Lethal Reaction

by S A Gardner

  “How do you know it’s…?” Words backlashed in my throat. God, I did need an emergency insight transplant. “I don’t want to know. Just get away from me—right now.”

  He came even closer, plastering me to the wall. “You’re not going to tell me how things went with Ed? Or with Sir Ashton?”

  “You mean you don’t have both get-togethers archived in digital memory already?”

  He smiled. Then he hurried to raise both hands before I exploded and splattered him and the Sanctuary’s wall. “I just know it went well with Ed since you got Sir Ashton back in record time. I can draw more conclusions from the way he was injured, and the way he escaped here as if he was escaping a swarm of bees. But I’d appreciate specifics.”

  And if he didn’t know those, I was starting kindergarten tomorrow. Still, with my missing ingredient, I might as well obey the chronic naïveté that had replaced it and that made me believe it would be news to him when I gave them to him.

  He listened with nothing to guide me to his reaction then nodded. “All’s well then. And though our plan was solid without Sir Ashton and with Desideria in her original part, the way they are positioned now makes for better projections of losses.” I bared my teeth at him. He shrugged. “We are entering a minefield. It would be stupid not to project losses. They’ll be in a more acceptable range now with Sir Ashton and Desideria’s roles. Accept it.”

  “And I thought you had a memory like an elephant.”

  “I’d forget my name before I forget how acceptable and loss in the same sentence drive you stark raving mad, Calista.”

  Our eyes clashed on memories of that night in Darfur, when my refusal to accept losses had driven me to a suicidal stunt that had almost cost Damian his life, had cost Mel and two more theirs.

  “And who do you consider acceptable loss now, Damian?”

  A shockwave rose off of him. “I’m in the business of risking all lives to get the job done, mine first of all. As for you, I want to lock you away until all this is over. I want to lock you away forever. Does this answer your question?”

  And how.

  Next second it was as if I’d imagined his intensity as he went on. “I still don’t want to endanger Desideria to that level, would have rather she slipped away from the scene before we played our hand, but I know convincing her to stay on the sidelines now she decided where she wants to be would be as easy as convincing you to stay home knitting while I took care of business. As for Sir Ashton, I would have asked for his involvement myself if I didn’t consider him your territory and I’ve grown fond of my brain where it is. But all things come to he who…”

  “Plots and manipulates?”

  He pressed a kiss into my stiff lips. He stepped away at my growl, turned and tugged me behind him. “Let’s gather everyone, go over everything one more time, stressing the new developments. Then I’ll go put everything on stand-by.”

  A black steam cloud followed me all the way to our ready room.

  But I soon forgot everything as we plunged into our final war council.

  It was over in less than thirty minutes. Everyone could recite everything from memory by now anyway, down to the last detail of the plan, the floorplans and each guest’s name, favorite color, guards’ nicknames and lover’s phone number.

  Afterwards, everyone went to spend the night before what could turn out to be our final battle the way they saw fit. Damian drove me back to his house.

  He drove as if the car was an extension of the precision and swiftness of his will. And he drove in silence.

  At least where talking was concerned. At some point he started humming, then singing along with Tom Jones and Elvis and Gypsy Kings and the interior of the car grew hotter.

  There were times when I thought he was oblivious to his effect, and others when I believed he knew it damn well, and used it better. I mean why choose those three if he didn’t know he sounded like a cross between them? Did he know that to me he was sexier than the three combined?

  Was he performing for me?

  I decided that he was, closed my eyes and let my man entertain me. The familiar words of the memorized tunes leaped into new dimensions of emotional impact riding his tones, imbued with his passion.

  Then we were at his gate. He dropped me off with a quick kiss and a “See you in a few hours, amor” then zoomed away.

  Well, I’ll be damned. Again. Cool cucumbers had nothing on him. Especially when it came to the part of accepting the deal I’d offered Ed and Ed’s counter offer. At least at face value. But what good was that with Damian?

  I entered the house and headed for our suite, as he called it. I had a lot to do until he came back.

