Dead Sexy (16 page)

Had anyone cried when D.S. died? Had they mourned him? Or, had he been one among masses? Just another body turned in the first wave of Biters twelve years earlier.

How many people had called him a monster in the days since?

“He wanted to turn me into a thing. A Biter. He wanted to keep me in a cage like a toy.” I swallowed back my tears. “He wanted me to forget everyone I loved… he wanted me to forget you.”

D.S.’s strong arms wrapped around me. He pulled me in so close I could have heard his heart beating if blood still ran through his veins. Instead, a wall of muscle formed up around me.

“Hick was just another monster,” D.S. said. There was a short pause. “Trust me, Gemma. I’ve been around a long time. I know about
monsters
. Tonight, it was either you or it was him. If you’d died, he wouldn’t be here crying over your body.”

His head tilted down and his lips brushed against mine.

And then he kissed me on the Belle Isle Beach in front of the Detroit Police Department, a pack of Biters, and my mother.

I didn’t care.

I lost myself in the sensation of his lips on mine. I pressed myself up onto my tiptoes and kissed him back. My fingers buried themselves in his crisp jacket and I finally let myself go.

I was still tugging at D.S.’s jacket a little more than an hour later when we stumbled through the door of his hotel room. There’d been a brief break on the beach where D.S. had given orders to a team of DUA agents and checked in on my mother. The police had wanted to keep me for questioning—I’d just killed a government employee—but D.S. had put his foot down. There was somewhere else I needed to be.

Something else I needed to do.

The bright lights of Downtown Detroit illuminated the hotel room as we fumbled backwards onto the bed. The DUA must have been better funded than I thought because the room was just as grand as the lobby downstairs, with a small sitting area at the door and a king sized bed near the window.

Did Biters sleep? Did it matter?

The last thing I wanted to use the bed for was sleep. I needed to feel D.S.’s hands on me. I needed to feel his body moving against mine in a steady rhythm as old as time.

I stumbled as my leg connected with the edge of the bed, faltering against a small table. Something crashed to the floor? A picture frame? It was too dark to tell and I was past caring.

D.S. caught me and pushed me down against the pillowy mattress. His body covered mine. His hands ripped at my t-shirt, tearing the stained cotton to shreds in a moment. Then his callused fingers were running across my belly, and I lost myself in the sensation.

He cupped my breasts, tweaking my nipple. The world spun around me and my hips bucked up to meet his. I could feel his erection through the fabric of my jeans and his suit. Long and hard, ready to fill me to the hilt.

“Now,” I demanded.

“Eager little thing, aren’t you?” His teeth skimmed against my neck and I held my breath. Would he lose control and turn me by accident? Then his mouth lowered to meet my breasts. He didn’t bother to undo the catch on my bra. Instead, it joined my shirt as a pile of shreds. He sucked my breast into his mouth, teasing my nipple with his tongue.

“Oh,” I moaned as fires exploded all over my body.

“You’re going to have to learn patience,” he rumbled against me. “This is your first time, Gemma. I’m going to make it special, if it kills me… again.”

Just what I needed a chivalrous zombie.

Then his mouth was back on me, and I lost myself in the sensation.

He raised himself upward—supporting the bulk of his weight on one arm—and I whimpered as chilled air raced in to fill the gap between us.

His hand trailed down my body a second time, slowly. Apparently, making it special involved torturing me as he brought my body to new heights over and over again. He gripped my hip, pinning me to the bed.

His mouth twitched up into a smile against my breast. He undid the fly of my jeans and his hand slipped inside. For a long moment, we stayed like that, with him holding me on the brink.

“Please,” I begged. “Please.”

He eased my cotton panties to the side and a finger entered me. My eyes opened wide, my hips bucked upward to meet his touch. I let out one moan after another. A second finger joined the first and muscles convulsed deep inside me.

I hadn’t known a man could make me feel this way.

I hadn’t known…

His hand began to move back and forth as the fires built deep inside of me.

My head rolled back and I gasped excitedly.

“Faster,” I demanded. “More.”

