Chapter 33
Chapter Thirty-Three
Lagos
I grind my teeth in my sleep.
The roar of the storm outside carries a familiar nightmare on its sand-laden back. Single quick flashes of a scene appear in my mind.
Flash; a dead baby on the floor of the compound laboratory, head crushed into the clean white tiles. Flash; bloody grid marks beneath my boots.
Flash; running, running, my lungs burning… And then a girl sprawled out on the mattress, her neck twisted and crushed.
Flash.
Dahlia.
Dead Dahlia . Crushed little flowers covered in blood, green eyes staring up at me, betrayed and in love… In love.
Dread weighs me down.
“Lagos… The storm is scary tonight.” Somehow, her small whimper reaches into my mind and pulls me out of there, thrusting me back into her arms.
My eyes snap open to the ceiling of the farmhouse, my body instantly turning to pull her close to me. To protect her. “It’s just the wind. You’re safe with me, little flower. I’ll take care of you.”
I lie still, staring ahead, but part of me feels tethered to that place, the compound, and the years that I spent training, killing, and studying. So, I hold my little flower, focus on her breathing, her scent, and easily shake away the dark images of my past.
“But…” she murmurs sleepily. “What about tomorrow and the next day and the next? What about… Spero.”
The Shadow baby…
She yawns, tucking her little body into the cave of my torso. I gaze down at her. The room is dim but slithers of light from the torch slash her profile and body.
My gaze follows the bridge of her nose, straight but for the slightest curve from the attack. To her lips, full and parted as she breathes. Soft bruising paints the corner of one eye. And freckles—freckles fucking everywhere, with a few on her upper lip.
“The milk…” She sighs sleepily, sadly. “I’ve failed him.”
I’m not sure if she’s awake or tormented in her slumber by that fucking Shadow baby and its needs, but I don’t like it.
I’m certain I wasn’t breastfed. Why does he get her? He only burdens her, saddens her. I hate that. Just put it in a damn box and feed it every few hours.
That’s how it’s done.
I recall the rows and rows of incubators I saw that last day before I escaped. Shadows fed through tubes, hooked up to machines, barely organic. An awakening moment… That was me— is me. I am not human.
I’m an abomination. Made of the same material as a human but built in a laboratory.
I gaze through the dark, across to the sleeping infant in the corner, tucked in, covered, kissed goodnight. This fucking thing…
This infant is… lucky. Not a word I would usually use, but I can’t shake my contempt. Though I know it is pathetic jealousy—I have to share her…
I don’t like sharing her.
But no matter how powerful my possessive demands are, her misery strikes me harder ? —
The need to taste between her legs burns through me, and within a minute, I have her on her back with her thighs either side of my face.
“Lagos…” she complains, sleep clinging to her husky voice.
As I rub my nose and lips against her knickers, inhaling, she moans. Finding the back of my head, her little fingers feed into my hair.
“You smell so good.” A possessive growl vibrates from me. As much as I want to chew her knickers off, I don’t. She only has a few pairs. I saw her washing all her clothes in the sink earlier. She needs more. I need to provide for her.
I drag her knickers off her trembling legs and brace myself on my elbows with my palms holding her little thighs to the blankets, spreading her wide for my gaze.
Even in the dim, I get an eyeball of perfectly shaped pussy lips, slightly open, revealing luscious soft internal flesh. So vulnerable. So fragile. This is what a man dreams of after death.
I lick her from arsehole to clit, and she jerks off the mattress, rasping out startled breaths.
“ Oh … Lagos.”
My name… Is it? A strange need growls through me. Unbidden, unwelcome, fucking dark, because I wonder what it would feel like to be called Six. Would I like hearing that from her? Or would I despise it?
Would I choke the word from her lips… Dark rings eclipse my vision until her pussy is my only focus.
I lap at her, up and down, her salty juices coating my tongue. Squeezed between my abdomen and the blanket, my cock thickens. Precum pumps to the tip, smearing and leaking.
Her hands paw at my hair.
She moans when I dip my tongue between her swollen lips. Rimming her entrance, her flesh ripples against the onslaught of my attention.
She squirms and mewls, her backside trying to shift and join the movements.
I glide one rough palm up her trembling stomach, over the ladder of her ribs, careful not to hurt her. Covering both small, pert breasts, I knead them firmly but also pin her the fuck to the blanket so I can eat her without interruption.
“I know where to lick you, little flower. How hard. How fast. When to stop. Fuck… ” I never want to stop tonguing this perfect cunt.
Supple thighs rub against my beard while I mouth her pussy, fucking her channel with my tongue and thrusting my hips into the blankets.
Groaning… Fuck.
Too turned on.
Groaning harder…
Dangerously turned on.
I snarl viciously as I eat her, hearing fragile uncertainty pitch her whimpers, but that doesn’t stop her from coming. Doesn’t frighten her pleasure away.
Her pussy clings to my tongue, her climax tearing through her quickly. She pulses in my hold, her moans belting the room with sweet, wild abandon.
I didn’t even suck her little clit.
I drag my tongue slowly up and then latch onto the tiny hood, pushing with my lips to bring the little pink member out so I can flick it with my tongue.
“Oh!” Her legs spasm. “Lagos… Please, it’s too much.”
I hold her the fuck still. Not unlike holding a wounded animal as it thrashes to keep from the clutches of pain, she thrashes as I force her to come again and again, despite her sensitivities. I want her twitching with sensation.
