Title: The Victor
Chapter II: The Animal, Part II
Rating: M for foul language, violence, and sexual content.
Summary: This is a rewrite of the Octoberverse (originally published in May 2009). Victor Creed gets sidetracked on a mission by a lovely piece of collateral.
Disclaimer: If I couldwrap myself up in Liev Schreiber's enormous Victor Creed arms every night, I would. Alas…
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"I'm supposed to see her tonight."
Creed picked an imaginary piece of bloody meat out of his teeth with a sharp claw. This asshole was more annoying than he was worth. For a moment, Creed imagined offing the little shit—forget the job; they could keep their money—and packing up little October and taking her with him. He'd use her as long as she lasted, get her out of his head.
"That's nice, shithead. Didn't you have a little date or something planned?" His lip curled.
"Or something," McQuay snapped. "How am I even supposed to know if she's okay if I can't see her? It's not as though she has a phone anymore."
Creed smirked a little, looking supremely satisfied with himself and vaguely nostalgic. "Oh yeah," he drawled. "There's that, ain't there?"
"Don't pretend to be an idiot," McQuay retorted. "As much as you might like to play a musclehead, you're clearly smarter than you look."
Fangs flashed in a wider smile. "Clearly," he drawled.
"We always go out to dinner on Thursday night," the silver-eyed man insisted, taking off his dark glasses. "We're regulars at this place on Folkshire and Georgetown. People will notice if we're not there."
Creed leaned back in the extra chair and propped his boots insolently on McQuay's desk. "People will notice if we're not there," he mimicked in a ludicrously high-pitched voice. His eyes hardened. "Strangely, I'm still not convinced."
The tiny man bowed over the desk, cradling his head his hands and scrubbing them over his face. "I'm sorry," he said at last. The words were measured, and though Creed didn't think they were insincere, there was a strength behind them that made him frown. "But I've done everything you've asked," McQuay went on, "and I don't even know if she's all right."
Creed glowered. "I said she's all right, dinnit I?"
"Can't I just see her? Even briefly? Talk to her?"
The library loomed in Creed's mind. He could see McQuay's mercuric eyes pawing at Toby's legs like a kitten desperate for love. A sour taste flooded his mouth and Creed bared his teeth. Fucking sick, to be honest. The little mutant had no self respect, did he? Sniffing after a woman who he'd never had a shot at, and too scared and somehow selfish to even try to make the frail love him.
Well, love. Of course what Creed had meant was that McQuay wouldn't make her spread her legs. The buttery, spiced-almond scent of her teased his brain, growing more musky and sweet when she got wet and scared. He reached for the decanter of whiskey, taking out the topper and sniffing the alcohol.
"Guess yer just gonna have to trust me," he grunted, letting the scent burn through his nose, burn out the imagined scent of her drenched cunt.
"Trust you?" McQuay uttered, his voice teetering, almost losing its careful cadence. Creed shot him a warning smirk, one eyebrow raised, and poured the whiskey into all four cut-crystal shotglasses on the tray.
"I think I just heard you ask me to give yer friend a pretty black eye." He plunked one shot down in front of his host and tossed back the other three without flinching, forcing his mind away from the thought of her wanting him, even just a little. "Drink up, shithead."
The frail man nearly collapsed on his desk, alcohol ignored. "Please don't," he pleaded. "Please don't hurt her." The plea in his voice was a salve to Creed's ego. "D'you want to hear me beg?"
Creed pulled a face, looking thoughtful. God, he loved this part. "Beggin' would be nice."
McQuay's eyes hardened. It was a look Creed knew well from his mirror, and it made him smirk. Perhaps the little shit had some backbone after all. Therefore, it startled him when the little man rose shakily to his feet and began to try to lower himself to his knees, his eyes still fastened on Creed's: steely, resolved. A momentary flicker of surprise coursed the feral's spine, but he shook it off and bit out a sneer. "For fuck's sake, man, have some pride. She's just a frail. Besides, I don't give black eyes. If I'm gonna beat her, it's gonna be a lot more permanent than that."
