by Lynne Silver
“Marriage? Babies? We’ve known each other two days. And I’m going to—”
“New York. I know,” he said almost bitterly. “You’re going to be the next Blondie, and I will not stand in your way.”
“Then what do we have?”
“This,” he said, and leaned in to find her mouth and take her in a deep kiss. As soon as his lips touched hers, all her fear and anger morphed quickly into passion, and she tugged him down to deepen the kiss. Just like at the concert, their passion exploded into an inferno. His large body pushed her willingly back into her mattress, and the comforter crushed up between them as an unwanted barrier.
She couldn’t get enough of his mouth and ached for more. “Get under here,” she ordered and tugged the blanket out from between their bodies. She heard him kicking off his boots and she sat up to yank her extra-large T-shirt over her head. Her panties were next. Peter stood next to the bed, ripping off his clothes silently and quickly.
When they were both naked and pressed head to toe under the blanket, she said, “We have to be quiet. My parents are down the hall, and my brother is next door.”
He kissed her quickly. “I’m not the problem. If memory serves, you were the one making all the noise.”
She punched his upper arm and came away with a sore fist. Peter was hard everywhere. “If I scream it’s only because you do things to me.”
His hands were toying with her breasts, and his voice was low and arousing when he asked, “What kind of things?”
“Good things,” she said on a moan. “Ooh, keep doing that. Or you could…never mind.”
His mouth had found her nipple, and she clasped his head with both hands, loving the feel of his soft buzz cut under her palms. “I could what?”
“You could go down on me.” She clamped her lips, embarrassed at asking for something so intimate.
“Go down?” He gave a puzzled look toward the foot of the bed.
Oh God, she was going to have to explain it, wasn’t she? “Um, it’s when a guy kisses a girl. Down there.” She tilted her head slightly to point the way. “You know, kind of like a blow job, but for a girl.” Her cheeks could light the bed on fire, they were that hot.
A slow male grin spread across his face. “Okay.” He ducked under the covers, and she remained frozen, slightly shocked at how quickly he’d embraced the idea. Most guys in high school had whispered in locker rooms stupid things like chicken smells and hair in teeth. Peter seemed to have none of those hang-ups.
“I can’t do this if you don’t spread your legs.” His voice was muffled under the covers, and it took her a moment for his request to penetrate. She pushed the covers off his back and planted her feet widely on the narrow mattress, knees bent.
“Do you really want to…?”
In answer, his mouth found its way between her legs, and he took his first taste of her. It was her first time having a man do this to her, and she wasn’t sure she liked it. It was a bit awkward.
His head popped up and their gazes met. “Relax,” he said with a small smile.
She reached for him. “Come kiss me.”
“I am.” And his head disappeared between her thighs again. She laughed when the tip of his tongue touched a particularly sensitive spot. Now she saw the appeal of a man going down on her.
Ripples of pleasure radiated out from her core through her spine and down her extremities. A moan escaped her before she could stop it, and Peter froze a moment, looking up to smile. “Quiet. This is not how I want to meet your parents. Does your moan mean I’m doing this right?”
She giggled, bubbling over with pleasure that her serious, rather scary lover had a dry sense of humor. “Come here, you.” She pulled at him by his underarms, and this time he allowed her to pull him up for more kissing. They made out slowly, then with more urgency, his erection pushing against her lower belly the whole time. He started to prod at her opening, but she resisted, trying to roll him onto his back. He was too strong for her to move anywhere without his consent.
“I want to be on top,” she whispered. That sparked his interest, and he quickly rolled them until his back was to the mattress, and she was balanced on his torso. Her breasts squeezed against his chest, and she angled her hips until his erection prodded at her damp opening. She rose up, then lowered down slowly. This time, it was him moaning, and she pressed her lips against his to catch the noise. “You definitely don’t want to meet my parents like this.”
He didn’t answer and instead experimented with thrusting up into her slowly then faster. “It’s even better than before,” he whispered.
They stared into each other’s eyes, not talking, barely breathing. Both their hands were clasped alongside his head, and the only movement was her hips on his. The only sound was the gentle shushing of the cotton sheets under their sweaty bodies.
“Peter,” she finally gasped out, and squeezed her eyes shut as an orgasm wound its way from her brain down to the point where his penis was buried deep inside. She could become a sex addict if they kept this up. Sex for her had always been nice enough, but it had never made her want to stay naked in bed with her man and not leave the room ever.
He was still thrusting upward, and she tried to relax her inner muscles around him, because the intensity of the sensation was quickly becoming overwhelming. “I can’t…” she said with a moan.
“Should I stop?” he asked, slowing his movements.
She cracked open one eye. “But you haven’t come yet, have you?”
The muscle was tight around his jaw as he shook his head.
“I’m okay. Keep going.”
“You sure?”
“Positive.” She clenched her thighs and squeezed her muscles around him, staring down at his face as he screwed her. Her body was tender and felt like every nerve ending was being teased, but she didn’t want to stop. Peter was like another person when he was making love to her. He had all these facets to his personality that she didn’t know how to interpret.
