by Jan Irving
“I guess that makes you Mulder.”
“I’ve got the half-assed flashlight to prove it.” He lifted my pilfered penlight.
Somehow I was kissing him again, hungry for his touch, for his breath on my lips, for the feel of him surrounding me, large and very male, his lips offering me poetry I’d never hear from him—not in this lifetime.
“What are you smiling at, Doc?”
“You. Just who you are.”
“Who I am is enough to make a smart man run.”
“Oh, yeah.” Our tongues met, teasing, sliding together. Delicious friction that made my heart thunder like an unbroken horse. Wild, he made me as wild as he was when he touched me.
When his hands went to my waist I grabbed them.
“No?” His voice came out slow and foggy. His eyes were dilated. “Too fast, Doc? I can go slow. I can give you whatever you want, be whoever you want.”
“Idiot. I don’t want you to give to me.” I wasn’t sure how to put my idea into words. I hadn’t ever done anything remotely kinky until I’d hooked up with Caleb. And this…this was a kind of healing. “I thought we’d do it on one of the tables,” I blurted out. Now Caleb blinked. Then a slow smile touched his lips. “Why, Doc…” he drawled. I was blushing. Damn, why was it I did that with Caleb? “Um, if you want.” “A little medical kink to white out what happened to me here?”
Now I hurt for him again. I couldn’t speak so I just nodded.
He kissed me, tenderness and heat and his hand around the back of my head, holding me close. “I fuckin’ love your bedside manner.”
I expected to feel self-conscious but I hadn’t bargained on Caleb.
He took command, taking my arm and guiding me to the examination room adjacent to the cells. He was breathing heavily, sweat on his upper lip. He switched on the large overhead lamp and the sudden light struck my eyes.
“They hurt you here,” I said.
Caleb nodded. “Hamilton especially. I think the cheerful doctor got off on it.”
A wave of sickness obscured the desire I’d been feeling. “It was a stupid idea, Caleb. I’m sorry.”
He cupped my face. “Why be sorry, Doc? You want to make it better, just take it away. You’re a healer.”
“I’m a jerk.”
“Why? You took it away for me when I was here before. This isn’t any different.” He locked the door with a decisive click that set my pulse pounding again. His hard, chiselled features were suddenly intimidating. What had I let myself in for?
He leaned against the locked door and crossed his arms. “Take off your clothes, Doc.”
“I—” Whatever I was going to say flew from my head when he slowly shook his head.
“You offered to be mine. You think I’m going to give you up?”
“But we have to—”
“This is going to be quick and rough and very satisfying. We’ll save the world after I have you. But I’m going to have you.”
The burn of his eyes on my body made my hands shake as I pulled off the greens I’d snagged. First the shirt, my nipples puckering in the cool air, then the pants, my hard cock falling out, needy and unsubtle.
In two strides he was beside me. He hefted me off my feet.
“Jeez!” I gasped. His strength somehow always took me by surprise.
He dumped me on the examination table, spreading my legs and clamping my ankles into restraints. The cool metal cuffs grounded me down.
He was going to do me, really do me.
Caleb wasted no time in tearing the extra sheet into strips, the sound of the rending cloth primitive emphasis for what we were about to do. He used one strip to tie my hands above my head. Then he held my gaze. “I want to gag you.”
My heart jumped in my throat.
He looked down my body at my weeping cock. “You like the idea.”
There could be no lies with him. Never with him. “Yes,” I whispered.
“If you need me to stop at any time, I want you to pound your hands down on the table,” Caleb said as he gagged me with the second strip. “And I’ll stop and set you free.”
I nodded, since he’d taken away my ability to speak. Taken it away and left me deliciously helpless. God help me, I wasn’t thinking of what they’d done to him now. I was just thinking of what he was doing to me and how much I wanted him to treat me like this.
Chapter Eleven
“Are you ready for this?” His voice was a silken noose, capturing me as much as he’d already done physically. He stroked himself through the medical scrubs he was wearing and suddenly the term medical kink had all new meaning to me. I’d never played this way before, despite all the usual jokes at work.