"Please don't hurt her," McQuay said again, and the words were cautious, but not pleading. "She's a sweet girl, and I'm sorry. Just don't—I just want to see her. I've done everything you've asked, I swear—"
The feral snorted. "I don't do pity." He scowled. As for the Morgan frails herself…he shifted, biting back a snarl. The girl would want to go, of course. Not that he gave two shits what she wanted. But for a moment her felt the fragile bones of her ankle in his grasp, the softness of her mouth when she'd willingly pressed it against his self-inflicted wound. Stupid on her part—he hadn't been hurt at all, comparatively speaking, and what exactly would her kisses do to improve anything in his life anyway?—but something about her beckoning to him, her sleeping beside him on her little ragged couch, made him rethink it. Maybe a visit between McQuay and Morgan had its merits, after all. Maybe Creed could dangle her like a sweet piece of bait on a string in front of her old friend. She was still sporting bruises from where Creed had gripped her face a few days prior. Let McQuay see it—maybe it put the fear of God in the insolent little shit.
"Actually," he mused slowly, mockingly, "I've been meaning to take the bitch out anyway." He grinned. "See if she can behave in public." At McQuay's hopeful look, Creed flashed a fang and winked. "I think I'll join you two."
Though McQuay's mouth quivered and his eyes lit with hope, Creed found himself re-evaluating the skinny revolutionary. He didn't like the man, but there was something in him that required a grudging sort of respect. At the same time, Creed could see the fawning worship for the Morgan frail: the simpering, the clutching. It seemed to Creed from stories he'd heard—from the sly manipulations of Wade Wilson and the more genuine, sorta fumbling admiration of Dukes—that a frail would bask in being the subject of that kind of idolatry.
'Morning, sunshine.
Perhaps her murmured, purring greetings were meant for Dean McQuay, after all.
"I can see her?" McQuay asked.
He hardened in his jeans immediately, almost brutally, and it was an erection born of barely-restrained anger. Creed bared his teeth, unsure of what to make of McQuay and his little madonna, or what to make of their relationship. All he knew was that it made his talons itch: made him want to mark her. Made him want to fuck her, to call her his.
"Yeah," he said only, and swung around to make his way out the door. He'd mark her, yes. He'd parade her sweet body in front of McQuay like a trophy, and leave the littler man with no question as to who owned his sweet Toby. Creed threw open the door, still glowering, and added over his shoulder, "I'll tell her to bring your balls while I'm at it."
vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv
"Shouldn't you be getting ready for your hot date tonight?" Creed sneered. October was sitting by the window, reading a hardcover novel.
She blinked up at him owlishly. Her reading glasses has slipped down her nose, and her hair was mussed and glowing in the window. "What?" So much confusion, so little alarm. It was disconcerting, and those big dark eyes—
He wondered what it would be like to see them so wide on him when he was slamming himself inside her. The surprise, the parted lips. The tightness that rose in him was alien, and it took him a moment to realize the difference: that in his mind's eye, now, her expression wasn't brought on by horror and screaming, but just surprise, and want. Maybe even pleasure.
His jeans were almost painfully tight.
"With our good friend Dean-o," he growled. He hated her. He did. She must be taunting him. He imagined her sitting across from McQuay, touching the little shit's arm. Stroking his face, the way she'd petted his own chops. Creed bared his teeth.
He didn't need to, though. She'd jumped from the windowsill, the book falling to the floor, forgotten. "What?" A fucking echo, huh?
"Are you deaf?" he snapped. "Don't ya have a little ritual Thursday-night dinner together? At the intersection of Folkshire and Georgetown? Some shitty little romantic restaurant? Followed by frolicking through fields of daisies?"
She wrinkled her nose in something like confusion or disgust, and rolled her eyes—rolled them!—before twisting her mouth in in thoughtful consideration. Her eyes, quiet and dark, were fastened on him. Funny: he had not noticed how assessing her eyes were, how very intelligent, and still, and open. "You're letting me go out?" she asked.
"Did I not make that clear?" he snarled, irritated beyond reason. He had no idea why he was so angry, but it didn't matter. He'd long ago stopped questioning his own rages.
That expression, those eyes. As though she thought she had the measure of him.
"Come with us?"
He did a double-take. He stopped—stared. She might look like she was trying to read him, but her gaze was utterly guileless. He ran over the words in his mind: rippling, light. It was not an assumption, or a fear-laced question.
It was an invitation.
It was a weapon.