His pace didn’t change. He just kept touching me, feeling me. His mouth lifted and he was kissing me again. His thumb scraped across my clitoris and something broke inside of me as I came in an explosion of heat and desire.

This was it, the moment I’d been waiting for, the feeling that I’d read about in trashy novels and heard about second hand from Cindy.

I didn’t want to wait any longer.

I wanted D.S.

I reached down to cup his erection. I didn’t have the strength to tear his clothes to pieces—like so many rags and tatters—but my fingers made short work of the button at his waist. The sound of a zipper being pulled down was audible over my gasps and moans. Then my fingers wrapped around his hard length.

My eyes met his. “Now.”

23.

“Damn, Gemma.” D.S. made quick work of his clothes, his mouth never leaving my body for more than a moment as he struggled out of his secret-agent suit, crisp white button down and ox-blood loafers. His undershirt slammed against the far wall and his boxer-briefs ended up in a puddle beside the bed.

When he was wearing a black tie and nothing else, I wrapped my hand in the dark silk and pulled him back to me. It was the first time I’d seen him without his shirt on, and the sight was truly fearsome to behold. The man had died in his prime. Muscles rippled across his powerful torso as he moved.

The gash on his side wasn’t the only scar on his body. There were almost a dozen holes in his skin like he’d been ripped apart and sewn back together. Black thread held his golden skin together, making him whole, while a gleaming metal plate covered a hole the size of my palm over the spot where his heart would be.

A dark tattoo curled around one muscular bicep. I couldn’t make it out in the dim light. My gaze focused and I couldn’t see anything except for D.S., staring down at me, waiting patiently to see if I’d pull away at the last moment.

“What happened?” I ran a single finger across the stitched up wound on his side, the same scar I’d seen in the restaurant so many days earlier. “Is this all from the other night?”

“This is years,” he said. “Biters don’t heal. Not like humans.”

I knew that, but I hadn’t thought about it. Not really. I hadn’t considered the scars a lifetime’s worth of injuries would present on a man’s body. Every wound was a story. Each stitch was a battle. My fingers moved against his chest to touch each scar.

“I’m not like other men,” he said.

“I don’t need other men.” My hand wrapped around his erection and I tugged once, twice, three times. His hard length twitched against my palm as a shudder ran through his body.

“Damn,” he groaned.

So, Biters could feel after all.

Special Biters.

D.S.

His hands moved at my waist and a few seconds later my jeans were gone. The man was hell on the heart and worse on my clothes. I’d have to borrow something from him to wear out of the hotel room the next morning.

For tonight, I didn’t care.

He kissed me again and then his body was covering mine. He pressed my legs upwards, forcing them to bend at the knees as I contorted into a new position, and the bulb of his erection jostled against me. “Oh, god,” I moaned. “Oh, god—.”

He plunged inside of me hard and fast. Forget pleasure. Pain seared my fragile nerves as he split me in two. I screamed against his shoulder.

“Gemma—” D.S. jerked backwards, exiting me completely.

“I want this,” I told him through clenched teeth. “I want you. Now.”

His eyes darkened as he came back to stand over me. This time, he drew me forward to the edge of the bed. “I’ll stop if this hurts,” he said. “I swear, Gemma.”

“Never stop.” I pulled him towards me. This time I was prepared for the sharp ache that came as he filled me. I leaned forward slightly, shifting my hips to better meet him. My arms wrapped around his neck. “Never stop.” I kissed him hard.

D.S. held himself perfectly still for a long moment and then finally—slowly—he began to move. His hips ground against mine. He drew himself back and for a brief moment I thought he was pulling away.

He rocked forward, and I gasped out loud. Not in pain. Not this time. Not when the motion had broken something free inside of me. Back and forth. I held on tight as his body moved against mine. Heat built inside of me as he brought me to completion over and over again.

The rest of the world fell away, and the only thing that mattered was his hand on my breast and his mouth on my collarbone. I might have been wrong to wait so long for sex, but I hadn’t been wrong to wait for D.S. Thomas Conroy.

The man’s endurance was inhuman. Just when I thought I’d gotten used to the way he felt inside of me, he’d move in a new way and send me soaring.

