It made sense that it didn’t take long. That it just abruptly burst through her like someone slamming a fist into her gut. She came close to doubling over—and probably would have done if he hadn’t been holding in her place. But as things stood she just had to lie there and take it, while telling him that she was coming, oh God she was coming, ohhhhh yeah don’t stop don’t stop.
He didn’t. He kept licking and lapping as she climaxed all over his face—a fact she knew she would feel embarrassed about in a bit. She’d probably also feel embarrassed about the way she was trying to rock against him, and the noises she was making, and the way she kept whispering dirty things at him without her own permission.
At one point, she was fairly sure she said, Yeah lick my clit.
But for right now she didn’t really care. He kept going until she was boneless, stripped of all shame and inhibitions. An actual laugh bubbled to her lips in the aftermath, and that touch she hadn’t dared came to her easily.
She simply reached out and ran her hand through his hair, as though it had always been that way between them. He randomly went down on her in the middle of a wrestling match, and then she blissed out, while stroking his head. All perfectly normal, perfectly fine, nothing wrong here.
And surprisingly, he seemed to back that assessment up. His expression nearly mirrored her own, when she finally dared to look at it. His eyes were hooded and filled with a kind of warm satisfaction. Then as she watched, he actually licked his lips. He licked them as if he wanted to savor the taste of her, all worries and doubts about any of this forgotten.
For a moment, at least.
For one perfect moment he seemed easy with everything and all was right with the world. He was going to fuck her now, she thought. Only it wasn’t going to be the kind of fuck she’d imagined before, in a blind panic. It was going to be like the kiss he’d just given to her cunt, all greedy and passionate and teasing. She could feel it in the way he was currently caressing her thigh—as though his fingertips were made of feathers—and in the smile that was almost on his lips, as he leaned down to her.
And then the alarm sounded and that smile faded as quickly as it had come. It seemed to slide off his face all in one sagging rush—though she could hardly fault him. The noise was so loud it seemed to shake the walls, and so abrupt she was almost winded for a second. His reaction was completely normal, she told herself.
But as he yanked himself up and into action—face a grim mask, every move too violent and too obviously angry with himself—the tale got a little harder to spin. That look on his face hadn’t been a natural response to a possible threat situation. It had been a realization, a terrible realization.
I almost let myself enjoy something, she suspected.
And was grateful she didn’t have time to despair.
She moved without thinking, without stopping to consider. Five years of training simply kicked in like a computer going into autopilot and she flew to the control room on feet that barely touched the ground. All thoughts of his ghastly expression fled and were replaced with a simple mantra—lockdown lockdown lockdown.
She didn’t have a choice. That alarm wasn’t for minor breaches of the perimeter, such as lost hikers or Girl Scouts selling cookies. It was for major breaches, life-threatening breaches, terrorism-based breaches. It meant an actual group of people had crossed into their grid, or that someone was moving in a very specific sort of threatening way—but that was okay.
She could deal with it. She could deal with anything. All she had to do was get to the control room and okay every security measure. Arm the stealth sentries, close the steel shutters, seal off all entrances and exits. They’d never get through, then.
Unless, of course, they were already in the house.
At first she couldn’t quite believe it. She stared at the red highlighted sector on the screen, sure she was just reading it wrong. A sudden breach like this just wasn’t possible. Any intruder would trigger a million different pressure points before hitting one that was right over her head. Even if they dropped in from fucking space there were sensors to detect them.
So what was happening here?
She had to be looking at the wrong section. She’d gotten things backward maybe…or flipped the framework onscreen somewhere. That wasn’t the house she was looking at. It was a car park seventeen miles from here.
Only she knew it wasn’t. Of course she knew it wasn’t. You didn’t learn a system inside and out like she had and suddenly forget how to read a simple blueprint. She just wanted things to be that way. Better that than some fucking maniac slithering through the ventilation system above her head.
And Sergei seemed to agree. She activated her earpiece for the first time since she’d gotten here and informed him of the situation, and he responded with all the incredulity she’d been feeling a moment earlier.
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”
But with about twenty percent more tight-lipped panic. In fact, if she was being honest, it kind of sounded like fifty percent more. This strange calm had settled over her body and was currently rooting her to the spot. Her own voice was an odd monotone, and she hadn’t yet lifted her gaze from the screen.
Sergei, on the other hand, was a different story. “Get out of there now,” he barked, as though his main concern wasn’t securing the labs, or arming himself, or even rooting the intruder out.
His main concern was her.
His main concern was something she hadn’t even registered yet—what if the intruder burst through here, now? What if he fired through the ceiling? After all, it was the first instinct she had. As soon as the idea of someone bursting through occurred, she went for the nearest weapon. She kept a pulse gun under her desk for just such purposes, and once she had it in her hands she aimed at the place the red dot onscreen was indicating.
Of course she was sweating as she did it. She could taste the tang of it on her upper lip, and feel the prickle of it beneath her arms. Nerves were getting the better of her, no matter how slowly she tried to breathe, or how deliberately she moved. She took one careful step back to avoid the intruder’s potential fire, but was so on edge the feel of the wall kind of jolted her.
