Warmth suffused Amaryllis, but only a part of it was the desire she'd been trying so hard to deny. His face was haggard, as if he'd found little rest, and his words bespoke of far more than physical need. He needed more than to possess her body. He needed to feel acceptance. Briefly, desire warred with wariness, but there was no contest really. She lifted her hand, caressing his hard cheek. “It wouldn't be a lie."
It seemed to take several moments for that comment to sink in. When it did, he surged toward her, crushing her body between his own and the unyielding wall behind her. Capturing her face in his hands, he tilted her head back, seeking her mouth with his own, his hunger evident in the fierceness of his possession. A wave of dizziness crashed over her the moment his lips covered hers, melding, clinging, pressuring her to part her lips and allow him intimate access to her body. Fire followed in its wake as she parted her lips for him and felt the faintly rough texture of his tongue as it plunged inside her mouth and raked across her own. His essence filled her, consumed her mind like a fiery intoxicant that allowed little room for thought.
Doubt flickered briefly through her mind—her own demons, the knowledge that he was cyborg and her enemy. Pleasure banished the doubts far from consciousness as every nerve ending in her body came alive, pelting her with the pleasurable sensations of his heat and the feel of his body, the strength and pliancy of his muscles, the texture of his skin against her own. His hands moved over her body as his tongue danced along hers, coaxing, caressing, consuming her life force until she felt weak, giddy, hungry.
He snapped the thin supports of her garments so that not even that thin barrier separated her from his touch. Liquid fire gushed through her as he cupped a breast in either hand, massaging them, plucking at her tender nipples. Her insides liquefied, became molten. Her breath froze in her lungs.
Abruptly, he broke the kiss, caught her beneath her arms, pushing her up the wall. Mindlessly, she twined her arms around his shoulders, buried her face against his neck and wrapped her legs around his waist to hold herself upright. His cock, swollen, heated, nudged along her cleft, sending hard shafts of pleasure through her that made her gasp for breath as it rubbed against her exposed clit.
He caught her hair, tugging on it, tilting her head back to expose her throat, and sucked a burning trail of kisses along it, rotating his hips rhythmically against her cleft as he did so and making her mindless with need. Tension wound inside of her as the pleasure escalated almost beyond bearing, tightened. Her body clenched in time to the pressure. Abruptly the pleasure reached a point of extremity where it could no longer be contained. Blackness swirled around her as it burst, making her body quake endlessly with release.
She collapsed weakly against him, scarcely aware of her surroundings as he carried her to the bunk and lowered her onto it. With an effort, she opened her eyes to look at him as he stepped away from her.
Doubt swarmed through her when she saw that he was still fully clothed, his face harsh with his own needs. He hadn't sought to assuage the desire he'd claimed he felt for her and could not contain, hadn't possessed her body with his own, hadn't even removed his own clothing. Chaotic thoughts flickered through her mind. Before she could voice them, he worked the fastenings of his uniform loose from neck to groin, exposing a sprinkling of dark hair in the center of his chest that formed a thin trail downward to the nest from which his cock sprang. With hands that shook noticeably, he stripped his uniform from his body.
She shouldn't have been surprised by the sheer perfection of his body, but she was ... and fascinated at the same time. Mesmerized by the play of muscles beneath his silken skin, Amaryllis didn't even think to protest as Dante grasped her legs, parted them and settled against her, wedging his hips between her parted thighs. An aftershock of pleasure went through her as she felt his cock settle along her moist cleft, nudging against her still throbbing clit.
He absorbed her gasp of pleasure as he covered her mouth once more in a kiss that neared desperation. The dying embers of her release leapt to life, threatening to consume her. She was breathless and already drunk with passion when he tore his lips from hers and moved downward, lathing her flesh with his tongue, nipping at her skin with the edge of his teeth and sending stinging nettles of delight through her.