  And until he did, I could do nothing but believe that he wouldn’t do anything to mess with Ed’s volatile ingredient and our precarious plans.

  Twenty-Eight

  “You better not have plans tonight.”

  Damian’s voice slashed across my back. I’d felt him the moment he’d entered the room. The house. The grounds even.

  I thought I was prepared for his impact undiluted by distractions. I wasn’t. I’d never be. He’d storm my defenses, every time.

  I remained there, my back to the door, kneeling in the middle of the burgundy-spread bed, draped in his black silk robe and my hip-long hair, our plans of stealth and destruction spread in front of my unseeing eyes.

  I wasn’t turning to him. I couldn’t. During the four hours of his absence the scalpel edge I’d been balancing on had begun to slip, dip, cut through me, slow and deep.

  This could be our last night.

  Tomorrow we could be dead. We could be far worse than dead. Hacked, mutilated, no longer us, in body or even in mind.

  This night could be all we had left of each other.

  I wanted to cram a lifetime into it. Tear open every second and fill it with him, with us. I wanted to consume him, assimilate him. I wanted him this second. I wanted to wait, to go insane waiting. I wanted every contradiction at once. I didn’t want patient or tender. I didn’t want fast and ferocious. I wanted. Needed. How had he once described me? Oh, yes…

  I found my voice, answered his challenge. “I do have plans. A tempestuous, borderline-fatal devouring of my lover.”

  “Mi amor, mi Calista.” His croon was blacker than the silk spilled on my thighs, dipping into the bass reaches of insanity. It hit a chord of blind lust inside me, reverberated it until it snapped.

  My breasts heaved, my nipples hardened to points of agony. I couldn’t bear the crush of silk over my inflamed skin, the chafing emptiness inside me.

  Then he made it far, far worse. “Can I convince you to let me devour you instead? I guarantee to take you to the very edge of survival in one minor death orgasm after another.”

  My senses ricocheted within a body that felt hollowed. Every breath, every tremor, electrocuted me. Every heartbeat felt like a wrecking ball inside my chest.

  And he was coming closer, slow and knowing, cruel and inexorable.

  The mattress dipped under his weight. I felt him kneeling half a breath away. He didn’t even breathe, didn’t move the air at my back, yet inside me a tornado tore everything apart.

  I snatched a breath. It screeched down my lungs laden with an elusive scent. Not his. Or his mixed with something—chemical? I was in no condition to identity it.

  A phantom touch laden with his intensity moved my hair to one shoulder. Then a kiss hovered just above the other. Another tormented a flight pattern over my neck. Then he breathed. Inhaled me. Drew me whole into him.

  I swung around, grabbed him and crushed his nerve-racking lips to mine, to my breast, to my core. I screamed and screamed for him to crush me back, to invade me.

  I did all that in only my mind. In reality I didn’t even move. There was such a thing as too much wanting it paralyzed you.

  Obeying my silence, his hands moved all over me, miming every liberty he’d take, hovering an inch away, creating a field of sensual friction that yanked every
desperation from my flesh to the surface, needing to smother itself in his possession, his torment. He leaned one more quarter of a breath closer, brought his lips to my ear.

  His rumble felt like thunder, rocking me to my recesses. “You think you know what your desire does to me? You think you have the least concept what you are to me? What I’d do for you? You don’t.”

  I collapsed against him, buried in arousal.

  He took me, my back to his chest, his thighs enveloping mine, his erection digging in the small of my back. He kneaded my breasts through the layers of silk shackles, scissored my nipples between these long, powerful fingers. They’d never been sensitive until he’d touched them, taught them what they were for. Pleasure. His and mine.

  Then one hand swept down, pressed into my rigid abdomen, captured my mound, squeezed fresh agony. His fingers rushed to receive it, clearing a path through barriers, delving between my soaking folds. I almost rammed my head back into his face.

  His laugh scorched me. “That’s what I wanted to do to you after you almost rammed my teeth down my throat that first day.”

