Archaic (Reverse Harem 2)

I stride off the boat, leaving Penny in my wake. I don’t like the way she’s acting, and I want this trip to be over. The sun is beating down on my back, and the sand is soft beneath my feet. I hate it. I can’t get traction if I have to run after someone. My eyes dart around, looking for any signs of activity.

Anything that can point us in the right direction.

“It’s so beautiful out here.”

I roll my eyes at Penny’s lilting voice.

“Stop for a second. Take a look.”

“We have a mission,” I say. “Then I’m due to get back to Clarissa.”

“She’s really got you hooked, hasn’t she?”

I turn my gaze slowly down to Penny as she looks up at me with her wide eyes.

“What is it about her that gets your inner doggo going?” she asks.

My eyes narrow to slits as she takes a step away from me.

I’m not about to answer her question. About how I bonded myself to Clarissa by healing her wounds. Just the thought of it alone sends jolts of electricity to my cock. I can feel my inner animal coming alive at the remembrance of her lips on mine. How her soul begged me for more, and how I had somehow peeled myself away from her.

Even now, I still don’t know how I managed to get away from her electric tug on me.

“For Gus, it was my eyes. He loved how wide they got when I was after something,” Penny says.

I don’t like the way she’s looking at me. Nor do I like the way she’s reaching out for me.

“I miss his touch,” Penny says. “I miss the feeling of his arms wrapped around me.”

Her hands slide up my chest, rippling over the divots of my muscles. Her stench is overwhelming. Dripping with a lust that I will not fulfill for her. The wind kicks up and pushes Penny closer to me, and to keep her from falling I wrap my arms around her.

She takes it as a move and buries her face into my chest, pressing kisses to my skin.

“I can give you what she won’t,” Penny says, wrapping her arms around me.

“No,” I say.

But my arms stay around her.

“It’s not forever,” Penny says. “I don’t know if I could ever do forever again.”

My lust is overwhelming. My mind is battling between what is right and what it wants. My hands dig into Penny’s back, and I can feel her hands turning to claws. Raking down my back and tying us together. And in any other moment, with any other person, I might have allowed myself to cave. Maybe I could have sucked up the smell of her long enough to relieve myself of the deep-seated ache implanted into my bones the moment my tongue touched Clarissa’s skin.

But Penny doesn’t feel like her. Doesn’t sound like her.

And certainly doesn’t smell like her.

I grab onto Penny’s shoulders and pull her away from my body.

Master manipulators. That’s what opossums are. Her eyes were round and full of want. Practically bulging from her face as her claws clamor for me. She’s out of control. Lost in a world where her loneliness and her anger collide. She’s wanting to fuck her rage out. Not wanting to wait to get her claws around the neck of the person who took her husband away from her.

I’m familiar with both emotions all too well.

“Stop,” I say.

But Penny still struggles as I hold her at arm’s length.

“Penny, I need you to stop.”