The Spawning (27 page)

Screaming, Miranda whirled and ran, throwing bottles in every direction, nearly tripping over one in her haste to make it back to the compound. She could hear the solid thuds as his feet hit the wall behind her. It spurred her to a reckless speed.

Deborah and Stacy gaped at her for a split second, screamed, and leapt from the wall to the compound. A roar of sound surrounded her. The wall began to shake again, far harder than before, nearly pitching Miranda off. Behind her, she heard a huge splash.

She didn’t dare look back, though. It was all she could do to stay on the wall.

She’d managed to cover about fifteen more feet when she heard the splat behind her again and realized Khan had either regained the wall, or one of the others.

She didn’t know and she didn’t care at the moment. She couldn’t think past

reaching the beach and leaping from the wall herself.

The women began screaming again.

At first Miranda thought it was either a warning to her, encouragement to run

faster, or a reaction to whatever was happening behind her.

It sounded as if the wall was crashing into the sea, but the wall beneath her feet was wobbling too much for her to spare a glance back—or ahead. She was focused on her feet and the wall and the water below. The moment she saw the glint of sand and realized she was near the shore, she raced forward several feet more and leapt.

A hand caught at her flying gown as she jumped.

She screamed at the jerk against her, but he hadn’t managed to grab a firm hold.

She wasn’t as close to the beach, she discovered, as she’d thought. Her feet hit THE SPAWNING Kaitlyn O’Connor 120

the water and she kept going. When her feet did hit solid ground, her knees buckled.

Shoving upward again the moment she stopped moving downward, she broke the surface and, coughing and choking, her hair blinding her, began to struggle toward the beach.

Even as she slung her wet hair out of her eyes, she was grabbed from behind. She caught a brief tableau of the chaos on the beach—women running in every direction, screaming their heads off and Hirachi chasing them—and then she was whirled dizzily.

When her eyes finally focused, she discovered that it was Khan who’d grabbed

her. His face was taut, his golden eyes tumultuous. “Mine,” he growled. Using the tether of her hair to drag her head back, his head descended and he captured her mouth beneath his in a kiss filled with such raw need Miranda wasn’t certain for several moments whether to try to fight him off or yield.

As confused as she was, though, there was no escaping the onslaught against her senses as he moved his mouth hungrily over hers, sucking at her lips, raking his tongue possessively along hers. She caught the madness. Fire coursed through her, seemed to consume her in a wall of heat. Weakness followed, dizziness. The light faded as she descended into darkness. Every sound save the pounding of her blood in her ears and their desperate breaths diminished. She lost awareness of the water surging around them and knew nothing but the hardness she was clutched tightly against.

She was barely aware of movement until she found herself pressed down against

the ground, sandwiched between the damp sand of the beach at her back and Khan, who’d pressed tightly against her side, wedging one knee between her thighs. Supporting the bulk of his weight on his side, he explored her body with the same feverish possessiveness as he did her mouth and then her throat, tugging at her gown, pushing demandingly at her legs to urge her to open them for him. He’d pinned one leg with his weight, but she readily lifted the other and, when he freed that by shifting his weight to the knee between her thighs, dragged that leg upward, as well, and twinned it around him.

He shook all over in eagerness as reached between them to tear at the opening of his pants and guided his engorged flesh to her opening. Shifting upward the instant he found her channel with the rounded knob of the head, he surged into her with trembling desperation, his breath rasping hoarsely from his chest.

He came so fast, she was stunned, began to jerk with the hard spasms almost

before he’d claimed her fully. It touched off a minor quake within her in response, but she was still left with a bewildered sense of incompletion when he withdrew, still swimming in a heated whirlpool of need.

“Mine,” he growled as he moved off of her. “She accepted me!”

Dazed, Miranda pried her eyelids up with an effort and discovered Teron, Gerek, and Adar standing over the two of them. A shockwave went through her at their presence even before the rage on their faces sank in. The three glanced at each other, but to her surprise and relief, they merely turned and strode quickly away. More deeply confused, though vaguely relieved that it didn’t seem the four men would begin to brawl as she’d more than half feared, she glanced up at Khan. He was scanning the compound through narrowed eyes.