  Everything frothed over. I was climaxing even before his fingers glided down to my grasping slit, snapping the brutal tension with one sweep over my engorged clitoris. I shredded my body and throat on pleasure.

  His continued stroking, his ragged “Sí, amor, sí” drove me on, drained me. Then he plunged two fingers inside my spasming flesh, long and strong and knowing, while his thumb stroked the spot where all my nerves converged, echoing his beckoning movements inside me.

  I writhed in a rising crest of incoherence against his hand until his “Otra vez, mi vida” hurled me convulsing and shrieking into another orgasm.

  I subsided against him, a mess of tremors, mute, sated. But his fingers remained deep inside me, soothing, preparing me for the next peak.

  Then when he had me teetering there, he rasped in my ear. “How would you like your third minor death?”

  I thrust back into his erection, made him growl and snap his teeth over my robed shoulder. His fingers twisted inside me, making me grind into him.

  He ground back, his chuckle into my neck unadulterated sensual evil. “I take only verbal requests. And I’m a bit slow. I need graphic explanations.”

  I’d give him graphic. I swayed to my knees, mounted his thighs, spread mine over them, bore down with my crotchless get-up over his rock-hardness. “I want my third minor death all over your erection.” His breath hissed in his throat as said erection lurched. “I want to bury you all the way to my womb. I want to ride you until I wring your life essence from you. Then I’ll resurrect you, and do it to you all over again.”

  His tore his hand from inside me, fumbled for his zipper. The sound of it sliding down, so slowly, screeched down my nerves. It had to be slow to free the enormous obstacle no pants designer ever thought of making allowances for. Moistness gushed from my eyes and core when his erection thudded against my back, hot and heavy.

  Damian. Alive. Whole. And mine. All mine.

  He thrust against me, up and down, burning a furrow in my buttocks and back. “Here it is. Here I am. Take what you want from me, Calista. Make me die, mi alma, make me live.”

  Something crumbled to ashes inside me as I scrambled up to scale his length, opened over the head of his shaft. With the last heartbeat left in me, I sank on him.

  A burnt cry of welcome rose from my core outwards. His erection felt as big as a fist plowing inside me. Filled beyond capacity, I writhed against him, pain and pleasure bleeding into an indecipherable mess. I should be used to him. I wasn’t. Would never be. Thankfully.

  I told him how he felt inside me, reached back, took his sac in my hand, squeezed my demand. He obeyed, thrust up, meeting my grinds, forging new depths inside me, panted his own confessions. The pressure built in my loins with each word, each abrading slide and thrust, spread from the point he was hitting deepest. I rode him harder, insane for my release, for his.

  Then it started, like shockwaves heralding a detonation too far to be felt yet. Ripples spread from the outside in, pushing everything to my center, compacting it into a pinpoint of desperation.

  I took him in one more perfect fusion and it came. The spike of shearing pleasure, followed by slam after slam after slam of spreading damage and satisfaction. And he pitched me forward, crammed a pillow beneath my stomach, angling my hips upwards, the he plunged into my wracking convulsions, ramming them with his, with his long, hard jets of release.

  And I receded, replete, complete.

  Then I was spread beneath him and he was blanketing me in his power, remaining inside me but keeping most of his weight off me. He now showered me in what I craved more than the frenzy of passion; the post-frenzy cherishing. I’d done us the ultimate favor when I’d resorted to long-term protection. The idea of not having him like that, no barriers, his flesh, his release mingling with mine, was inconceivable.

  Eyes closed, I smiled smugness and wellbeing into the mattress beneath my cheek. “Your promises stink, as usual. You promised minor deaths. The first two were major then massive and the last one was cataclysmic. What’re you trying to do? Kill me for real?”

  He turned my face, and his tongue thrust into my mouth, feeding me his groan. “Look who’s talking. I almost had a stroke just hearing what you want to do to me. And then you went ahead and did it.”

  “I gave you only one. You got many more coming on the way to the edge of survival,” I keened around his taste and feel, opened my eyes to flay myself with the passion and satisfaction in his up-close eyes—his brilliant blue eyes…?

