you have a charitable, good nature and you want to help the surviving townsfolk … but those people are not your blood. Family must always come first. Please do not gamble your or your brother’s safety for the welfare of mundane strangers. Please promise me this.”
He looked so sad and worried I found myself saying, “I promise.”
And then immediately wondered if it had been the right thing to do.
chapter
twenty-one
Doppelganger
Once I said good-bye to my father and closed the mirror, I sat down on my bed to think. He was right; clearly Miko meant to drive us all to so much angst and misery that we’d surrender ourselves to her. The meat puppets hadn’t been serious adversaries because they weren’t supposed to be. Their attacks were intended to exhaust our bodies, fill our minds with horrible memories of carnage, and burden our souls with the guilt of having had to slaughter people’s grandmothers. Attrition through demoralization, as the major had put it.
If I could just keep my head on straight, I knew I could blaze through everything and get us home, somehow. But my lust made that damned difficult, and Cooper’s anger wedging us apart made it thornier still. It wasn’t just that I felt as if I would go insane if I couldn’t get laid; I missed him. I missed hugging him, missed the comfort of his touch, missed laughing with him. Our stolen moments together in the tent in Mother Karen’s backyard seemed like a lifetime ago.
I looked at the bedroom around me. This was my dimension now. I created all this, purely from memory and will. What else could I create in here?
I held my hands out in front of me and closed my eyes. Thought of Cooper, his powerful legs, his lean body, his muscular arms, his runic tattoos, his curly black hair, the sound of his voice, the warmth of his touch …
Strong, familiar hands took mine.
I opened my eyes.
Cooper was standing before me, smiling down at me. He was naked, his long handsome cock half hard. Glad to see me, clearly.
“I missed you,” he said. A moment later, I realized it was what I’d wanted him to say. And decided that right then, I didn’t really care.
“I missed you, too.” I stood up; with a thought, my clothes were gone. We kissed; his mouth tasted like Nutella, as if we’d just come in from making a mid-morning snack in the kitchen. His skin smelled like fresh gingerbread and clean healthy man.
When we broke from our embrace, Cooper cupped my breasts in his warm hands, leaned down, and began to suck on my right nipple, sending an electric thrill through my chest and belly down to my vulva. The sudden spark blossomed into a sharp, insistent ache in my loins that made me moan. Smiling, Cooper straightened up and gently pushed me down so I was sitting on the edge of the bed. I lay back, my legs hanging over.
He knelt on the carpet between my legs and spread my lips with his thumbs. My flesh ignited at his touch; the anticipation was killing me. He began to run the tip of his tongue around the opening of my vagina in light, teasing circles. And then slowly up, up my juice-slick groove to my clit, which he circled, tapping gently just beyond my pleasure’s reach, tormenting me.
“Fuck me,” I whispered. “Please fuck me.”
He wet his fingers against my pussy and began to rub my flesh in gentle circles, still just barely touching my clit. I sucked in my breath. He slowly stood up, gently brushing his hard cock along the length of my inner thigh to my vagina. He pressed the tip against my waiting flesh and began to slowly push into me as he rubbed my clit directly—
—I moaned again as the dam of my pleasure swelled, ready to burst—
He drove his cock in deeply and I came, my flesh shuddering around his shaft. I threw my head back against the mattress and wrapped my legs around his waist, trying to pull him in as deep as possible.
When the surge of my orgasm had passed, he worked his flesh in mine more slowly, gently, giving my tension time to build, and then he thrust faster and faster, pinning me to the bed, my body at his mercy. I felt his cock shudder inside me as he came, and the feel of his seed spurting inside me sent me over the edge and I was coming