Lex Talionis

by Keira Michelle Telford

  For a second, while he’s there, fawning over her belly, Silver allows herself to enjoy the illusion that everything’s okay. Then, she sees the cogs turning in his mind.

  “Hang on”—he withdraws—“what do you mean she doesn’t have a choice?”

  “She’s a Delta.” Silver slides a hand over her stomach, still getting used to the idea that there’s a tiny human in there. “Our baby is a Delta.”

  “Seriously?” Alex’s grin widens. “Shit, Silver. This fixes everything.”

  “How?”

  He wriggles out of his pajama pants and climbs on top of her. “We don’t have to worry about transferring the infection.”

  “Alex, what are you doing?”

  He starts kissing her neck. “Things can be back the way they were.”

  “Give it up.” She smacks his shoulder halfheartedly. “Stop.”

  He doesn’t.

  Far from stopping, in fact, he reaches between her legs and starts touching her over her underwear, tickling his fingers over her clit, teasing her starved flesh.

  “I said stop.” She wraps her hand around his wrist, but fails to push him away.

  He still doesn’t do as he’s told. He tugs her camisole up and exposes her breasts, quickly sucking one of her nipples into his mouth.

  Losing her resolve, she whimpers. She can feel his erection pressed between them, bumping and rubbing against her cleft, and she wants him. The need is so great that when he gropes for her hand and drags it down below the covers to play with him, she voices no objection. His firm cock feels good, like his fingers do inside her.

  “You’re so wet.” He probes every possible inch. “I need to fuck you.”

  He pulls back and grasps her undies, but …

  “No.” Silver halts him. “We’re not doing this.”

  “Yes, we are.” He yanks her undies off, preparing to mount her. “There’s no reason not to. Not anymore.”

  “Stop!” Silver pushes on his shoulders, preventing him from leaning over her. “I said no!”

  “We need this, Silver.” He engulfs her small hands in his fists and manipulates her like a doll, spreading her legs despite her protests. “We can be a proper couple again.”

  “Alex, please don’t.” She gives him one last chance to do the right thing of his own volition, but her plea falls on deaf ears.

  Pinning her arms to the pillow, he gets lined up and rams himself into her, groaning at the sensation of her hot, wet sex wrapped tight around his swollen cock.

  “It’s been so long.” He closes his eyes and holds himself still inside her, willing himself not to unload already. “I can never make it last with you the first time.”

  Silver stops wriggling for a moment, but only because she can see the look of concentration on his face and she doesn’t want him to accidentally spill. She’s aware that she’s clamping down on him, her tensed muscles squeezing him like a vise, and she tries to relax. The sooner he gains control of himself, the sooner she can safely put an end to it.

  “God, you’re hot like fire.” He starts to move.

  That’s her cue.

  Ready to evict him from her body, she lifts her legs up to get her feet beneath him. Of course, when she does that, he thinks she’s inviting him deeper.

  “Fuck, yes!” He starts to thrust harder.

  Urging her body not to respond to him, she plants her feet flat against his chest and shoves him backwards, forcing him out of her.

  “I told you to stop!”

  He slumps back on his heels, his slick cock refusing to give up hope of release.

  “What’s your problem?” He runs his hands through his hair, exasperated. “Why are you being like this?”

  “You know what my problem is. I don’t want to be a Taint, Alex, and if any of your bodily fluids get into my bloodstream, it’ll fuck everything up.”

  “So what am I supposed to do? Lie here next to my wife every night and keep my hands to myself?”

  “I guess so.”

  “What kind of relationship is that?”

  “I don’t know, but what did you expect? You wanted it this way.”

  “Yes, I did, and I was fine with the fact that I’d have to keep it in my pants during your pregnancy—I really was. But if our baby’s not at risk …” He ruffles his hair again. “I didn’t think staying married to you meant taking a vow of goddamn celibacy.”

  “You know what? You’re being a dick again.” Silver reclaims her underwear and gets out of bed. “I’m not staying here with you.”

  “Where are you gonna go?”

