by Rena Marks
He pushed another finger inside her, and suddenly it became too much. The orgasm wasn’t there and then suddenly it began, ripping through her on a loud, needy moan as it tossed her body against him. Involuntarily she bucked, riding the edges of her storm with his finger deep inside her. She cried out his name, and he groaned hers in return, grinding between her thighs as if watching her climax was pushing him to the edge and he couldn’t control his own response.
He moved suddenly and his mouth brushed against hers. He was pure masculine energy, yet his muscles trembled under her touch. He shifted his hips and moved between her thighs until the hard length of his trapped cock rubbed against the seam of her underwear as she spread her thighs wide to make room for him. Oh, God, it felt so good, to know he was right there within reach. Robyn wrapped her arms around his neck, clinging to him. His mouth never left hers.
His hands cupped her breasts and squeezed. She moaned against his tongue.
Steele tore his mouth away from hers to break the kiss. She opened her eyes. There was something wild-looking about his eyes at that moment. Passion flashed through them. Eyes were the window into someone’s soul—she believed that—and his were promising hot, delicious sex.
His hand left her thigh and gently pressed between her breasts. He pushed her flat on her back down over the mattress.
His hands gripped her hips and tugged her closer to him until she was bared, splayed out to his view. He slid his palms upward, heat against her ribs, the bottom curve of her hips, her nipples as they pebbled against the heel of his hand. His heated gaze lowered.
“Beautiful,” he rasped. “But this is in my way.”
She gasped when he gripped the skirt and dragged it over her hips, leaving her completely naked.
Robyn panted a little as he leaned forward, cupped her breasts again with his bare hands and his mouth opened over her nipple. He sucked it into his mouth and she felt his teeth clamp down on the skin around the taut tip. He didn’t hurt her, but he had a good grip. His tongue started to slide across her nipple, and he sucked on her harder. Robyn gasped. It felt as if her breast and her clit were connected by an invisible link, leaving pleasure in two different places. Her fingers slid into his thick, black hair. She breathed his name, “Steele...love me. Please.”
He growled as he slowly released her breast when he lifted his head. Their gazes met. He reached up, and his fingers encircled her wrists to tug her hands free from his hair. She let go and was stunned when he jerked them up to lift her arms above her head, locking them there.
“Keep them there.”
She nodded. He broke eye contact with her to travel the length of her body spread out in front of him. His hands gripped her knees, and he nudged them, indicating that he wanted her to release him. She freed his hips and he lifted her legs straight up against his chest and spread them enough to brace them at his shoulders.
He reached down, and she heard his zipper rasp as he opened his pants. His gaze held hers. “I don’t care what anyone says. You’re mine. You’ll always belong to me,” he rasped. “I don’t care about our differences. I don’t care that you were my doctor. All I care about is you’re the mother of my child.”
She nodded. There was no argument from her. His finger traced the seam of her pussy, and the light brush melted her nerve endings. She knew she was soaked from her recent climax. He danced his finger higher to play with her clit. She moaned as he rubbed small circles around the pearl of flesh.
“Steele...” she begged.
“Tell me you’re mine.”
“I’m yours, baby.”
She’d always be his. She was reveling in the raw pleasure he gave. She wanted to touch him, but he wanted her to keep her arms above her head. It was almost torture and her legs tensed, unable to take much more.
“Please?”
One of his arms locked across her legs to pin them against his chest and his gaze lowered between them to stare between her legs. She squirmed, open and exposed and naughty all at the same time. He adjusted his hips until the head of his cock pressed against her bare skin. The feel of him entering her body broke her focus on his face, and she threw her head back. Inch by inch he entered her body, letting her feel every glorious movement. Once he was buried in her depths, he paused for a brief second, and he began to fuck her in long, firm strokes.
She moaned and could only feel the drive of his cock and him continuing to play with her clit. The overwhelming urge to release burned her from the inside out.
“Faster,” she urged.
He growled. “No, baby. I’m in control.”