This afternoon he’d been like a machine, beating the crap out of the three guys. Now, as he held her tightly, he was all tenderness and hooded eyelids. She liked that he accepted her stares without getting bigheaded about it. He fascinated her on every level. And she loved that he seemed equally fascinated by her.
He’d scared her today with his violence that had unleashed as fast as a cheetah dashed after prey, but with her, he’d been all gentleness.
Her muscles tightened around him, and he groaned, suddenly opening his eyes. His smile filled her heart with a joy so big it threatened to burst out of her. If it wasn’t the middle of the night, and she didn’t have a man literally inside her, she’d grab her guitar and express her joy in music. As she watched Peter find his climax with a suppressed groan, she realized she wanted to play for him. Needed to play for him. She wanted him to see her sing.
They spent the next few weeks in a similar pattern. Either she’d be woken in the middle of the night by Peter climbing into her bed where they’d make love and whisper long into the night. Or occasionally, he’d be able to meet her wherever she was. He never made promises and she never asked him to meet her at a specific time or place, but she was always careful to let hints drop about her schedule.
Like if she was meeting friends at the mall, he’d show up. The first time he’d shown up unexpectedly had been during her shift at the movie theater. He’d walked up to the counter where she’d been mindlessly filling popcorn buckets and held up two tickets for Empire Strikes Back.
“You’re shift is over in ten minutes. Will you watch the movie with me?” he’d asked, a hopeful smile on his face.
She’d called over a co-worker who agreed to let her off shift early, and they’d snuggled next to each other in the dark cold theater. She’d wanted to do a little necking during the movie, but there was no distracting Peter who’d watched every second of the movie wide-eyed.
“That was incredible,” he said, at the end when the credits had rolled and the theater had emptied.
“You liked it?”
He grinned. “Loved it. I want to stay and watch it again.”
“Oh, God. You’re going to be a movie nerd. I can tell.”
“What’s that?”
“The fan boys who line up outside the theater before the movie opens and camp out so they can see it on opening day.”
He laughed. “Not sure I’ll ever be able to camp out to see a movie, but I would if they’d let me.”
She squeezed his hand and stepped toward the exit of the theater. “Who is the they you’re always talking about? There’s so much about your life I don’t understand, Peter.” And who are they that a twenty-year-old man needs their permission? Sometimes it sounded like he was being held prisoner somewhere.
He tugged his hand away and strode up the ramp to the theater exit. He opened the door and she blinked at the light flooding in. “I can’t explain, Allison. Don’t ask me to. There are some things you’re better off not knowing. Trust me.”
“Are you some sort of Russian spy?” she whispered. It would make sense. He didn’t seem to have a real job. His hours of freedom were sporadic, and the way he could fight told her he’d been trained like a soldier. Her stomach twisted that she could’ve become involved in a Soviet spy nightmare.
He gently pushed her back into the dark theater. “What makes you ask that? Do I look like a spy?”
She swallowed. “I don’t know what a spy looks like. But it kind of makes sense when you think about it.”
“It does?” He sank down into the corner seat in the last row of the empty theater. Allison knew someone would be in any second to sweep up spilled popcorn. But she sat on Peter’s lap and wrapped her arms around him.
“You can tell me,” she whispered. “Are you a spy and you don’t want to be anymore? Like I said, we could run away to New York together.”
His hand brushed through her hair and his lips rested on her cheek for a sweet moment before he pulled back. She’d meant what she’d said. Even if he were a Russian spy, she’d forgive him as long as he gave up his old life.
Then she realized he was laughing. “I’m not a Russian Spy, Allison,” he said between chuckles.
Relief swept through her. Although if he were a real Russian spy, he wouldn’t exactly blurt it out, would he? “Then what are you?”
His laughter stopped. “I’m just a man,” he said. “Can we leave it at that?”
She squinted trying to make out his features in the mostly dark of the theater and then released a breath. “Fine. But it doesn’t seem fair. You know every little detail about me. You’ve been in my home, and I’d introduce you to my parents if you ever showed up before midnight, but I know next to nothing about you.”
“Okay,” he said, settling back into the chair and pulling her more securely onto his lap. “What do you want to know? I’ll answer anything I can, and say no for anything I can’t.”
“Sounds fair. Okay, let me think…Well, I know you’re twenty, but I don’t know you’re birthday.”
“January 2, 1960.”
“What are your parent’s names?”
“Betty and Thomas.”
“What was your favorite subject in school?”
“Military strategy.”
There was no hesitation on his part when he gave his answer. She blinked at him. “Uh, Peter, that’s not a normal subject for kids.”
“It’s not? I meant history. But I liked studying the wars the best. Especially Napoleonic Wars. That’s what I meant by military strategy.”
“Oh,” she said, not one hundred percent reassured.
One night after dinner, Peter hummed, thinking of last night’s encounter with Allison. She was his match, he was sure of it. How else to explain the bone-deep connection he felt with her? And the sex. Not that he had anything to compare it to, but holy hell, the sex was intense.
Another soldier had stopped by his table at dinner to tell him to head to the main office after dinner. Apparently, Doctor Rovinsky wanted to talk him. Probably about his new mile speed time. Ever since meeting Allison, his running times had increased significantly. All his other physical tests had improved too.
