Everafter Series 1 - Everafter (27 page)

Her mouth moved all the way down my legs. She paused for a long time on my calves while attaching the ankle restraints, and then she ran her hands firmly up the entire length of my body to pay the same attention to my wrists. When she finally sat back and surveyed me, spread-eagled beneath her, her pupils expanded dramatically.

“So beautiful,” she whispered, just before taking my mouth in a tender kiss. And then her free hand was trailing down my body to cup my hip and pull me even closer, and her tongue was parting my lips as her fingers caressed the dip between my thigh and abdomen, and I was surging against her as she stroked me with feather-light touches. She moved down my body just enough to ease her fingers inside. Her tongue was a swirl of heat against my aching breasts, and I surged against her as much as the bonds would allow.

She raised her head, and I saw thirst in the tightness of her jaw, the trembling of her lips, the darkness of her eyes. The panther’s consciousness shifted, growing more alert as I sensed Valentine’s need. The feline presence in my mind was decidedly wary. I didn’t know how to calm her, how to convince her that what she perceived as a threat was anything but.

In that fraught moment, Val twisted her fingers inside me, hard. The slight twinge of pain only sharpened my pleasure, but it also compelled the panther to unsheathe her claws. I sucked in a deep breath, trying to send her some kind of signal that she would understand.

“Gently, love,” I whispered to Val, wishing that I didn’t have to.

“Sorry, I’m sorry,” she gasped. When she paused to tenderly kiss my stomach, a drop of sweat fell from her brow to my skin. She was starting to lose control. The panther growled.

In an effort to calm both herself and me, Val rested her cheek on my abdomen. “Should I stop?”

“No. Please.” I would have run my fingers through her thick gold hair, had my arms been free. “Just…you were right. About the tone of this.”

Feeling her nod, I let my head fall back to the pillow. Relax, I told the panther. Just relax. Val stayed just like that for a few minutes, listening to my heartbeat. Once my pulse was back to normal, her lips began to ghost once more over my skin. And then, so lightly that I almost didn’t feel it, she fluttered fingers that were still deep inside my body.

“Val,” I breathed reverently. “So good.”

“Love you,” she said, and the air behind the words tickled my most sensitive skin. My pulse spiked again. Oh, God, she was going to—

When her tongue touched me, I arched into the air and bit down hard on my lower lip to keep from screaming. Nothing could ever prepare me for Val’s mouth—for the heat and softness and exquisite, relentless stroking.

As the pleasure built, I thrashed against the restraints. The vibration of Val’s answering moan catapulted me right to the edge. Dimly, I could feel the panther respond to the tension that gripped every muscle, but I had no focus, no energy to spare her. Every molecule in my body craved union with Valentine.

As if she could read my mind, Val raised her head. “Babe…” Her voice was low, husky, pleading. The absence of her mouth on me was torture. My head spun.

“Need you,” I gasped. Immediately, the pad of her thumb replaced her tongue and she bent her head to kiss my inner thigh.

And then she struck.

The pain of her teeth sinking into my skin merged with the perfect pressure of her fingers against me, inside me. But as I surrendered to that glorious ecstasy, the panther enraged, rebelling against the clench of the parasite’s jaws and the sucking pull of its lips. She demanded the use of her own lethal body—of those sharp claws and viciously curved teeth that could protect us so much better than could this frail human shell. Tied down and now apparently injured, she was beyond all attempts at consolation. Appeals to reason—even the kind of animal logic that she appeared to understand sometimes—were futile. Val was a predator. The panther would not allow herself to become prey.

And so we fought. I thrashed against the bonds, not out of passion now, but as a physical manifestation of our internal struggle. My mind was a battleground between her instincts and my will. She pushed at me with the weight of millions of years of evolution, and I pushed back with determination fueled by my love and need for Valentine. The contest was like a tug of war, and I dug in my metaphorical heels, hard. But all I could do was hope to slow her progress. Inexorably, she crowded me out of my own head.

“Val!” I gasped, feeling my control slip dramatically.

