"Yeah... damn..." His chin tilted back, the veins in his neck popping. "More."
She put her other hand on him, stacking her palms, moving them together. His mouth fell wide open, his eyes rolling back in his head, a sheen of sweat breaking out over his body.
"How does this feel, Butch?"
"I'm so close already." He clamped his jaws together and breathed through teeth that were locked light. But then he grabbed her hands, stilling them. "Wait! Not yet..."
His erection pulsed, kicking in their grips. A crystal drop appeared at the tip.
He took in a ragged breath. "Hold me out. Make me work for it, Marissa. The longer you burn me, the better the end will be."
Using his gasps and the spasms of his muscles as a guide, she learned the peaks and valleys of his erotic response, figured out when he was getting close and just how to suspend him at the tip of the sexual blade.
God, there was power in sex, and right now she had it all. He was defenseless, exposed... just as she'd been the night before. She loved this.
"Please... baby..." She loved that hoarse breathlessness. Loved the straining cords in his neck. Loved the command she had as she held him in her hand.
Which made her think. She let go and attended to his sack, sliding her hand under the weight of it, cupping him. With a curse, he knotted the sheets up in fists until his knuckles went white.
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She kept going at him until he was twitchy and covered with sweat and shaking. Then she bent down and pressed her mouth to his. He gobbled her up, grabbing her neck and holding her against his lips, mumbling, kissing, thrusting with his tongue.
"Now?" she said in the midst of the kiss.
"Now."
Taking him in hand, she moved her palm faster and faster, until his face contorted into a beautiful mask of agony and his body grew tight as a cable.
"Marissa ..." With no coordination, he grabbed the hospital gown and pulled it over his hips, shielding him from her eyes. Then she felt him jerk and shudder and something warm and thick came out of him in pulses, covering her hand. She knew instinctively not to lose her rhythm until it was over.
When his eyes finally opened, they were fuzzy. Satiated. Full of a worshiping warmth.
"I don't want to let go of you," she said.
"Then don't. Ever."
He was softening in her palm, a retreat from the hard staff he'd been. Kissing him, she took her hand out from under the hospital johnny and looked down, curious as to what had come out of him.
"I didn't know it would be black," she murmured with a little smile.
Horror flooded his face. "Oh, Christ!"
Havers walked down the hallway to the quarantine room.
On the way, he checked on the little female he'd operated on days before. She was healing well, but he worried about sending her and her mother back out into the world. That hellren was violent and there was a good chance they would be back in the clinic again. But what could he do? He couldn't let them stay here indefinitely. He needed the bed.
He kept going, passing his laboratory, waving at a nurse who was processing various samples. When he got to the housekeeping door, he hesitated.
He hated that Marissa was locked up with that human.
But the important thing was she hadn't been contaminated. According to the physical they'd done on her early yesterday, she was just fine, so her lapse in judgment evidently wasn't going to cost her her life.
And as for the human, he was going home. His last blood sample had been very close to normal and he was getting stronger at an astonishing rate, so it was time to get him the hell away from Marissa. Havers had already called the Brotherhood and told them to come get the man.
Butch O'Neal was dangerous, and not just because of the contamination issue. That human wanted Marissa-it was in his eyes. And that was unacceptable.
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Havers shook his head, thinking that he'd tried to keep them apart back in the fall. At first, he'd assumed Marissa was going to drain the human and that would have been fine. But when it became obvious that she was pining for him in her illness, Havers had had to step in.
God, he'd hoped she'd find a true mate at some point, but certainly not an inferior, roughneck