  “Anywhere but here.” She pulls on her pants, grabs a shirt, and heads for the door.

  “Say hi to Luka for me.”

  Silver flashes him a sour look over her shoulder, but doesn’t waste her breath by offering a response.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Alex wakes not long after dawn and feels an immediate wave of disappointment course through him. He’d half hoped to find Silver lying next to him, having returned sneakily to bed sometime during the night. But no such luck. There’s no sign of her, and her pillow hasn’t been disturbed.

  Pulling on a pair of pants and swiping a t-shirt, he wastes no time in rising to look for her. Unfortunately, the first person he finds in the sunny courtyard is Linx. She spots him from two hundred yards away and dashes over to him, carrying a bowl of freshly picked and washed grapes.

  “Morning!”

  She’s bubbly and excited, eager to engage him in more conversation, but he doesn’t have the time or patience for pleasantries.

  “Have you seen my wife?”

  “Uh-huh. She’s been up since dawn.”

  “Where?”

  “She volunteered to go with the morning bait team, checking the traps and snares to see if we caught anything yummy overnight. Your friend went with her.”

  “Luka?” Alex feels the need to set her straight. “He’s not my friend.”

  “Well, he and your wife seem quite close.”

  Whether or not she’s saying that deliberately to rile him, Alex isn’t sure, but he’s riled anyway. Across the courtyard, Silver and Luka return with the bait team, carrying a few dead rabbits and a squirrel. They’re laughing and joking, playfully jostling one another, completely oblivious to his simmering jealousy.

  “How did you sleep?” Linx makes another bid for his attention.

  “Okay, I guess.” He cracks his shoulders.

  Biting slowly on a grape, Linx ogles his bare chest and arms. “You’re in such good shape.” She reaches out and gropes his biceps. “I bet you have a lot of stamina.”

  She doesn’t get to feel him up for long, as he finally puts on the t-shirt he brought with him, but the inappropriate conduct is protracted enough that Silver gets an eyeful of it. Perhaps that was the point.

  “Oh, that’s nice,” she comments sarcastically, dishing herself up some porridge from a communal pot hanging above a low fire.

  “What’s he doing?” Luka puts on his best disapproving face, utterly astonished that Alex appears to be flirting with someone other than Silver.

  “Punishing me.”

  Luka nabs his own bowl of porridge and follows Silver to a picnic table. “For what? Emptying animal traps with me? Honestly, if I was trying to seduce you, I think I could do a little better than that. We weren’t even alone.”

  “He’s pissed because I walked out on him last night.”

  “Shit.” Luka wasn’t expecting that. “Where did you go?”

  “I spent the night with Aiden’s horse, Fitch.”

  “You slept in a barn?” He sniffs her alfalfa scented hair. “That explains a lot.”

  “It seemed marginally less irresponsible than sharing your bed.”

  “What did he do that made you so upset?”

  “He tried it on with me.”

  Luka waits for more, but that’s all she’s willing to divulge.

  “That’s it? He asked you for sex, you said no, then you storme
d off?”

  “He should know better. Apparently, though, it came as a surprise to him that I didn’t want to be reinfected, and he had a little trouble taking no for an answer.”

  Luka fishes a condom out of his pocket. “Would this help?”

  Silver scowls at him. “Remind me again why, in that little backpack of belongings you brought with you from Amaranthe, you felt the need to pack condoms?”

  “Better safe than sorry.”

  Silver rolls her eyes. “Put it away.”

  “You don’t want it?”

  “I wouldn’t let him put his dick inside me even if he put a cork in it and covered it with a vulcanized rubber sock.” She plays with her porridge and glances up at Alex, finding him sitting with Linx at another table. “Whatever Linx smelled on you yesterday, he probably reeks of it today.”

  Truthfully, the thought of that makes Silver slightly nervous. If Linx’s olfactory ability really is that sensitive, she’ll be able to tell that the lingering scent of his seminal fluid—assuming he completed the task alone—isn’t commingled with her own bodily fluids.