Her wrists twisted, and she clawed at the wooden surface of the headboard. Steele suddenly thrust into her a little deeper and rocked his hips at a faster pace. He massaged her clit to match. The sounds that came from him were a mixture of excitement and pain.
“Come for me,” he ordered in a harsh voice. “Now. I can’t hold back.”
He pressed a little harder against her clit, the sensation demanding, and Robyn screamed out his name as she exploded. Her vaginal muscles convulsed from the force of her climax.
Steele threw back his head. A roar came from him that drowned out everything. His hips ground against her as he jerked with each jet of semen he shot into her.
Robyn panted as she tried to recover and kept her eyes closed as Steele eased her legs down. His hand slid away from her clit, and he gripped her thighs, rubbing the skin. His body settled over hers and he kept them connected by refusing to withdraw his cock from her body.
She opened her eyes and stared deeply into the depths of his eyes just inches from her own, so different from hers. Would their baby have his eyes or hers? His hot breath fanned her lips and she loved the smile he gave her. Her hands moved to cup his face. He turned his head a little to press tighter against her palm.
“That was amazing.”
His lips brushed across hers but he didn’t deepen the kiss. “You’re so sexy, Robyn. I can’t get enough of you. I was careful not to be rough.”
“It was fine. I’m pregnant, not a china doll.”
He braced his arms on the bed next to her, caging her in his hold. “This is unprecedented. I may be more relaxed if there’s a second one.”
“Remember not to mention another pregnancy while I’m in labor,” she smiled. “It won’t go over well.”
He grinned back, a groove cutting a slight indentation on the side of his cheek. “It’s still the middle of the workday, and I stole you away.”
She gasped. “We were supposed to talk to Beast and Sunny, remember? I forgot about her.” She winced.
“It’s to be expected,” he said. “Besides, the humans are unaware, but the others know you have a lot on your plate right now.”
“One day I may get used to that telepathic communication,” she said, kissing him and rolling over to grab discarded clothing. She smoothed out the wrinkles in her skirt. “I need to get back to the office,” she said, laughing as she tossed his shirt to him. “I had wanted to do a little research to see how this may have happened between us before Sunny arrives. Hopefully, she’ll be late enough for me to iron out a few details.”
“Beast distracted us.”
“You distracted us. It was so worth it.” She smiled, leaning over the bed to kiss his lips.
“I’ll send her a message to get to you when she can. I think she’s exploring the outer buildings.”
“I love you. Daddy.”
“I love you as well. Momma.”
Chapter Four
Robyn hunched over her computer, the door to her office wide open so she could pay attention to the happenings in the hall. A small movement caught her attention. Amanda stood watching, her normally sleek hair messy. Robyn hid a small smile. Amanda had obviously spent some quality time with Renegade while she was with Steele.
“What are you doing?” Amanda asked.
“Researching how long a gestation is for the Essassani breed.”
“Essassani? Do y
ou have them mixed up with someone else? They haven’t been able to breed in eons. They reproduced by cloning.”
“Yes. But what if they’re half human? The human DNA would enable them to breed.”
“How would you know? It’s an untested theory.” Robyn could see when the truth hit Amanda. “Oh, my God. You’re pregnant?”
Robyn nodded. “In an unverified—kind of undignified—way. Eclipse sniffed me.”
Amanda squealed, throwing her arms around Robyn’s neck. “Congratulations! We’ll take such good care of you. It’ll be the best pregnancy ever. Don’t you worry about a thing. I’ll be the only one peering into your vagina.”
Robyn rolled her eyes. “It does make me realize we’re low on medical staff. We only have you.”
“Yes, but I have trustworthy friends who may want to help out. Just like I found us a security team. They’re on their way here. I wanted them to be available for our monthly meeting, to see everyone and get a feel as to whether or not they could live here.”
“I guess it helps to have friends in high places.”
“Iota Nine, baby. The highest city there is.” Amanda leaned back.
