Escape (Project Vetus Book 1)

by Emmy Chandler

  “There is no child,” I hiss at him. “And there never will be.”

  The pain that twists his features sends an answering bolt of sorrow through me, and I gasp with the realization that I’m feeling his pain.

  Don’t get me wrong. I have plenty of my own, centered around the same subject, but this doesn’t feel like my pain. This is too…simple. It’s a single bolt of loss making my chest ache. Leaving a one-note bitter taste in my mouth.

  I push through the pain and pull free from his grip. “I’m sorry.” It actually hurts me that I’ve caused him pain. But I have my own pain to deal with. “I just…I can’t do this. You need to stay away from me.” I step into my underwear and pull my shirt over my head, then I grab my pants and my bra and dart out of the room.

  “Lilli!” he roars, and I hear the heavy plop of his bare feet on the floor behind me.

  “Stay there!” I shout as I race down the hall, and too late, I realize I’ve passed all the cells, where I could have claimed a room of my own. Not that I could have closed the door.

  “What’s going on?” The man with dark skin and kind eyes appears in the doorway of the small kitchen. I don’t think I’ve heard his name yet.

  “I was right before. Keep him away from me.” I can’t afford to smell him, to hear that sound he makes, or I’ll wind up in his bed again. I’ll wind up pregnant. In a fucking genetics lab. With an alien-hybrid’s baby. Which would be perfectly fine as the plot in a sci-fi horror vid, but not as the forecast for the rest of my life.

  “Lilli, wait,” Carson calls, and the man with kind eyes looks past me.

  “Captain,” he snaps. “Pants.”

  I turn around to see Carson standing naked in the middle of the hallway, his massive cock still at half-mast, his pants hanging from one hand. He growls and stops to step into his pants, and I clutch the rest of my clothes to my chest and duck into the kitchen, past another of the men.

  “What happened?” the second man—the one with bright, pale blue eyes—asks. “Did he hurt you?” But disbelief is written all over his face as he glances from me to the doorway, where Carson has positioned himself, facing off against the other man.

  “Of course I didn’t hurt her,” he snaps. “Move, Coleman.” He shoves at the dark-skinned man, who refuses to budge.

  “Please.” I set my pants and bra on the seat of an empty chair and turn to Carson, pleading with him over Coleman’s broad shoulder. “Please just stay away. Please.”

  “I just want to explain…”

  “I understand,” I assure him. “And I know that if you won’t stay back, I can’t make you. And I can’t resist you. So this is up to you, but I’m telling you right now that I will hate us both if you let this happen again.”

  Pain flickers across Carson’s features, and again, an answering ache throbs in my chest—like a glimpse into his wounded heart.

  He blinks at me, and I can see the effort it must be taking for him to get the beast under control. Slowly, the glow in his eyes fades. His jaw unclenches. And though the pained lines never leave his forehead, he gives me a single solemn nod. “I’ll be in my room.”

  I don’t ask him which one that is. It won’t be hard to find. Or to avoid. But either way, I’ll be sleeping on the couch in the lounge. As far from his room as I can get.

  Carson looks from Coleman to the other man. The one at my side, holding an MRE pastry. And this time his voice is an inhuman rumble. “Don’t touch her.”

  “Captain, you know we wouldn’t—”

  “At all,” Carson growls. Then he disappears into the hallway, headed back the way he came.

  “What the fuck?” Coleman turns away from the doorway to look at me with one eyebrow arched. “What’s going on with you two? I’m Vaughn Coleman, by the way.”

  “Lilli Malone.” I start to offer him my hand to shake, but then I think better of it. I’m pretty sure that if I touch Coleman, Carson will hurt him.

  I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t be able to stop himself. Or rather, he wouldn’t be able to stop the beast. Because that’s what the problem is. The beast is overruling his head, just like my body’s overruling mine.

  My “beast” is a fucking nympho.

  “Burke Jamison,” the man with blue eyes says. He doesn’t offer me his hand either. “Would you like to sit?”