She almost turned around to see who she’d blundered into, which seemed like a ridiculously stupid thing to do. It wasn’t like her at all, no not at all. She was a strong, focused sort of person…who suddenly couldn’t fire through a ceiling tile. She couldn’t, she couldn’t. More than that, in fact.
She didn’t want to.
Oh God, she didn’t want to.
She aimed the weapon and suddenly saw the bloody hole she’d made the last time she’d fired a gun. Just give us the clone, he’d said, and then she’d killed him. They’d just wanted to help her, and she’d killed him. And apparently, the direct result of this was a terrible inability to shoot an intruder.
He’s just come to set them free, she thought.
And simply couldn’t do it. Maybe she’d never be able to do it again. She was next to useless now, crippled by feelings she barely understood. Burned by the events in the desert forever, to the point where someone had to come and help her. He’s going to sweep you into his arms, her mind whispered, and suddenly she was sweating harder. Her heart was kind of pounding, only it wasn’t out of fear. She could hear Sergei’s boots on the stairs, as loud as the alarm, as loud as thunder, louder still. He was supposed to be stealthy in situations like this, but he wasn’t being.
He was running to her as if his life depended on it.
She knew he was, even though she did her best to deny it. He’s just focused on the intruder and the ramifications for the mission, she told herself as he screamed in her ear for her to exit the room immediately. He barely sounded human anymore, and when he finally burst into her lair his expression backed this assessment up.
For a moment she was sure he wanted to kill her. He didn’t give a damn about the intruder. She was dead wrong about that. He just wanted to grab her and squeeze
until her head popped off like a champagne cork. His hands were shaking. His whole body was shaking. She almost fired the gun out of fear of him, rather than the more reasonable fear of an intruder.
But thankfully, he put that option out of commission. His first action was to blast the fuck out of the ceiling with what looked like a C77 pulse rifle—more typically used for downing aircraft than eliminating a single intruder. Plaster disintegrated and dust vaporized in a single burst of energy, so bright and brutal she almost marveled.
And then the static-crackle cleared to reveal sunlight, and she did marvel.
Though perhaps marvel was the wrong word.
He’d not only blown a hole in the ceiling of the second floor, he’d blown one through the roof above the third too. They now had a skylight, with non-optional exposure to the elements. After a moment it actually started to rain a little bit through the massive gaping wound he’d delivered to their home, so really her reaction was more of a what the fucking fuck.
She gawped at him, unable to adequately express how crazy he’d just been. All the possible things she wanted to say had to be squeezed into her eyebrows and her frown and her eyes. Her eyes felt as if they were trying to burn holes in him, and that was before they discovered what he’d just nuked.
It wasn’t an intruder.
It wasn’t even a person.
A raccoon had gotten trapped in the ventilation system.
Chapter Eight
He didn’t wait for her to finally speak. He didn’t even acknowledge the bits of animal that were currently all over the floor. The moment he became sensible that he’d just done something she would definitely want to discuss, he went for the exit. He practically stormed for the exit. If the door had been closed, she felt pretty sure he would have bashed his way through it. His boots sounded as if they were trying to kill the floorboards as he stomped out.
However, there was one tiny problem with this escaping strategy. Whereas before he’d managed it because she was willing to let him…here she was not. She wasn’t sure if she’d ever be willing again. Enough was enough, man. He’d just blown a fucking hole through the roof. He’d just run to her like some love-ravaged hero in a movie about crossing oceans of time to be with someone.
She had to speak to him now, and she was going to follow him until he agreed. No cooling-off period. No chickening out. She matched him step for step down the hall—or as close as she could come to matching those immense strides—then rocketed down the stairs right after him. He was picking up speed and going for the door, she was absolutely certain of it, so when he abruptly turned she almost jerked backward. In truth, she almost jerked right onto her ass.
Having Sergei suddenly about-face and loom over you was not a comforting thing. It was an intensely nerve-wracking thing—one that definitely warranted a startled reaction. And to top it off, he still looked absolutely furious. His eyes were laser beams, searing strips off her body. There were all these weird lines between his brows, and after a moment she recognized them as a frown.
Plus, his massive fists were clenched. They were so tightly clenched she was starting to worry about his hands. Could you turn your palms to paste just by squeezing really hard? If so, he was going to make a fortune on the liquidized body parts market. He seemed to be working on pulping his teeth too, which meant another excellent source of profit.
Though his words kind of suffered, she had to say.
It sounded as if he were trying to talk through a vise.
“I don’t want to discuss this,” he said, only it came out dint went ter hissuss siss. She had to translate the meaning based on the rest of him—which wasn’t that hard. He practically had a sign pinned to his front that stated the same thing.
But she persevered. She had to persevere.
He’d just blown a hole in the roof.
“I think at this point we kind of have to.”
“No we don’t. We don’t have to discuss anything. There was a threat, and I wasn’t paying attention, and then you were almost killed by an intruder. I think that sums everything up, case closed.”
