to a powerful man. He’d promised to wait until you were old enough to claim you, but this attack will move up the timeline. He’ll be here soon, and take you someplace safe.”
/> My mind couldn’t process even half of her sentences, so it focused on the most relevant part. “Mated? You mean, like, married?”
“In our world, we mate,” my mother said with total calmness. “Humans marry.”
“Huma—” The whole word refused to come out of my mouth.
Simon shot me a look that demonstrated his low regard for my intelligence. “Yeah, you really don’t think you’re among a bunch of humans, do you? Remember? Cat? Man? Demon? Portal travel?”
I couldn’t focus on any intelligent thought. “Wait, I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m human. I’ve been one for twenty-one years. There’s nothing unhuman about me. I mean, I…I almost failed gym class because I hated it, and…I did fail geometry, but that might have been because I was lazy.”
Faced with my raw emotions, Owen sighed and pulled me to his side. He spoke softly, “Hush, little girl. You’re safe.”
It was hard to stay mad at my father. I buried my head into his shoulder and cried softly, “I just don’t understand.”
His hands may have represented the occasional slap on my ass, but his lap held familiarity and security. I gave into his comfort with a sad little whimper while the room grew quiet.
The familiar scent from my dream reached me first. Without thought, I involuntarily slid away from my father toward the deeper comfort that rested just beyond my reach and my pussy twitched with anticipation.
Losing focus on my audience, my body betrayed me with erect nipples and a tingling hormonal rise. With my eyes closed, I waited for the invisible entity to find its way down my pants and my legs opened slightly in cooperation. With my endorphins rising to volcanic proportion, I wanted to strip and drive my fingers deep into my core.
It was too much. The pounding headache mounted to a new peak, and the room rolled in crazy circles. Anna’s voice called to me, but the last thing I remembered was a stranger’s face.
Then everything went dark.
Chapter Three
I woke to a quiet and unfamiliar room. The luxurious and very feminine space was decorated in soft gray and gentle pink tones. The solid furniture was expensive with a gold maple finish that contrasted beautifully with the dark cherry floors and cream area rug.