I nodded again and a hint of a smile touched his lips as if he could clearly sense my eagerness.
Well, it wasn’t hard to see. I was on display for him and my cock was stiff.
He moved to the end of the table and separated my legs even wider. As I watched avidly he opened a drawer and put on rubber gloves.
I moaned and he gave a husky laugh. “You are so into this, baby.”
The snapping sound went straight to the base of my spine, where desire curled.
Next he lathered his fingers generously with lubricant before breaching me in a business-like manner.
I made a soft sound at the heavy feel of thick fingers inside me. It had been so long.
“You want me to have you again, don’t you, Doc?” he demanded softly.
I held his heavy-lidded gaze and nodded. Yes, I want you. I want to be this way for you. Only you.
His eyes flared like a lit match, as if he could read my thoughts.
“Doc, I…” His voice was husky. I read what he couldn’t say in his eyes. I want to be this way for you. To please you. To be your man.
There was a soft rustle of clothing and then he revealed himself to me. With his shirt on and his pants pushed down, that single, blatant strip of nudity seemed to stand out. He was long and wet-tipped, his penis crowned with a plumy head. Breathless, I watched him touch himself, running a fingertip over a thick vein. He hissed as if he was touching something super-hot—which in my opinion, he was. Oh, Jesus. I could almost come looking at him.
“You like lookin’ at the goods, huh?” He smiled at me.
How often when we’d first been together had he woken up with my face buried between his legs? I loved the look, taste and smell of him, his crinkly pubic hair brushing my skin, the moles on his thighs, the scar on his ass, everything that made him Caleb.
“Oh, no.” He bent closer and his hard flesh grazed against my open thighs. I inhaled sharply. “Not yet. I want to draw it out for you.”
The maddening man moved away from where I needed him.
I was forced to lie there while a hand grazed over the back of my arm, tracing the veins that were blue against my pale skin. Then I felt a tongue gently probe a bruise. How could he do that with his lips and his breath, tease a fire in me that I was afraid would burn away everything I was?
I was conscious of the alien feel of a gag in my mouth, the cotton stretching across the lower half of my face. The tie on my wrists was loose enough so I could work myself free if I wanted, but the feel of it only emphasised our shared fantasy.
I moaned again, but he only laughed and brushed aside my hair to feast gently, slowly, licking where my shoulder met my neck and oh, God—why hadn’t I ever known how sensitive I was there?
My body felt like something new under his hands, something wild that he’d moulded from prosaic clay. Had I been alive since the last time he’d loved me? I squeezed my eyes shut. No, I had just existed. All those months I’d told myself I was getting over him, better, stronger every day. Building a wall.
But inside that wall I was bleeding.
He took one nipple in his mouth, rolling and nipping it until it pulsed. He pinched the other one, his focus so intense that I knew for him this was every bit as exciting as being inside me.
Was there anything sexier t
han a man who got off on foreplay? Except this wasn’t foreplay for Caleb. This was pleasing me. And pleasing me was what he needed, what he craved more than anything else. My pleasure had always been Caleb’s pleasure.
His hands meshed through mine and he looked into my eyes, possessing me in that flicker of a moment.
I cried out when he thrust inside me.
The bones of his face stood out, brutal in the harsh heat of the lamp. His rumpled clothing, my splayed legs should have made this merely an act of fucking but my gaze caught in his made it more.
He gritted his teeth. I could feel his hands tremble against my thighs.
Then I felt something like a shower of sparks deep in my body as he plied me, angling his cock.
The room was hushed except for the creak-creak of the table and his panting. He slid home, over and over again, so that my thighs shook and I lifted my body to meet his every thrust.
Sweat ran down his dark brow to drip off the side of his face. His hands bit into me.
“The only one. If I don’t make it out of this…you’ll be the last thing I see, the last thing I think of.”
