by Elise Jae
“They’d be getting dressed up for nothing?”
I like the way the suit conforms to him. I don’t like how thin it looks.
“Hey,” I grab his arm because there’s no loose fabric to grab hold of. “Come back to me in one piece.”
RICHTER
The chill bites a little harder as I step out of the house that is only now truly a home.
Wrapped in the suit that keeps me agile and protects me from the frost, I throw the cover off of my bike and kick the thing to life.
The coordinates fed by my neural key download immediately, and I double check my gun as the bike shoots out of my drive and over the icy tundra.
I risk a glance back. In the bright window, I see her silhouette. Watching. Waiting for my return.
A real reason to come back… one I haven’t had before.
But I can’t come back if I don’t put the whole of my focus into dealing with this problem.
The landscape turns to a blue grid of vectors and I search for the anomaly. The change in terrain that isn’t due to snowfall.
It’s faint, but the trail is there.
I’ve been on this ridge a thousand times. Scanned this ever-shifting landscape twice that, if not more.
I can feel when one of them is near.
And that prickling has started along my shoulders.
The easiest way to kill a monster is from a distance. Drift is amazing with a sniper rifle. He sees things the rest of us can’t.
But I’m not going to find this one from a safe distance.
As much as I am stalking it, it’s stalking me.
I’m still on the ridge when I sense the movement, only a moment’s warning.
It jumps up from my right.
The screaming wind cuts around me, blowing snow in a blinding swirl.
Claws score the front of my suit, tears let in the freezing wind, and I have to slide further down the hill to get back on my feet.
The creature doesn’t give me any breathing room.
I’m used to claws and teeth. I feel them less than I feel the icy air. But they’re more dangerous to me right now.
I catch hold of its rear right leg and with a sickening surge of adrenaline, I yank.
The thing I’m so afraid of around laurel, is what’s kept me alive this long.
Resistance disappears too quickly as I tear the limb from its socket, skin, spines and hair ripping in ragged lines.
The thing cries out in pain, but losing a single limb never really slows them down.
A fact I’m reminded of when another of its legs crashes around to slash at me.
The snow shifts beneath my feet and we both tumble.
My gun goes flying.
The way we’re rolling… there’s no way I’ll wind up on top.
Even missing a limb, the thing is heavier than I am.
Weight for weight, I shouldn’t be able to best him.
On my back, I’ve only got two options, and the knife strapped to my calf is on the wrong side.
In the blinding white of the snow, I can barely take my eyes away from the thing.
Luck is the only thing that saves me now.
A glance to my left, a dark spot against the snow.
I thrust my hand out.
I don’t have enough leverage to push the snarling creature over.
Jerking my head left, freezing slush sliding my shoulders….
I manage to grab the gun and swing it up….
This shot scores through the thing, splitting its skull and taking its left shoulder from its spine.
I take a moment in the eerie silence, listening to see if there’s another I didn’t hear before, but there’s nothing.
One was enough.
It’s an ugly mess of fur and gore. One I have to clean up before I go back and deal with the mess of my chest.
The shovel strapped to the side of my bike pulls off with a snap that echoes in the now silent landscape, and it takes less than five minutes to bury the remains in snow.
It takes twice as long to get home, and as I wait for the garage door to close behind me, I have to take long breaths--though I know she can already feel my anxiety.
Because everything I know of the monsters, as my mate calls them, tells me this isn’t going to be the last. And I will do everything in my power to keep her safe. Protecting the realm was a duty.
Protecting her is now the very core of my being. Failing is the only fear I know.
SEVEN
LAUREL
Richter is covered in dark blood and I can tell he doesn’t want me to see him like this.
I don’t care.
This is a part of his life. So it is a part of my life now too.
“We need to get you out of those rags and cleaned up.” He’s burning hot--I have no idea what normal Sian body temperature is supposed to be--and I don’t like it. “Then you can tell me what I can have ready the next time you have to go out.
He lets me lead him through the hall to our room and into the bathroom.
“Where do you keep your first aid kit?”
He just shakes his head and turns toward the shower. “I just need to wash off first.”
He winces as he reaches up and I move around to help pull the suit from his sweat slicked skin.
The marks on his chest aren’t as bad as I thought they were.
“I felt this.” I hold my hand out, but don’t touch the reddened skin. When it had happened, I’d thought the claws had cut straight through his skin. It felt like his chest was being flayed open.
He captures my fingers. Not to keep me from him, but to hold me.
Drawing my hand up, he brushes his lips across my knuckles.
“It’s a side effect of the pairing. I’m so sorry you have to feel my pain.”
“I’m not.” I’m glad the words don’t sound weak as I whisper them.
They’re flat truth.
“I don’t like that you were hurt… but I’m glad I know that you’re only hurt. Not dead.”
I feel the spike of terror flood him before he can stop it.
