Reluctant Protector (6 page)

“God, you're so wet.”

She wanted more of what she felt before. She craved it all. Needed to know what it was like to be loved, if even for a moment.

He gripped her hips. “Baby, please stop moving. Otherwise, I'll come all over you and that won’t be very pleasurable for either of us.”

She jerked with an involuntary thrust of her hips and he cursed again. His grin was quick, lopsided. “Seems you can’t follow directions.”

Cassie froze. Had she done something wrong? He seemed to like—all thought ceased as Seth moved his lips down her torso to her belly button. He pursed his lips and gently blew a heated caress along the top of her mound.

When his tongue found her slick folds, she grabbed two handfuls of his hair and held on. His unrelenting fingers and tongue parted her folds, licking and touching. His thumb traced circles over her clit and she cried out. Like before, the heated desire slammed though her. The desperate need. Blazing fire skipped over every nerve ending. Then he did the unexpected. Running his tongue down her slit to her dewy core, he didn’t stop. Instead, he stroked to the stretch of skin between her pussy and anus and he flicked the sensitive skin with the tip of his tongue.

“Jesus.”

“Do you trust me, Cassie?”

She was too shocked to answer, in too much desperate need to form the words.

He licked the sensitive flesh again. “Do you trust me Cassie?” He repeated. This time his voice was lower, more guttural.

She answered with a breathy, “Y-yes, I trust you.” But the words didn’t sound like her own. His tongue stopped lapping and went back to lazy stokes of her clit, teasing her. Disappointed, she wiggled against him and he chuckled. Moving back down her slit, he stopped at the tight stretch of skin and drew slow deliberate circles around her anus with his tongue.

Her orgasm hit her with the force of a sledgehammer. He held her thighs wide as he licked her. As Cassie started to come down from the euphoric high, he crawled up her body and held her face in his hands while he lined up his cock to her heated core. “You are beyond beautiful.”

The bulbous tip nudged her entrance. She stilled and tried to relax. As he slid into her, resistance stopped his forward movement. Both of their eyes popped as they stared at each other. His brows furrowed and he blinked several times. She tried to adjust to the size of him.

His face flushed, as if once again, he tried to regain under control. “Cassie, I—”

“Please, Seth. I need you.”

Turmoil and need waged war in his eyes. He wanted to continue, but he didn’t want to hurt her. After several beats, he cocked his hips and bypassed the resistance. Both of them expelled steady breaths.

Cassie reached up and stroked his face. He fit like a key into a lock and she never wanted him to leave. This was what her body craved, needed.

Eyes locked on hers, he withdrew to the tip of his cock and sank back in. He cursed and dropped his forehead to hers. “Do you have any idea how good you feel?”

Her response was to move her hips against him. Every time he slid back in the ridge of his cock brushed those nerves he hit with her first orgasm. And she was desperate to have that again. She rotated her hips.

“God damn, Cassie, keep moving like that and I won’t last very long.”

Wrapping her arms around his back, she bucked, daring him to fill her, to go faster, to brand her. She knew the moment his control snapped. He buried his face in her neck and inhaled as his hips moved in faster and faster.

Cassie’s body neared the edge of oblivion—so close. He reached around, scooped her bottom in his hands so they fit together more snugly. As he rode her, he whispered her name. Just as her body drove closer to that cliff, one of his deft fingers found the tight bud of her clit and gently stroked her tender flesh. She came apart in his hands.

He roared her name as the heat of his release spread inside her and his body melted into hers.

Chapter Seven

Lancing heat woke Seth out of his post-sex stupor. Enough fire radiated through his body to make him gnash his teeth together. The act of lifting his head made him feel like someone poured gasoline on his hair and lit it with a blowtorch. What the hell was happening to him? A side effect of whatever he'd been shot with?

 “Stop trying to wake yourself up, dumbass. This is happening, deal with it,” he muttered. A brilliant flash of images filled his mind. Cassie underneath him, writhing and panting as he drove into her. Her sharp nails scoring his back. He smiled, then immediately stopped when the act made him feel like his face was falling off.