I didn’t want to hear him say things like that. It made that pain expand again, that fear of living without him. I could do it, but God damn it, I didn’t want to. I wanted to wake up every day with him in my bed, grumpy since he wasn’t remotely a morning person. If he wanted to continue to be a SEAL or work for a security company or whatever, fine, I’d move where he needed to move. As long as I could fall asleep with him and wake up to the scent of burned toast and worse coffee and his long body in my shower.
The fear added a bittersweet edge to our loving. I saw it in his eyes. He wanted to stay with me as much as I wanted him there.
Suddenly he was pounding into me, my toes curling as he thrust deep, a cry burning up from my throat as I spilled and spilled and I heard his husky sound of completion.
When I could process again he was on the table. The gag was gone and he was curled around me protectively.
“I didn’t think about what went down here. Not once.”
I blinked. Shit, hadn’t this been an attempt to heal him? “Uh, great.”
He smiled. “I’m glad you forgot. This stuff…it’s been a shadow on my life.”
“So we’ll handle it.”
He exhaled. “Yeah, we will. I know we need to get up and play hero. I wish I could spend a few days with you in bed.”
“Sleeping. And eating huge pancake house breakfasts. And making love.”
“You always called it making love. Even that first time when I made fun of you for being sentimental. But it was never making love for me until you.”
“You just needed the best,” I said.
“You’re definitely SEAL significant other material, with that attitude,” he teased.
Too soon he was up on his feet, handing me a towel he’d dunked under warm water. I cleaned myself and dressed quickly. My heart was pounding and sweat broke out in my armpits.
Our respite was over.
When I looked at my watch, I couldn’t believe it. He’d swung me off my axis and I was now rotating at a different angle. All in just over twenty minutes.
“I know,” he said, leaning his forehead against mine. “I’m not the same either. You cleaned me out. I feel empty…and free.”
“Bleach for the soul.” I tried to make a joke of it but my voice was gritty to my own ears.
“Ready?” he asked.
Hell, no. I nodded.
Caleb flipped the lock and we slipped back into the hallway.
And face to face with Caleb’s ghosts of Christmas past.
Chapter Twelve
“Oh, shit.” Six men. Holding guns trained on us. Sharp eyes, killer eyes. Warriors, they were warriors the way Caleb was a warrior.
A slight man strode confidently from their heart.
“Jeffries,” Caleb whispered.
Dr Daniel Jeffries, head of research. King of the ant hill Caleb had kicked over.
The man was thin, stoop shouldered with neatly combed, wispy brown hair and a linen bow tie. The only things incongruous about him were the stains on his lab coat. Jeez, they looked at least a couple of days old.
Caleb shoved me behind him.
“Caleb Black. Just the man we were looking for,” Jeffries drawled. “Considerate of you to come back here just as we’re cleaning things up.”
“You sent those men after me.”
Jeffries’ lips tightened. “To secure the doctor. No way for us to know how much you’d compromised yourself by”—distaste flickered over Jeffries’ face—“talking to him. Fortunately you’ve also brought him so now all the loose ends will be tied up at the same time.”
“You won’t get away with this.” I heard myself say it and wanted to wince. Hello, hero cliché. All we needed now was a rusty set of train tracks for these guys to tie me to.
Jeffries smiled. “Because in the end good always triumphs.” Jeffries signalled to a burly guy built like a tank. “Take care of them. It doesn’t matter if it gets messy. Not now.”
Tank Guy raised his gun and two things happened at hyper speed—Caleb shoved me so I lost my balance and Tank Guy was suddenly flying through the air, striking the other men in the narrow hallway like pinballs.
On the floor I caught flash frames of the fight. Grunts. Blood flying, Caleb’s leg arcing and Jeffries hitting the floor. He snarled and I saw the white gleam of his teeth, his eyes.
A hand bit into my arm and I was tossed back in the room where we’d made love.
Caleb locked the door and staggered back, huffing as he examined the room. “Get that chair.” He glared at me. “Get it!”
