Chapter Twenty-Seven Darius
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Darius
It’s two days more until Monika is cleared to come home.
Though her wounds were mostly superficial, the acid was of an inhuman compound the doctors had never encountered.
They had Monika stay the extra days to ensure there weren’t any side effects—and for the annoying COE doctor, Emily, to take photos and samples so she can run tests and, more importantly, come up with something to counteract the worst of the side effects, namely the boils.
They spread slowly and continue to disintegrate through whatever substance they hit.
Emily is fairly certain that if left untreated, they’d chew through skin to the bone.
I try and fail not to think about what Monika’s legs would have looked like if I hadn’t found her in time.
Meanwhile, Emily’s excited jabbering in the face of Monika’s—and my own—distress awarded her a couple electrical zaps. Small ones, of course. Nothing to cause permanent damage. After all, if we’re going to get a useful antidote out of her, I’ll need her brain intact.
I shoot a text to Simon from the back of my limo. I sit there, shifting uncomfortably as my tail rubs against the squeaky leather. Why is it so squeaky? I hate it. Monika’s right: All my furniture is uncomfortable. Even in my damn vehicle. At least I already took care of my apartment.
“What are you thinking about?”
“Nothing,” I lie, squeaking against my seat again as I glance down at Monika’s legs.
She’s wearing hideous sweatpants her annoying godsister brought her that are bright orange and tattered at the hem—Cynthia truly could not have chosen a more hideous pair.
But not even their hideousness is enough to abate the rage that shoots up my spine at the thought of the bandages that lie beneath the ugly fabric.
Like the carcass of a dead animal on the side of the road, too gruesome to look at, too gruesome not to look at, I can’t stop staring at every one of her wounds down to the littlest scratch.
Every one of her stupid fucking bandages affects me.
The limo is huge. Doesn’t matter. I’m sitting so close to her the outsides of our thighs are zippered together. She tries to edge farther away from me, likely unimpressed with my answer. “Don’t,” I snap.
“Are you going to be an asshole forever?”
“Yes.”
I feel the temperature of her body rise, and lean in to plant a kiss to her temple. I like the way she leans back in to me too much. I like it even more when she says, “I’m really okay.”
“I know.”
“You don’t have to be an asshole.”
“I’m your asshole, remember?”
She doesn’t rise to the jibe and instead quips, “You don’t have to go on a rampage.”
“I know. But I like violence.”
She grips my knee and I place my hand, three times the size of hers, atop it. “Don’t start a war.”
“I’m not starting anything. I’m going to end it.”
She sighs. “Will you at least let me in on your plans?”
“Like you let me in on so many of yours?”
She huffs, unrepentant, and with her injuries I can’t even properly punish her yet. “I thought we agreed that wasn’t the play? That we were going to trust each other from now on?”
“I just have one more move.” And while I may trust Monika, I don’t trust that she wouldn’t try to stop me if she knew what it was.
She makes a sound that, on any other day, would have gotten her turned over and turned out.
I’d have shackled her wrists to the arms of my desk chair and let her kneel there all fucking day, putting that mouth to better use than those irritated fucking sounds.
“When you’re out of those bandages, I swear to God you won’t be able to sit for a month. ”
“You don’t believe in God.”
“I am a god. I believe in me.”
“So you’re swearing to yourself?”
“You got a mouth I want to fill.” I rub my own jaw, irritated with myself and fucking furious with her and just damn . . . scared. “You must have knocked some attitude loose when you hit your head.”
“I’m sorry that I don’t want to be talked to like an inconvenience for the rest of my life.”
“For the rest of your life?” I raise an eyebrow and actually look at her—try to—but she’s still got a white bandage taped to her forehead and another to her left cheek.
It didn’t look like that serious a cut, but it was deep.
They gave her nine damn stitches. Five surface, four underneath.
Her face is still all bruised and swollen, which doesn’t make it any easier when she smiles bashfully up at me.
“Let’s start with today first,” she says, her eyes locking on mine.
I look away quickly and rub my face again. I want to reach over and grab her fucking thigh, but there’s stitching zigzagging all across her goddamn legs. There’s no part of her I can touch without causing her pain. “I’m going to take all your days as soon as I find where you hid that paperwork.”
She makes another annoying fucking sound that makes me want to hear her beg to be taken from the back. All damn night. This time it’s a little laugh as if she doesn’t believe me. Her laughter turns quickly to a groan when she shifts position.