“Whoa whoa whoa hold the fucking phone.”
She held her hands up, just to emphasize how much the phone needed to be held.
Was he serious? He couldn’t be serious.
“I said case closed.”
Oh God he was serious.
“So let me get this straight. You think that you somehow did not pay enough attention to a raccoon in the ventilation systems, and that this caused me to almost die. Am I hearing that correctly? Because I kind of want to believe that I’ve gone deaf.”
“That’s not what I’m saying and you know it. You’re just twisting everything around to make my legitimate concerns look as bizarre as possible,” he said, only she could tell how little he believed what he was saying. His voice aimed for how dare you, and hit something like I have no idea why I’m claiming bullshit like this.
He even pointed his finger in a funny, unconvincing sort of way. The tip curled in on itself as he made the attempt, as though the tip was ashamed of this ruse he was perpetuating. It knew he was being an idiot, even as the rest of him tried to deny it.
“So you’re not blaming yourself for my possible untimely demise at the hands of a large rodent?” she asked, and now his finger was practically on backward.
But he kept trying, anyway.
She suspected he’d keep trying until his whole hand dropped off.
“I didn’t know it was nothing. I thought it was something. It should have been something—for God’s sake that alarm’s not supposed to sound for a fucking animal.”
“All right. Fine. Let’s say it was a person. What on earth do you think you were supposed to do? What do you think you could have done differently?”
He took a breath. A really hard, I need-this-to-marshal-my-thoughts sort of breath.
“I could have noticed the threat before you were…you were in danger,” he said, and now she had to go full sarcasm. He left her with no choice, just no choice at all.
“My apologies. I didn’t realize you had psychic powers.”
“Oh it’s impossible to explain this to you,” he said, only he didn’t just say it at all. He snarled, and threw his hands up, and generally did his best to make her the one at fault in this situation. And in truth, maybe she was. Maybe she shouldn’t have gone with that drawling, rolly-eyed response.
She should have gone with this one, instead.
“You haven’t even tried. You’ve never even tried. There are so many, many things that I just don’t understand about you at all and every time I’ve tried to ask about them you just cut me off. You walk away.”
“I don’t walk away.”
“No, you’re right. You run. Sometimes literally.”
“I have good reason to.”
“Do you?” she asked, and though she tried to rein in the incredulity in her voice it was there just the same. It was more than there, in truth. It took over her whole body, and spat out words she didn’t intend. “Dear God, what are you so afraid of?”
“That I’ll fuck up again.”
He meant to reply angrily again, she could see. But somehow on the way to the words his voice dropped. It lost all its heft and emerged so faint she could hardly hear it. Maybe she didn’t want to hear it. The sudden wind-dying tone was bad enough on its own. Accepting the words themselves was near heartbreaking.
It made her voice come out funny, for reasons she couldn’t explain.
“I don’t know what your first fuck-up was. But if it’s anything like this one, you should probably know…there was nothing you could have done differently here. Oh honey you’ve got to know that there was nothing you could have done differently,” she said, surprised by her wavering tone and that one weird word, honey.
But the bigger surprise was his response. It was his sudden fierceness, stripped of all confusion and doubt for one glorious moment. And it was his words, spilled out in a pneumatic rush that she c
ould hardly keep track of.
“Of course I could have done things differently. I could stop fucking thinking about you and obsessing over you and fucking wanting you for just long enough to do my fucking job—that’s what I could do differently.”
He paused, then—which was good, because she needed one. He needed one. His voice was galloping away with itself, suddenly saying things that he barely seemed to understand and she definitely didn’t know how to hear.
And there was more, oh Lord, more was coming.
“Have you any idea what every day here is like for me? I can’t eat, I can’t focus, I can’t sleep. I spend my nights frozen in one position, afraid to move in case I accidentally do all the things I really, really want to do. I want to do them so much that just having you look at me is a kind of torture. Just being near you, just getting a hint of that maddening marzipan scent that’s all over your hair—”
He seemed to realize he’d said too much with the hair thing. But if she was being honest, he’d probably said too much around the word “stop”. Maybe even further back than that, in truth. If he’d reined himself in around “of course” she might have been able to carry on breathing and living and thinking. She wouldn’t have been clutching at herself now, and he wouldn’t have had to wear an expression best called oh fuck.
And he wouldn’t have had to register all this, in slow motion.
“You didn’t know any of this, did you?”
He thought she’d known this?
How?
How?
“Are you okay? Should I…get you a chair?”
Well, his consideration was nice at least.
It didn’t help, but it was nice.
“No, I think I can stay standing,” she said finally. Then once she’d gotten her courage, she went for more. There had to be more. “That may be because I’ve turned to stone, however. Good God, why didn’t you tell me any of this? I’ve spent most of my time here thinking you kind of hated me.”
“I don’t hate you. I just…I just want to do my job. I’ve made mistakes in the past because I wasn’t clearheaded enough, and I don’t want that to happen here. If it happened here I think I’d die inside. I’m already dying inside.”
Almost Real Page 9
