Beyond a demonstration of her reluctance, the exercise was useless. The guards held her down impassively while Freda injected her.
The drug went through her and set her blood on fire. She was breathless with arousal, every touch burning her up with need. By the time they hauled her to her feet and led her down to the beast’s cage, she was almost ready to tear free and race to him.
Fear washed over her briefly when she saw the look in his eyes, but the urges were far too strong to resist. If she had known positively that he would rip her to shreds, she didn’t think she could have refrained from going to him and demanding that he ease the ache inside of her.
Chapter Three
During the times when she was completely lucid, Erin was certain nothing could be worse than what she’d already experienced. She discovered that she hadn’t reckoned on Freda’s penchant for tormenting anybody and anything within her power.
She had lost track of time since she had been confined in her quarters, lost track of the number of times they had taken her to pleasure the beast, but she knew weeks had passed, perhaps as much as a month, maybe even more. The day arrived when the guards came and she was injected not with the drug that drove her wild with need, but a mild sedative instead.
It made very little difference in her ability to fight them off.
It made a world difference, however, when she was shoved into the beast’s cage. She was far more aware of her surroundings, far more conscious of the threat she faced, and she did not have the drug driving her libido out of control.
Such was not the case with him. She could see they’d given him a powerful dose to overcome his resistance. The moment his gaze settled on her his eyes darkened and his features hardened with barely leashed desire.
But she saw there was wildness in his eyes, too, something she had not noticed before in her own state--and hate and rage.
It was small wonder considering what they’d done to him.
She huddled near the door where they’d left her, afraid to approach him.
He seemed to sense her terror, as hard as she was trying to hide it, sensed that something was different. He ceased struggling against the chains, breathing deeply, raggedly.
He still watched her with a predatory gleam in his eyes, but she could see he’d begun struggling with the drug they’d injected in him.
They were watching. She knew that the moment the pulley overhead began to churn and the chains went slack. His arms dropped to his sides. Pain contorted his features.
Despite her fear of him, pity twisted hers.
He saw it when he opened his eyes. It enraged him and she saw his control slip. “What?” he asked in a low rumbling growl. “You think you’re so good, chère, you can collect your specimen from over dare?”
Erin moistened her lips. “They drugged me. I didn’t know what I was doing.”
His lips curled. Amusement didn’t touch his eyes, however. “Coulda fooled me, chère. Seemed t’me you knew just what you wuz doin’. You spread them purty white thighs real nice.” His gaze flickered down her body to rest on the curls at the apex of her thighs. “They gave me three hits,” he added broodingly. “What you think about that, chère? You think, maybe, they’re figuring they don’ need you no more? Think they figure I’ll take care of their little disposal problem?”
Erin shuddered, sorry now that they hadn’t drugged her out of her mind. The sedative did nothing more than disorient her, slowing her reactions, muddling her thoughts.
He bared his teeth in a parody of a smile. “Come closer, chère. I got a little somethin’ I wanna share wi’ you.”
Erin shook her head slowly, backing away until she was plastered against the door. The cold metal sent a shiver through her. She glanced up at the camera.
As if it had been a signal, the churning of the pulley began again. Alarmed at the sound, Erin’s head snapped toward him just as the beast bounded toward her. She didn’t have time to scream. Before she’d managed to do more than suck in a sharp breath he was upon her, his hands closing around her arms, pinning her to the door.
She squeezed her eyes closed, expecting any moment to feel pain explode inside her mind as he shredded her flesh. She jerked all over when she felt his heated breath against her ear. “Now I get ta do a little experiment of my own, chère.”
Her eyes opened wide as he lifted his head, capturing her chin and forcing her to look up at him. His face closed in on hers as he dipped his head toward her. She felt the heat of his ragged breaths on her face, the scent of his breath. Her body reacted instantly to the chemical it had been taught to respond to--his. Warmth displaced the fear, unfurling like an opening blossom in her belly.
“You don’ wanna kiss the nasty beast, do you, chère?” he murmured, nibbling her lips with his. “Too personal? Too intimate? It’s not like jus’ fucking the beast, is it, chère? Cause din you cain’t pretend you don’ really want it, cain’t be all scientific and detached. It’s too much like makin’ love, ain’t it, chère?”
Her lips tingled from his touch and his nearness. Her mouth had gone cotton dry from the short, quick breaths she took. She licked her lips to moisten them, inadvertently touching his lips as she did so.
He fitted his lips to hers more firmly, flicked his tongue out to tease the seam that posed the only barrier to his intimate caress. Dizziness washed over her that had nothing to do with the drug they’d injected her with.
When he opened his mouth over hers and parted the seam of her lips with the tip of his tongue, delving inside to explore the sensitive recess of her mouth, she offered no more than a token resistance, her thoughts too chaotic to consider anything else. The warmth became heat. The heat became need. The resistance inside her fled.