For a moment, he was thrown, but then he grinned nastily. "I was planning on it, frail. Didja think I was gonna let you two out of my sight? This ain't a conjugal." His sneer grew wider, toothier. "Unless, of course, you want me to watch."
She completely ignored his implications, and smiled so suddenly and brightly that her eyes curved into crescents. She half-lunged forward and his claws sprang from his fingers instinctively, but she stopped just short of him without even seeming to notice the sharpness just inches from her. She said only, "I'm sorry—I forgot—no touching—" and moved past him with a half-mocking, half-apologetic grin. Before he could grasp her—and he wanted to, though it took him a moment to realize it; wanted to drop his arms to her waist and reel her in whether she liked it or not—she slipped away from him and down the hall, practically skipping.
He understood, then, that she had been going to embrace him.
Jarred, he paused, then trailed after her, his brows furrowed in disconcertion. Of course, with disconcertion came anger. "You want me to come?" A pause, a sucked-in breath, a muffled curse of confusion. "Are you a fucking moron?"
She tossed a grin over her shoulder. "Why not? You'd just be worried we were trying to 'escape your clutches' anyway." She wiggled her fingers good-naturedly, curling them into harmless and fragile little claws. For some reason, the image made something plummet behind his sternum. He paused mid-stride in pursuit of her. Creed was familiar with the sensation of loss, though it had been a while since he experienced it, and something about her delicate fingers and fake-ferocity had sent it washing over him.
Let the tigers come with their claws, he thought, and there was something forlorn in the words. I am not at all afraid of tigers.
She was, after all, so weak. Strange, how there was so little gloating in the thought of it just now, in this moment.
She dropped her fingers and smiled with a kind of gentle, contemplative mockery. "Or you'd be sneaking around the shadows, stalking us," she teased, and ducked around the corner into her bedroom, where he'd been sleeping.
"Aren't you a mouthy one," he sneered, though his mouth was still dry. He followed her without knowing why. "Maybe we should find something to keep that hole in your face occupied—"
"You're here and there's nothing I can do about it, right?" she interrupted with a wide-eyed, playful grin, shoulder-deep in her closet. "Probably the healthiest thing I can do is be charming and hope for the best."
While he was growling, both furious and aroused—never a good combination; at least, not for anyone but in his immediate vicinity—she disappeared into the closet, just slipped right in and then resurfaced like a mermaid, hugging a white one-piece dress. It was pretty, with a square neckline, and she rifled through a drawer for white underthings to go with it. Creed's mouth watered when he saw the handfuls of colored lace she was ruffling through, and he wondered why the hell he'd never thought to go through her drawers.
It pissed him off to no end to think McQuay might have seen her panties when he hadn't.
He moved in silently behind her, and when she slammed the drawer shut and whirled around, her hair whispered against his chest and she gasped at his nearness, leaning back against the dresser. It came up to just below her shoulder-blades, and the angle of her body thrust her breasts up at him. He trailed a claw lazily down her throat, leaving a lean red welt in its wake. The nail slid lower, down over the slope of one breast. The soft flesh surrendered beneath his claw, giving in under the pressure, and a line of blood rose to the surface. When it hit the air, his mouth watered at the smell of it. At the feel of her: so soft. He wondered what it would be like to feel her not just under his claw, but with the roughened pads of his fingers. The thought made him twitch, and at the same time her breathing hitched, breasts rising into his hungry fingers. His talon dug deeper than he intended, but he wasn't sorry. Her fear and her excitement—and now her metallic blood—were heavy in the air. She was trembling with want—hard—and the soft flesh under his fingers quivered. He let his nostrils flare to breathe her in, and his claw dragged her tank top down and revealed the edge of her bra: cream satin, edged in black lace. Soon the pale fabric would be tinged at the edge with red from where he'd cut her.
Let McQuay see his mark.
"Go get ready," he growled, releasing her but not moving back. She didn't move, frozen, her lips pale but her cheeks flushed. She licked her mouth and he leaned in, fully intending to bite her, to pull her lip into his mouth and grind between her legs. His cock was heavy, hard.
She slid against him and ran down the hall, toward the bathroom, slamming the door behind her hard.
