She laughed at that. But what came out was more of a breathless sound that was half chuckle, half excited sigh.
So she opted for a simple nod instead.
He led her to the bed, and she could make out the indent of every sculpted lateral muscle running up and down his back. Even beneath the silk of his black dress pants, she could see the movement of his masculine ass, and she wanted to study him even more closely than she’d been able to last night.
Alek brought her face to face with him at the foot of the towering structure that somehow resembled a bed. But before he did anything, she shoved him gently back onto the plush mattress, wanting to enjoy him a minute more before he most certainly did.
“I’m glad I have the same effect on you as you do me,” he said, grinning as he propped himself up on his elbows.
“And what would that be?” she responded, kicking off her boots and crawling up onto the bed on top of Alek.
His grin widened. “Desperate, unquenchable need.”
Her gaze roved down his body, past his chest and abs and to his hips. The bulge of his manhood was more than plainly obvious, and she undid his belt and pulled his slacks lower, past his thighs, leaving him in black boxer briefs.
Just the thought of him being inside her made her ache.
For several moments, she allowed herself to simply revel in the sheer shape of him, feeling over the ridge of his abdominals and pectorals. He didn’t flinch, didn’t rush, didn’t demand anything of her as she did. And with each touch, she felt closer to him, more connected than simply skin touching skin. Like she could touch his soul, could feel his heart, beating only for her somehow.
She leaned down to kiss him on his chest, his neck. Each second with him more arousing than the last. Then, finally, his lips. She traced a line across them, full and masculine. How could something so simple make her feel such fire within?
And when she lowered herself to kiss him, he rose to meet her halfway. But as his tongue slid inside again, there was no question who was in charge, who was calling the shots. Whatever she did, he allowed. Whatever he did, he knew she wanted.
As they kissed, her hands lowered down his body, wanting to feel his shaft. But just as she reached it, she felt his arm around her, and suddenly, the world turned around as she lay back on the bed.
She practically sank into the soft covers, surrounded in luxury and overwhelmed by Alek.
“All in good time. But me first,” he commanded.
Her eyebrow rose. “You first?” she remarked curiously.
Somehow Talia got the impression that he meant it differently than what that usually meant between lovers.
Alek slid down her, pulling her red dress up and devouring her with his eyes. Then he flicked a piercing blue glance at her that seemed to say everything without saying anything.
I want to see you come first.
A shiver of excitement coursed down her back like an electrical current just as his finger found her clit through the satin panties she’d worn. But the fabric was invisible compared to the feel of his deft digit pressing against her center like that.
She writhed, burying herself even deeper into the down blankets and pillows, unable to move, unable to think so long as he continued to do what he was doing. But he just smiled devilishly at her, leaning down to kiss along her collar even as his finger moved like a metronome of pleasure for her.
Wanting him to kiss lower, past her dress, Talia pulled one shoulder down, far enough to reveal the black bra she’d put on. Seemingly knowing his way around her, Alek moved the material away from her breast, licking over it and suckling deeply.
Shocks of sensation went through her body, colliding with the feel of his hand between her legs, leaving her unable to think. Alek took over, pulling the shoulder of her dress lower so he could reach her other breast, squeezing it first with his hand, then kissing it, too.
High above her, the ceiling seemed to twinkle with stars. Her vision blurred as she tried to hold on. But with one more press, Talia came, all senses drowning in a pool of her own desire. She grasped onto his legs, fingers digging in as he flicked once more with his finger, then went still, letting her ride out the rest of her orgasm.
But even as she regained consciousness, he repositioned his head between her thighs. Talia blushed, still not accustomed to men being so assertively focused on her pleasure as Alek was.
Then again, it was painfully clear that Alek was no ordinary man.
He slid off her panties and pulled her dress up farther so the thin material was barely covering anything now. She tried to sit up to get a better look at him, but all rational thought was lost as his tongue covered her clit with powerful wet heat.
She collapsed against the bed, hands grasping at soft blankets as wave after wave of fire consumed her skin at the feel of even the tiniest of flicks. And as he alternated the motions, using his tongue like some surgical instrument designed for her pleasure, she felt another release quickly building inside like a pressure valve about to break.
But Alek was relentless, stroking over and over until, in what could have been either a very short or very long time, Talia came again.
His hands held her thighs this time, her body rocking with incredible shocks in the best orgasm of her life. The bed yielded to and resisted her at the same time, trapping her in a prison of silky softness that forced her to feel nothing but pure pleasure.
Amazing.
“You’re incredible, Talia,” Alek remarked, watching her so intently he didn’t seem to blink. And for a moment, his irises seem to flicker pure white as if illuminated by noonday sun. But then it was gone again, leaving Talia to think it was probably just post-release afterglow. Or something.
“Given the results at hand, I’d say the compliment belongs to you, Alek. But thank you.” Her breaths were heavy, trying to make up for lost time. However, she was not yet finished.
She sat up, undoing the zipper of her dress. Alek helped her, pulling it free and tossing it aside. The slight lull in the moment made her brain buzz with anticipation as they bared themselves completely to each other, ready to take the next and final step.