“Are any of them geneticists? Because that’s where it really gets tricky. Especially now.”
“The dark DNA?” Amanda stared at the hologram Robyn had been studying.
“Yes. Not only has it been established that humans have dark DNA, or basically DNA that’s invisible—we have no idea where it came from—but the Xeno Sapiens are human and other. Now we have double dark spots.”
“Twenty percent of the human genome is unaccounted for. So if the Xeno Sapiens also have an additional twenty percent unaccounted for—“
“In some cases,” Robyn said, squinting and rubbing at her tired eyes. “Some of the Xenos are more human than others. They would have varying degrees of dark DNA. Not necessarily forty percent. There’s no way to account for simple math.”
“My God. So there’s no way to track how much?”
“No. At the time, it was for the best to destroy all records out there. That was the only way to make sure Crested Ute would never create genetically altered humans again. But the what if haunts my dreams.”
“What do you mean?”
“We ran with the theory of what if Crested Ute was done creating them. But what if they weren’t? What if they’d already created other batches? What if they’re hiding them in another underground lab somewhere?”
“Oh God, Robyn. Our best hope is they can’t revive anyone alone. It took your hacking into old files to manage it. That and the cyborg chip they placed in their brains.”
“The Xeno Sapiens are a fluke that should never have happened. Yet they did. We were lucky in discovering the Quinteah they produce. What if the Crested Ute scientists get lucky?”
“We were more lucky than we knew when we injected it into their damaged brains. It worked like a super-hormone, correcting previously broken pathways. But there’s no way the scientists could have known that.”
“But we again plunder into the unknown. Here I am, having a baby without any of the answers.” With a grimace, Robyn swept out with an arm and dissolved the holograms she’d spread out, layered on top of one another for study.
Amanda covered her hand. “Sometimes, we need to stop being doctors and computer wizards and let nature take its course. Robyn, you wouldn’t have gotten pregnant if it wasn’t a miracle that was meant to be. This pregnancy will be fine. Stop worrying. Each Xeno Sapien is a miracle. This baby is a tiny miracle, too.”
Robyn clasped her fingers. “Thank you. You’re right. I need to get out of my head.”
“How’s Steele?”
“Calm and placid. He’s my rock.”
“Then what are you doing out here?” She sounded perplexed.
“Waiting for Sunny. She’s due at any time, so I thought I’d get a bit of research done while I waited for her.”
“Do you mind if I hang out with you both?”
“Of course not,” Robyn smiled. “It’s just like old times. Minus the lab and the creepy dungeon techs.”
“Sometimes it feels like a dream, doesn’t it?”
Robyn didn’t mention that sometimes she felt terrified as if she might wake. That perhaps they were still in the dungeon, and Amanda had just injected the Quinteah into her skull, and this whole past few weeks was a farfetched delusion she’d drummed up while unconscious.
Sometimes she wanted to pinch herself.
This was exactly what they were dealing with concerning all the Xeno Sapiens. Dreams and recollections of their lives before they were deliberately killed, their brains dead but their bodies kept on life support in the hopes of one day having a successful revival.
“Here comes Sunny,” Amanda said. “Hey, gorgeous, how are you?”
Sunny smiled. “I’m awesome. I was just accepted as the first volunteer for any outside guardian duties. Should they decide we should stretch beyond the gates, that is.”
“Does Beast know?” Amanda asked.
Sunny’s eyebrows knit together. “No. Beast is my friend, but I’m not obligated to tell him everything.” Then she sighed. “Besides, I’m not quite sure how to break it to him. I was thinking perhaps someone else should.”
Both women turned and looked at Robyn.
Robyn’s jaw dropped. “Seriously?”
“You are good friends with him,” Amanda said. “It would make sense.”
“It doesn’t have to be right away,” Sunny said. “I mean, just being accepted means nothing. We have to actually decide if a team will be assembled. And the team has to have an outside job to do, besides media relations.”