A hoarse cry scraped along her throat as he covered the trembling tip of one breast with his mouth, nudging it with his tongue. The hunger of his kisses threatened to send her over the edge once more, brought her perilously close as he divided his attention between her breasts, teasing first one and then the other until she thought she would black out.
She was mindless with need by the time he ceased to tease her breasts and dragged kisses along her belly. The heat of his breath against her clit was her first inkling of his goal and his intentions. Her protest died on her lips as his mouth covered her and she felt the rough caress of his tongue against her clit. The air left her lungs. Molten fire poured through her veins. Something between a gasp and a hoarse cry escaped her as her body seized with ecstasy, hovered for so many moments she thought she would die, and then exploded with the force of a neutron bomb, mushrooming outward in a wave of fire.
She was barely conscious when he rose above her, settled his weight on one arm and guided his cock into the mouth of her passage. The rounded head of his cock felt enormous, sparking a flash of doubt that penetrated her semi-consciousness. Her flesh, quaking still in the aftermath of her climax, resisted his possession.
He pulled slightly away and thrust again, eased along her channel by the moisture gathered there. Amaryllis gasped, opening her eyes wide as she felt him stretching her, felt her muscles clenching around him.
He watched her face as he claimed her inch by excruciating inch, retreating and then pressing forward again each time she thought she could take no more, could feel the muscles of her passage burning from the resistance to his intrusion. She'd begun to fear he would rend her in two when she felt his hips grinding against her, felt the head of his cock nudge her womb. A mixture of relief and pleasure filled her. As he withdrew once more, she lifted her hands, skated them along his arms to his neck and locked them behind his head. Pulling herself upward, she moved her lips along his hard, bulging pecs, nipped them with her teeth.
A shudder went through him. She gasped as he surged deeply inside of her again, burying his cock to the hilt, grinding his hips against her briefly and then withdrawing as slowly as he'd entered her. When he thrust again, she lifted her hips to meet him, sucking a love bite on the side of his neck. Groaning, he collapsed against her, thrusting and withdrawing in a slow, measured rhythm that drew heat from her once more, made her body burgeon rapidly toward release again.
She clutched him tightly, moving in concert, urging him to move faster, plunge deeper. He paused, drew in several ragged breaths and abruptly increased the tempo of his thrusts, plunging harder and faster with each thrust until Amaryllis could feel herself slipping up the bunk with the force of his possession. She dug her heels into the mattress, met his escalating assault with gratification as his hard thrusts sent her spiraling out of control.
Her culmination was so shattering it dragged a ragged cry from her despite her efforts to restrain it. The clenching muscles of her passage around his hard length sent him over the edge, as well. He let out a hoarse groan and covered her mouth with his, shuddering as waves of ecstasy rolled over him.
Amaryllis went perfectly limp, exhausted with repletion, listening to her heart thundering in her ears. A fine sheen of sweat dampened them, made their skin cling as they struggled to catch their breath. Finally, Dante settled a shoulder and hip beside her, scooped her into his arms and rolled so that she was draped bonelessly atop his chest.
Nothing, Amaryllis realized with a dawning sense of amazement, had ever felt so right before in her life as this moment did. Her entire body sparked and throbbed with the dying echoes of the ecstasy he'd given her, and yet she was even more aware of the chest rising and falling beneath her cheek, the wa
rmth of his skin. It should have felt foreign to her, alien. Instead, it seemed almost as comfortingly familiar as her own body—more so, because she'd never really felt that comfortable with her own body.
"I have to go,” he said after several moments, his voice still sounding gravelly.
Surprise jolted through her. She lifted her head to look up at him. “Now?"
His face was impassive. “I should not have come at all."
An odd sense of uneasiness began to work its way through Amaryllis as he slipped out from under her, leaving her in sole possession of the bunk. As she watched, totally confused, he snatched his uniform from the floor and quickly pulled it on. Dozens of questions crowded into her mind, but she couldn't seem to voice any of them.
He'd wanted her.
He'd had her.
He was done?