He kicked off the sweat-soaked sheets and inspected his leg. The wound was mostly healed. All that remained was a tender, bright patch of flesh. “What the fuck?”

Slowly craning his head around, he stared at Cassie, her dark hair fanned out on the white pillow. How was this possible
? Consider for a minute what she says is the truth.
By no doing of his own, he'd stumbled onto the biggest story of his life. Superhuman soldiers? His life wasn't normally an episode of Fringe. This stuff wasn't supposed to exist.

He tried to push himself up on his elbows, but the burning sensation singed his arms and torso. Talk about lighting him up. Every nerve cell did the samba with lighter fluid. “Cassie,” he called out.

She didn't stir. He watched and waited as her eyes jittered back and forth in REM sleep. “Cassie, please wake up.” He placed his hand over hers and tapped lightly.

Her dark lashes fluttered against her cheek and he braced for her icy green stare.

She blinked several times before her eyes focused and she sat up. “Seth? Are you in pain?”

At the sight of her lithe, nude body, a wave of heat hit his groin and his hips involuntarily jerked. “Shit. I—uhm. I'm burning up.”

Her delicately arched brows drew down as she probed his shoulder and leg wounds. “I thought you were healed.”

She chewed her bottom lip and for the barest hint of a moment, he forgot all about the blaze in his upper body. But as he tried to reach for her, that skin-licking flame spread, oozing its way down his body. The pain was so great, he feared he might cry. He met her eyes. “I—I, don’t know what's happening. My skin's on fire.”

She touched his bare chest, shaking her head. “I don’t understand. This shouldn’t be happening.” Her expression was wary, guarded, like there was something she didn’t want him to see.

She ran a hand down his back and his skin cooled where she touched him. But that did nothing for his pectoral muscles. As the seconds ticked by, they seemed to be shredding and re-knitting, ripping and mending.

“Feels, better when you touch me, but…” Another wave of pain bit through him and sliced through his shoulders.

Cassie stared at him, mouth open. She traced her hand over his pecs. Eyes wide, she sat back. “What's happening to you?”

Another pain hit his forearms like they'd been battered by a baseball bat. Through clenched teeth, he said, “Don’t know. Feels like someone is mincing my muscles.”

He looked into Cassie's eyes. All pride gone, he reached for her, but his feeble arms flopped to his sides. “Help me.”

Another jolt of searing pain slammed into his brain like a semi-truck. Images flashed, overloading his synapses. The headache was like a migraine on some kind of titanium injection. Men with guns in their room, shooting Cassie, breaking his neck.

Shit
. Was he losing his mind? Another image flashed. Him, strapped to a table in a white lab. Cassie lay next to him, unmoving. Peter Reeser stood over him with a scalpel. Seth shivered and his heart raced. More than during the first battle he covered in Afghanistan. He gulped in air and his vision grayed at the periphery. “Cassie, we have to go. They’re coming for us.”

She gaped at him for ten seconds, but then became a flurry of motion as she dressed. He ground his teeth and shoved himself into a sitting position.

She slowed to help him. “Maybe we should—”

“No. If we stay any longer, they'll find us. Find
you
. We have to go. Or at the very least, you do.”

She glared at him for several long moments before she donned his dark grey T-shirt. “You might be ready to be rid of me, but a deal's a deal. I'm taking you to a doctor.” She peered at the clock. “It's only six. Good thing the ERs are open all night.”

He pushed himself into a standing position. Even though his legs were taking their turn in the inferno of fire, at least they weren't in mind-numbing pain. He could walk. He just had to find his clothes.

“I’m not talking about a doctor, Cassie. You need to leave.” He shook his head, aware of how crazy he sounded. “I can’t explain how I know, but I can see it. More men, they're coming here. They're going to shoot you and kill me. Or shoot us both and take us both. I'm not sure. Either way, bad things happen if we don’t haul ass.”

