Chapter 24 #3
But Ravik’s entire body relaxed under the contact and he seemed to get relief at once.
And Cassandra…Cassandra looked impossibly soft as she bent over him, her brown hair falling forward over one shoulder, her red silk nightgown brushing the tops of her thighs, her mouth gentle against Ravik’s burned skin.
And as she kissed him, something happened—the fog in Ravik’s eyes thinned.
Severin saw it happen. The Beast Kindred was definitely responding to her touch, as much as her scent, the scientific part of his mind noted. The other part though how beautiful she was, kissing his best friend.
“Feels better!” Ravik rumbled, nodding. “Mate’s kisses make Ravik feel better.”
His sentences were already improving, Severin noted. Good.
“Good!” Cassandra exclaimed, echoing his thoughts and clearly relieved at the result. “Now will you let me kiss the other hurt places better too?”
Ravik nodded.
“Make Ravik feel better. Thank you, mate,” he rumbled.
“You’re welcome. Now just sit still and let me get you healed up,” Cassandra told him.
She went to work, kissing all the red burn marks over his broad chest and abdomen. Severin watched because he had to…because every kiss was a treatment…because every contact point appeared to correspond with improvement in Ravik’s verbal coherence and eye clarity.
Because he was a scientist and this was data.
Liar, whispered a dry little voice in his head. You like to watch them together. You’d like it even more if you could join in.
Severin pushed it away. He needed data—this situation was providing it. Therefore, he had to watch and it didn’t matter if the scene playing out in front of him also made his cock hard and his fangs ache.
Cassandra stopped several times to reapply the burn ointment and he watched the way the salve glistened on her lips before she pressed them to Ravik’s skin again. Ravik sat perfectly still now, allowing her to treat him with a look of such deep, almost worshipful trust that Severin’s chest ached.
His best friend had come back for her…the thought landed with unexpected force.
Ravik wasn’t all the way back—not permanently. But he’d come back enough to trust…back enough to speak. He was back enough to feel pleasure and comfort and gratitude—all the softer, gentler emotions the Hunger Virus had stripped from him.
Cassandra was not merely suppressing his best friend’s symptoms, Severin thought—she was reaching Ravik on a deeper level.
Every time she touched him, every time she breathed near him, every time she used that sweet, bossy voice on him, the virus lost a little more ground.
Severin could almost imagine it as a cellular battle—viral neuroproteins attempting to bind to Ravik’s olfactory-limbic pathways while Cassandra’s volatile endocrine markers displaced them, stimulating dormant mate-recognition circuits and reactivating higher cortical function.
It wasn’t a cure—not yet. But it was the first real weapon they had against the virus.
And if Severin could isolate the active compounds—if he could identify which part of her scent profile had this effect, which pheromonal fraction, which hormonal metabolite, which immune-marker cascade—maybe he could synthesize it.
Or bind it to the anti-viral he’d been modifying in the lab.
Or use it to create a carrier agent capable of crossing the blood-brain barrier and delivering the serum where it needed to go.
Again he thought that he needed samples. Skin oils. Hair. Sweat. Saliva. Blood. Possibly vaginal secretions, given the dramatic improvement after last night’s contact. He needed Ravik’s blood before and after exposure. He needed his own essence tested against—
“Hey—I’ll help you with your hand in just a minute, okay?” Cassandra said suddenly.
“Hmm? Oh, that’s fine. Fine,” Severin said, his deep voice sounding slightly strained.
He looked down and realized his uninjured hand was balled into a fist on the edge of the table.
His burned hand throbbed. His fangs ached.
His cock was half-hard in his trousers because apparently watching Cassandra kiss his best friend’s body back to health was doing things to him he had no wish to admit.
No, that wasn’t true—he had already admitted some of them to himself last night.
He liked to watch.
He liked to watch Ravik with the curvy little human…liked to see Cassandra’s soft hands on the Beast Kindred’s big body…liked the way Ravik responded to her. And he especially liked the idea of being included as he had been last night.
That was the problem—he liked far too much.
Apparently satisfied that he was content to wait, Cassandra turned her attention back to Ravik. She’d healed every burn she could reach, but he was still cupping his shaft protectively behind one big hand.
Severin frowned—he was worried about that particular injury.
“Ravik?” Kneeling between his spread thighs, Cassandra put her hands on the Beast Kindred’s knees and looked up at him. “Ravik, I need to see what you’re hiding,” she said, nodding at his hand. “Can you show me? Can you show your mate?”
Severin gripped the edge of the table harder.
He ought to help, he told himself. This was an intimate injury and Cassandra shouldn’t be forced to treat it.
He could handle it himself once Ravik was calmer.
Or he could attempt a numbing spray from a distance.
Or he could sedate him, though the thought made him grimace because Ravik’s system was already compromised and unstable.