Yet nothing felt awkward with Alek. Perhaps the fact that he was so completely comfortable with himself and so entirely attracted to her made her worry less about her shape. About being too short, too curvy, too “anything” that the world made a constant and aggressive point about making her feel awkward or self-conscious about.
And hopefully, with time, she’d be able to continue thinking the same about herself as he did of her.
Alek leaned over to his jacket and pulled something out. A row of six or seven condoms came out, and she wondered how he’d had those there the whole time.
“Intending to use all of those in one night, Lothario?” she joked at the train of foil packets.
“I wasn’t sure how many to bring. The instructions didn’t say,” Alek said matter of factly, looking at them for a moment and then pulling one free.
“The instructions?”
He pulled at the foil and took the condom out, positioning it for a moment before putting it on.
“I read the instructions on the box. Doesn’t everyone do that?” He winced a little as the last of it rolled over him.
Talia laughed, but she didn’t have the heart to tell him that no, nobody did that. She was just pleased that he’d been thoughtful enough to do that for her. Especially considering the incredibly tight fit the latex had over the diameter of his dick.
Talia lay against the bed, spreading her legs and beckoning for him to join her. Slowly, Alek propped himself up on his hands, his big palms sinking into the memory foam bed on either side of her, and brought his hips between hers.
Then, with one incredibly slow, incredibly delicious movement, he slid into her.
For a second, Talia could feel herself stretching to accommodate him, enveloping him entirely. It was almost too much to bear. But gradually, as her body relaxed, trepidation transformed into
white-hot pleasure, the sensation almost so powerful she could come right now.
“God, yes, Alek.” Her entire body wanted to groan out in raw, unadulterated lust.
Alek, his thick blond hair cascading over his shoulder in waves and framing his face, just slid out, then thrust back in a tiny bit faster.
How they fit together, Talia had no clue. Perhaps they were made for each other, not just emotionally, but anatomically as well.
Either way, the feel of his cock pressing into her, filling her from the inside out, was far past anything logical and blending with the supernatural, the inexplicable.
“Faster,” she whispered, and Alek moved into a slick rhythm that brought their bodies together in ever-increasing succession. Each withdrawal made her hungrier for him, made her need him more badly than the last.
Alek’s body seemed to glow with the exertion. And Talia’s own body, still riding the high from her previous releases, could somehow sense that he too was coming precariously close to the edge with her. A growing sense of wonder and excitement built in her with each motion as her senses tingled and her muscles twitched.
Then, with one more final motion where hip met hip and body met body and soul met soul, the intense buildup of everything exploded outward. She felt heat and electricity blast through like a whirlwind, and as she did, Alek grunted and came as well. Rigid jerks of his member spurred her orgasm even stronger. And as badly as she wanted to watch him go, it was hard to see with so many things going on inside.
So instead, she felt his release ebbing and flowing as if on the same wavelength as her. Finally, they were both spent, nothing more to give, nothing more to have, at least for the moment.
Alek slid out slowly, and Talia could feel her entire body relax all at once, as if heaving a heavy sigh of pleasurable relief. He disappeared into the bathroom for a moment and came right back to bed with her,
He said nothing. Yet the way he’d treated her, loved her, he didn’t have to. At least not right now. And when he leaned over to kiss her, she kissed him back, her heart swelling beyond capacity with emotion that she couldn’t quite understand.
But she didn’t need a PhD to know she was developing feelings for him. Deep ones, if she were honest with herself.
But she had no idea how to talk to him about it. How to ask what was in his heart. How to tell him she’d fallen too far.
So she just relaxed into his kiss and let the moment take her away.
Chapter 15
The next day, Talia could still feel the aftereffects of last night in her body as she relaxed against Alek’s chest in the back of a taxi on the way home.
It had been like a dream. A living dream that even now she didn’t want to wake up from.
Her phone dinged, and she pulled it out of her purse to glance at it, worrying it was Dr. Henrick.
Hey, made some discoveries. You might want to see them, her friend Iris sent.
Worry and excitement bubbled inside her at once, making her stomach churn. It sounded urgent.
What kinds of things? she texted back.
The kinds of things I wouldn’t try to explain over text…
Iris was always a straight shooter, not one to exaggerate small things. So even she must have found something big to be texting so cryptically.
“Is everything all right?” Alek asked, looking down at her.
“No. Well, yes. The results from yesterday are in. Iris wants me to take a look at them.”
“It seems urgent.”
“Can’t say for sure. Would it be okay if we took a short detour?” Talia asked, trying to ignore the pounding sensation her heart was making in her chest.
“Certainly. Whatever you want,” he said, the tiny grin on his lips present that only seemed to be there when he was looking directly at her.
She gave the address to the cab driver who thankfully knew his way around campus. A few minutes later, they were directly in the biology building.
“Her office is just inside. Do you want to come?”
Alek shook his head. “The scent of blood and other things in her workroom is a bit unsettling. But if you do need me, just call.” He waved his phone at her, and she couldn’t help feeling a bit of pride at his impressive use of tech in spite of where he’d been only a few days ago.