He knew the med team wondered about it, but he’d have to keep them in the dark. If he told them what he suspected, that meeting his match had led to an increase in his enhanced capabilities, they’d go ballistic. Allison would be forced to move onto the campus and give up her dreams.
Though a deep dark part of him craved that more than anything, he already loved her enough to not let her dreams get lost.
He walked into the main office building and was surprised to see Doctor Rovinsky and a crowd of some of the other medical staff huddled outside of one of the meeting rooms. The doctor was holding a white towel to his cheek, and when he moved it slightly, Peter could see a bleeding red line down his face. He didn’t have much time to wonder how the injury occurred, because the minute he approached the cluster of the med team, they all turned to him. Some had a smile on their faces, some looked at him as they usually did: as if he were a robot or some kind of freak.
They looked at him as if he was going to go Hulk on them. Ever since the TV show had aired two years ago, he’d identified a lot with the scientist who turned into the green monster. Peter hadn’t asked to be born this way. He felt like a normal human except that everyone around him treated him as if he were different. One day soon he’d paint his chest green and rip off his shirt when people looked at him funny. He was smiling at the thought as he approached the group huddled around the door.
“Peter,” Rovinsky said.
“Hi, doc. You wanted to see me?”
“Yes, we have something you want to see in here.”
He cocked an eyebrow and tilted his head toward the door. “In there?” His hearing was enhanced to the degree that he could hear better than the average person, but at that second it was almost as if he could hear the heartbeat of every person in the building.
“Should I go in?”
“Yes, that would be good.”
Peter should’ve known something was up by the strange behavior of the normally complacent medical team. He turned the knob and felt a small push at his lower back, sending him tripping into the room. The sight that greeted him shocked him more than touching the electrified fence that surrounded the Program compound.
“Allison?” He raced over to his girlfriend, who was handcuffed to the leg of a side table. She sat gagged on the couch with her handcuffed arm hanging over the arm of the sofa.
He tore off her gag, which was damp with her tears. “Peter?”
His heart clenched at her confused voice, so different than her normal sultry upbeat tones. “Yeah, baby. It’s me.”
“What’s happening, Peter? Where are we?”
“This is my home.”
She physically scooched back a foot at his confession. “You’re one of them?”
“One of who?” he asked, not knowing how much she’d been told. Did she know he was a genetically enhanced human? Why was she here? More importantly, who had forced her here and tied her to the chair with a gag? His anger flared, pounding within his brain and deafening his enhancements.
“The kidnappers.”
“No.” He gave a violent headshake and felt some of his recently eaten dinner threaten to come up. This was exactly what he hadn’t wanted to happen. How they’d learned about Allison, he didn’t know, but he wanted to kill them for daring to touch her. “I never wanted you here. I love you too much to want you trapped here like me.” He reached over to stroke her hair, and she leaned into him like a cat seeking affection, but then she seemed to remember where she was and whipped her head out of his way.
“Is this what you meant before? That you didn’t want me trapped like you are?” Her eyes widened and she tugged at the table with her bound hand at his words. “What is this place? Where are we, Peter?”
This time she let him touch her. Her thigh was soft under his palm when he leaned in to whispe
r, “I’ll tell you everything, I promise, but first I need to take care of something.” He rose and strode to the door, ready to add to the scratches on Rovinsky’s cheek, because it was obvious now Allison had fought her captors.
“Rovinsky,” he roared, turning the doorknob, but it remained locked in place. He pounded on the door and then slammed his shoulder against the wood. “Let me out of here.”
“Calm down, Peter,” a voice came through the door.
“Hell, no. Not until you let me out and release Allison.”
“She’s your match, Pete,” Doctor Rovinsky’s voice rang out. “Don’t you want her?”
He stopped slamming his body against the door. “Of course I do, but not like this. She’s a citizen. She has the right to choose.”
“Choose what?” Allison asked from behind him. “What do they mean I’m your match?”
He ignored her for a minute. “Don’t do this. I won’t go along with it.”
“Peter, it’s me, Doctor Paulson.”
He relaxed slightly. He’d always been closer with Paulson, the one member of the science team who treated him like a person and not a walking-talking experiment.
“Peter, let me talk to everyone. Everyone’s excited because you’d be the first soldier to find his match.”
He understood their sentiment, which was why he’d been sneaking around the past month with Allison.
“Why don’t you and Allison talk? Explain things to her. Let her make an informed decision. You don’t have to hide your relationship anymore.”
“You don’t understand, Doctor Paulson. Allison can’t stay here. Her family will be looking for her.”
Another voice, one he thought was his commanding officer’s, rang out. “It’s been taken care of.”
“What do you mean?”
“Yeah, what does he mean?” Allison’s voice quavered.
“A note has been left from Allison explaining she finally ran away to New York to become a singer.”
Peter whirled to see Allison’s golden skin whiten and lines bracket her mouth as tears dripped from her eyes. “How do they know so much about me? What did you tell them?” she whispered. “How could you?”