Pursued(55)
The vault! Have to keep it in the vault! It had become a constant mantra with her now. The vault door was bulging, the corpses in there were unquiet, demanding in louder and louder voices to be let out. But I can’t let you out, Elise thought desperately. If I let you out I’ll drown!
She thought she knew why the vault door was getting weaker and weaker as the days went by. Part of it was the hunger, which she refused to feed. But the hunger wasn’t the only feeling that was growing inside her. There was something else—that same, strange, heated feeling between her thighs she’d experienced right before Merrick had come for her in the IHOP. But it was also akin to the feeling she’d gotten while sitting on his lap, during the ride back to the Mother Ship, when he’d been explaining what he wanted to do to her—how he wanted to taste her…
Somehow that feeling—that sexual need—was even more frightening than the memories of Buck and the black shadow-man who wanted to hurt her. I’m not like that, Elise told herself over and over. I don’t do those things. Don’t even think about those kinds of things.
But though she tried hard to keep the thoughts out of her head, her body kept responding to the feelings, which she had a much harder time suppressing. Feelings of desire whenever Merrick was near, whenever she smelled his warm, fur and smoke scent, so masculine and so completely desirable. Whenever his arm brushed hers as they passed in the narrow corridor or when he looked into her eyes and she had to turn quickly away, blushing, so that he wouldn’t read the need on her face…
Elise tried telling herself it was just a side effect of their artificial bond, but she knew that wasn’t true—or not completely true, anyway. Somehow her hunger for his touch had mutated into something else—something stronger and harder to deny or ignore. That was why she continued to ask Merrick to sleep on the floor, the reason she shied away from his touch, and refused to do anything more than hold his hand.
The memory of the black shadow-man had long since been banished to the vault—an uneasy corpse, to be sure, but at least it was no longer loose in her psyche, walking and talking and ready to wake her screaming with nightmares. Elise had it under control—for now.
What she didn’t have under control was herself. And that scared her—scared her almost to death. Because the feelings of sexual want and desire weren’t natural for her. The deep, maddening yearning in her soul to be touched, to be stroked and tasted, to lose control in another’s arms, was wholly foreign—wholly wrong.
I don’t do those things. I’m not that way, whispered a voice in her head—the high, trembling voice of a much younger girl. Of a victim. I don’t want to be that way. I can’t. I won’t.
She knew Merrick had some idea that things were wrong and going wronger by the moment, but still Elise struggled to control and contain her embarrassing problem. After all, she couldn’t tell him she was terminally horny. Even though her pussy was constantly wet and her nipples ached with need, it wasn’t something she was prepared to admit to herself—let alone him.
Still, she saw his nostrils flare sometimes when they were close to each other and wondered if he had other ways of sensing her problem. If he could tell how difficult her life was becoming, how the hunger and its new companion, lust, were tearing her apart inside even as she strove to keep a calm outer façade…
* * * * *
The night before they were supposed to make orbit around Rageron, Merrick decided he couldn’t take it anymore.
He’d been patient and calm and kind and the Goddess knew none of those qualities came easily to him. But he couldn’t sit by and watch Elise die because she was too frightened and proud to take what she needed from him.
He could feel the hunger coming off her in waves. Their bond might be fake but it worked just fine for conveying her needs and emotions to him. Holding hands with her every night wasn’t enough to feed the immense need he felt growing inside her. It was like throwing a starving man a few crumbs of food every day and expecting him to survive—it wasn’t going to happen.
But there was something else growing as well. Along with the hunger in her he also felt…desire. Even outright lust. Which complicated things a hell of a lot. He remembered what Sylvan had said—that as time went on Elise would need deeper and more intense touching and that things might have to turn sexual between them. The thought made his cock hard and the mating fist at its base swell with desire…until he remembered the stark fear in her eyes the night he’d come into the room and frightened her half to death. Her body might be in heat but her mind most certainly was not and that led to a whole new set of problems—problems he couldn’t ignore if he wanted to keep her alive.