Because it was clear that their intention was to mate. Yet it seemed they were doing this for self-fulfillment, not for practical means.
Why would I do such a thing?
A moan spilled from her own lips as the male licked a path downward to the apex between her thighs. Caro’s legs clenched as though it were happening to her as well—which, she supposed, it was.
How strange a sensation to watch something happen from outside her own body yet feel it deep inside.
Her stomach tightened as the woman on the bed writhed, the male devouring her in a cyclone of ecstasy and strength.
Oh, she thought, her spirit burning with the remembrance of just how that felt. Oh, I like that.
It caused her knees to quiver, her body flaring with a yearning she hadn’t experienced in such a long time. Yes. More. She closed her eyes, pretending to be the female on the bed. With the moans and pants so familiar to her ears, she could almost be her, could almost feel his teeth against her sensitive folds and his tongue on her clit.
Her back bowed, the rapture spilling out of her on a tidal wave of sensation.
She screamed his name... Sethios... and climaxed so hard she swore she died.
But as she opened her eyes, she found herself beneath him, his dark eyes swirling with adoration and sensuality as he slid inside her, taking her to new heights and forcing her to forget the impractical nature of it all.
For just a few moments, she forgot her own existence. Stopped thinking about how this couldn’t be real. And just experienced his tenderness and love and pain.
His teeth were in her neck, drinking from her, showering her in goose bumps and spearing through all her defenses. She cried out, tumbling headfirst into another oblivion as he drove into her, taking her with a force that hurt in a beautiful way, one that touched her very soul.
This was her life.
Her purpose.
Her meaning.
She loved this man. This Sethios. This male who had shattered all her beliefs and had broken through the harshest of her resolves.
Caro clung to him, weeping, her time with him too short. The sacrifice they would make would change the future of the world. But what if they couldn’t come back from it?
She would never voice that fear, the knowledge of what was to come.
Because her mother would find her when she failed to locate Astasiya.
Caro would endure rehabilitation.
And she would survive.
That was her purpose, her one secret, that she never gave up. With Sethios forever etched into her very soul, the council couldn’t separate them. They would try, and they would fail. She would return to him. Always.
“I love you,” he whispered to her, his lips a caress against her ear. “I will forever love you.”
“I love you, too,” she breathed. And this time it was her. Her voice. Her heart. Her body. Her soul. She’d fallen into the memory, enraptured and ensnared and never letting go.
His eyes burned into hers. “Come back to me, Caro.”
“I’m right here.”
“Come back to me, angel.”
She frowned. “I’m here.”
“I miss you.”
It didn’t make any sense. How could he miss her? He was inside her. Making love to her. Only, everything began to blur, the memory slipping from her fingers and surrounding her in a cage of literal glass.
She frowned. Where am I?
Wires hooked into her arms, legs, around her chest. A soft beeping sound echoed outside her chamber. The room was dark. Cold. Smelled of antiseptics and sterility.
Caro shivered. This wasn’t where she wanted to be. She desired the warmth of Sethios’s body. His touch. His tongue. His voice.
She closed her eyes, striving to return to him, but the ice of her surroundings infiltrated her mind, suffocating her beneath a wave of harsh reality.
Reformation.
That was what this glass pod meant.
There was no sun here. No peace. It’d all been a figment in her mind, a ruse meant to lull her into a false sense of calmness while they reprogrammed her from the inside.
But a memory had awakened her, one so powerful it had shattered the chains locked around her mind and shoved her into full awareness.
How long had she slept in this thing?
She took a physical assessment of her atrophied muscles and prone form. It was all she needed to do to know she’d been here for a while.
Caro strived to remember her last true memory, but the past however many years or decades clouded her judgment. So she clung