Finally, when I thought I could take no more, he shuddered on top of me. Nails dug into my skin as he roared my name in the darkness: “Gemma.” He collapsed on top of me. “Damn, Gemma.” He rolled to the side, his hands never leaving me.

I still don’t know if Biters sleep, but D.S. held me in the safety of his arms all night long. When I woke up, his eyes were the first thing I saw. His lips pulled back into a warm smile. “Good morning, sleepy head.”

Every inch of my body was sore—inside and out—and I’d never felt better.

“Good morning.” I grinned.

A phone was ringing somewhere in the background, the noise tiny and incessant. “Should you get that?” I asked.

“Probably.”

It took D.S. a moment to extract himself from the bed. He rifled through his discarded pants and grabbed the cell phone, taking it into the bathroom to return the call. A couple of minutes later he was back.

“Anything important?” I asked.

“Just tying up a few loose ends.” He slammed open a dresser drawer to grab a pair of fresh black boxer briefs. He tugged the clothes into place before continuing, “Your mom’s doing okay—I had an agent stay with her last night just to be sure—most of the Biters have been transferred to a department holding cell in Toledo.”

“Most of them?”

“Andrea is being held at the morgue. She’ll go back to her parents in a couple of hours. Hopefully, this time she’ll stay there.”

“Right.” I nodded. Andrea should go back to her parents. Of course, this time I might just have to stop by and check in. Losing their undead daughter once was carelessness, losing her twice—I didn’t know what to make of that.

“I thought I’d run out and get us some breakfast.” D.S. tugged on a clean white t-shirt and grabbed a pair of blue jeans from a pile inside the closet. “There’s a diner around the corner. It’s not the Randy Goose, but I think they have huevos rancheros.”

I opened my mouth to object—he didn’t need to go by himself, if he waited a few minutes then I’d come with him—but my stomach was already growling at the thought of eggs dripping with cheese and salsa.

“Sure, that sounds good.”

“I’ll just be gone for a couple of minutes.” He pulled on his pants and left.

That wasn’t much time, but at least it gave me an opportunity to clean up. I lunged out of the bed, darting into the bathroom for a quick shower. I washed my hair, scrubbed my hands, and came out a few minutes later smelling like a daisy.

My clothes were in pieces—there was no salvaging them—so I helped myself to a pair of D.S.’s jeans and a soft white t-shirt from his bureau. It was the same outfit he’d left the room wearing a few minutes earlier.

D.S. had looked damn good—the soft cotton clinging to his muscular shoulders—but I didn’t look half bad myself. The shirt cupped my curves and the jeans clung to my rounded backside. I used a towel to dry my hair and started cleaning up the room. I dumped the remains of my clothing in the trashcan along with a few other odds and ends from around the room. I even made the bed… sort of.

Crunch
.

Glass shattered under my foot. I glanced down, blinking when I saw a framed photograph face down on the ground where it had fallen the night before. I picked it up and turned it over, expecting to see a bland landscape or an advertisement for one of the nearby music halls.

The picture was old; a sepia toned stereograph with twinned images side by side. The last time that style of photography had been popular was the Civil War.

The image was of a handsome man in a pressed shirt with a crisp collar. The edge of his face was slightly fuzzy—like he’d moved while the picture was being taken—but there was no mistaking the square set of his jaw or the fire in his eyes.

D.S. Thomas Conroy.

My hands shook as my mind scrambled, trying to process what I was seeing. The picture had to be a fake, a ten dollar souvenir from a historical museum.

But the paper felt old.

It wasn’t possible. D.S. didn’t look much older than twenty-five. If he’d come back in the first wave of Biters twelve years earlier, then he was only thirty-seven.

I turned the photograph over, searching for an explanation.

Conroy.

My eyes watered as I struggled to make out the cramped, spidery, letters on the back of the photo.

Thomas Conroy, New York City, 1862.

And another line further down on the paper.

I only regret that I have but one life to give for my country.

My heart was slamming against my chest. If the picture in front of me was real then, it changed everything. It meant that the dead hadn’t just started rising twelve years earlier. Biters weren’t some new phenomenon created in a government test tube. They were something older than that… more primal.