thing: How in the hell he was going to be able to take her memories, release her out into the human world, leave her to live the rest of her life without him?
Sadly, however, the sacred glass had showed him only her face, not some kind of a future for them as mates.
Destiny had dictated only that they meet. Not that they be together for long.
“Are you all right?” she said. When he didn’t immediately answer—because his throat was too tight to let speech through—she nodded to the left, toward a doorway. “Let me give this to Ehlena for testing in the lab. And then let’s—is there anywhere we can go for a walk or something?”
“There’s a gym?” He motioned over his shoulder. “Back that way.”
“Give me a minute.”
The facility was a lot larger than Sarah had initially assumed, and she learned the footprint firsthand as she and Murhder strolled down the corridor away from the clinical area. As they went along, they passed by locker rooms. A weight room. That gym he’d mentioned. An office. There was also a pool complex with what certainly seemed to be an Olympic-sized body of water.
“Big place,” she murmured as they kept going.
“Yeah.”
She glanced over at Murhder. His head was down, his brows cranked tight over his eyes, his big shoulders tense.
“You look like you’re trying to take pi out to thirty decimals.”
He looked at her, his beautiful red-and-black hair hanging forward. “What?”
“Sorry. Scientist joke.”
“So you were saying you’ve got an idea for John’s treatment?”
Sarah stopped. “What’s going on? Just tell me. Whatever it is, I’ll deal with it.”
Murhder reached out and brushed her cheek with his fingertips. As silence stretched between them, she got the feeling he was trying out lies to her in his head.
The truth, however, was what he eventually spoke: “We’re running out of time.”
Her first thought—her only thought—was that she couldn’t leave him. Nate. John. And logic told her that that desperation was because she had no other life to go back to anymore. It couldn’t possibly be because … she’d fallen in love with a vampire. In like, twenty-four hours.
Oh, God …
“I know,” she said sadly.
“Come here.”
When he put his arms around her, she went willingly up against his body. And the next thing she knew, they were kissing, lips melding, tongues meeting.
When they were both breathing hard, he took her hand and drew her over to a door. She had no idea where they were going and didn’t care. Whatever was on the far side was dark, and that meant they could steal some private moments.
Really dark, that was.
As they were shut in together, she could see absolutely nothing, the room they had entered pitch black and then some—and oddly, she was reminded of what it was like to skinny-dip at night, your body floating in a void.
At least she didn’t have to worry about sharks in this case. In fact, she wasn’t worried about anything attacking them. Murhder would take care of it—and defend her.
His hands were rough as he peeled off the top half of the scrubs she’d borrowed after she’d taken a quick shower during the day … his nimble fingers shedding the baggy layers, finding her skin. The fact that she was blind in the darkness meant every stroke of his was magnified, and when he captured her breast in his palm, she gasped against his mouth.
She was sloppy with the buttons of his fine silk shirt, impatient, fumbling. When he helped by yanking the thing off, a tear sounded out. And then they were kissing again, the bottoms to the scrubs disappearing, his slacks getting unbuttoned at the waist and falling down to his shoes.
Murhder picked her up and she straddled his hips, his strong arms holding her off the floor. His penetration was a firebrand, nothing slow and gentle this time, his arousal entering her on a one-stroke that went so deep, she nearly orgasmed then and there. Desperate to find a good rhythm, he shuffled them over to a wall, the hard, cool surface hitting her bare back as he braced her against it. Then he pumped into her, his body working hard, churning, dominating.
She held on for dear life.
And only wanted more.
Linking her arms around the back of his neck, she put her face in his long hair. He’d shampooed it, and it was still damp underneath, and she breathed in the scent of—no, that wasn’t shampoo. That was him.