The stinging emptiness of her teeth leaving me was the last thing I felt before the seizures began, pain flaying me open for the panther’s rebirth. Dimly, I registered Val leaning over the nightstand, plucking the tranquilizer gun from its place in the drawer.

“It’s okay, baby,” she said, her words coming to me slowly through the agonizing haze. “Don’t fight anymore. Just let it happen.”

She was right. At a certain point, continuing the battle for dominance only made the transformation process more painful. Bitterly, I capitulated my last mental toehold, giving in to the eerie sense of vertigo that always accompanied the change. Triumphant, the panther shoved me aside, forcing my consciousness into that narrow slice of her primitive brain that I had come to call my prison.

The world shifted sideways. Scent of sex and sweat. Hunger, pain, anger.

Trapped.

I screamed at her as she ripped at the one restraint that had held through the transformation process, but she would not hear. And then she was free, balancing fluidly on the mattress, tail lashing and ears pressed close to her skull. Through her eyes, I watched Valentine point the gun at my face. She was waiting as long as she possibly could, to see whether I could somehow regain control after all. But that battle was hopelessly lost.

The panther growled, lips drawing back from her teeth. Val’s chest rose and fell in a sigh. “I’m sorry,” Val said, her finger tightening on the trigger.

But the panther was one step ahead. Her haunches coiled, then released as she sprang forward, fixated on the pulse in Valentine’s throat. The horror was paralyzing—time dilated as the panther’s powerful leap carried her ever closer to Val. In that endless moment, Val’s intent to throw herself from the roof made perfect sense. I knew what I would become—one of the lost, feral, my psyche given over to that of the beast. I refused to wake into a world where I had killed my lover.

And then suddenly, her ears throbbed with the sharp report of a gunshot. A sting, high on her flank. I watched in wonder as Val fired into the panther’s belly and whirled away, less than a second before razor-sharp claws would have shredded muscle from bone. The panther hissed furiously at her missed opportunity, but the shadow creeping across her vision made it impossible for her to try a second time. The lassitude was stronger than the hunger, the rage.

Her legs gave out beneath her and the darkness spread inward. For those last few moments, I let myself feel despair at failing yet again. And then, I welcomed the oblivion.

*

The breeze was cool and the sun was warm and the earth gave slightly under her paws as she ran. Hunger temporarily satiated, she ran simply because it felt right. She was free. Exhilarating in the speed of her unfettered muscles, she went faster, bounding over the sweet-smelling grass. For once, I didn’t feel confined, either. There was such joy in this—in the wind and the openness, in the heat rising up from the earth and beating down from above.

She crested a small rise and began to run down the opposite hill. To the left, a narrow path had materialized over the plain, leading to the metallic towers of a distant city, sparkling under the brilliant sun. It called to me.
Home.

The panther slowed her pace. Surprised, I reiterated the command.
Home.
She listed a little to the left and slowed all the way to a walk. I sensed confusion from her as she looked between the shining city and the open field. She took a few steps to the right before balking again under my insistence.

Home.
Compelled, she padded forward. It was a strange sensation, like handling her by the scruff of the neck from inside her own head. But even as I marveled at having the upper hand, my control slipped. Instead of forging ahead, she began to back away. And then, whirling swiftly, she pricked her ears forward and resumed her bounding run across the plain. I sensed in her a kind of contentment with her choice—an alien certainty that all was as it should be. But she had not risen up against me during our brief disagreement. We had been communicating. And technically, she was right—while in this form, the wilderness was our domain.

Our. For just a moment, we had been working together. I wondered if perhaps someday we could move beyond the fundamental divide that defined each of us now—beyond a her and a me to an us.

I woke feeling hopeful for the first time since the Were virus had ravaged my DNA. Val was sitting at the room’s single desk, reading something. I glanced at the clock: almost noon. The events of the night returned: our lovemaking, my transformation, the close call that would certainly have been fatal if not for Val’s heightened reflexes. Waking, groggy and ravenous, in one of the hunting facilities. Finally transforming back in the early hours of the morning, utterly exhausted. I had a dim recollection of my head lolling against Darren’s chest as he carried me back to this room.