Her body remembered the pleasure he’d taught it to feel and opened to him as if he’d uttered an incantation.
In a sense it was just that. The rake of his tongue along hers filled her with his chemical essence. The thrust of his tongue evoked keen echoes of his possession.
She didn’t know when she ceased to accept him passively and became a willing participant, but one moment she was merely unresisting and the next she found herself stroking her tongue along his.
He tensed, immediately suspicious, but as she lifted her hands and skated them lightly, tentatively over his belly, she felt his wariness crumble, felt his needs supplant his reason. His hold on her upper arms relaxed. His hands moved to her back, pulling her more tightly against him. The kiss, which had begun with gentle persuasion, sharpened with hunger.
He broke from the kiss abruptly, lifting his head to stare at her. With an effort, Erin lifted her heavy lids to look up at him. Raw need glittered in his eyes. Behind them was a war zone. The drugs threatened to slip the leash he held upon it, his natural desires working against his reasoning mind and joining forces with the effects of the drug. He swallowed thickly. “That was … a mistake, chère,” he muttered, dipping his head abruptly and fastening his mouth over the flesh along the side of her neck.
She felt the sting of his teeth as he scored her flesh. Goose bumps broke out all over her, making her more acutely sensitive to every slight brush of his skin against hers.
He sucked the sting away, lathing it with his tongue, moved lower, nuzzling the upper slope of her breasts, sucking tiny love bites and then moving on. “The floor or the wall, chère? One’s as cold and hard as the next. Either way, I’m gonna have ta have you now.”
The question filtered through her mind dimly, sluggishly. By the time she’d grasped the gist of it and tensed, it was too late. Her head swam as he pushed her to the floor and covered her body with his own. She gasped as her back met the cold floor. He seized the opening, covering her mouth with his in a kiss as he unleashed his beast upon her. The savagery of his possession, instead of frightening her as it should have, evoked a similar need inside her.
He broke from her lips and moved down her body to taste and suckle her flesh, teasing her with the sharp edge of hi
s teeth. When he reached the sensitive skin of her belly, she gasped, tangling her fingers in his dark hair. Ignoring the tug, he moved lower still, pushing her legs apart and parting the petals of flesh around her cleft with his tongue.
A wall of need slammed into her as he teased her clit. She cried out, writhing beneath him. He caught her wrists, disentangling her fingers from his hair and bearing her arms to the floor. She struggled to close her legs, fighting the insidious heat racing through her, making her heart pound.
Releasing her wrists, he caught her thighs, pushing them wide and then wedging his arms between them and grasping her wrists again. She groaned, bucked as he settled his mouth over her clit. Within moments she ceased trying to escape and began to writhe with fevered need. He teased and suckled her unmercifully, until she began to jerk and moan with release. Before the convulsions had even died away, he slid up her body and began to tease first one and then the other painfully erect nipple, stroking her cleft with the head of his cock and then wedging it into her opening.
She gasped, panting for breath as he began working his way past the tightly clenched muscles of her channel, moving deeper with each foray. He was shaking as badly as she was, a fine sheen of moisture coating his body by the time he’d claimed her fully. He hesitated, as if struggling to regain control and then released a harsh breath. Slipping one arm beneath her hips, he set a frantic, pounding pace as he began thrusting and retreating.
Erin cried out as her body convulsed again in climax, this time harder than before. He ground his teeth, faltered briefly and then began to thrust harder and faster than before as his body exploded with rapture.
Erin went perfectly limp in the aftermath, fighting to catch her breath as he slumped heavily against her, his own breath sawing harshly in and out of his laboring lungs.
She roused slightly as he pushed himself slightly away from her. When she managed to pry her eyelids open, she saw that the fire of lust had ceased to glaze his eyes. They were filled now with barely leashed rage. “One day I will kill you all for what you have done to me,” he said in a menacing whisper. “But you, chère--you I will save for last.”
* * * *
The drug had all but worn off by the time Erin was shoved into her quarters again and left to dwell on her situation. Foremost in her mind was the threat. It made her cold all over each time she remembered it. She didn’t for one moment suffer any doubts that he not only fully intended to do what he’d promised, but that he was perfectly capable of it.
She knew they would never release him. They would keep him as long as they were interested in studying him, and then they would destroy him.
The thought gave her no comfort. It made her feel ill.
Whatever he was, they had no right to take his life and yet after what they’d done to him they would have no choice. She had not been comfortable about the capture to begin with, even though she’d known he wasn’t really human, but in the back of her mind she had always considered that at the worst it was only a life interrupted. They would study him, find out what they could, and then he would be released.
Up until he’d uttered that promise, she had willingly made herself believe that what they were doing wasn’t really wrong.
As fearful as his threat had made her though, it had made one thing clear. They had tortured him beyond endurance, turned him from dangerous to deadly. More specifically, that twisted bitch Freda had.
