She strained her ears, listening to the faint noises outside. Wet sounds, crunching and the occasional burst of aggressive noises. They were feeding on the big nasty she’d killed. Claire had been fighting them for years, and they still deeply disturbed her. A minute passed.
“It’s busy eating,” Victor said.
“Do you think it can get in here if it tries again?”
“Maybe.”
“Well, that’s reassuring.” She turned to him.
Victor shrugged. “Not gonna lie just to make you feel better.”
Claire almost smiled. The force was supposed to have gender equality, but many of her male partners and colleges tried to protect her by hiding how bad things were or even by outright lying. Victor might try to physically protect her, but he wasn’t going to coddle her like some of her partners had. “Good, I’d rather have honesty.”
“Told you I was honest at night.” A glint of humor lit his eyes.
“What’s it like for you at night? What goes on in your head?”
He looked at the floor. “My thoughts jump around more. It’s been better the last few days, but it’s hard for me to keep a train of thought. Scent is more important, and sound. And instinct. Instinct drives me, to fight, to kill, to…” He glanced at her, then away.
“Fuck?” She suggested, her stomach fluttering.
“Yes. No. To mate.”
“What’s the difference?”
He met her gaze, silent for a long moment. “I don’t want something to fuck, I want you.”
It was bizarrely romantic. She shifted toward him and took a deep breath. The impulsive side was winning.
Victor also took a deep breath, closing his eyes. “My control only goes so far. Tell me to stay away or do something about it.” He opened his eyes and she saw the challenge there.
Her heart rate kicked up again and the practical voice in her head got quieter. She slid a foot toward him. Another. Shifting to her hands and knees, she crossed the short distance between them. Victor watched her intently, his breath coming faster. She leaned up on her knees, now only inches from him.
“Stay still,” she said.
Victor nodded. Oh, God, she couldn’t believe she was doing this. Claire licked her lips and watched his pupils dilate. Slowly, she leaned forward and pressed her lips to his. He trembled under her touch and it made her bolder. She urged his lips open and slipped her tongue into his mouth. Nothing in the kiss made him seem like a monster, even his groan was entirely human. He leaned a little toward her, just with his head, and kissed her back.
Victor broke the kiss. “Claire.” The whisper had a hint of growl beneath it. “I want you.”
“So you’ve said.” She leaned back, watching his eyes. She was starting to get used to his mismatched gaze. She was starting to get used to a lot of things.
“Even if I was worried about losing control, I’m too hurt to fuck you. So if you want to take advantage of the situation, feel free.” He shifted a little and winced, as if to demonstrate.
The practical side surfaced. “But you heal fast.”
“Not Wolverine fast.” The corner of his mouth turned up. “My face will be okay in about an hour. My side won’t be okay until probably dawn. The nasty got a few organs.”
She felt sick thinking about the damage those long claws had done. “Oh, painkillers. Shit, I should have thought of them sooner.” For herself too. Her head was still pounding and the bruises from the seatbelt ached. “Um…do they work on you? Or did the vaccine change that?”
“They work. I just need more of them.”
Claire dug in the first-aid kit for the bottle of aspirin and also pulled out the carefully packaged morphine syringes. He held the syringes up. “Should I use this instead?”
“You want to get me high?” He smiled.
She rolled her eyes.
He pressed a hand to his side and the smile faded. “Give me the morphine.”
She opened the package and pulled the cover off one of the needles. Victor held out his arm. She stuck the needle in, just like she’d been shown in first-aid training. After a moment, he sighed. “That’s better.”
“You should have asked for it sooner,” she said as she pulled out an aspirin for herself.
“Didn’t think of it. I’m easily distracted.” His smile this time was dreamy.
Claire took a pill and washed it down with water from a bottle. She considered how much she hurt and took a second pill. She couldn’t imagine what Victor was going through. “Have you been hurt this bad before?”
