Pursued(16)
What is this? she thought, shifting uncomfortably. If I didn’t know better I’d think I was aroused somehow. But that didn’t happen to her—it was one of the things she’d managed to put in the vault and forget about. So what the hell was this weird new feeling?
“Darling? Are you quite all right?” James leaned across the table, looking at her anxiously and Elise realized she’d stopped in mid-bite with a forkful of pancakes halfway to her mouth.
“I…I think so,” she said slowly, putting down the fork. “I just feel…feel so funny all of a sudden.”
He snorted. “I should think so. After eating all that junk! Anyway, I thought you were a vegetarian—you never have anything but coffee and grapefruit when we have breakfast together.”
“That’s because that’s all you ever have,” Elise said distractedly. “If you’d asked me, I would have told you I like breakfast food. You just never…never asked.” She could barely finish her sentence because the heat which had pooled in her pelvis seemed to have intensified, radiating outward like a ball of molten lead between her thighs. My God, what’s wrong with me? What’s happening to me? Suddenly she felt like she was going to be sick.
“Darling?” James asked, frowning. “Look, if you’re finished eating I really have to be going. I can’t miss my flight and we’ve already spent enough time—”
“Excuse me!” She bolted up for the second time that day, sending platters of half-eaten food across the table toward her hapless fiancé. James shot out his hands, attempting to fend off the flying pancakes and ended up with a lapful of scrambled eggs and sausage gravy instead. Elise ignored his cry of irritation and rushed back to the ladies room yet again.
She barely made it to the handicapped stall and bent over the toilet before everything came up. Never, she thought miserably as wave after wave of nausea hit her. I’ll never eat breakfast again. I swear, I promise. Just let this be over, please God, let it be over.
She finished puking at last and wiped her mouth on a swatch of scratchy toilet paper she fumbled off the roll. Stumbling to the sink, she rinsed out her mouth and tried to swallow a little water. Outside the door, she heard someone knocking.
“Elise? Elise are you all right in there? Listen, darling, we really have to go now. I have to run to the office for a change—I can’t go to Japan wearing your breakfast on my trousers. Elise?”
“A minute,” she managed to gasp. “Please, James, I just need one more minute.”
“We don’t have another minute. What if a reporter from one of the news vids shows up? I’m telling you, Elise, I can’t be seen like this!”
“I know. I’m sorry…sorry…” She tried to make her voice stronger but the words came out in a whisper. Now that her stomach was empty, the wrong feeling was growing again. The feeling of heat, of need…a different kind of hunger between her thighs. What was it? What was causing it?
“Elise!” James was practically pounding on the door now. “If you don’t come out, I’m coming in. I—” Suddenly his voice changed and it became apparent he was talking to someone else. “Hello. What are you doing here?”
“She’s in there?” A deep familiar voice, like stones rubbing together in a riverbed made Elise’s heart jump. Could it be…?
“Yes, but she’s indisposed at the moment.” James sounded suddenly haughty—his posh British accent becoming much more pronounced.
“I don’t give a fuck about indisposed,” the other voice growled. “Elise? You okay in there?”
“Merrick…” His name was nothing but a whisper on her lips. The fire inside her was eating her now, burning her from the inside out. Elise reached for the door but didn’t make it. Her legs refused to work and she sank down on the grimy floor instead.
“That’s it—I’m coming in. If you aren’t decent, cover up.” The wooden door banged open and Merrick barged in, ducking his head to avoid hitting his forehead on the lintel. James was right behind him.
“You can’t go in there—it’s the ladies room! Don’t you Kindred understand the concept of privacy?”
Merrick ignored him. He knelt on the dirty floor beside Elise and looked at her anxiously. “Hey baby, you okay?”
The use of his pet endearment for her nearly brought tears to her eyes. “No,” she whispered, shaking her head. “No, I don’t know what it is but something…Merrick, something is wrong with me. Really, really wrong.”