I got it.
The door vibrated under tremendous pressure.
Caleb put the chair against the wall then used it to reach a vent. He smashed his elbow into it. Jip rock spattered like icing sugar.
“Up here, Doc.”
He was already inside the freaking vent.
I climbed on the chair, wobbled and took his hand. It was bleeding from his fight with the men, the knuckles—
“How did you… Those men all had guns.”
“I’m aware.” He yanked me into the vent. I lost some skin on my forearms. “Move. Move!”
I skittered behind him, harsh breaths, sweat stinging my eyes. Behind me I heard the door implode, then a sound like pebbles hitting metal. Shooting at us. They were shooting at the vent.
We reached a corner and Caleb kicked out powerfully, smashing through another opening. One minute he was there, the next he was gone.
Behind me I glimpsed a pale face.
I jumped head first out of the vent.
And into Caleb’s arms.
We collapsed onto the floor.
Caleb was up, limping, urging me on. “Come on!”
He yanked open the door into the hallway and we ran through it, retracing our steps. Behind us I could see Jeffries and some of his men chasing us. The elevator shaft was a black hole. Caleb fell into it, pulling me with him. I struck the side of the shaft, felt something give in my hand. My eyes watered at the sudden sizzling, wild pain.
Caleb pushed me through the opening we’d made earlier and we were in the elevator car. Behind us those hot striking pebble sounds returned with a vengeance, like we were in the middle of a hail storm.
“Hit G, Doc,” Caleb rasped. His gun was up, pointing to the opening. He fired through it and something heavy hit the elevator. Oh, Jesus—a body?
I hit G for ground? Garage? Who the fuck knew. The elevator took a hundred years and then lurched down.
Caleb coolly shoved another clip into his gun, but now his focus was on the elevator doors.
“You think…” I huffed in breath, cradling my hand against my chest. “Someone could be waiting for us?”
“Get down on the floor!”
I didn’t need to be told twice.
The elevator came to a halt, dinging with a bizarre kind of cheer, as if eve
rything was fine and dandy as long as you’d reached your destination.
Caleb rolled through it, came up with his eerie brand of grace, his gun hand moving like a search light.
The minutes ticked. I swallowed. A bead of sweat rolled down my face.
My hand was swelling. I had a gash…broken fingers? Felt like it.
Caleb jerked his head and I jumped. I was so keyed up, even that movement had shocked my system.
I crept out of the elevator, staying close to Caleb.
Behind us, the doors slid shut.
“They’ll be coming,” Caleb said.
He didn’t need to tell me that. My gut weighed like lead as I heard the elevator move from our floor.
We were in a space as large as a hangar for an aeroplane. Inside were vehicles, rows of military Jeeps with the occasional Hummer thrown in for colour. I hated those things, took up so much room on the freeway and they had to be a bitch to park…
“Jeffries’ eyes,” I muttered. “They were white at the edges. And his lab coat was filthy. He was dressed like a neat freak except for that coat.”
“He’s a very sick man.” Caleb nodded.
“He experimented on himself?”
“That’s where it all started as near as I can tell. Why do you think he’s so desperate for a cure?”
“He wasn’t as bad as those men in the woods.”
“It was different with him. I don’t know why. I don’t know medical stuff.” Caleb ran to the nearest Hummer. “We’ll take this one.”
I sprinted after him, watched as he took his shirt off, wrapped his arm.
I flinched as he smashed through the glass.
“It’s all right,” he said. “I’m going to get you out of this, but we have to go now. Right now.”
“I only have the files on those men.” I grabbed Caleb’s arm. “I don’t have all of your information, not all the tests they performed on you—” I couldn’t fill in all his gaps.
“It doesn’t matter.” His expression was closed off, like a door, slammed in my face. “Get inside. They left the keys. I want you to drive.”
My hand hurt like a bitch but I nodded.
Caleb sprinted to the passenger side, opened the door.
“Caleb!”