“Not this bad, although since I’ve been altered I’ve had some nasty injuries.” He chuckled and repeated, “Nasty. Nasty injuries from nasties.” Morphine didn’t make you silly, so that was just him.
“What did you do before this?” She settled down with a few inches of space between them.
“I was evening shift. Before that I worked in the weapons factory after putting in my four months in the night shift.” Tension leaked out of him as the morphine continued to work.
“Were you called back in, or did you choose to come back?” All able-bodied people, with few exceptions, could be called back into rotation on the force.
“I chose to. I got restless not going out to fight them.”
She smiled. “I hate to admit it, but we’re a lot alike. Sometimes I take a few months off to keep myself sane, but I keep coming back. I have to know I’m doing something, and working in a factory or a greenhouse just isn’t enough.”
“Not much glory there either,” he teased.
She straightened, her bruises protesting. “You keep bringing that up. You got a problem with me?”
“No problem with glory hounds, as long as they don’t step on me to get to the glory.”
“You’re my ticket to the glory. If I step on you, no glory.”
“That’s not reassuring,” he said.
“How about this—I don’t step on my partners. I might be a bit of a glory hound, but I’m not an asshole about it.” She shifted, uncomfortable at having to defend herself.
“Fair enough. If this project fails, they’ll kill me. Throw me out like a defective weapon.”
“You mentioned that the first day.” Part of her had agreed with the idea then. Only a few days ago, and so much had changed. “What about me? Would they get rid of me to cover up the whole thing?”
Victor shrugged and winced. “They might. They were willing to put you in a cell with me, send you out alone with me, knowing I could turn on you. You’re not exactly precious to them.”
The thought chilled her. “So now that I’m not worried about you eating me, we have to worry that if we fail we might be killed by our own people. Great.”
“But we’re not gonna fail, are we?”
She looked around pointedly. “We’re trapped in the back of a broken AV and surrounded by nasties. They might not consider this a success.”
“We’re still alive,” he pointed out.
“Think that’ll be enough?” Her head throbbed harder as she wondered what might be waiting for them back at base. The damn pills weren’t working yet.
“It’s a start. We came out too far, and it’s not our fault we ran into that thing,” he said. She kept focusing on his blue eye, watching it as he blinked. That had to be from the alteration. No way that eye was natural. “So we’re stuck in here tonight. We’ll get another chance tomorrow. Think long term, if we can convince them I’m useful and if we can get the others on board. You’ve seen what I can do. Think of a whole group of us going in on a clearing mission, or acting as a front line on the night shift.”
She stopped, watching his eye as his words sank in. “You’re planning. You said it was hard to think at night.”
“The morphine is clearing my head a little. And being around you helps, like I said.” He shifted carefully.
“What is it about me? Is it just that I’m the first woman you’ve been around since you were altered?” As soon as the words were ou
t of her mouth, she wanted to take them back. She was afraid of the answer, and the question made her sound needy. There was her need to be special again.
“No. When you first came into my cell you smelled like food. If it was just about being a woman it would’ve been different then.”
“Then what is it?”
“Because you’re strong. Because you stood up to me when I could smell how scared you were. You treat me more like a human than anyone has since I was altered.”
She looked at both his eyes now, guilt rolling through her. Claire had shown him some kindness, even kissed him, but she’d also called him names and treated him like a dog. She wondered if his attitude and mental problems had as much to do with how he was treated as they did with what the vaccine had done to him. “I haven’t been very nice to you.”
“Same here.”
“Yeah, but you’re…” She waved a hand.
He arched an eyebrow. “Fucked up?”
“I wanted to say something nicer than that.”
Victor chuckled. “Broken? Not all there? Crazy? Infected?”
She looked away. “It’s not funny.”
“Sometimes you either gotta laugh or cry, and there’s no crying on duty.”
Claire bit her lip, but a little laugh escaped her. He was right.