  “And dress?” Vaughn adds with a pointed glance at my clothes. “Having you a little less naked might help with whatever’s going on here.”

  “She woke up his beast,” Burke says as he pulls out a chair for me.

  “I woke up his beast?” I step into my pants, but I can’t put my bra on without showing more flesh, so I sink into the chair with it in my lap. “How is this my fault?”

  “You’re the cause, but that doesn’t make it your fault.” Burke sets his uneaten pastry on the table, on its empty wrapper. “Can we get you anything to drink?”

  “Vodka, if you have it.”

  He smiles. “I wish. But I could probably come up with some instant coffee and powdered creamer.”

  “That’d be great.”

  While Burke takes a mug from the dish drainer next to a small metal sink and runs water into it, Vaughn sits in the chair across from me and breaks off a corner of Burke’s pastry. Which is when I realize this isn’t a kitchen. It’s just a small break room holding little more than a table, a countertop, a sink, and a microwave.

  “So, what does that mean—she woke up his beast?” Vaughn asks.

  I arch both brows at him. “You didn’t understand that either?”

  Vaughn shakes his head. “Jamison has a special…insight.”

  “Because he’s also a possessive prick?” I turn to Burke with a teasing smile, and Vaughn laughs.

  Burke smiles as he sets the mug in the microwave and presses a button. It buzzes to life. “Because my beast didn’t just come with this.” He holds out his arm so I can see a familiar seam of flesh—almost like a double line of scar tissue—running the length of it. From which his bone blade will emerge, if he’s threatened.

  The microwave beeps, and he pulls out the steaming mug, then he dumps instant coffee into it from a packet. Burke sets the mug in front of me and sinks into the chair on my other side, meeting my focus with a blue-eyed gaze of his own.

  “So, what, you can read Carson’s mind?” That sounds ridiculous, but then so does everything else that’s happened to me in the past week, so right now, I wouldn’t be surprised if a leprechaun came through the door dancing a jig.

  Burke twists in his chair and grabs a spoon from the dish drainer. “Not his mind. His emotions.” He sets the spoon and a packet of powdered creamer next to my mug.

  “Thank you.” I rip open the packet and dump the creamer in. “Well, that makes two of us,” I tell him as I stir my coffee.

  Colman eyes me over the mug. “You can feel what the captain’s feeling?”

  “Yes, but that just started.” I take a sip, and the nearly instant buzz of caffeine washes over me like a warm hug. I’m pretty sure I went through withdrawal while I was unconscious. “It’s like the more time I spend with him…physically, the less I know my own body.”

  “He doesn’t understand what’s happening either,” Burke says. “He feels very…confused. Torn between instincts he doesn’t understand and personal experience that no longer feels relevant.”

  “Meaning…?”

  “Meaning none of his previous dating experience is helpful, with you. And everything the beast wants him to do just pushes you away.”

  I huff as I set my mug down with a loud clack. “That’s because his beast wants the same damn thing Dr. Brennan wants—to breed me. And that’s just not going to happen.”

  17

  CARSON

  Laughter rings out from down the hall and I ache to go see what’s amusing my little petal. But I know better.

  Lilli is making the most she can out of captivity. Out of this new form of prison. She’s taught Lawrence to add coffee creamer to his
hot chocolate packets for a richer drink, in the absence of milk. She and Dreyer have exchanged tips for “fixing” long hair in the absence of hair dryers and whatever the hell a round brush is. Lilli and Zamora tell dirty jokes over dinner, competing to see who can make more people gag and push their food away. Or choke on laughter.

  I’m glad she’s happy. But she hasn’t been here long enough to understand the true horror of this place. Brennan hasn’t locked anyone in the breeding room since Lilli got here, nor have the scientists come down for more tests. Or sent us out into the playground to hunt.

  So far, her time in zone X has been like summer camp. But eventually that will change, and I’m worried about what that will do to her, if she won’t accept my comfort. Or even my nearness.

  Standing in the doorway to my cell, I watch as Lilli emerges from the lounge and heads down the hall with a bundle of fresh clothes tucked beneath her arm. She still smells like unscented shampoo from her last shower, but beneath that, she smells like…

  Mine.

