Chapter 1: Midnight Rut - The Office Takeover
The doorknob came off in his hand. It wasn’t a twist and push; it was a crunch of brass and splintering wood as the mechanism tore clean through the old oak door. Dale stared at the metal knob, dumbfounded, his own reflection warped in its surface. His hand looked wrong. Thicker. The veins stood out like ropes under skin that seemed stretched taut.
From inside the office, Mayor Carol Jenkins’s voice cut through the hum of the air conditioner. “What in God’s name was that?”
Dale stepped through the ruined doorway, a low groan escaping him as his shoulder brushed the frame. The fabric of his uniform shirt pulled across his back with a threatening stitch. He could feel every seam fighting a losing battle.
Carol was behind her desk, half-rising from her leather chair, a pen frozen in her hand. Her eyes, usually so sharp and assessing, went wide. They traveled from the shattered doorframe up the impossible breadth of him, lingering on the strained buttons of his shirt, the cords of his neck.
“Dale?” Her voice dropped, the official sternness leaching away into something else. “What’s happening to you?”
“I don’t know.” The words came out wrong. They were too deep, a gravelly rumble that vibrated in his own chest. He cleared his throat, but it didn’t help. “I was on patrol. I started feeling… hot. Like my skin was too tight.”
He took another step into the room. The sterile glow of the desk lamp seemed to pulse. The tidy world of policy binders and municipal reports blurred at the edges. All he could smell was her. Not her perfume, but something beneath it. A warm, salt-and-sweet scent that cut through the dry office air and went straight to a part of his brain that had no words.
His belt buckle dug into his gut, which was hardening, flattening into a rigid plane of muscle. He fumbled with it, his fingers clumsy. “My clothes. They’re—”
“Stop.” She stood up fully now, circling the desk. She wasn’t running. She was watching, her breathing shallow and quick. The pragmatic mayor was still there, analyzing the threat, but something else flickered beneath the surface. A flush crept up her neck. “Just breathe, officer.”
“Breathe?” he growled. A fresh wave of heat surged through him, a visceral, twisting need that clenched low in his gut. His vision sharpened, zeroing in on the pulse thrumming at the base of her throat. The orderly thoughts in his head—procedure, duty, control—were being swallowed by a louder, older noise. A drumbeat. Take. Claim. Breed.
He saw her eyes drop. He followed her gaze. The front of his uniform trousers was stretched taut, the outline beneath them blatant, obscene. He should have been horrified. A deep, fragmented part of him was. But the larger part, the part swelling with this raw, new power, felt only a fierce, proud surge.
“Carol,” he rasped, her name foreign on his changed tongue.
“Carol,” he rasped, her name foreign on his changed tongue.
She didn’t flinch. She took a step closer, her heels silent on the plush carpet. Her eyes were dark, the pupils swallowing the practical blue. They weren’t looking at the ruined door anymore. They were locked on the blatant, straining bulge in his pants.
“Look at you,” she whispered, her voice husky. It wasn’t fear. It was hunger.
That did it. The last fragile thread of his civility snapped.
A guttural sound tore from his chest. He closed the distance between them in one long stride. His hands, broad and clumsy, shot out and gripped the tailored wool of her blazer. He didn’t ask. He pulled. The fabric ripped cleanly from collar to waist, buttons pinging like little gunshots against the bookshelves. She gasped, but it melted into a moan as the cool office air hit her skin. The sensible lace of her bra contrasted wildly with the frantic rise and fall of her breasts beneath.
“Dale—” she started, but he cut her off, his mouth crashing down on hers. It was less a kiss and more a claiming. He devoured her, tasting coffee and lipstick and her. His tongue pushed past her lips, demanding, and she met it with her own, her hands coming up to claw at the sides of his head, fingers tangling in his short-cropped hair. She bit his lower lip, hard enough to draw a coppery tang, and he growled his approval into her mouth.
He spun her around, his immense strength effortless, and bent her over the polished oak of her desk. Reports fluttered to the floor. He shoved her skirt up around her waist, revealing the sheer hose, the tight swell of her ass. He tore the hose down, the material shredding in his hands.
“Fuck,” he breathed, the word thick and hot against the back of her neck. His fingers hooked into the waistband of her panties and yanked. The silk tore like tissue.
He fumbled with his own fly, the button shearing off. He shoved the fabric down just enough to free himself. He was huge, thicker and harder than he’d ever been, veins standing in brutal relief, the head flushed an angry red. The animal part of his mind preened. This. This is what you need. This is what she needs.
He didn’t test her, didn’t prepare her. The burning, driving need was a singularity in his mind. He positioned himself at her slick entrance and pushed.
Carol cried out, a sharp, shattered sound as he entered her in one relentless, stretching thrust. She was tight, impossibly so, but soaking wet. Her nails scraped across the oak, searching for purchase.
“God… you’re so… deep,” she panted, her voice broken into syllables. She pushed back against him, taking him further.