  Wha…?

  My focus snapped wide, and a flare of silver blond filled my visual field. I jerked, wrenched my lips away, dislodged his still intact erection from my depths. I heaved beneath his pinning weight, impossibilities slashing me wide open.

  Blue eyes, long silver-blond hair, Damian’s voice. And Sir Ashton’s words. The only way Ed got me was through imitating Damian.

  He tried to restrain me. “Calista, what’s…”

  “Get off me.”

  That got him off me. I lurched around, my eyes slamming into him. And I collapsed back, paralyzed, gaping.

  His lips curled in derision. “Surprise. On both sides. This sure wasn’t on the list of reactions I expected. I should give up trying to anticipate anything you’d say or do.”

  I gaped still. Until all horror and revulsion and outrage subsided and the ridiculous fears dissipated.

  Then I blurted out, “God! First a ponytail and now you’re a bleached blond. You even bleached your beard. And you got contacts!”

  “Last time I checked a disguise included such things.”

  “But—a blond!”

  “What? I don’t make a good one?”

  The unbelievable thing was, he made a stunning blond. His bronze skin had that copper glow to it that the best sun-tanning efforts never achieved and the blond hair and blue irises offset it, made it smolder. I shook my head.

  His gaze sharpened on me. “Why were you so alarmed?”

  “Uh—nothing really.” He caught my chin, demanded an answer. “Hey, I sleep with a Latin lover slash Native American warrior and found myself beneath a Viking. Excuse me for freaking out.”

  “You didn’t know me? Even for a second?”

  “I wasn’t all there. And it was a hell of a surprise. And it’s a good thing, if even I can be fooled for a second.”

  “It crossed your mind I was someone else.” Ed was heard loud and clear. “I wouldn’t only kill him, I’d vivisect him.”

  “Listen, this is just too stupid for words. I didn’t expect you to come back to me a blond but I wouldn’t have been surprised for even a second if I’d taken one frontal look at you. I’m jumpy and my mind is infested with nightmarish scenarios…” Something vicious slithered in his eyes, the inanimate contacts augmenting it. “And stop right there. Leave the poor guy alone. Ed never even looked at me funny.”

  “Like you thoug
ht I never looked at you?”

  “How about I knock you out and end this ridiculous conversation? And just why the hell are you in disguise now? And why a dye?”

  Our gazes warred. It was his that relented as he exhaled. “I’m nowhere as good as you at wearing wigs and the bleach job will serve our tactical maneuver. I also like to break contacts in 24 hours in advance or I tear up on the job. And it’s not ridiculous—having you screaming for me to get off you. Seems I’m human, after all.”

  A valve in my heart must have melted. I reached for him, poured all my love and apology into his lips as I rid him of his clothes. Then my fingers sank all over warm chiseled flesh ready for my pleasure, for his. He smelled of passion, of aggression and invincibility. And peroxide.

  Now I realized what the scent that had baffled my olfactory centers was. I tugged him to me by his blond tresses, opened my mouth over his flesh.

  He tasted like everything worth having.

  And I had him. And I had to have him again, now.

  “Damian—I love you, God–how I love you…”

  He snatched the confession from my lips, ground his litany of answering adoration into me, his declarations as usual putting mine to shame.

  I needed the rest of him, demanded him. His hands reached for my pleasure centers and I knocked them off. “No foreplay. I’m taking you—now.”

  He groaned, tore his robe off me—and collapsed on his back. I had my own surprise for him. Though I admit, his reaction was way better than mine.

  I straddled him and his hands shook over me, following the design of the scrap of silk encasing me, the one he’d bought for me, the one that matched my hair. I still couldn’t believe what it made of me. An ethereal being and a voluptuous bombshell, all at once.

  “Looked your fill?” His now-blue eyes moved to mine, the contacts not the reason they were glazed. “Remember your promise a few days ago? Fulfill it. Take me out of it as I take you.”