“How bad’s your pain?” I snarl.
“Not bad. Everything feels better after showering. They offered me codeine, but I said no. It freaks me out, so I just took the Motrin 600 and the antibiotic Emily prescribed for my legs . . . What are you . . .” She doesn’t finish.
“Divider up,” I call out, and Nicoleta complies while I unbuckle my seat belt, kneel on the floor of the limo, and carefully spread Monika’s bandaged legs.
“Are you serious?”
“Stop me if you want to stop me,” I tell her, tearing a hole in the crotch of her sweats. She’s not wearing anything underneath.
Her palms come down on the top of my head. They’re bandaged too. The right one also has stitches.
I don’t think about it as I gently pull her hips forward on the seat and spread her exposed mound with my fingers. “Fuck, you’re pretty,” I whisper to her heat. She’s on fire. I blow on her lips gently and her back arches. “Don’t you dare fucking move. You stay still.”
She’s unshaved here after three days in the hospital, and I can smell the generic soap on her skin.
It’s all heavenly to me because she’s still here, despite everything.
Her breathing is hard, and I know this is a bad idea.
She should be relaxing, shouldn’t she? I don’t know.
I didn’t ask her doctor about sex. But she’s not injured here, one of the few places she isn’t, and I need this.
I need her not to hurt, not to make any more of those sad, whispery sounds, even if just for a few minutes.
I spread her mound, spread her lips next.
So pretty and dark brown, almost black, they flower a lighter brown at their center, and when I spread her even farther open, pink way in deep.
It’s that pink I’m going for. I lick a line through it and then open my mouth wide and inhale it all.
My tongue enters her body, reaching for her G-spot and coming up short.
So I bring my tail around the side of my body and slide the tip up the inside of her thigh.
It’s long enough to enter her, and I’m surprised by the stimulating sensation I feel jolt through my own body as I start to fuck her fast with the thin limb while my mouth retreats to work her outer skin. My tail is getting more sensitive.
I nibble on her mound, suck on her clit, feel as her pulse jacks up way too high, and before I’m really sated, I finish it.
I fuck her so fast with my tail she screams, and when I suck next on her clit, hard, she comes undone.
She comes for me and I feel a little better when she shivers and sighs contentedly. Before I’m ready, I pull away.
I sit back on my heels and rub the slick from her body down my chin and neck.
“I can’t stand to look at you . . .” I choke, my dick as hard as a goddamn tire iron in my jeans.
I reach down and stroke myself once, twice, then shove the offending appendage down my goddamn pant leg. My tail is another story.
“Darius . . .” she starts, still panting.
“When you’re hurt like this. I don’t fucking like it.” My tail swats at the air, droplets of her orgasm spraying over the seats of my limo. It’s a good way to part with the vehicle, I decide. One last hurrah. I’m gonna sell it in the morning.
“Your car?” she says.
Didn’t realize I’d spoken out loud. “Yeah. Gotta downsize,” I say, lifting up and giving her a quick kiss before plopping down beside her. I ignore my angry erection entirely. “Now that I’ve taken a serious pay cut.”
She snorts and reaches out to place her hand on my thigh. “I, um . . . That was . . . Should I . . .”
“You don’t wanna finish that sentence, or you’re gonna piss me off all over.”
“I . . . Sorry.”
My head rolls on my neck before I lift it to lazily look at her. “You?”
She bites her bottom lip.
“You’re some kinda something. A lion until you have an orgasm. Then you become a sweet little kitten.”
“Fuck off.” She pushes my shoulder.
I laugh and try again—try harder—to look at her.
My gaze moves over her face. The taste of her satisfaction on my tongue makes it easier.
“You said you weren’t good at this,” I tell her softly, imploring her through gaze alone to understand what I mean when words seem so difficult to piece together.
“This is hard for me, too, but I want to be good at it.”
Her blush gets deeper. She nods quickly and gives my thigh a little squeeze. My tail rolls up the inside of her ankle and she jolts. “Does it hurt to sit on that thing?”
I groan. “You’re an idiot.”
We ride the rest of the way to our building in companionable silence, and when we arrive, I help Monika gingerly exit the vehicle after Nicoleta opens the car door for us. “It’s good to see you’re okay, Monika,” she says.