She braced herself for sunrise. Victor’s reaction yesterday hadn’t been fun to watch, and she’d been mad at him then. He sat straight, his head tilted and his eyes distant. “They’re leaving.”
Claire allowed herself a long sigh. The last hour the nasties had been scratching and banging against the AV, trying to get in. They’d eaten the big nasty she’d killed and they knew there was more food inside the metal box. Now I know what canned stew feels like. She snickered to herself.
“What?”
She shook her head. “Nothing.”
He tilted his head in a different direction. “Close now.”
“Does it hurt?”
He stayed the way he was, turned away from her, and for a moment he was so still she imagined he’d turned into a statue. “No. I’m safe inside, right where it wants to be.”
“So you think it’ll be fine? I was going to ask if you wanted another shot of morphine.” She’d given him another shot two hours ago even though he said he was getting better. He’d taken the bandages off his face and the three claw marks were already half-healed, but that injury wasn’t near as bad as his side.
“No. Dawn hasn’t been fun since I was changed, but it’s nothing like it was yesterday. Learned a lesson about getting inside before daybreak. I should be fine,” he said. “I hope.”
Both of them sat tense, waiting for sunrise to come. Victor sat with his back to her, facing the east. She couldn’t read emotions from scents the way he could, but she could see the tension running through his body. Claire moved to sit beside him and slid her hand into his. “If you break my fingers, I’ll break your jaw.”
Victor looked at her and smiled. He squeezed her hand—gently. “It’s not bad. It’s the fear that gets you, you know?”
Claire nodded. Seeing him afraid was so strange. She watched his face for a moment, looking at his brown eye—his human eye, as she thought of it—and wondered what he was like before he was altered. He started to tremble and squeezed her hand harder, just shy of hurting.
“Sunrise.” He took a deep breath and closed his eyes. All the tension drained out of him, his shoulders slumping. He started tilting, and she realized too late he was going to fall. He was sitting so it wasn’t far, but he fell on his left side—the injured one. Victor groaned.
“Are you okay?”
“This is normal. I just need a few minutes.”
She sat back, not knowing what else to do. Victor lay partly curled on his side, his eyes closed, breathing slow but steady. After a while, he took a deeper breath and sat.
“So that’s normal for you?” she asked.
“Yep. Every morning since I was altered. It doesn’t really hurt. I just get weak and shaky while the monster pulls back.”
“Is your side okay?” She looked at the bandage.
“Still sore, but I feel much better.” Victor pulled the bandage off. It looked like he’d gotten the wounds days or weeks ago instead of last night.
“Are you okay to walk?” Her gaze moved from the healing wounds to the solid muscles of his chest.
“Yeah.”
She pulled her gaze away before she could think too much about running her hands over that chest. “Then let’s get going.” It was going to take them hours to get back to the lab.
“Not yet.”
“Why not?”
Victor closed the distance between them so fast she barely saw him move. He wrapped strong arms around her and then his hot lips were on hers, his tongue demanding entrance. Claire tried to make a sound of protest but it turned into a moan. She opened her mouth for him, rolling her tongue against his. The night had been cool, almost chilly, but it suddenly felt stifling in the small space. She got control of herself enough to pull back. “What are you doing?”
He smiled, a wide playful grin. “Kissing you.” He leaned close to do it again.
“Wait. Stop.”
The smile faded and he loosened his arms, although he didn’t let go.
The look in his eyes, intense and wary, made it hard for her to think of a reason for them to stop. “We need to get back to the lab.”
“They won’t expect us for hours.”
It was disturbing how tempting that was. “But…” She scrambled for another excuse. “You’re hurt.”
“Not enough to stop me.” He left one arm around her and brought the other hand up to brush strands of hair from her face. Her ponytail had come loose during the night. “I want you so bad.”