As she comes apart for the fourth time, I lick down to her entrance again and hum. I lick her for my enjoyment. Only mine. Messily and hungrily and without consideration.
I squeeze her left nipple and roll it between my thumb and finger— Fuck. Then, I nearly blow my load on the blankets when the tight bud weeps with a thick fluid. She is lactating into my fucking hand.
I bet she doesn’t even know.
Arousal hits my temples. I don’t stop stimulating and squeezing as something—some kind of emotion—spreads warmth through my chest. Pride . It’s fucking pride. I’m proud of my little flower.
Crazed with need, I’m prowling up her body, trailing my tongue over her wet, shuddering skin as I move.
Dropping my elbows to the blankets on either side of her, I stare down at the way her milk glistens in tiny rivers from each nipple.
Fuck. Me.
My tongue darts out instinctively before I can stop myself, and I lick the milky fluid from her. As I take her small breast into my mouth, drawing in, her nipple squirts. Warm, sweet liquid streams down my tongue. I swallow hungrily, humming and greedy for more.
“Lagos!” She yelps, panic and embarrassment ripe in her sweet voice. It only fuels me.
To get away from me, she tries tugging at my hair, and the small sting fuels me.
“I’m… I’m… Stop,” she pleads. “You don’t understand. You have to stop.”
Hell no!
Drinking from her, my mind in a haze of pleasure, I fist the blankets by her head and fuck her leg, losing control momentarily, but then stop… Because she needs me to stop. She needs to feed the fucking infant.
I tear my mouth from her nipple, heaving because I forgot to breathe. “You need more food.” It’s the first thought to axe through my arousal.
Her needs… She needs more food if she is to let that infant suck nutrients from her body. “I’ll be back with food.”
Without a second thought, I am standing and walking from the room.
The hallway is almost pitch-black except for the glow of one of our flashlights in the kitchen.
I enter to find Tomar sitting with his elbows on the kitchen table, his face buried in his hands. Darkness crinkles around the edges of the space, but the torch in front of him beams upward, creating a dot on the ceiling.
Stirring displeasure digs claws into my thick skin. “Were you listening to her come on my tongue?”
He lifts his head, a pained gaze hitting me, before snapping away with a hiss. “Get some clothes on, Lagos!”
I look down the long, hard slope of my body to my cock, thick and steeled against my abdomen, painting me in precum that won’t fucking stop flowing.
“She is lactating,” I state plainly.
“What?” He rises to his feet, eyes bugging out with shock. “That’s— That’s brilliant news.”
I cross my arms. “She needs food.”
“I agree.” He moves to a crate and grabs a large cardboard box. “Full of military-grade rations,” he states. “The people who lived here must have raided a Trade vehicle or something.”
Cold, I grab the box and turn my back on him, walking away.
"Why is her innocence so attractive to you?” he blurts out.
I stop dead in my tracks.
“I know why I like it, but I don’t know why you do,” he goes on. “Is it because you're depraved? You want to break all the pretty things?"
Some fucking honesty from him in relation to her—for once.
Slowly, I edge around to face Tomar, the torch offering enough light to really study his exhausted demeanour.
“Tell me how you really feel, brother?” I glare at him. “I thought I won’t break everything I touch?”
He closes his blue eyes and shakes his head. “I didn’t mean that. I know you don’t want to break anything.”
Perhaps it’s because I know he cares for her, because he cares for me, or maybe it’s because I know men can’t control their instincts… I offer him honesty. "Maybe to start with.”
"See it from my perspective.” He opens his eyes, levelling me. “I have spent the last two decades watching you hate the world and yourself, kill hundreds of men and sleep soundly. I have tried to show you peace. I have tried to show you joy. I don’t want her to be broken… You will find her annoying and boring. And you will hurt her.”
"Annoying... Yes. She is fucking annoying, but that says more about me and my bitter view of life than about her.” I clench my teeth, already hating that I called her annoying. “And boring? The opposite. Everything is more when she is beside me. Things I've seen a million times are more remarkable, more beautiful. Her innocence sees the world the way I want it to be. The way it should be. It's not a big fucking fan... Is it?” I cross the room, shadow him, and grip the side of his neck with one hand, squeezing. I think I’m warning him or showing him affection. Perhaps, I want to snap it. I can’t tell. “It’s a fucking remarkable fan,” I admit, voice rough. “And I want to see more with her so she can open my eyes."
He frowns up at me, locking his jaw. “I tried to open your eyes many times, Lagos. You wanted to be blind.”
I release his neck. “Not anymore.”
“You found God in her.” He laughs without mirth. “I see The Cradle as remarkable because I know God made it, designed it, and I see God everywhere. In all of it. Even the punishing wind. Even in you. I see His incredible power and will.”
“I only see her.” My tone deepens, a threat thundering in my chest. “Don’t test me when it comes to her, brother. Bury whatever feelings you have. If I so much as suspect your hand is on your cock while you dream of the sounds I pull from her, I will remove your hands and your cock.”
“Vulgar,” he grumbles but saves further feigned disgust. “I was wrong to let myself feel that way. I see that now.”
“It’s not wrong. You’re a man after all. It took her for me to feel humanity. It took her for you to feel primal.” As the words growl through my teeth, the urge to kill him intensifies. I don’t want anyone feeling primal, or anything else for that matter with her.
Fuck.
I pause, lording over Tomar as moments roll by. Killing him would hurt her and pain me to an early grave, so I stride away from him.
Focus on my little flower.