They both recognized it as a futile gesture. If he wanted to break in, he would, and easily. Instead, he prowled toward it and leaned against the wood, listening to the rustle of clothes falling off her body, the careful sound of water, the hiss of breath as she cleaned the shallow wound on her breast. The zipper sliding down the dress, the sound of the fabric on her legs, the zipper moving up.
"Don't cover your bruises," he murmured through the door, his voice closer to a purr than he'd intended.
The popping of the lock was his only warning to brace himself when she yanked the door open and presented her back to him.
"Finish me, please," she said demurely, sweeping aside the golden curls and revealing that she'd only zipped herself halfway. He saw the strap of her bra, ivory satin overlaid with delicate folds of sheer fabric.
Finish me.
Please.
Oh, gladly, frail.
He had no doubt, in that moment, that she knew what she was saying. He wouldn't call it flirting—it was too frivolous a word—but she was knowing, and inviting, and giving him her back like a lovely bit of prey. His hand slid up the bare triangle of her back: slowly, feeling the silk of her flesh. Lingering. He thought about leaving another mark—or perhaps one for each claw—but for whatever reason, he didn't. He just let his calluses skate over her skin, protecting her as he followed with the zipper. Wouldn't want anything but him to mar that lovely back of hers, he reasoned. When he'd zipped her up, she turned to him, leaning on the doorframe opposite him. The dress's square neckline revealed the barest hint of cleavage, and the angry red slice glared up at him from the gold-and-white flesh. The blue shadows of her veins stood out in the paler skin. Delicious. Made for biting.
"Is this some kind of macho pissing contest?" she asked suddenly. Her voice was syrupy. Then—she batted her eyelashes.
She was mocking him.
Fury flooded him. He bared his fangs, but there was no humor in the expression, not even the violent wit to which she'd become accustomed. "For there to be a contest, there'd have to be a challenge," he spat viciously. "Let me just assure you that in a cock fight, I'd win."
She shook her head, looking bewildered. At least the mockery was gone from her gaze. "What are you going to do next? Mark your territory?"
He leaned over her, claws extended, hands clenched as tight as his jaw. Oh yeah. He'd almost forgotten how much he hated her. "Don't. Tempt. Me."
"Don't be ridiculous," she said mildly, turning from him to pull a hairbrush from the drawer. "There is nothing between me and Dean. At all."
He grappled with that for a moment. He hated her so much, but he hated the idea of McQuay's face buried between her legs even more. Somehow, he couldn't bring himself to believe the littler man hadn't been there after all—why else would the little shit be so besotted?
"Has he tongue-fucked you?" Creed demanded crudely, a lewd sneer curling his lip. "Rubbed you off through those pretty underthings of yers?"
She spun around, a look of comic shock written on her face, and laughed so hard she had to bend at the waist to keep her balance. "Good lord, no!" She almost couldn't speak around the laughter, and he stared down at her, unable to maintain the careful leer. She stayed tilted, using the angle to examine her hair as she brushed it, still chuckling and shaking her head.
The nape of her neck was bared to him.
"He called you sweet," Creed said after a moment, and snarled silently at the lack of menace in his own voice.
October looked up at him from around her heavy curtain of hair, appalled. "Sweet? Ew." She shook her head, returned to her work. "I hate that word."
"He worships the ground ya walk on, frail. Thinks yer some kinda goddess." He eyed her shrewdly, and wondered what he was waiting for. It wasn't like he believed her to be goddesslike, after all.
The brush parted her hair into a dozen rivers, shining in strands of gold and platinum and brass and copper. When she spoke her voice was dry and unimpressed. "Correction: he thinks I'm a fragile flower."
"You are a fragile flower."
She wrinkled her nose up at him. "Please. You don't know the half of it."
"I know I could rip you apart." It was true. It would be easy. "All that petal-skin." His hand hovered over her—huge and hard and sharp-clawed—and his voice was a low threat, though it felt hoarse in his throat.
She wrinkled her nose and made a dismissive gesture that garnered both his fury and his curiosity. Did she think it didn't matter?
"You're not the scariest thing out there, Mr Creed."
He blinked at that. He damn well should have been. Before he could respond to it, though—probably with a violent hand around her throat—she continued.
"And sweet? Really? Do I seem sweet to you?"
He glared down at her. "What's wrong with sweet?"