That made her wet, and she was done with trying to make excuses. She cupped Victor’s face and pulled him into a kiss that let him know exactly what she was thinking. Claire started stripping off her armor. Whatever the vaccine had made him, he was still a man, and she wanted him just as bad as he wanted her. It didn’t matter how fucked up this was. One of the lessons she’d learned in this harsh new world was you had to take what good you could get. She got her outer layer off and paused long enough to run her hands down that delicious chest of his. It was all lean strong muscle, his skin hot under her fingers. She looked up to find Victor’s hungry gaze on her.
“You’re not afraid at all.”
“No. If anything, I’m afraid of myself.”
“Why?” He tilted his head.
“How can…” She chewed her lip.
“How can you want something like me?”
She wanted to say it wasn’t like that, but she’d be lying if she did. “Yeah. I’m sorry. It’s not a nice thought, but there it is.”
“It’s all right. If you get too grossed out, just tell me to stop.”
Now it was a challenge. Claire pulled off her undershirt and tossed it away. “Enough talking.” She slid her hands up the hard muscles of his chest until she reached his shoulders and pulled him down for a kiss.
Victor groaned into her mouth and pushed her until she lay on her back. He tugged at the fastenings of her pants and she helped him pull them off along with her shoes. Victor yanked off the blood-stained sweatpants he wore and Claire swallowed. He wasn’t wearing anything underneath. Staring at his cock made her mouth go dry. Then reality slammed into her. “Condoms. Oh shit.”
“Yeah. I didn’t happen to bring any, and it sounds like you didn’t either.”
“We can’t take any chances.” The pulsing ache between her legs protested.
“That’s why I waited until dawn. More control.” He leaned over her.
She pushed against his chest. “I’m not having sex without a condom.” And it was so damn disappointing.
His wicked look made her fight against the urge to rub her thighs together for the friction. “No penetration, I promise. This is about me controlling myself while I make you co
me.”
The little noise that came out of her might—might—have been a whimper. Claire leaned up to pull off her bra. “Then fucking touch me. I can’t stand it.”
He laughed and leaned down to suck on one of her nipples. She moaned as he flicked and rolled his tongue over it. He slid one of his hands along the curve of her hip and settled himself beside her, their bodies touching. More, she wanted more. He licked a trail over to her other nipple and clamped down with his teeth. It wasn’t enough to break the skin, and besides, he’d said his bite wasn’t infectious. But still, that moment of fear combined with sharp pleasure made her gasp and arch. He tilted his head to look at her, his brown eye fixed on her as he kept his hold on her nipple and pulled. She gasped again, pure pleasure now. Victor trailed his fingers low across her stomach and she arched again, encouraging him. When his hand went no lower, she reached down to take his wrist.
Victor lifted his head, one eyebrow raised. She pulled his hand down to trail through her pubic hair and…there. She pushed his hand down against her clit and rocked her hips. He rubbed at her with his middle finger and she let his hand go.
“Oh, that,” he said in a rumbling voice. “I was thinking something like this.” He slid a finger inside her.
“Oh God,” she moaned. This was wrong in so many ways, but she didn’t want it to stop. She wanted more, and the little spark of fear that Victor might get out of control only made it more exciting. He thrust inside her, slow and steady, watching her with those mismatched eyes. Another finger slipped inside her and she moaned again. His fingers were hot, every place his skin touched her was hot. She leaned up slightly on her elbows, thrusting back against him.
He kissed the inside of one thigh, then the other, barely more than a soft brush of lips. His hot breath puffed against her as he kissed just below her belly button, then on each side of her hips. Claire couldn’t take much more of the teasing. As good as his fingers felt, she wanted his mouth on her. A dangerous mouth, teeth that could grow sharp and tear her apart. But Victor wouldn’t do that, she trusted that he wouldn’t hurt her, not deliberately. Everything about him at this moment was careful and controlled. He kissed the inside of her thigh again, just as gentle and then she felt the scrape of teeth.
Taming the Darkness: Love & Monsters, Book 2 Page 5