“I’ll think about it,” Robyn said slowly. Because like Sunny mentioned, it could take several months for anything to be implemented. Hell, by then, Sunny could decide she doesn’t want to be a guinea pig on the team. Especially with her golden coloring. She would stand out against the muted colors of humans like a sore thumb.
“Let’s get down to business,” Amanda said. “Though the records have been deleted, we’ll establish a library on the species attributes for each of you. As far as we could tell, you are from the Statrath species located three point eight billion light-years away. Your universe was sun oriented and the planet didn’t depend on a money system. Your people divided into two types. The white-skinned individuals who mined the lower levels of the underground, and the gold-skinned individuals who farmed the upper level of the planet.”
“That one’s me. The farmer of the planet.”
Robyn took over. “The gold-skinned people were solar power oriented. They soaked up the sun, so to speak. At night, they slept with the plants, and the sun-sourced nutrients slowly leaked out to feed them.”
Sunny went still. “Did they glow? My people? When they were stealing the sun’s strength?”
“Why?” Amanda asked. “Do you?”
“Sometimes. When I’m passionate about something, I feel like my skin gets a little brighter.” She gulped. “Once, I saw myself glow and ran away from the situation.”
Amanda nodded. “It got to the point that the two peoples of your planet couldn’t live in tandem. The gold were sucking the energy—the souls—of the white-skinned. The whites mined deeper and deeper, trying to get away. Yet they always tried to help each other. They remembered a time when they loved and intermingled. The golds would leave bounties of harvest at the shafts of the mine for the whites to eat.”
“What do you mean sucking the souls?”
“Sometimes, if a gold couldn’t control himself and he glowed, he’d sort of pass out. When he came to, he’d find a dried husk of a white-skinned albino body, still smelling of putrid decay. It was a painful way to die. Their faces were frozen in the throes of horror, eyes open, mouth screaming, fingernails clawing at their own eyeballs, sometimes gouging them out. But ruining your vision didn’t alleviate the death. We can’t be sure why they ripped out their own eyes.”
“We tortured them?�
�
“You didn’t mean to. You couldn’t help it.”
“What if I can’t control it, either? What if someday I find myself like a bomb, glowing out of control until everyone around me is exploded husks of people?”
Robyn placed her hand over Sunny’s. “We’ll monitor you. We’ll know if your body changes.”
“What if it happens overnight?”
“There’s always a possibility,” Amanda said. “But highly unlikely. I think you’re worrying for nothing, Sunny. Think of how maternal, how nurturing you are. That’s the sun-sourced energy that your people became. Not the soul-sucking monsters you’re thinking of.”
“We don’t really know since there’s no one we can ask,” Sunny said. “I can’t take that chance. I need to move into the outer rings of buildings. Immediately.”
“I don’t think that’s necessary,” Amanda said. “I think you’re jumping the gun.”
“Sunny, look. We’re all free. We’ll honor your wishes. But give it some time. Okay? Let’s just not panic yet.”
Sunny took a deep breath, slowly calming herself. “Okay.”
“We’ll have you come in three times a week for monitoring. We’ll watch you constantly.”
“Eventually, I want away from people.” Her voice was firm.
“Wouldn’t it be safer to be around them? If you’re isolated, you’ll have no idea if you’re sucking energy. More than likely, if the gifts were going to develop, they’d come slowly. It’s unnecessary to be isolated.”
Sunny clenched her fists. “I just don’t know what to do.”
“Nothing yet,” Amanda soothed. “We’re here. We won’t let anything happen to you.”
“Promise me at the first sign of something...anything, you’ll lock me away.”
“I promise,” Robyn said.
“I do, too,” Amanda said. “Though it’s unnecessary.”
“I don’t want anyone else to know, either.”
“We would never discuss your medical history with another. You have complete privacy.”
“Thank you.” Sunny stood. “I’d like to talk to the guards. Maybe one day it will be possible to be trained. I don’t know, something, anything to keep me active. Of course, if I ever start to—“
