As if she’d already turned on the shower.
Throwing off the sensation, she unzipped the two halves and opened the kit. Not sunglasses, no. Instead, there was a glass vial with a clear liquid in it, and three syringes, all strapped in like they were going for a car ride and wanted to follow the seat-belt laws. The label on the little bottle was facing in, and she twisted things in place to see what it said.#p#分页标题#e#
Morphine.
She’d never seen anything like this in any of Wrath’s things. And it wasn’t hard to extrapolate that he might have gone to Doc Jane—or hell, even Havers—to get prepared in the event she went into her—
Another blast of heat came over her, and she frowned up at the vent above her head. Maybe Fritz needed to have the HVAC systems looked at—
As her knees gave out without any warning, she barely had time to catch herself on the counter, the kit scattering into Wrath’s sink, her two Chanel perfume bottles knocking over. With the groan of a wounded animal, she tried to haul herself up, but her body didn’t listen to the signals.
It was on its own path.
A tremendous, volcanic power exploded out of her, robbing her of the strength to keep herself off the floor. Slumping down, she curled herself around her core, holding her lower belly, jacking her knees to her chest. The cool marble barely registered as the forest fire under her skin shifted into a driving urge, an overwhelming sexual need that required one and only one thing.
Her mate.
Flipping herself onto her back, she rolled over to her other side, and then onto her belly. Clawing at the slick floor, she rubbed her thighs together, trying to find some relief, some respite from the ache that was taking over everything.
How many hours? She tried to think—how many hours had Layla said this lasted?
Twenty-four? No, longer—
Beth cried out as another blast tore through her body, sweat bursting from her pores, fangs descending into her mouth.
And this was only the beginning, a distant part of her acknowledged. Just the first salvo—it was going to get worse: As time wore on, the hormones were going to render her incapable of anything but respiration.
To think she had volunteered for this?
Madness.
The needing was like a pair of fists torquing her body to the point where she knew she must have broken bones. No, no, this was going to kill her—how could it not? And the need for sex? It wasn’t even about having a child. It was about survival—
Wrath.
Oh, God, he was going to come up here. Whenever he was done talking to Tohr. And he was going to find her on the floor—and then what?
Even through the maelstrom of hormones, she was able to think that through to its conclusion—he was going to be in a horrible position: either service her and live with consequences he hated, or watch her suffer.
Which he would never do.
Her palms squeaked against the slick floor as she pushed her thousand-pound torso up. Climbing the drawer pulls like they were a ladder, she had to take a break at the counter level, her vision swimming, her eyes struggling to focus as her body begged for sex it simply couldn’t have.
Before she succumbed to this entirely, she was going to take care of things on her own.
Her hands were shaking so badly, it took her several tries to capture the kit, but eventually, she got the thing and brought it down to the floor. Time for another breather on the cool marble. But not too long a delay. The waves were coming harder and faster each time.
Fumbling fingers, the glass vial bouncing out of its tether, skittering away.
She was crying as she dragged her body after it, arm out, hand pawing—
“Beth,” a voice said. “Oh, God … Beth.”
A masculine palm came down from out of the sky, reaching for her, searching through thin air for her—and through the morass, she struggled to process the hows and whys—except then her body made the connection for her.
Wrath.
As his shitkickers came into her vision, her hormones blew up, responding to his presence by ratcheting up to a level that was Hell not just on Earth, but under her skin, boiling her blood, making her sex scream for what only he could give her.
But that could never be.
“Go…” she cried out in a cracked voice. “Drug me … or give me the—”
Wrath knelt down with her. “Beth—”
“Give me the drugs! I’ll do it—”
“I can’t let you—”
Pegging him with a hard stare, she didn’t have any energy to fight with him. “Give me the fucking drugs!”
Wrath’s body had begun to respond as he took the stairs up to their quarters—and by the time he made it into the bathroom, he knew exactly what was doing. As well as what the solution was: Every instinct in him was roaring to service his female, to ease her suffering in the only way that mattered.