She flushed, but this time it was from anger, or possibly embarrassment. "Why don't I just dye my hair pink and wear little kitten-ears?"
His glare melted into bafflement.
"I'm not sweet," she said sharply, and it was perhaps the most irritation he'd heard since he'd ripped her phone out of the wall. "I'll be a little egotistical and say I care about people, but that makes me anything but sweet. It makes me pushy and bossy and demanding and stubborn." She was almost baring her teeth, ripping the brush through her hair now, furious at the thought. "I realize I don't kill people for a living, Mr Creed, but a fragile flower couldn't wake up every morning and do what I do."
He had a feeling she wasn't just referring to her work.
Or even to having him in her home.
October straightened and tossed her hair back. No longer a mass of tangled curls, it streamed over her back in glistening waves. He bet on about an hour until it was back where it had started.
"Sweet. What a joke," she snapped at the mirror. "I love Dean—as a friend—but if he ever opened his eyes and took me off his goddamn pedestal, he'd see that I'm just another loud-mouthed, incredibly-fallible human being."
He leaned back against the wall and folded his arms, raising an eyebrow. She was crackling with her irritation and it was fascinating, if ineffectual. All that anger. His lip twitched in a smirk.
"You certainly smell sweet enough," he said mildly, mockingly. "I bet you taste like it, too."
She only rolled her eyes. "Please. Don't overdo it." It was a little fascinating, and he watched her musingly. He'd never seen her so…cross. She pulled out a make-up bag and unzipped it. "Why don't you go find a woman who doesn't mind putting up with your macho bullshit?"
The corner of his mouth curled. "Oh, you don't mind it much," he purred, and he felt her flush, smelled her grow wetter. He licked one incisor, grinning. "Besides," he said silkily, "there haven't been a whole lot of willing women in my experience." He felt her fear palpably then—a physical tension in the room that overpowered her arousal like a tidal wave. He felt something stammer to a halt inside him, stuttering and drowning. For just a moment, he groped for something to say. But the feeling was fleeting and he crushed in between his clenched teeth, then let his smirk harden into something fiercer. "What?" he growled dangerously. "Didja think I was bluffing when I said I'd rape you?" He snorted, but he was eyeing her watchfully. He wasn't even sure what he was looking for, but he knew he would tear her apart in a second if the mood took him. "Wouldn't be the first time," he goaded her hatefully. "I learned young: take what you want."
She licked her lips and looked up at him, the bag now clutched in her hand. She was wide-eyed, and her expression put him in mind of something hurt and bewildered. "But—why? Surely you've come across a dozen women a day who would be happy to—"
"To what?" He snickered. "Fuck the mutant-monster? Yeah, they're lining up." His tone was cutting. So, she could be mean-spirited as hell when it suited her, couldn't she? "The last time a frail touched me willingly was when I was a kid, and that ended ugly." His tone grew even nastier. "Besides, it's so much more satisfying to just…take."
She turned back to the mirror slowly, her face blank. "I don't even believe that," she said after a moment. She was all but expressionless, except for the trembling of her mouth. "I bet there are hundreds of women who daydream about jumping your bones."
He snorted derisively and didn't answer. He wasn't sure if she was trying to get under his skin, or if he had gotten under hers, but her face was so careful and her mouth was so vulnerable. He didn't know if she was angry, or sad, or scared, or all of those things, but the muscles in his abdomen tightened and his stomach suddenly knotted, and for just a second he thought he wanted to fuck her more furiously than he'd ever fucked anything in his life. The thought was fleeting and he shoved it away—he didn't have a hard-on in this moment, not like he'd had with her before anyway—but he wanted something, and he couldn't explain it. Not to bite her, not to hurt her, not even to fuck her—not really. But he wanted her skin, somehow—the slender soft muscles beneath her flesh. He wanted her slight weight against him, the knotted silk of her hair under his hands, the fragility of her sweetly-bendable body. He wanted it—whatever it was—so badly that his throat closed and he had trouble, for a moment, swallowing. His fangs itched, and his bones itched, and his claws itched.