Disappointment jumped into sharp relief, but still the dream lingered, tempering my despair. What did it mean? Karma might have an idea. Maybe I could treat her to lunch. Somewhere quiet.

Hearing me stir, Val turned in the chair. Her smile was tentative and tired. I ached to be the one who could make her happy, rather than the cause of her stress. She pushed back from the desk and crossed the room to sit next to me on the bed. I slid over so I could lay my head in her lap. She stroked my dark tresses lovingly.

“Saturday’s the seventh,” she whispered.

It took me a second to comprehend what she was saying. “My God, our anniversary.” Tears welled in my eyes and I tried to blink them back, only to feel them tumble and slide down my cheeks. Val’s fingers were there instantly, brushing them away.

“I rented us a cabin in the Catskills for the weekend, longer if it works out. We always talked about doing that someday, remember? I want us to get out of here.” Her fingers traced the shell of my ear and I shivered in pleasure. “We can get away from all of this complication. Just pack up and go to a place where it’s just you and me.”

My heart thrilled briefly at the idea. A vacation. That sounded so nice. So normal. But just as quickly, despair clamped down and snuffed the flame before it could grow. “It’s not safe. My control is still so tenuous, and you won’t be able to feed at all.”

“Just for the weekend. I can skip a meal. I really think we need this, especially now.”

I heard the sadness she was trying to hide in her voice and it tugged at my self-control. “I don’t know, love. It seems so soon. I don’t think it’s a good idea to be away from the Consortium facilities just yet.”

Val’s fingers tensed against my face. “I think this is exactly what we need. We were just fine before either of us knew anything about the Consortium.” Her voice was rough. “It doesn’t feel right here. I don’t like having people hovering over us all the time, machines measuring our every move and emotion. I hate knowing that every time we make love, there are three orderlies waiting in the hallway to pump you full of tranquilizers in case I don’t get you in time.”

Shivering with the memory of how close we’d come to that very scenario last night, I leaned even closer to Val and allowed myself to imagine what it would be like to get away—just the two of us, out in the wilderness, miles from civilization and even farther from the Consortium. I shivered in anxiety but there was more behind it. I wanted it, too. I wanted it so badly that I could feel the panther thrashing inside me, fueled by the power of my need. I took a deep breath, calming the beast within. Val gazed down upon me, hopeful and vulnerable all at once.

“Maybe, but I want to talk to Karma first.”

*

Karma arranged to meet me the next day. I practically had to push Val out the door so she wouldn’t miss her exam. I loved her for wanting to prioritize me above everything else, but it wouldn’t do either of us any good to fail out of school now. Besides, I told her, I needed to hear Karma’s unbiased opinion on whether the Catskills was a good idea. That seemed to get through, and she left me with a long kiss and a fierce hug.

Like every other floor we had seen so far in the Consortium, the thirty-eighth had its own unique design. The walls were a mosaic of glass and steel, giving the entire floor an open, airy feel. From one end of the hall, it was possible to gaze all the way through the building and see the city beyond. The panther was instantly at ease, more so than she had been in the vampire or medical wings of the facility. I understood instantly that we had arrived in the purview of the Weres.

I stepped into Karma’s office and slid the door closed behind me. She was sitting behind a tinted glass desk, typing expertly on a slim laptop. Behind her, a wall of windows afforded a partially obstructed view of Central Park in the distance. My heart lurched at the sight of trees. Perhaps Val’s idea of getting away was the right one after all. Karma gestured for me to take a seat in the ivory armchair facing her. I sank into the richness of Italian leather and she snapped the laptop closed to give me her full attention.

“I’m sorry for being so needy. I feel like I’ve leaned on you a lot over the last few weeks and I really appreciate it.” I hadn’t planned on apologizing, but when Karma gazed at me with her golden eyes full of friendliness and sympathy, it was hard not to feel overwhelmingly grateful.

“Alexa, I consider you a friend. Even if circumstances were different, I think you and Valentine are people that I would have wanted to know. And now?” She smiled and I could feel some of my tension slipping away. “Now you’re family. Tell me how I can help and I will do what I can.”