by Lora Leigh
Her laughter was light, amazingly feminine. “I must find my pleasures, small though they are, where I can. I gave up my fiction fetish for this practice,” she growled irritably. “I should be amused somewhere.”
She moved away then, obviously finished with him.
“Armani,” he called out softly.
She paused, glancing over her shoulder questioningly. “I pity you should a Breed mate with you. You may find we’re a bit more intelligent than you give us credit for.”
“I never imagined you weren’t, Aiden.” Her smile was less than comforting. “I’m just waiting on you to prove it. As for a breeding; ah well, we will see should it happen, perhaps. We shall see.”
She turned back and walked away from the cabin slowly. Her shoulders were stiffly straight, her stride determined, though not hurried. A grin edged his mouth. Damn, he wanted to be there should it occur that she did mate with another Breed. Watching the doctor fall would be more than amusing.
Chapter Fifteen
Charity came awake slowly, for the first time in more months than she could recall there was no pain, no racking shudders twisting through her body. But the depths and severity of the arousal had changed. What had once been agony was now a deep-seated compulsion.
Behind her, Aiden slept deeply. His arm was wrapped around her waist, keeping her back locked to his chest, his body sheltering hers. His heat surrounded her, warming her. That cold core of agony that had once been lodged in the very depths of her midsection was no longer there. Instead, heat burned.
She could feel the arousal tingling over her body. Like starvation, or an unquenched thirst, she couldn’t convince it to ease. There, of course, had to be a scientific reason for the change, she thought, concentrating on the clinical rather than the physical aspects of the changes overwhelming her. Which meant she needed a lab. She needed blood work, vaginal and saliva samples; the list went on. If Nicole Armani were here with the Breeds, then she would have a lab. She would have the supplies and the equipment needed for the tests.
“Do not move.” Aiden’s voice was husky and deep as she prepared to do just that.
Charity bit her lip as she felt his breath fan over the tender wound at her shoulder. When she felt the long canines bite into her flesh the night before, she had expected to awaken in more pain than she had started out with. The wound wasn’t painful. Rather it was sensitive, receptive to his lightest breath and aching for a deeper caress.
She fought to keep her mind distant from his touch as his hands stroked the clenching muscles of her abdomen, easing the ripples in her womb. She needed to keep as much information as possible in the forefront of her mind. The changes overwhelming her once again were varied and intense. The pain was gone, but she didn’t like the sensations that had moved in instead.
She closed her eyes as she fought her response to him. His cock was swelling along her buttocks now, thick and hard. The thickness of the Breed cock was overwhelming anyway. Talk about being packed. It had taken both hands to wrap around it in the Lab, and hiding the fist-sized knot that had risen halfway in the shaft had nearly been impossible.
What it had done to her cunt amazed her, even now. She should have ruptured. Should have been so filled with him that she was damaged forever. Instead, the overly sensitive tissue of her cunt had relaxed, eased, accepted the possession rather than tearing in protest.
“You’re thinking too hard,” he whispered at her ear. “I remember that look on your face, Charity. As though your are deciphering a particularly difficult puzzle.”
Her eyes opened, her head tilting to glance at him as he watched her from behind her shoulder.
“You used to watch me?” It had been so long ago, but she thought she remembered every detail of their time in those damned Labs. “I never saw you watching me.”
“I didn’t want you to see.” He lowered his head, his tongue swiping over the wound at her shoulder.
Charity couldn’t control the shudder that worked over her body. Oh, that felt good. Better than good. It was almost climactic, almost a sexual act itself. She bit her lower lip, fighting the moan that would have escaped her throat.
“Why?” she asked breathlessly. “Why didn’t you want me to see?”
“If you had thought I was watching you, you would have changed,” he breathed at her ear, his voice smoky, rough with arousal as his cock heated her backside. “I wanted you to react naturally. I wanted to see your expressions, see the myriad emotions that would chase across your face when you thought no one was looking.”