Looking troubled now, she set down the bag once more and began rifling through it. He leaned in the doorway and watched her, trying to reign in the unnameable, unfamiliar sense of wanting. He'd never seen a woman put on make-up before, and he tried to focus on the actions, to drown out the overwhelming desire that was fast becoming irritation. He had lived with men for years in his unit. He'd lived with his brother. He knew how boys and men woke up in the morning, how they stretched and belched and pissed and postured for power, how they talked. Now he focused on her tiny movements, her precision in uncapping and twisting and brushing on the cosmetics. It had never occurred to him, before, to be curious about how a woman rose in the morning: how they moved, or stretched, or spoke. In his mind, women had always served one unified purpose of providing sex and bloodshed.
But after all, despite her vulnerability and the fact that she was easy prey…wasn't it good to know the enemy?
With that justification, he watched her as she pulled out something that looked like a black crayon, and carefully lined her upper eyelids, just above the lashes.
"I'm just saying times have changed, at least a little," she murmured at last, smearing the crayon over her eyes. She took out some powders in cream and copper and painted her eyelids with them. When she blinked, he thought they looked like butterfly wings. Some strange tension he didn't know he'd been holding on to leaked out of him then. It uncoiled from his spine, and he crossed his arms and relaxed just a little against the frame of the door.
"There are plenty of women," she added, her tone shifting to something more confident. She was briskly powdering her face with a fine dusting of something else that made his nose twitch. "Plenty who would think you're beautiful, and witty, and dangerous enough that they would be all over the opportunity to get you into bed."
He raised an eyebrow and sneered, thinking of the first girl he'd tried to kiss: the original, the frailest of frails, sweet Mary. He and Jimmy had been trying it out in a Canadian settlement in those first few months on their own, trying to blend in. He'd been fourteen, and she'd had this long hair the color of cornsilk, and eyes that were amber and green. He'd knicked her with one of his fangs, on her lip, and she'd screamed bloody murder and clawed his face. When she watched the wounds heal—well, it had only gotten worse from there.
"That's not been my experience," he said icily, his voice like gravel.
She stared in the mirror, lipstick held loosely in one hand. The silver charm bracelet clinked and jangled as she gestured. He tried to make out the letters as they moved.
"Normal people…" she paused, leaning closer to the mirror and eyeing her lips critically. She pursed them, then relaxed. He watched. "We're slow," she said after a moment, flicking her eyes over to him as she gestured lightly with the tube of make-up, then dabbed it thoughtfully in the center of her lower lip. He watched her plush flesh yield under the crayon.
"Maybe it comes with how quickly we die," she added, pausing. She was staring at her mouth in the mirror, but almost looking past it, her eyes focused on something in the distance. "I mean—" she cast him a saucy grin "—unlike some people, we kind of have an expiration date."
He glowered. "Your expiration date is when I say it is," he growled, and she laughed.
"Okay," she conceded. "Whatever you say. The point is, though…we learn all these lessons, and by the time we have a handle on them, we're on our deathbeds." Her voice was quiet as she turned back to mirror. "Just praying that our children and our children's children can learn from our own nasty mistakes. But for whatever reason—lack of experience, lack of maturity…" She paused and grinned again. "…lack of intelligence—whatever it is, they usually don't."
She dabbed more pigment on her lips and he thought just how very soft she was, and how very smart. He tried to picture crushing those lips with his own, or biting them till they bled, or how they'd look wrapped around his cock. And those images made him hard, made him want her all over again, bloody and mangled and pleading beneath him. At the same time, he also couldn't get rid of the image of her, right now, as she was, standing there in the distorting florescent light of her bathroom, putting on her lipstick.
He tried to focus instead on the thought of her tearful face as she knelt in front of him, her lips wet and trembling, her hair a bloody mess of crimson and brass.
"My point is, human progress takes a long time," she murmured into the mirror. "I mean, it's not perfect yet, and I'm not saying—" she laughed and waved the tube of lipstick dangerously before refocusing her attention on her lips "—that it would be easy to go out and find someone to have a deep and meaningful relationship with—"
He snorted, and she grinned into the mirror at him, then pressed her lips together to gloss her mouth evenly and capped her tube of lipstick. She turned, leaning against the counter, and smiled openly at him. Her eyes were utterly without cunning, completely open, and she said frankly, "I just think you could go just about anywhere—a bar, a restaurant, or Kmart—and find a handful of women who would be more than happy to let you fuck their goddamn brains out."