  She smells like mine.

  Days. It’s been days since I’ve touched her. Since she’s let me come close enough to even speak to her, without having to call out to her from across the room. Or, more often, from across the hall.

  Forever, the beast insists. It’s been forever.

  He’s not wrong, no matter how many days have actually passed. Every minute without her feels like forever.

  “Hey,” she says as she approaches my cell, but the casual greeting is a lie. Her gait changes as she walks past me, arousal blooming in her scent. She still wants me, even if she won’t admit it to herself. She fights this all day long, every day, and beneath her easy smile—far below her bubbly laughter—that need is chipping away at her.

  I know, because I can feel it.

  I could make her happy, if she would let me. Not just in bed. In life. In what passes for life, anyway, here in the land of transparent walls and prying cameras.

  “Hey,” I lie in response to her greeting, as if I’m not suffering just like she is. As if we’re not living this lie together. Drowning in denial.

  She stares at the floor as she passes me, her steps stiff with the effort to resist me. I feel a little better, knowing this is as hard for her as it is for me. But not much.

  She claimed the cell farthest from mine, but she doesn’t sleep well on her cot, and not just because we have no way of knowing when it’s actually night. Whether or not we should be asleep, according to human chronobiological function.

  I hear her moan in her sleep. Sometimes she cries out for me, and my cock hardens instantly. Aching for her. But even worse than my lonely cock are my empty hands. I want to hold her. I want to stroke her thighs and run my hands through her hair, and intertwine her fingers with mine.

  I want to be near her. I want to be with her. But she gives her presence to everyone but me.

  I watch as she heads into the communal bathroom, and this time I can’t help myself. I follow her, silent on bare feet. When I hear her turn on the water, I slip into the outer chamber of the bathroom, where several sinks are built into the wall, opposite a row of three toilet stalls. Her clean clothes are folded neatly on the countertop. Her dirty clothes are piled on the floor beneath it.

  The shower room is around the back wall. Out of sight.

  The sound of falling water changes as Lilli steps beneath the spray, and though she’s out of sight, I know what she must look like. Water pouring over her head, rolling down her body. Rounding the generous curves of her ass.

  My mouth is dry. I want to drink from her body. I want to go down on my knees and open my mouth so I can catch the drops that stream over the peaks of her breasts. I want to slide my hands around to cup her ass and pull her close as I lick every drop of water from her body, glorying in the fact that my erotic task is endless.

  Instead, I pick up the shirt she left on the floor and bury my nose in it, breathing her in. Always ready, my cock stiffens instantly.

  In the shower, Lilli moans. Her arousal blossoms fresh in the air, and I freeze. Can she smell me? Is that why she’s suddenly fragrant with need?

  Take her, the beast growls.

  Instead, I stay still. Silent. Simultaneously grateful for this moment—for how close I am to her—and frustrated by the wall standing between us.

  Lilli moans again, and my cock strains against my zipper. I run my palm down the front of my pants, trying to relieve a little of the ache, but that only makes it worse.

  The rhythm of falling water changes, and a second later, I hear a new sound. A soft, wet sliding sound, followed by another quiet moan.

  She’s touching herself in the shower.

  You’re a disgrace, the beast growls at me. And I understand his disgust. My mate should not need to pleasure herself, hidden away in the shower. I should be pleasuring her in the shower.

  But she does not want me. Or at least, she does not want to want me.

  So instead of intruding on her moment, I unbutton my pants and join her, unseen, content, at least for the moment, to find relief near her. Thinking of her. With utter certainty that she’s in there thinking of me.

  I picture her as I stroke myself, visualizing her smooth, slick skin. The heavy weight of her wet hair, tangled around my fist. The taste of her lips—the warm depth of her mouth.

  In my mind, her hands slide down my chest as she lowers herself to her knees. She grips my thighs as she steadies herself, making no effort to shield her face from the warm fall of water. She takes me into her mouth, licking the head of my cock. Sucking gently, her tongue pulsing against the underside as her head bobs. As her mouth clutches me.