  She’ll know they didn’t have intercourse. Well, not much of it anyway. She’ll know Alex wanted to—that he was aroused and eager to perform—and she’ll know he was forced to jerk himself off in order to get some relief before bed. Moreover, she’ll know that he’s virile. She’ll know he has a healthy sexual appetite that’s not being adequately met by his wife, and she’ll be able to use that to her advantage.

  “You could’ve given him a hand-job,” Luka muses. “That’d temporarily dull the craving.”

  “You think he’d be satisfied with that?” She arches an eyebrow. “Would you be satisfied with that? We’re not kids anymore, Luka. A hand-job doesn’t cut it when you’re used to having …” She sighs, thinking twice about the direction of the conversation. “It’s a slippery slope, that’s all.”

  “Not necessarily. He probably only wants to feel close to you, Silver.”

  “Yeah? Well, I don’t trust him. I don’t trust myself, and we’ve been down this road before. Years ago, when the Hunter Division was giving us a hard time—spouting the usual bullshit about prohibited liaisons—we called our whole relationship off.”

  “Really? I never knew that.”

  “It was short-lived. We made it a few days without physical contact, then it all went to hell. One minute we were on border patrol together, sitting outside the city gates in our truck, keeping an eye out for Chimera. The next thing I know, he’s got a massive erection, and he convinces me to stroke him off so that he can concentrate.”

  “Did you do it?”

  “Of course I did it. But you know what? It didn’t help.”

  Silver’s body tingles at the memory. She recalls seeing the bulge in his pants, his swelling erection pressed tight against his clothing. As the night went on—his erection persistent—he’d begged her to give him some release. Just a hand-job, he’d said, so that he’d be able to get it out of his system. In any case, he had to take it out. His clothing was pinching and confining, and it was getting painful.

  When he finally set it free, he let out a sigh of relief. He said he needed to come. It’d been days since his last release, and his balls were so full they ached. It wouldn’t take long, he assured her, lightly stroking the shaft, coaxing it to swell more.

  Silver couldn’t help but look at it. The large vein on the underside was pulsing, the purple head swollen, a drip of fluid appearing on the tip. It aroused her; she couldn’t deny it. He sighed again when she wrapped her fingers around him, holding his fat cock in her palm.

  She wanted to make him come. She wanted to feel his big dick throb and pulse and unload.

  It squelched in her hand, his excitement oozing down the head onto the shaft and squishing through her fingers, and that must’ve felt good because he closed his eyes and moaned. He moaned again a few seconds later, and looked down in time to watch the first jet of white liquid spurt from the head and land on the console. Three more followed, until he was spent and his cock began to wilt, and he was satisfied … temporarily.

  The next day, a hand-job turned into a blowjob. He didn’t want to make a mess, he’d said, so she took his load in her mouth. Within a week, they were screwing like a couple of horny teenagers.

  He’d be fully engorged already by the time they stopped the truck, the anticipation of coitus making his cock throb expectantly. No sooner were they at a standstill and she’d scramble out of her pants while he unbuckled his belt, pulling his eager erection free.

  Without any exchange of words, she’d straddle his lap and lower herself down over his rigid shaft, taking him all the way inside her. Once he was buried up to the hilt, she’d hold onto his shoulders and rock her pelvis back and forth, grinding herself down on top of him.

  He wouldn’t last long. The first fuck of the night was always quick. He’d release in minutes, clutching her ass and yanking her tight against him. When it was over, they’d get back to work.

  For a little while anyway.

  Inevitably, he’d soon feel himself getting hard again, and he’d drag her into the back of the truck. Desperate to be inside her, he’d drop his pants and take her right there on the floor. He’d ram his cock into her in one swift stroke, fucking her hard and deep—his rhythm tireless and relentless—till she’d come all over him, her body contracting around him, milking him deep inside her …

  Suddenly realizing that she’s intensely aroused, Silver returns her focus to her porridge, forcing herself to eat the tasteless goop because she knows it’s healthy.

  “How are you gonna keep him happy if you don’t want to have sex with him?” Luka asks, finishing the last of his breakfast, seemingly unaware of her excited passions.