Charity whimpered in longing as he turned her more fully to her back. He leaned over her, his silvery eyes gleaming with sexual intent as his hand stroked her tight abdomen almost absently.
“Every time I looked at you, all I could think about was fucking you,” he said ruefully. “Do you have any idea how hard it was to control my body? My need for you? Each drug injected in my body made me weaker, took more strength to fight. I cannot tell you the times I nearly lost all control.”
Her eyes widened in surprise, then in shock as his palm slid between her thighs. Charity couldn’t halt her whimper of desire. She lifted to his touch, her thighs falling open of their own accord, giving him easier access to the flesh he now cupped in his hand.
There was so much to do. So many things she needed to make sense of, to find the answers to, yet her mind was fragmented, her body’s demands so intense, so desperate, she couldn’t hold onto the sensibility needed to probe into the puzzle before her.
“So lose control now,” she whispered heatedly. The feel of his hand between her thighs, his fingers probing into her creamed slit, was driving her insane.
Practical thought was merely a whisper of a memory of what she should do. The heavy ache in her body was a demanding scream for what she better do. She needed him, every hard inch burrowing inside her clenching cunt.
His lips quirked slowly, his eyes darkening as he watched her closely.
“I can still see your mind working,” he whispered, his voice thick with amused patience. “As though you are cataloging and filing away each response, each sensory reaction. I don’t like this clinical side you possess, Charity.”
“Who can think like this?” She licked her lips, desperate for his kiss. “Trust me, Aiden, my mind is completely on you.”
“Oh, I have no doubts there,” he said gently, his fingers strumming against her wet, inner lips. He was teasing her, deliberately, knowingly. “Yet a part of you is watching all this, clinically dissecting each touch, each sensation, as though it were no more than an experiment.”
His eyes flashed for a second with anger before it was carefully hidden, as though his knowledge of her attempts to reason out why and what caused such reactions angered him.
“What more can it be?” she asked him, watching him, not bothering to hide the conflicts within herself. “We aren’t mates, Aiden. Not as you think we are. It’s the drugs…”
“Like hell it is,” he snarled. “Do you think when the drugs are out of your system, that you will be free of me? That before the drugs you weren’t destined to react to me this way? You are fooling yourself, Charity. You know this.”
She breathed in roughly as his fingers moved suddenly, parting her, pressing deep inside her. She shuddered in reaction, her pussy rippling in response.
“You grew wet for me before the drugs,” he charged, staring down at her, daring her to deny it.
“It was only lust,” she cried out. “Lust and some measure of caring, of hope that you would survive.”
“You lie.” She watched him warily as he bit the words out with enough force to cause the primal, instinctive growl to echo through the room. “Do you think, Charity, had I marked you before the drugs, that you would have escaped this need for me?”
“All we have to do is find a cure.” She arched uncontrollably, her thighs clenching on his hand as his fingers moved gently inside her.
That gentleness was so at odds with his expressio
n that she felt held on an edge of fear and excruciating pleasure.
“A cure?” he asked her carefully. “Do you believe there is a cure for this, Charity?” His fingers moved, pulling back, then plunging forcibly inside her once again.
Charity couldn’t halt the scream that escaped her throat, or the pleasure that ripped through her body. Tiny fingers of electric energy stroked through every nerve ending. Her cunt spasmed around the two broad fingers as the hard caress drove her ever closer to the brink of climax.
“Aiden, don’t torture me this way.” She shivered, feeling his fingers inside her, stretching her, preparing her.
He leaned closer as she watched him, his expression tight, angry and aroused. He bent to her until his lips were almost touching hers, tempting her until she licked her lips in anticipation.
“Take my tongue as you did the last time, Charity,” he whispered. “Show me how desperately you want me.”
As she had last time, sucking it, glorying in the unusual taste that filled her senses. In a distant part of her brain, she knew she should be wary of doing such a thing. The sensations had increased, had inflamed her senses in such ways…
His tongue slipped between her lips, and before she could help it, her lips closed over it, her tongue stroking it back as she suckled it into her mouth. She tasted a burst of sweet spice in her mouth, a summer rainstorm, a fiery shock of need that completely overwhelmed her.