Anger sparked to life at that thought. The next one tamped it. What had she expected? They would fuck like a couple of bunnies and then he'd profess undying love? She wasn't that naïve—that antiquated in her thoughts—was she?
And he was a frigging machine, for God's sake!
He paused at the door and turned to study her for so long that she thought he might say something. When he left without a word, she was even more confused. She was still trying to figure out how she felt, beyond stunned and confused, when she heard the retreating thread of his boots stop suddenly and then the sound of distant voices.
She couldn't make out what was being said. Abruptly, the conversation ceased. The sound of many feet, coming in her direction, followed.
They didn't pass the door. They halted outside. Amaryllis had just leapt from the bunk when the door flew open. Within seconds, the room was filled with cyborgs.
Chapter Nine
Reese stood at the forefront, wearing the uniform of the cyborgs. His gaze swept her from head to foot. “Leave us,” he said without turning.
After the briefest of hesitations, the cyborg guards behind him backed from the room and closed the door behind them.
Amaryllis was too stunned even to think. He looked like Reese. He sounded like Reese. But was it her partner?
"Reese?"
Something flickered in his eyes. “Get dressed."
Unconsciously, Amaryllis glanced toward the garments Dante had left in a ruined pile on the floor. When she looked at Reese again, she saw that his gaze had followed hers. Before she could think of anything to say, he strode to the clothing and lifted it to inspect it. His head whipped toward her, his gaze capturing hers. “He forced you?"
Amaryllis blushed to the roots of her hair. Not unless climbing all over someone and moaning ‘fuck me’ constituted force. There was something in his expression, however, that told her that wasn't something he wanted to hear.
He saw the answer in her eyes. His face hardened.
Amaryllis took a step back when he straightened and surged toward her, catching her upper arms in a painful grip. “Bathe,” he said through gritted teeth, thrusting her in the direction of the facilities.
She merely gaped at him when he released her and moved to the door. Opening it, he spoke to the men outside.
Belatedly, it occurred to Amaryllis that the facilities might be her only hope of escape and it still took an effort to force herself to move. Reese, or the cyborg who looked like Reese, caught the door before she could close it, following her inside.
"There is no where to run to, Amy."
The comment stopped her in her tracks although she wasn't even certain by that time if there was even any point in trying to escape. It also added considerably to her confusion. No one called her Amy except her family. She'd thought she'd imagined it before when Reese had called her Amy. Maybe she had. The plain fact of the matter was that no one, including Reese, should even know her real name, much less the name her family had called her. She was fairly certain she didn't want to ask him how he knew, though. “I don't ... understand ... any of this."
"You do. You just don't want to,” he responded coolly, taking up a position by the door.
Reluctantly, Amaryllis moved to the shower and turned it on. She felt as if she was living the bizarre reality of a nightmare. The man watching her so coldly looked and sounded like Reese, her partner, the man she'd had secret fantasies about from the time he'd joined the hunters, even before he'd become her partner. “You're not ... you aren't...."
He lifted a brow. “The same man who worked beside you for the past eighteen months? I am."
"You're a ... cyborg?"
His lips flattened into a thin line. “I would say that we are the same, but we both know that isn't true, don't we? You were born of woman, born with a soul. While I ... I was cooked up in The Company labs."
A wave of dizziness washed over Amaryllis. “They said we were all the same,” she said through lips that felt strangely stiff and uncooperative.
This couldn't be happening.
He couldn't know that. No one had access to that information except The Company.
Unless Dante had told them?
Nausea followed that thought.
Hehad turned her in. He'd come to her, fucked her six ways from Sunday, and then fucked her over.
Christ! She wassuch a fucking moron!
And she'd been feeling all maudlin over the fact that Dante hadn't even made an attempt to convince her that there was affection involved in the act.
The sense of betrayal was almost more than she could handle on top of the shock of discovering that Reese was one of the cyborgs ... not a hunter/maybe cyborg as the others were, the people she still thought of as people. A cyborg.
