Escaping Monsters - Rita Stradling

Prologue

Ten Years Ago

So, this was marital bliss.

My husband of eight days panted above me so hard I was starting to worry that he was having a medical issue, which would really suck as we were camping dozens of miles away from anything resembling civilization. Kane slid in and out of me in quick furious thrusts, and I suddenly had an image of his manly bits as a boxing glove, punching my cervix.

“Baby, can we move around?” I asked as I attempted to rock my hips forward in with Kane’s thrusts.

“I like you where you are, Teagan,” Kane panted as he pinned my hips down. His shoulder-length curly blond hair dripped sweat onto my face as he hovered just a little way over me. “Stay right…” he groaned, “Right there.”

I gave up. I was beginning to understand those celebrities that got divorced immediately after their honeymoons. I was also a little afraid that Kane wouldn’t finish before all of the wetness dried up from my vagina like a sponge left out on the counter. It was getting a little uncomfortable down there. Why hadn’t I listened to my sister and brought lube camping?

Kane and I are in love, I had said. We don’t need lube on our honeymoon. Sure, we needed lube at home, but gripped in the sweet passion of our marital bliss, we weren’t going to need some generic brand Pleasure Jelly.

How wrong I was.

What I hadn’t anticipated was the eighty-five mosquito bites making me itch in places I had yet to discover on my own body. I also hadn’t anticipated the rocks that seemed to always position themselves under my ass in our two-person tent. Who knew that hiking forty miles through the wilderness on your honeymoon would be so un-romantic?

And, was that a bear?

I lifted my head as I heard the sound of cracking branches and footfalls outside our tent. Holy fuck, there was a bear outside.

Kane’s thrusts were really starting to become abrasive up in the deeper parts of my vagina, and I realized that a bear trampling through our campsite might be the perfect excuse to stop.

I touched Kane’s arm. “Bear.”

“Not now, Teagan, I’m going to cum.” He panted the words as he continued to impale his dick up against my cervix.

“Babe, finish quick. There’s a bear. He might get our food.”

As soon as I said it, I realized that it was true. Shit! The bear might get our food! And we only had a specific amount rationed for the rest of the trip. That was one thing that I realized on Kane’s chosen honeymoon, there was an unexpected weight loss component to it. That one he sprung on me. I guessed he thought it would be a great wedding present.

It was our first fight as husband and wife. If that bear took the remainder of our food, I would hunt it down and kill it with my bare hands.

Kane moaned out above me and pushed in deep, and I thanked all that was holy that finally there was a little lubrication down there. It was beginning to feel like he was taking a cheese grater to my vaginal walls.

“You feel so good, baby,” he whispered as he collapsed on top of me.

“Yeah. Uh-huh. There’s a bear,” I wheezed as his weight pressed me into the uneven rocks below. “There is a bear in our campsite.”

“What?” Kane lifted his head, and I got a good look at him for the first time in about thirty minutes. Once again, I had to marvel how good looking he was even under the blue-green glare of our electric lantern. He had the kind of perfect, chiseled model-esque face that had women passing him their phone numbers and room keys while we were on dates. That, and he was a twenty-eight-year-old millionaire and semi-pro tennis player. And yet, he wanted to marry a broke twenty-seven-year-old coffee shop manager from Bakersfield. Not that I didn’t love every inch of myself, but our matchup was pretty much at Hollywood rom-com level. I knew that. Everyone at our destination wedding knew that. Only my sister thought I was too good for him, bless her.

“That’s not a bear,” Kane said, still looking toward the closed tent flap. “It’s much too small. Maybe a raccoon.”

“That would be even worse.” I wiggled my fingers in the air. “They have those dexterous little hands that can get into practically anything.”

Branches snapped next to our tent.

“It’s getting closer.” I tapped his arm anxiously. “We can scare it off.”