She blinked at him with wide eyes. From his current vantage point, she looked even tinier than when he first met her. As if either she was shorter or he was taller.

Cassie shot one more quizzical look at him then shoved on her jeans. She jammed their dirty clothes into her backpack and swept the first aid kit remains into the garbage. Shaking out his jeans and easing his feet into the legs, Cassie yanked up his waistband and buttoned his fly.

The pain in his arms gradually decreased, but not before the pain in his legs upped the ante. Though this pain was more a deep ache than sharp knives, the tremors went bone deep. He was dying.  Only the possibility of death made him consider his next option. “I know a doctor. She’s about forty miles from here. She’ll see me. That way you won’t have to overuse your power. You didn’t get much sleep.”

Cassie's cheeks tinged pink and he wanted to smile. Even now, in the throes of the most incredible pain he ever experienced, the dull hum of arousal flooded his veins.

She quickly wiped down every surface they touched, from the bed side lamps, to the miniscule desk in the corner and the bedside tables. She even swept a cloth over the wood frame of the bed. Her bare feet raced over the worn, beige, carpet as she flew swiftly around the room. “If they’re on their way, they’ll know we've been here. Maybe someone saw us. I pushed the desk clerk, but I was really depleted. Maybe it didn't hold. I'm not willing to take chances though.”

She propped her shoulder under his arm and holding his waist, she helped him limp to the car. Large puddles welled on the ground, but no rain drops created ripples in the mini lakes. After she slid him into the passenger side, she backed out of their space and floored the gas. All the while, gut tearing pain gnawed at his ribs.

“This doctor, can you trust her?”

He clenched his teeth. He wished they didn’t have to entrust Cassie's life to her. “I’m not sure, but we have no choice.”

Chapter Eight

Seth was right. As they screeched onto the highway at a wrap-your-car-around-a-tree pace, dark cars with tinted windows approached their hotel. Cassie thanked God the back parking lot kicked them right onto the two-lane freeway. If they had stayed one second longer, they’d both be dead.

Cassie slid a glance at him in the passenger seat. Seth had started shaking and passed out a half an hour ago. He was going through the transformation, but she couldn't fathom why he would. Unless they’d shot him with something other than Nisulin. What truly astonished her was the precognition. He knew Trackers were coming for them. If she hadn’t given him the benefit of the doubt, she would have been caught.
They
would have been caught. She oscillated between weaving in and out of traffic like a bat out of hell and coasting behind soccer moms not to draw any attention to their car.

The real question was how the Trackers had found them. She’d disabled her tracking chip.  Maybe she had been careless, missed some detail. Maybe she should have been more worried about their safety than finding out how good it felt to be in Seth’s arms. She flushed and looked at his sleeping frame. His face had also started to change. His cheeks were leaner and his bone structure more pronounced. The muscles around his neck were thicker as well. The change in his pectorals was hard to miss. From gently muscled to bulging.

As they left the motel, he complained about the pain in his legs. She didn’t doubt they were going through the same transformation as the rest of him. Something was happening to him and she was responsible. The question was why? Was it the solution in those dammed bullets or her healing his wounds? Or perhaps she’d done something to him when they made love. She didn't know how he'd react to the changes. She should have left him behind.
So he could be killed?
No.  For the time being, he was stuck with her.

Following the directions he gave her before he passed out, Cassie veered toward the exit for Coral Gables. He seemed uncertain about trusting the doctor, but as things stood they had no choice. If they went to an emergency room, explanations would be necessary. She couldn’t just leave him in his current state.
Yes, you can.
The small voice inside her beseeched her.
You could take him to the nearest ER or to his doctor friend, and then drop his ass off and ghost.
Except, the mere thought of leaving him behind made her stomach clench and ache.

On her own, she wouldn't have to worry about protecting him from the Trackers. But she'd gotten him in this mess, and with the way things had changed between them, what they'd already been through, could she walk away and leave him to fend for himself?