Worse, she was well versed with scientific studies. They might continue to hold him and experiment on him for years.
And she’d become part of the experiment.
It almost seemed to her that he hated her worse than all the others. She couldn’t understand why he would, but the things he’d said seemed to indicate that he did.
She had never harmed him. Except for taking his food to him, she had scarcely even been around him up until Freda had hatched her brilliant plan to use her.
But maybe that was all it had taken to make her his prime target? She had succeeded in stealing his seed when he had guarded it in spite of every other method of torture Freda had been able to come up with.
There was only one conclusion to draw from that. For some reason, he was particularly drawn to her, and it didn’t take a great leap to get to the root of his hatred. He felt betrayed by her. He had let down his guard, and she had betrayed him.
He had to know she had been drugged just as he was. Surely, he had enough reasoning ability to see that she couldn’t have been willing if they’d had to drug her?
But apparently not.
And they hadn’t had to give her Formula 9 this time.
She felt vaguely ill. She had responded to him and she couldn’t even comfort herself that it was the drugs anymore. It revolted every feeling to realize that they had forced her to couple with that creature until she’d become chemically dependent on him, until she’d begun to crave the feel of his flesh pumping into her.
She shuddered, wrapping her arms around herself.
What was she going to do? She couldn’t escape. The place was guarded like Fort Knox, maybe even worse. Even if she could manage to break out of her quarters, she’d never escape the facility itself.
The alternative was to give up and allow them to use her until they were through with their little experiment--at which time they would probably kill her, too, if the beast didn’t get tired of playing with her and take care of it for them.
He’d implied as much when they’d thrown her in with them without dosing her with Formula 9 first.
Was that it? The fucking bitch, Freda, had wanted her to be completely aware of what was happening? She’d expected the beast to rend Erin limb from limb when she’d given him the freedom to move about his cage freely?
Tamping her fear with an effort, she pondered that change curiously.
A horrific thought occurred to her after a while. She thrust it aside, but it kept returning, stronger each time until the certainty finally settled over her.
Either she was pregnant, or they were hoping for it and they were afraid the Formula might damage the embryo.
She couldn’t rest after that, couldn’t put it out of her mind. She kept trying to tell herself that it just wasn’t possible. A hybrid between the two species would never develop to maturity.
But the moment the word hybrid entered her mind she knew without any doubt whatsoever that that was just the sort of possibility that would fire their imaginations.
Whether it was possible to achieve their ends or not, they were going to try.
With her.
What could she do, she wondered a little wildly?
Nothing, her mind answered. As long as she was confined to her quarters she had no chance at all of getting away from them. She might not have a chance anyway, but she certainly didn’t if she could change that much.
The only chance that she could see at all was to convince them she’d had a change of heart and was willing to cooperate. She doubted they would be fooled, but she had to try.
The next time the door opened and a guard shoved food inside, she remained where she was, seated on her bed and trying to appear perfectly calm. They were watching her. She knew that.
When she’d eaten, she tried to rest, knowing she needed to do everything she could to keep her wits about her. She dozed fitfully despite her resolve. They came again, as she had known they would, to take her to the beast.
She tensed, but she managed an outward calm. “I don’t need that,” she said, allowing her gaze to flicker to the syringe Freda was holding.
Freda’s brows rose. “I suppose you think you’re going to convince me you’ve accepted the situation?”
Erin shrugged. “I can’t do anything else, can I? I just don’t like the drugs. Besides, it isn’t as bad as I thought it would be.”
Freda laughed humorlessly. “Considering all the caterwauling I’ve been listening to it would be a lot more accurate to say you’re enjoying yourself immensely.”
Erin reddened, but
held onto her temper. “I guess I like it rough and raunchy. That isn’t the point, though, is it? I’ve been getting the sperm samples for you. I just don’t want to be drugged.”
Freda’s eyes narrowed speculatively. Erin could see her mind working. It went against the grain with the bitch to do anything anybody might want. Now she was thinking Erin was enjoying it way too much. The problem was, she needed the samples and no one had been able to get them but her. Otherwise, Erin was sure saying she was starting to enjoy it would have been enough to nip the little experiment in the bud right then and there.
“Maybe we’ll try something a little different this time,” Freda murmured thoughtfully.
Erin cringed inside, wondering what sort of ‘something different’ Freda had in mind, knowing it wasn’t going to be anything she would like.
“Take her,” she ordered the guards.
It took every ounce of will power Erin could muster to watch them stride across the room to drag her off of her bed without cringing, without putting up any resistance at all. When they had her on her feet, they turned and looked at Freda expectantly. Smiling a secretive smile, Freda turned and led the way from the room.
Surprise flickered through Erin as they passed the beast’s cage.
Dark Wrath Page 4