As if he’d come to a decision, he brought his focus back to her face. “I will take you to my pod. How long can you hold your breath?”

Miranda gaped at him blankly. “A few minutes … maybe three.”

THE SPAWNING Kaitlyn O’Connor 121

He got up, pulling her with him before she had time to fully grasp his intention or question it or argue. Carrying her out into the water until it was breast high to him, he lowered her. “Hold on to my back. When you need to breathe, pinch me to signal me.”

He dove almost before she’d situated herself. She sucked in a quick breath as she saw the water coming at her, squeezing her eyes closed as it covered her. He shot through the water like a torpedo, his body undulating as he raced through the water until she felt as if she’d caught a ride on a missile … or a dolphin. Just as she was beginning to feel the burning need for air, he shot to the surface, arched just above the water and dove again. If she hadn’t gasped instinctively the moment she cleared the water, she wasn’t certain she would’ve had time to catch a lungful of air.

The speed he traveled was dizzying in itself. When, added to that, she was forced to hyperventilate, hold her breath until she felt herself skating the edge of panic, and then suck air again, she was so beleaguered, so lightheaded, she didn’t have room for any thought beyond the focus of clinging to him and grabbing air when she could. She’d just begun to think she was getting the hang of it when he stopped, dragged her around to face him, and caught her chin. “I will breathe for you. Take deep breaths.”

She was already panting for breath until darkness encroached. At his command, though, she sucked in several long, deep breaths. The moment she clamped her lips together, he dove, propelling the two of them through the water so fast she felt like she was strapped to a rocket. She clung to him frantically, her heart pounding with fear but even as panic for the lack of air began to grip her, he fastened his mouth tightly over hers and forced a gust of breath into her lungs. The panic receded but the darkness seemed to wind more tightly around her. Trying to focus on something to keep the fear at bay, she counted the breaths he fed her. With the tenth, he abruptly disentangled her, shoving her away. Opening her eyes fearfully, she discovered he’d thrust her toward a rounded opening.

It looked too small for the two of them to pass through together. Confused as she was, there was no arguing and no doubt in her mind he expected her to swim through it.

She pushed herself inside of it after a brief hesitation, and when she saw light just ahead, swam toward it with the eagerness of a sudden certainty of finding air. She sucked in a harsh breath as her head broke the surface, choking on the water she inhaled in the process. Khan broke the water beside her. Catching her waist, he tugged her with him and finally caught her waist with both hands and lifted her straight up. Her buttocks landed on a solid ledge. Releasing her, he moved beside her, caught hold of the ledge and heaved himself from the water.

THE SPAWNING Kaitlyn O’Connor 122

Chapter Fourteen

Shaky from her ordeal, Miranda swiped the water from her face with one hand

and looked around curiously, feeling her confusion deepen rather than lift. The room she found herself in was cave like. There were no windows. The walls curved from the flattened surface beneath her to form a dome above her head. Light filtered in through a hole in the ceiling, however, creating a spotlight effect on the floor directly beneath and then diffused to brighten the remainder of the room, more similar to recessed lighting than anything else she could think of.

It was furnished after a fashion, though it looked as if the seats and tables that scattered the room in groupings had been hewn from the same stone as the floor and walls. Here and there, were what looked like colorful cushions, but the dim lighting, or maybe the lightheadedness that still plagued her, made it difficult to see well.

Getting to his feet, Khan drew her up and pulled her soaked gown off, dropping it in a soggy heap where she’d been sitting. Still dazed by everything that had happened, unable to completely grasp it, she shivered, staring at him while he focused on peeling off his boots and then his trousers. When he’d dropped them by her wet clothing, he scooped her into his arms and strode across the room and through an open doorway.

She had a dim impression that it was a bedroom a moment before Khan lowered

to a soft, yielding surface and followed her down. His scent enveloped her, wafting from the bedding as well as him as he curled around her.