He reaches up and brushes my hair back from my face. “I’m not about to die now that I’ve found you. I didn’t know you were what I needed until you were here.”
A different type of terror pulses through me.
My secret might change his mind.
And for the first time, that truly scares me.
Whatever he reads from that he pulls my chin up and kisses me, lightly.
“I’m not going anywhere.”
He strips off the last of his clothing and steps into the shower. He’s still looking at me as the water sluices over his skin.
He’s not as injured as I thought. The suit saved him from the damage I expected.
I never got dressed.
It takes nothing more than a gentle tug of the band at my waist and the robe slithers to the floor.
“I was hoping you’d decide to join me.” He holds out his hand. The soap is gone, leaving him clean and me so hot.
This time, I want to do something I haven’t had the chance to do yet.
The tiles were hard, but warm on my knees and I looked up at him, feeling his arousal backtrack into me.
He knows exactly what I want, and his smile tells me he wants it too.
His hands on my head, he pressed slowly into my mouth. The taste of him, clean from the soap, is all I taste on my tongue.
His fingers in my hair hold me steady. He doesn’t pull me toward him. Throughout, he doesn’t break eye contact. Each centimeter he moves forward, he’s watching, making sure…
Until there’s nowhere left to go.
I had to close my eyes too, surprised that I could manage it. That, somehow, I’d taken all of him.
But that’s just for bragging rights.
Pulling back, I grab hold of his shaft and set to pleasuring him, long strokes with my mouth and tongue, met by hand.
Every time I slid him into my mouth, a slice of l
ust ran through me. Until it was almost too much to bear.
That was when he stopped me. When he yanked me to my feet and turned me into the spray, scrubbing me down before stepping into me, walking me back to the tiles.
It was his turn to drop to his knees. He shoved me up against the wall, slinging my legs over his shoulders as he lifted me up off the ground.
Tongue swirling around my clit. I couldn’t stop the tiny moans from escaping my lips, no matter how hard I bit them. There was nowhere for me to take hold of save for his head, and I had to balance--not an easy task as he drove me wild.
“I need you.” His words are harsh as he kisses his way up my body. “I need you now.”
He turned me around, still holding me to the wall.
Those warm tiles were all pressure and arousal on my breasts.
He slid into me so easily, I had to gasp at the invasion. My body was getting used to him… my senses were not.
Every movement drove me higher, pressed me harder into the wall.
Until the wall--and floor were both gone.
He held me off the ground, one hand at my hip, one swirling around my swollen clit as he balanced me on his forearm.
I had to reach out to keep myself from falling forward.
My fingers pressed hard against the wall, each hard breath echoed back as he drove into me, relentlessly.
I was crying without tears as the delight and sensation drove me toward the edge. As every thrust made me hotter for him.
“Richter!” His name was a cry, bouncing off the tiles and he cursed as I came.
As he came.
That was something I was still getting used to. They came so much more than earth men… and got hard so much faster.
He was already bouncing back as he set me down, holding me close--a good thing, as I wasn’t sure I could hold myself up.
He was still dripping down my leg.
RICHTER
I had no idea it would be like this.
I want her again.
I want her constantly.
I remember something in the long list of required reading about the need to be gentle. To work them into constant coupling. But she’s so hot and I feel how much she wants it.
Dragging my hand up her leg, I get the last drips of my come that have dripped out of her and take them back up helping keep her wet and ready to take me again, because I have no intention of letting her out of this bathroom before I’ve taken her again.
Hands under her hips, I lift her off the ground, wrapping her legs around my waist as I turn off the water and step into the warmth of the bathroom.
It’s less than five full steps across the room to place her on the counter.
I give her space, but not much. The room might be warm, but she’s warmer.
Heavy lidded eyes on me, she bit her lip and reached out. Her delicate fingers slide over me.
Not good.
I take hold of her wrists. Her hands are dangerous. I have to keep them over her head. Have to keep her from touching me.
Her back against the mirror, my knuckles on the cold glass.
I don’t have to ask. She opens herself to me, knees wide, smile wicked.
“I want every inch of you. I want it now.”
Placing myself at her entrance, I trace her wetness. Wanting her… but wanting to tease her more.
She rocks her hips against me. Each movement sliding me into her, just enough to cover the tip of me and then drag back off, skin sliding in her wetness. Driving me closer to the edge.
“God, you’re so much bigger than anyone I’ve ever been with.”
She wasn’t a virgin when she came to me. But until that moment, I hadn’t thought about anyone else she’d been with.
“Are you thinking about them now?”
She shook her head, biting her lips and making the most delicious sound.
“Tell me.”
“How could I think of any other man when you fuck me so hard, I’ve forgotten what any of them even look like.”
“But you remember their cocks?”
She smiles, her laugh a breath. “All I remember is that I’ve never felt this full.”