He fucked her with a raw, punishing rhythm, each drive of his hips slamming the desk into the wall with a steady, sickening thud. The window rattled. He wrapped one arm around her waist, locking her to him, his other hand fisting in her hair, pulling her head back. His breath was a hot, ragged storm on her cheek.
“You see?” he snarled, his voice not his own. “You see what I am now?”
“Yes,” she sobbed, but it was a sob of pure, unadulterated ecstasy. “Yes, I see. Oh, God, more.”
She loved it. She loved every brutal, degrading inch of it. The mayor who controlled budgets and ribbon-cuttings was gone, replaced by a woman coming apart on a cock that felt like it was remaking her from the inside out. The primal fury of him, the total loss of his gentle officer’s demeanor—it didn’t frighten her. It freed her. This was a force of nature bent over her desk, and she was reveling in the storm.
“This what you wanted?” he grunted, piston-driving into her, his balls slapping against her skin. “All those looks… those tight fucking skirts…”
“Yes!” she screamed, the word tearing from her throat. “Fuck me! Breed me, you animal! Do it!”
Her words, filthy and desperate, sent him over the edge. A roar built in his chest, a sound that had nothing to do with men and everything to do with beasts. His hips stuttered, his grip on her becoming viselike as he plunged into her one last, devastating time and erupted. He emptied himself into her in hot, pulsing jets, each spasm wracking his enormous frame, a claiming so profound it felt less like sex and more like a rewrite of destiny.
He emptied himself into her in hot, pulsing jets, each spasm wracking his enormous frame, a claiming so profound it felt less like sex and more like a rewrite of destiny.
Silence, then. Broken only by their ragged breaths and the creak of the abused desk.
Dale did not collapse. He did not soften. He remained buried deep within her, a solid, unyielding presence. The Bull was not soft. He was a permanent, thick weight holding her open, and a fresh, terrifying ache of need bloomed inside Carol at the realization. He was still hard. He was staying hard.
He shifted, just slightly, and the movement sparked a lightning bolt of sensation up her spine. A low, possessive growl vibrated through his chest and into her back. One of his hands, still monstrously large, slid from her hip around to her lower belly, pressing down as if to ensure his claim was taking root.
“Don’t move,” he rumbled, his voice scraped raw.
She couldn’t have if she’d tried. Every muscle in her body was liquid, but her mind was terrifyingly clear. The scent of sex and sweat and him filled the office. Her office. Papers detailing the new sewer line were stuck to her sweaten forearm. This was insanity. This was a career-ending, life-ruining catastrophe.
And yet.
The need to obey him was a physical law, as undeniable as gravity. It wasn’t a thought. It was a current in her blood, humming in time with the low, primal frequency he seemed to emit. He owned the space inside her body. He now owned the space in the room. The logic of permits and voter approval shrank to a faint, buzzing noise in the back of her skull.
“Dale,” she whispered, testing the name of the man who was no longer there.
“Shut up.” His hand on her belly pressed harder. “Just feel it.”
She did. She felt the impossible fullness, the hot trickle of their mixed fluids down her inner thigh, the brutal imprint of the desk’s edge on her skin. She felt the raw power keeping him embedded in her, a power that was still growing. The uniform shirt finally gave up, a seam splitting across the impossible delta of his back with a sound like a gunshot.
He pulled out.
The sensation was a brutal withdrawal, a sudden, shocking emptiness that made her gasp. She heard the wet, obscene sound of it. Before she could slump, his hands were on her again, turning her roughly to face him.
His eyes were the worst part. They weren’t Dale’s gentle hazel. They were dark, bottomless pools, the pupils blown wide with an appetite that had only been whetted. He looked at her naked, debauched body—blazer shredded, skirt rucked up, hose in tatters—with no triumph, only a blunt, focused assessment. Like she was a vessel. A useful one.
He gripped her jaw, his fingers and thumb nearly meeting around it. “You’re going to stay here. You’re going to clean up. You’re going to lock the door.”
She nodded, her head moving in his grip.
“You’re not going to call anyone.”
Another nod.
“I’ll know if you do.” He said it plainly, a statement of fact. He leaned in, his breath hot on her face. “My scent is all over you. In you. I’ll know.”
He released her jaw and turned, pulling his ruined trousers up over the persistent, formidable evidence of his condition. He didn’t look back at the destruction—the door, the desk, her. He walked out through the shattered frame, a silhouette of impossible proportions blocking the fluorescent light of the hall for a moment before he was gone.
Carol Bentley, Mayor, slid down the front of her warped desk and crumpled onto the floor amidst the scattered documents. Her body throbbed in time with her heartbeat. She brought a trembling hand between her legs, then brought her fingertips to her nose. She inhaled his scent, musk and salt and something wild, and a fresh, helpless flood of heat soaked her thighs.
The Bull was not soft. And she knew, with a certainty that chilled and exhilarated her, that she would do anything he told her to do.