“A more fitting nest for my mate,” he murmured against her throat as he

burrowed against it, nipping at the sensitive skin and sending cascades of goosebumps all over her. Her nipples, already perked from the coolness, tightened more in response to his touch.

The heat radiating from his body chased the chill from the lingering dampness

from her skin. The brush of his lips over her flesh, the touch of his hands, generated a fire in her belly.

A strange sense almost of being outside himself and looking on gripped Khan as he absorbed the feel of Miranda’s smooth skin against his hands and lips, drank in her taste and scent so that it became a part of him. There was almost a dream-like quality about touching her—as if it
was
one of the dreams that had plagued him for weeks, imagining her in his bed, receptive to his touch, goading him with soft sighs of pleasure to take his own pleasure, waiting eagerly for his seed to fill her with new life.

Dread flickered at the fringes of his mind, as if threatening to turn the dream into a nightmare, but he refused to acknowledge it, allowed the drunken sense of victory and the heated need pulsing through him to take precedence. It wasn’t difficult to submerge himself in the glorious feel of her. It was easier than trying to probe that vague sense of uneasiness, of wrongness.

Twice he’d merged his body with hers and both times too frantically to relish.

She was his, now. His. A fresh wave of triumph engulfed him as memories of their mating ritual flooded his mind. The acknowledgement when she’d met his gaze, the THE SPAWNING Kaitlyn O’Connor 123

token chase, her instant yielding when he’d captured her.

He’d half feared she would reject him—more than half feared it—and choose one

of the others bearing down on them. She’d yielded, though, with no more than a token resistance—just enough to leave room for a niggling of doubt, to bring a dizzying sense of triumph when she gave herself.

His heart thundered almost painfully in his chest with the memory. For a handful of moments the sense of painful desperation to join with her instantly, again, threatened to overwhelm his determination to savor his victory. He fought it down, joining his mouth with hers in intimate play that assuaged some of the need to penetrate her body with his, to feel her heat wrapped around him.

He had to
give
pleasure for her body to more readily accept his offering, he reminded himself, breaking from her lips finally and scooting downward to search for all those little places where her body was most sensitive. He mapped them all, lingering to hear her gasps and moans for the sheer pleasure it gave him, not merely to learn the way of touching her that pleased her the most.

The taut little buds at the center of her breasts drew hoarse cries from her when he sucked them, made her clutch at him frantically and arch her back for more. He lingered over them until she was thrashing feverishly beneath his touch and searched further a field, examining the soft depression between her ribs that created a gentle valley leading to her belly. He charted the soft belly that housed her womb where his child would grow, wavering between a vague, incomprehensible sense of fear and heady delight as he nestled his face against it.

The urge to explore her sex pushed everything else from his mind as he caught

her woman’s fragrance, a mingling of her desire and the scent of her skin. Pushing her thighs wide, he examined the delicate pink petals of flesh with his gaze briefly and then with his mouth and tongue. Discovering a hard bud at the apex, he plucked at it with his lips. When she bucked against him, sucking in a harsh gasp, he caught it more firmly and sucked at it, flicking his tongue back and forth across it until she was groaning incessantly. She stiffened abruptly, her entire body arching upward, and then began to convulse with rapture.

A red haze filled his mind as the certainty that she’d come did. He sucked and teased the bud until she was crying out hoarsely, began to beg him to stop. He lifted his head with a mixture of uncertainty and reluctance, but when she wilted with relief instead of tipping her head to glare at him, he decided she’d finished coming.

Crawling over her, he caught his cock and guided it to the mouth of sex, pressing against her until her dainty little mouth opened to swallow the head of his cock. He nearly blacked out when it did. Shaking his head to push back the wall of darkness, he caught his weight on his elbows on either side of her and struggled to sink deeper inside of her.

He found himself on the brink of losing his seed long before he’d penetrated her deeply enough to feel her womb, too far. Gritting his teeth, he eased the pressure for a moment, sawed shallowly in and out until he felt her moisture coating him and then tried again. Her body closed so tightly around his flesh, despite the moisture, it was almost as much agony as pleasure to force himself into her tight sheathe.