  “Are you not listening?” She flicks his ear. “I do want to have sex with him—that’s the trouble.” She takes another peek at Alex, still chatting with Linx. “And it looks like I’m not the only one.”

  Hoping to distract her from Alex’s childish attempt to provoke her, Luka directs her attention to a pair of men sitting beside the communal campfire.

  “Are those the guys Honey picked to go with us? They look like they’re waiting for something to happen.”

  One of them is Mason, and the other man, Silver assumes, is Bold. He’s in his thirties, kinda blonde, kinda short, kinda nondescript. He has a goatee, shoulder-length curly hair, and one wandering eye.

  “I guess so.” Silver sighs, unimpressed. “I’m gonna go find out what, if anything, they know how to do. If they can tie their own shoelaces, I’ll be truly impressed.”

  As she walks across the courtyard, Linx darts up from the picnic table she’s been seated at with Alex and rushes toward her.

  “Hey!” She zips in front of her and cuts her off. “I want to come with you to Manchester.”

  “No.” Silver pushes her aside.

  “Why not?” Linx cuts in front of her again. “I’m good with an arrow.” She’s cocky, and full of attitude. “You know I am.”

  Silver glares at her. “Why’d you shoot me?”

  “I thought you were a Taint.”

  “No, you didn’t.” Silver keeps glaring, doesn’t even blink, and asks Linx again: “Why’d you really shoot me?”

  Linx doesn’t answer.

  “Let me tell you why you shot me, then.” Silver folds her arms. “You saw an attractive man with violet eyes walking through the forest, and your undies got a bit damp. Instead of shooting him, which might have had the unfortunate side effect of making him crabby and not in the least bit amiable, you thought you’d shoot one of his traveling companions instead. How am I doing so far?”

  Linx sucks in her cheeks and pouts.

  “Miserable bit of bad luck for you that the person you shot ended up being his pregnant wife.” Silver moves her aside again. “Now get lost, and keep your hormonal Taint paws off my husband, or I’ll break you like china doll. Clear?”

  She doesn’t care to stick ar
ound for a response. She turns her back on Linx and strides up to Mason and Bold, getting straight down to business.

  In short order, she establishes that both men have been to Manchester before, but only Mason has had dealings with Slade. He was there when Tomkin was taken, and that’s why Honey chose him: so he can redeem himself. From what she’s able to ascertain regarding Bold, it seems he was picked purely because he’s Tomkin’s closest friend and he knows the terrain well, but he has no combat experience—neither of them does.

  “Have either of you ever fired a gun?” Silver despairs.

  Bold has. Once. By accident.

  Frustrated, she looks around the courtyard on the off-chance that she might spot somebody—anybody—who looks more capable than either Bold or Mason, and she finds Carmen sitting alone at a picnic bench, chowing down on her breakfast of porridge.

  She slides onto the bench beside the sullen young girl. “So are you a cop or what?”

  “I’m not anything.” Carmen continues eating.

  “How about before you left London?” Silver pulls back Carmen’s jacket, revealing her gun. “You look like a cop, and I know the Crown Prosecution Service has something to do with law enforcement.”

  “I was a Magistrate,” Carmen says with her mouth full. “A glorified bounty hunter, that’s all.”

  “How interesting.” Silver shuffles closer, smiling. “I was a bounty hunter for a while.”

  Carmen eyes the strange foreigner suspiciously, scraping the dregs of porridge out of her bowl.

  “You know what this means?” Silver carries on. “That’s a second thing we have in common.” She waggles two fingers in the air. “Do you wanna come and play with me?”

  Carmen shakes her head. “I’m not in the mood for games.”

  “Indulge me.”

  Silver hauls her up by the scruff of her neck and drags her over to the shooting range. She takes out her gun, plants Carmen a decent number of paces away from one of the colorful, freestanding target boards, and shoves the gun into her hands.

  “Hit the bullseye.”

  Carmen yawns, pushing the gun back at her. “No. I don’t want to.”