She smiled wider and flounced from the room, leaving him startled and blinking in her wake. The cusswords that peppered her speech seemed so incongruous when they came out of her plump lips. It jarred him back to reality and made him think about all the other things he could make that dirty mouth do.
With that thought, he turned on his heel and stalked after her and into the kitchen. She had tipped her head back and was squeezing water from a sports bottle into her mouth, careful not to let it mar her painted lips. He snagged the bottle deftly from her hands, latched his own around her waist, and hoisted her onto the kitchen counter. She gaped up at him, then laughed.
"How unfair is it that you're still taller than me?" she asked, looking up at him despite her perch.
She was scrambling his fucking brains.
"What about you?" he growled, placing his hands on her knees.
She blinked up at him, obviously baffled, an uncertain smile twitching the right corner of her mouth. She was a little afraid—he could smell it—but not nearly enough.
Not nearly enough.
He spread her thighs, the white hem of her dress riding high, and slid between them, watching as her breathing hitched.
"Are you one of the women who would let me fuck their goddamn brains out?" he mocked, leaning closer so that he towered over her.
She faltered, her eyes wide as a doe's. She reminded him of every deer he'd ever taken down.
"I—I don't really—" She paused, gulped. "I don't exactly count."
He raised an eyebrow, then leaned in to smell her throat, the fragrance of her hair. He liked that the way her chest hitched when she gasped, and that she couldn't finish a sentence.
"And why's that?" he purred in the shell of her ear. She jolted back to fast that she cracked her head on the cupboard behind her and he let out a sharp bark of laughter. It was twice as surprising when she winced, rubbed her head, and grinned sheepishly, as though the pain had somehow helped collect her thoughts.
Then:
"I may be genetically boring, but I'm about as far away from normal as you can get." She paused, licking her lips nervously, her gaze flickering between his eyes and his mouth. "And I—I generally don't let anyone fuck my brains out, not even when I want to. I just—never had the time, or the patience, or the experience for that—junk."
Never had the time? He didn't think she was a virgin—there was a certain scent virgins had, something that just screamed they were overripe and ready to be taken. Not that he particularly cared. He still didn't like the idea of McQuay seeing her in her pretty panties, but others? They weren't with her now. They didn't matter.
Regardless, she was twisting now, obviously trying to find a way to get down from the counter without pushing any closer to him. He could feel the heat from her, could smell how rich and wet she'd gotten.
"I think," he growled in a low, slow voice, his hands sliding slowly up her thighs, under her skirt. She stilled as they crept toward her hips, and then he dragged them back down to her knees, lightly scraping her with his claws. Her grin had long since faded and she was watching him with wide, dark eyes. He could smell her arousal as well as her apprehension.
He held her gaze and smiled slowly, baring his sharp canines. "I think you would let me fuck your brains out," he drawled lazily, teasing her skin with his claws, "if I tried really, really hard."
He ran his nails over her thighs again, lightly, and her lips parted with a soft puff of breath. "I…I don't think…" She caught her lower lip with her teeth and then let it go. He watched, his eyes zeroed in, and wanted to press his own fangs into the soft flesh. "I don't think you'd have to actually try that hard," she spilled out suddenly. "So, please, I'd appreciate it if you—didn't."
He didn't move, trying to stifle his own surprise at her words, still holding her eyes with his own like a cat toying with his prey.
I don't think you'd have to actually try that hard.
He leaned in, lightly touching her chin to lift her face to the light and examining her bruises. They were still dark and unmistakable against her skin. He dropped his hand to her collarbone, spanning it lightly with one hand before clawing back a lock of hair to better display the brilliant welt that slid down her throat and into her neckline.
"Let's go," he murmured, staring at her hard. She slipped from the counter, her body sliding downward against his, and moved toward the door.
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AN: Hey everyone. I've been trying to leave this version of the story clear of author's notes, but I wanted to let you know that updates are going to be slow. They ARE coming, I promise-I am always trying to squeeze them in, and am committed to getting the full, revised version up. That said, I am in the final semester-and-a-half of my graduate coursework, am working 50-60 hours a week, and am tired. Please be patient! Thank you for your ongoing interest, and your kind words. I deeply appreciate your company on this journey. :)
Happy reading!