Her arms went to his shoulders, her nails gripping at his flesh as he kissed her. Carnal, greedy, his lips moved over her, his tongue stroking hers even as she fought to draw more of the incredible taste into her mouth, her senses.
The arm beneath her shoulder dragged her closer as his head tilted to deepen the possession of her mouth. The hand between her thighs worked her pussy into a furious flame of need. The sounds of moist thrusts and her strangled moans mixed with his hard groans, echoing around her in a heady symphony of hunger.
When he tore his mouth free of her, she cried out in longing, reaching for him, desperate to experience the mix of fiery temptation and sweet longing she could literally taste against her own tongue.
“You’re killing me,” he groaned, his lips moving along her jaw to the sensitive skin of her neck, then her shoulder.
When his lips clamped on the wound, and his tongue began to stroke her with moist, hot swipes, she fought to breathe through the pleasure, and the rapidly rising heat in her body.
Her blood felt as though it were boiling in her veins. Heating her from the inside out, burning her alive with the need for his touch over every inch of her body. The light stroking thrusts of his fingers inside her cunt only drove her higher, made her wilder.
“Mate,” he growled as he moved over her, his fingers sliding free of her body as she cried out in protest. “Admit it, Charity, you are my mate.”
“Yours.” She would have screamed the word if she could have found the breath to do so. “Yours, Aiden.”
He moved between her thighs, his groan matching her strangled cry as his cock nudged against the wet opening of her pussy. Then she felt it again. The hard spurt of thick liquid warmth. She fought to clear her head, to analyze what it could be.
“Don’t think,” he whispered, pressing the head deeper into her opening.
She felt it again, felt the rippling response of her sensitive tissue to it. Feathery fingers of reaction seemed to quake inside her, driving her crazy with the hard vibrations of longing that washed over her. She needed him inside her. Deep. Hard.
Her senses were overwhelmed, her body screaming for relief as he slowly pressed in, filling her, possessing her. She was aware of the ejaculations from his cock at alternate phases of the entrance. Each one shook his body, heated her further. She stared up at him, dazed, fighting for sanity and realizing he had no intentions of allowing her to grasp it once again.
“There, baby,” he whispered gently when he was seated fully inside her.
His cock nudged against her cervix, feeling as though it were now lined perfectly to receive his release. She trembled, watching the stormy depths of his eyes, seeing the sexual intent in his expression.
“What are you doing to me?” she cried out, her hands sliding to his arms, her thighs spread wide for him, knees bent as she pressed harder into the impalement.
“Mating with you, Charity,” he whispered deeply. “Feel our bodies. Will you ever fit so perfectly with another male? Ever feel so deeply?”
Mating her. He was possessing her. Owning her. Tears sprang to her eyes, though her body gripped him with greedy intent.
“Drugs,” she whispered desperately, denying his claims. “It’s the drugs.”
Her neck arched as he pulled his cock nearly out of the clutching depths of her pussy, only to return with a hot, full thrust that stroked her nerve endings with delicious fire.
“Drugs?” His voice vibrated with lust, with anger. “Feel me, Charity. Did the drugs shape your body? Did they shape this hot little pussy to fit me so perfectly? Feel me, damn you.” He pressed deeper into her. “The opening of your womb aligns perfectly to my cock, its greedy mouth opened for my seed, and you call this drugs?”
“Aiden, please.” She was shuddering convulsively, so desperate for release now she felt as though the need would kill her.
As though he could no longer help himself, he began to thrust inside her, hard and heavy, taking her, stroke after stroke of fire as she panted and fought for breath.
“I will prove to you, mate,” he growled as one hand caught in her hair, pulling her head back to the side as his lips lowered to her shoulder. “I will prove to you whether it is a mating or the drugs. Feel me, Charity. Feel me all the way to your soul.”