“Okay, I’ll just be a minute.” She hopped out of the cab, pulling her jacket around her, glad it was a weekend so the campus should be fairly empty and not draw attention to the fact she was still wearing her clothes from their date last night.
Thankfully, it was an incredibly short walk to Iris’s lab. And when Talia knocked on the door, Iris let her in immediately.
“Wow. Hot date, huh?” Iris remarked, sitting in her chair and already focused back on her computer screen full of numbers and graphs.
“Yes.”
“With the big guy? How hot?” The click-clack of her fingers on her keyboard filled the relative silence.
Talia didn’t respond, but her blush didn’t help protect her secrecy.
“Nice.” Iris glanced over at her, smiling with her mouth but not her eyes. “You deserve it, honestly. But…” She trailed off, again returning to the monitor.
“What did you find?”
“Take a look at this.” She turned the screen to face Talia, and she glanced at a long row of columns. In the middle was a column simply marked “Specimen A.”
“At first glance, his blood seems quite normal. Red blood cell count is good, higher than normal. Leukocytes are perfectly hardy. But compare that last graph to this—” She clicked a button, and a similar graph popped up, overlaid on it. All the bars, with one exception, showed changes in height.
“So his cells don’t replicate at abnormal speeds. That’s good.”
“No. They don’t die.” She clicked several more times, and more overlays appeared. “I put a sample of replicating cells extracted from his blood into several different environments. Ideal conditions, less-than-ideal conditions. Even straight-up toxic conditions. They’re resistant to practically everything.”
Another button click showed a graph with all bars set to zero, with the exception of specimen A, whose bar indicated an unchanging cell count.
“That’s at sub-zero temperatures,” Iris said, adjusting her glasses. “Not even cancer cells can survive those conditions. None but the hardiest of bacteria can, either.”
“So they’re invulnerable.” Talia’s brain was still trying to process everything. The world where she was a scientist, a professional, and the world where her fairy-tale love had appeared from nowhere were merging uncomfortably.
“Not necessarily. Mostly just to environmental stressors—heat, cold, et cetera. Especially cold. This morning, I tried intentionally killing some of the samples off just to see how they’d react.” She folded her arms as she spoke, staring intently at the screen as it illuminated her features. “It took extremely volatile vectors to even dent the cultures. I had to straight up pour acid in one of them. Even still, a few cells remained, and they’re recovering like nothing happened.”
“So even if they do die…?” Talia asked.
“They just bounce right back. But unlike most organisms that have the problem of overproducing, these just go back to a normal, homeostatic state and stop. As if to say, ‘Okay, this is enough cells, guys. We’re done here.’ Like they knew how many there were to begin with and are intent on just returning to ideally functioning levels.”
“So not just their environmental immunity, but also their regenerative capabilities are abnormal.”
“Talia, I’ve seen abnormal. This, it’s… It’s incredible. Straight up science fiction from a medical perspective.” Iris, whose disposition was usually as unflinching as her commitment to her vocation, appeared genuinely stunned.
Talia couldn’t believe it either. Granted, she was just a PhD student at a fairly unknown university. But the data spoke for itself.
Alek was no ordinary man.
Granted, she kind o
f suspected it ever since he’d emerged from a block of solid ice. But the more normal he’d acted, the closer they’d come together, the more the occurrence felt like a distant memory in her mind.
“Can we keep this between us just for now?” Talia asked, hands clasped together tightly.
“Of course,” Iris said earnestly. “You’re my friend. I wouldn’t want to do anything to hurt you or Alek.” She swayed back and forth a bit in her rotating office chair, looking pensive. “Besides, these are just preliminary results anyway. I don’t think anyone else would believe them if they saw them. It defies our current understandings of the way human bodies work.”
“What do you think this means?”
Iris laughed. “Didn’t they teach you the scientific method in Bio 101? You can’t go explaining results without context.”
Talia grinned at that.
“Honest answer. I don’t know,” Iris said. “And maybe the less we know, for now, the better. That is until we actually know something about Alek to give us context. Until then, my lips are sealed.”
“What will you do with the samples?”
“Keep a few on ice somewhere safe. Destroy the rest. I don’t want some undergrad stumbling into my work and letting this get out. But promise me you’ll be careful. We might be messing with things way above our pay grade here. Maybe even some secret government shit or something.”
Talia stood, grateful to have such a stellar friend. Iris stood, too, and they hugged for a moment.
“Also, you owe me details about last night,” Iris whispered conspiratorially.
Talia nodded, and she left the lab, the sight of Iris sitting and sighing to herself as she stared at the screen in consternation the last thing before the heavy door clicked closed.
Talia took a deep breath and counted to ten.
Did Alek even know he was special? Certainly, his bearing and overly aggrandized sense of self when he first awoke seemed to imply such. But right now, he was just… Alek. Alek, whose kisses lit her body on fire. Alek, whose blue eyes she could get lost in.
Alek, who arm wrestled an entire team of football players in their prime.
Lord of Winter Page 10