She pushes me back, hands on my shoulders, not my chest. With her nails in my skin, she moves me back so she can stand.
“You have nothing to be jealous about.”
I don’t have to tell her I’m not. She knows all I have in me right now is possessiveness and lust.
She doesn’t let me get her back onto the counter. Using our momentum, she drags me down, onto the rug in the middle of the room.
I have to let go of her, to catch myself on the floor so I don’t drop on top of her.
With her hands free, she takes hold of me, guides me back into her.
That silky pleasure is enough to push me to that edge. I drive into her. Two more, hard strokes and I’m spilling into her again. Emptying myself into the hot, wet pussy I’ve fallen for.
Breathing hard, I manage to turn myself, to roll away from her before I collapse.
I glance at the clock. It feels like we’ve been in the bathroom for an hour, but no time at all has passed.
Humming, she turns to me and rests her head on my shoulder.
“I think I need another shower.”
She’s laughing, and I can’t breathe enough to join her.
Pressing up onto her hands, she slides down me to press an open-mouthed kiss to my still twitching cock, then pops up and turns the shower back on.
When I finally get to my feet and look in the mirror, I can’t help but cringe at the pink lines on my skin.
She doesn’t know what my chest looked like half an hour ago, so she has no reason to expect… yet.
But she’s observant, when the marks are fully healed tomorrow morning, there are going to be questions.
Realization strikes a moment later…. As if the orgasm opened up space in my mind.
She probably doesn’t know what is and isn’t normal for Sian healing.
And if I word things right… maybe she’ll never have to know.
EIGHT
LAUREL
“So,” I say, leaning against him as the news plays in the background.
I wait until he looks at me before I ask my question.
“When do I get to learn how to drive the car?”
“You want to run away so soon?”
The humor that back feeds through him is the only thing that keeps me from flinching. “No, of course not. But being able to go places, eventually, without having to make you play chauffeur, would be nice. I don’t think I can walk all the way into town in less than a day.”
I laugh at the idea, but he’s gone still.
Silent.
What humor was there has been replaced by something cold, like dread.
“Walking would be a very bad idea.”
Fighting against that wash of dread, I flash him as bright a smile as I can manage. “All the more reason to stop me from doing something silly because I’m stir crazy.”
He studies me for a moment, and I can feel that initial hesitation fade.
He nods.
“We can’t start tomorrow, I have to meet with the rest of the Brotherhood, but the day after.”
“Sold.”
He’s silent again for a long time, but I can feel his tension.
“What is it?”
“The monsters. They’ll come after you if you set out on foot.”
“But they’re on the other side of the caldera.”
“They won’t be for long if they catch wind of you. Or Cindy for that matter.”
Pushing up to sitting, spinning so that I faced him. “Okay. So that’s why you only go out if the sensors trip?”
“Yes, and no.” He takes my hands, thumbs tracing over my knuckles. “The cold saps energy. Makes it harder to fight them--stiff joints, fatigue, etc.”
“Okay, so avoid exposure to the air.” I walk to the windows, looking out over the icy landscape.
“What do I do if one….”
I’m in his arms so fast, I don’t even realize he’s turned me until my face is against his chest.
“There’s no reason for you to go out there alone.”
“I know that. And I don’t plan on going snowshoeing. But no matter how well you prepare for things, the universe always throws you curveballs.”
His brow wrinkles and I know I’m going to have to introduce him to baseball.
“There’s no reason I’ll run into one of these on my own… but if I need to hold my own long enough for you to deal with a second one, God forbid. I think we’ll both rest a little easier if I have a chance.”
His jaw is set and he’s looking out the window, down at the icy tundra where the monsters lurk.
I’m asking too much, too soon. But nose to chest, another question pops into my head.
“How do you heal so fast?” I traced the places where the lines had been. “Is that a Sian thing?”
His mouth twists and brow crinkles as he shakes his head. “Sort of.”
“Cindy said she’s had to stitch Core up a few times….” I remember the searing pain, the utter conviction that the monster had torn straight through Richter’s skin. “He doesn’t heal this fast, does he?”
“No.” There’s a pause, and I feel his internal struggle.
I try to wait, try to focus on being open to anything he might say. Try to let patience seep through our bond.
“None of the others heal as fast as I do… because they were made differently.”
There’s enough tension in his arms around me that I know enough not to push for more on that subject.
Not yet.
“I think,” I swallow, not wanting to push too hard. “We both know I need to know what to do if I’m out there and run into one of them.”
His jaw hardens. “It won’t happen.”
“But if it does. I’d rather be prepared for the worst.” I pull his chin down, make him meet my eyes. “I have to know.”
Maybe it’s because he doesn’t have to talk about being “made”, maybe it’s because he finally sees reason in my request. Whatever it is, he nods in stiff and silent agreement.