Chapter Sixteen
The Weakness
warning: suggestive chapter
The morning dawned bright and soft, golden sunlight piercing the darkness behind his eyelids. It was barely after eight-thirty but he could hear Chloe's soft crying and whimpering in the next room over, the sound carrying through the air vents. Sucking his lip against his teeth, he rolled onto his side, staring at the ornate metal grate that covered the floor vent, and couldn't stop the thoughts of last night.
Try as he might, he couldn't push the image of Chloe's strewn hair, pupil-blown eyes, and the flush that had steadily crept across her dusky complexion. How she had pleaded and begged and the fractured look in her eyes when he left her and locker her in. For her own good. For everyone's own good.
He'd heard stories of all the Gifted children born during Heat and it made him shudder but also made him think of Chloe's bed, soft and dark, how warm her skin was, how sweet her mouth was…
"God, what the hell is that?" Tori demanded from outside his room as he begrudgingly pulled himself into the upright position. She didn't knock, simply pushed open the door loudly and violently, and directed a hard glare at him.
He ran a hand down his face, listening to the sound of Chloe's anguish grow louder, incoherent profanity and vulgar promises, and felt heat rise to his cheeks. "She's in Heat. She started it last night but I managed to get her in her room before she really went wild," he muttered, running a hand through his hair and scratching the back of his head.
Tori crossed her arms. "There isn't anything we can do? Like, anything so she'll stop sounding like she's dying if she doesn't get any di—"
Derek shook his head. "No," he said, "she just has to wait it out."
"Seriously?" His sister sighed heavily, and Derek could almost sympathize—keyword: almost.
"It's not like we enjoy it. It's just something we go through, and once it's over, we don't experience it again. I think it must've been to help keep the population up."
Tori snorted. "You can say it, Derek. You guys have Heat—aka Sex Time Central—so the girls can pop out babies." She caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror, smoothed down her hair with a pursed look on her face, before she turned back towards the hallway, having been hanging in the doorway the entire conversation. Pausing slightly, she called over her shoulder, "Just make sure she doesn't get knocked up!"
She cackled the entire walk down the stairs but Derek didn't grace her with a response.
The very tantalizing idea of helping Chloe through her Heat, coaxing her through it, brought back her eager, hot kisses from last night, and he glanced at his reflection, looking at the long welts down his shoulders she'd clawed.
Shut up, he hissed to himself, pushing himself to his feet and blocking out the sounds of the girl beside his room, still desperate, still eager and aching to have her fire tamed, and grabbed the first t-shirt, trunks, and jeans his fingers landed on before he headed to his attached-bathroom to shower.
The sounds of Chloe's agony was louder, bouncing off the tiles, and he ground his teeth against the reaction his body had to her voice. He hated her. She couldn't stand him. But it was like everything had been tipped over on its head last night, and he couldn't stop picturing her fluttering, silver-thread eyelashes, her hazy, teary blue eyes gazing up at him with pupils blown with desire, the absolutely wrecked expression on her flushed face.
He growled to himself as the taste of her lips surfaced, warm and slightly sweet from chapstick probably, refusing to leave his mind. The reflection that met his narrowed gaze wasn't his—it couldn't be. The face was too spotted with patches of red, the lips too bitten and shiny with spit, the eyes too pupil-blown.
With a low snarl, he strode to the shower and turned the water on. Trying hard to block out and ignore how his own veins thrummed with heat while Chloe wailed and cried in the next room, he stripped down and stepped under the icy blast of water.
It didn't help.
Icy pellets pelted his skin like little glass shards but it helped clear his mind, just a little. Rivulets ran down his face, into his eyes, as he hung his head, letting the water soak into his hair.
Next door, he heard the door open and Tori's voice calling out to Chloe, who was probably dazed and wild and disheveled. "I've got some breakf—shit!" There was a crash, and the quick pattering of footsteps. Growing closer, towards where he was, and he felt frozen as a door opened yet again.
"Derek."
His skin tightened with goosebumps as a chill raced through him at the sound of his creaky bathroom door opening slowly. "Chloe, Chloe, don't. Do not." But he could remember his Heat so very clearly, how it had robbed him of self-preservation, how his skin had felt so stretched thin he hurt, how all he could feel was an ache that wouldn't abate, wouldn't ebb, and he couldn't imagine how much worse it was for her.
"De-rek," came her sing-song reply, low and throaty, animalistic, and he braced himself. Abruptly, she yanked back the curtain, her face spotted with a flush that ran down her chest, her eyes glazed and teary and pupils dilated so big only a sliver of ocean-blue peeked around. He'd never seen her in so little—a tiny tank top that showcased more skin then he'd ever seen and shorts covered in a paw motif—and his breath caught halfway in his throat at the sight of her dusky, freckle-decorated complexion and the rise and fall of her chest.
The searing flay of her stare made him flush as she drank him in from head to toe. "Chloe," he muttered, reaching out and clasping her tiny wrists in his hand while trying to shield himself with the curtain. She let out a little noise, half-whimper half-moan, her eyelids fluttering closed at the skin on skin contact.
He tried hard not to be affected, goosebumps chasing down his back, and shivered. "Tori! Come get Chloe!" he called, watching as her eyes went wide, panic-stricken, and she began to beg.
She pleaded with him. Dropped to her knees in front of him and god, that image made it all the worse when it came to keeping his wits. "Please, please, please, want—need. Need you. Derek, I can't, please!" Her large eyes implored him, desperate, and he swallowed hard; in that moment, his weakness must've shown, and she surged to her feet, catching him off-guard, and pressing her lips to his.
He wrapped his free arm around her, dragging her closer, tasting the gleam of spit on her lips, and couldn't stop the growl that escaped him. She shuddered in his grasp, hooking a leg around his naked hip.
"Ew!" Tori shrieked when she walked in on them and peeled Chloe off Derek. The answering water Gifted's wail made him step back and fumble with the curtain before his sister could see him in all his glory and he breathed a sigh when they disappeared out the door.
With a scowl, he stepped out of the bathroom, locked the door, and the sound of Chloe's whimpers and whines and soft pleading for Derek filtered in from the vents again. The smell of her still permeated the air, and he gritted his teeth, turning the water back on.
The cold blast didn't help at all.