  I gather her hair in my hand so I can see her face. She looks up at me as she takes me deep, all the way to the back of her throat, and—

  My groan is like the creak of a door in a silent house. Loud. Startling. I freeze with my cock in my hand as Lilli goes silent in the shower.

  She heard me. A startled ribbon of fear threads through her scent. Then I hear her quietly sniff the air.

  Arousal blooms in her scent again, stronger than ever. And to my utter shock, that wet sliding sound begins again.

  She knows I’m here. She knows what I’m doing. But she isn’t shouting for me to get out. Knowing I’m here has only made her more desperate to find release.

  Swallowing shame, I make peace with this strange truce and begin to stroke myself again, taking advantage of this compromise between what we both need and what she is willing to accept.

  Her moans grow louder as those soft, wet sounds come faster. I match her rhythm, stroking myself furiously while I fantasize about her mouth—a place my cock has never been. When she gasps, sputtering in the fall of water as she wrings pleasure from her own body, I release all over the counter, one hand braced on the cold metal wall for support.

  Lilli goes quiet, breathing deeply, and her rich scent thickens with the sweet fragrance of satisfaction. But that won’t last long.

  We both know that.

  As her breathing slows, the sound of falling water changes again, and I realize she’s standing fully beneath the spray. I hear a soft hiss, and a new scent floods the bathroom—artificial and floral—as she dispenses soap from the fixture on the wall. So I take a rag from the stack on the counter and clean up my mess. Then I leave her to finish her shower in peace.

  “What happened?” Brennan demands, staring at me from her stool across the room. I’m cuffed by my wrists and ankles to my chair, even though there are several armed guards against the wall, ready to stun me at the first sign of trouble. They’re wearing long sleeves and gloves, as well as full facial shields, so that I can’t access a single bit of their DNA. “She hasn’t gone near you in six days.”

  Six days. Feels like a lifetime.

  “This morning’s analysis says you’re pumping pheromones into the air at an incredible rate. We’ve seen evidence that that has an aggravating effect on the other men in the lab, and—oddly—no effect at all o
n Lieutenant Dreyer. So what’s wrong? Why is Ms. Malone avoiding you, when she’s so obviously drawn to you?”

  “She doesn’t want to be a lab rat.” Or conceive a baby in captivity. With me. Or at all, evidently. That knowledge makes me ache all the way into my soul, but I banish pain from my face, before she can see it.

  “Well, that’s not up to her.”

  “It is, though.” I turn my head to follow Brennan as she paces, stopping to consult something Justin points out on his tablet before turning back to me. “You can’t make her conceive any more than you could make Dreyer.”

  “No, but you can. She’s ovulating.” Brennan snatches the tablet from Justin’s hands and holds it up so I can see some chart I have no idea how to read. “According to her biochip, she’s been ovulating for six straight days, as near as we can tell, and I hope I don’t have to explain to you that that’s not normal for a human woman.”

  “I am aware.” I didn’t sign up for seven years of military service because I wanted to fight in someone else’s civil war. I did it to earn citizenship and all the perks. Including a parenting license.

  “Then get the job done, or we’ll give her to someone else.”

  “Give her—?” My hands curl into fists as I strain against my bindings.

  “Careful, Captain. You start showing signs of aggression, and this discussion is over.” She nods pointedly at the guards, three of whom are now pointing their pistols at my chest.

  Kill her, the beast demands. He doesn’t give a shit about the guards or the guns. Brennan is the enemy.

  I focus on her as I try to filter my rage into something she’ll actually listen to. “If it’s my pheromones that are making Lilli ovulate, you can’t just give her to someone else. How would that even work?”

  “We ran tests on all of you this morning, Captain, and what we discovered is that even though your pheromones have brought Ms. Malone into ‘heat,’ for lack of a better term, her constant state of arousal has had a similar biochemical effect on two of your men. The ones who’ve spent the most time with her, since she rejected you.”