His lips covered the mark at her shoulder, his teeth scraping it as he began to fuck her hard, fast. Her cunt tightened around the piston strokes plunging inside it, opening, then clamping around his cock as she lost the last shred of sanity she could have claimed.
Brilliant arcs of pleasure whipped through her body, mixing with the pinching pain as her cunt stretched to accommodate the breadth of his cock. She couldn’t fight the pleasure, couldn’t fight the needs that tore through her body. Her legs lifted, her ankles locking at the small of his back as she arched closer.
The new position placed her swollen clit in line for his pelvis to caress it heatedly on each downward stroke as she pressed harder into the thrust. Her cunt spasmed around his cock, drowning her with pleasure. It was too good. Too hot. Too much. Her nails bit into his shoulders as his thrusts increased and she felt the hard, deep swelling in his cock begin.
“No.” She fought his hold on her hair, but the tugging pressure was just another caress, another sensation adding to the others. “Aiden, please,” she screamed out his name as she felt her pussy clamp harder on him, instinctively preparing for what was to come.
Her womb shuddered, her nipples swelling harder against his chest, the blood surging through her veins, harder, faster, erupting…
When her orgasm hit her, she lost herself. All she knew, all she could feel was the agonizing pleasure that pulsed over her as Aiden locked inside her, his cock filling her, his seed spurting inside her with heated blasts of yet more sensation.
The pleasure/pain whipped through every cell, every molecule of her body. Nerve endings exploded in rapture, muscle and tissue filled with ecstasy. Her keening cry as her legs locked tighter around him was rife with her pleasure, with her agony as her womb responded with a hard, breath-taking tremor. It stole her breath, washed over her with an echoing orgasm so fierce, so hot she knew it would change her forever.
“Mine.” His growl was a vibrating, animalistic sound at her shoulder as his body jerked with his own release.
A hard spurt of seed shot inside her. The knot anchoring him to her throbbed, pulsed, as he shuddered in reaction. Seconds later, the action was repeated. Each throb of his cock was another pulse of agonizing pleasure inside her body; another pulse of hot, rich semen through her womb.
>
Her legs slid weakly from his hips, her arms falling to her sides as the swelling inside her cunt began to ease, the hard throb slowly fading away. Aiden’s body was a comforting weight against her, a warmth she had thought she would never know. Until he moved.
She opened her eyes, watching carefully as he moved slowly to her side. Echoes of pleasure still trembled through her body, though the torturous arousal had, for the moment, been eased.
“A mating.” Confidence surged through his dark voice as he watched her.
Regret filled her, washed over her as a small bitter smile shaped her lips.
“A mating?” she asked him sadly. “No, Aiden, not a mating. A reaction. Nothing more.”
Chapter Sixteen
“Your feet are doing much better. Evidently the fucking drugs were good for something.”
He had fed her, bathed her, dried her, helped her dress, then re-bandaged her feet after apply the healing salve to the rapidly healing welts on her feet the next morning. He hadn’t acknowledged her denial of the mating the night before, or this morning.
It infuriated him. He could feel the knowledge of their mating clear to his bones. It was a part of him. His body would not lock to her, the swelling would not occur, if she wasn’t his mate. And it had occurred before the drugs had been given to her. He knew and he knew she knew it. Yet still she denied it.
“I need to see Armani,” she told him as he straightened before her and picked up the comb he had laid on the night table, beside the bed.
She sat on the edge of the mattress, watching him warily.
“I’m aware of this. Turn around and I’ll comb your hair.”
She turned slowly, sitting cross-legged on the bed as he began to work the tangles free of her damp hair.
“Aiden.” Her voice was tired. Even after the hearty breakfast he had forced on her and the long bath, she still looked too pale, her body trembling at the least exertion.
“I called Armani while you were soaking,” he told her quietly, knowing he couldn’t put it off any longer. “No tests, Charity. Your body isn’t ready for it, even though you believe it is. The arousal and resulting sexual activity is too much as it is. I won’t allow you to push yourself further than absolutely necessary.”