Like Dante.
And, like Dante, he had betrayed her trust ... except that she'd given her trust to Reese unquestioningly. She'd admired him. He'd been an intergalactic ranger—they'd been told he had come to them from the rangers—and she'd thought he was one of the finest soldiers ever to live—thought of him almost like a ... god.
A chill went through her despite the warmth of the water. With a shaking hand, she shut it off and sloughed the water from her body. Reese tossed her the linen from the bed that she'd been wrapped in when the cyborgs had burst into the cabin. She managed to catch it and wrap it around her although a good portion of it dragged through the water that still puddled at her feet.
She didn't look at Reese as she headed for the door.
He barred her passage as she reached the opening, bracing his arm against the door frame. “I give you my word I will not betray you."
Amaryllis glanced up at him and then fixed her stony gaze on the floor. “You already did."
His lips tightened. “I was sent to infiltrate the ranks of the hunters."
There didn't seem to be much she could say to that. He was a soldier. He'd followed orders. God alone knew what those orders had included, but she was fairly certain she didn't want to know.
He wouldn't let her pass, however. She didn't know what he wanted from her, but it was obvious her silence wasn't it. “It doesn't matter now."
He caught her chin, forcing her to look at him.
"It matters."
She frowned, confused by the intensity of his gaze. “Why?"
Catching her shoulders, he dragged her up against his chest and covered her mouth with his own, kissing her deeply, hungrily. Too stunned even to consider resisting, he'd invaded her senses with the bold stroke of his tongue, his heat, his scent, his taste, flooding her body with the drug of desire, and annihilated any chance for thought even before Amaryllis realized what was happening. Heat curled in her belly. Her bones turned to putty. The only thought that flitted through her mind was the half formed one that she'd known Reese's kiss would be devastating. She staggered when he released her almost as unexpectedly as he'd seized her. “Think about it."
Think about it? Amaryllis thought blankly. Asif she could think at all! Feeling very much as if she'd been blindsided, she followed Reese back into the cabin. A fresh stack of garments had been placed on the bunk. She moved toward
them when Reese indicated she should put them on, but she was so shaken she couldn't make heads or tails of the pieces at first. Finally, she managed to dress herself.
"Where are you taking me?” she asked when Reese grasped her arm and escorted her toward the door.
"The barracks."
Amaryllis glanced at him sharply. Not a cell? Or maybe ‘barracks’ was merely a polite euphemism for prison?
Shewas a prisoner. A four man—make that cyborg—escort constituted an arrest in her book.
She discovered when he had escorted her through the ship that the barracks in question had been set aside for the females. She didn't know whether to be relieved or alarmed that they were being segregated by sex, but she discovered very quickly that itwas a cell, regardless of what Reese had called it. As soon as she'd stepped inside, the door was locked.
Still, it was a relief just to be free of the overwhelming presence of four enormous cyborg soldiers and the barracks at least had the feel of a barracks, not a jail cell.
She felt less relieved once she'd surveyed the room. Naturally enough the majority of the bunks had already been claimed. It was obviously a sleep period, for the room had been dimmed and the bunks were occupied, but the commotion at the door had roused most of them and she could feel dozens of pairs of curious eyes on her. Stiffening her spine, she moved down the aisle between the two rows, searching for an empty bunk.
"Cyborg whore!” one of the women muttered.
Amaryllis stiffened and glanced toward the sound of the voice. She couldn't recall her name, but she recognized the woman—a fanatic if there'd ever lived one. Half the hunters referred to her as Psycho.
To Amaryllis’ relief, she saw the woman had been chained to her bunk. She didn't currently feel up to defending herself from attack.
Deciding to simply ignore the remark, she moved on, wondering what the chances were that her secret would remain a secret. Reese's comment seemed to indicate that Dante hadn't betrayed that much, at any rate, but she doubted it would be long before everyone knew regardless.
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