But Cassandra didn’t seem unwilling—she just looked concerned.
“It…hurts,” Ravik rumbled.
“I know, baby. I know,” Cassandra said soothingly. “That’s why I want to see it—so I can heal you. Don’t you want me to kiss it better?”
Severin’s breath went still in his lungs.
Gods.
His mind, traitorous and unhelpful, supplied the image before he could stop it—Cassandra kneeling between Ravik’s thighs, her soft mouth slick with healing salve, her lips closing around the broad head of Ravik’s shaft while those warm brown eyes looked up from under her lashes.
His cock went from half-hard to fully rigid so quickly it bordered on painful and he shifted slightly, hoping the table hid the evidence of his arousal.
Ravik looked uncertain, but after another short moment of consideration, he slowly lowered his hand.
“All right,” he rumbled. “Mate can heal.”
Even Severin, who had known Ravik for years and had seen him naked many times in showers, medical bays, and battlefield triage chambers, could understand why Cassandra’s eyes widened.
The Beast Kindred was impressive in proportion to the rest of him, and even soft his shaft was massive.
The Bonding Knot at the base of it was as big as a fist.
The burn, however, was impossible to ignore once one looked past the size of him. A red mark marred the crown—angry and tender-looking.
“Oh, my—that looks painful.”
Gently, Cassandra reached out and slipped her fingers around his shaft.
Severin’s fangs cut into his lower lip and he had to bite back a curse.
The sight of her hand around Ravik’s cock was almost too much. Her fingers looked so small against him—so soft and delicate. Ravik’s shaft twitched at the contact, and Severin saw his friend’s cloudy eyes sharpen a little more.
“Mate will kiss?” Ravik asked, raising his eyebrows at her.
“Yes, will she?” Severin heard himself ask.
The words were out before he could stop them but he couldn’t help himself—would she really go so far to heal a male she’d known for only a day?
Cassandra turned her head and looked at him. He tried to keep his face neutral, but judging by the way her eyes narrowed, he doubted he succeeded.
He hoped his question hadn’t made him sound jealous—or worse, eager. This wasn’t sexual, he told himself. It was about healing.
“I’ll do what I have to in order to make him feel better,” she told Severin. “You don’t have to watch if you don’t want to.”
“No, it’s all right. I don’t mind, er, watching.” His voice came out hoarse.
“Good.” Cassandra put on more of the ointment on her lips and bent to her task.
Severin watched as she guided the broad, plum-shaped head to her mouth and began to kiss the hurt spot.
Ravik groaned, but not in pain—in pleasure. Severin had heard him with whores and pairing puppets before—he knew what his friend sounded like when he was being sexually serviced.
The sound rolled through the narrow lab like distant thunder and Severin felt it in his bones.
Cassandra looked up for a moment, her lips still close to Ravik’s shaft, her expression gentle and intent rather than wanton.
That somehow made the whole thing worse…
or better…or both. Severin couldn’t decide.
“I’m so glad you’re feeling better, big guy,” Cassandra said gently. She examined the spot. “But I don’t think you’re healed just yet.”
“It might work better if you suck him.”
Again, the words escaped Severin before he could stop himself.
Cassandra straightened up and turned to look at him.
“Excuse me?” She frowned up at him. “What did you say?”
“I said, if you take the head in your mouth, your lower lip will rub against the burned spot more fully,” he explained, and though the words were technically true, they sounded thin even to his own ears.
His suggestion was scientifically defensible but morally questionable.
It was also extremely arousing. Severin had to admit, he wanted to see that lush mouth wrapped around his best friend’s cock.
But Cassandra seemed to take his words in stride.
“Oh…okay.” She nodded slowly. “I hadn’t thought of that.”
Then, Goddess help him, she looked approving. As though she believed he was simply putting his big brain to use, finding the best way to heal his friend.
Severin nearly groaned aloud.
She was trusting him—that should have made him feel noble. Instead, it made him want to fall to his knees beside her and beg to taste her while she tasted Ravik.
Looking up, Cassandra caught Ravik’s eyes again—which looked decidedly more golden and less cloudy by now.
“I’m going to kiss you deeper now, okay?” she asked him. “Going to take you in my mouth—just to heal you. Can you let me do that, big guy?”
Ravik frowned, as though trying to understand.
“Mate will suck?” he asked, at last. “You want…to suck…my shaft?”
“Just a little bit,” Cassandra held up her thumb and forefinger with a small space between them. “Just to make you feel better.”
Ravik nodded.
“All right. Mate can suck.”
“Good.” And leaning down, she sucked the broad crown of his cock into her mouth.
Severin bit back a curse as his own cock throbbed between his thighs. Gods, it was like watching a live-action sex show! He reminded himself again it was all for science and tried to ignore how his fangs were throbbing and his cock was aching.
Ravik was certainly feeling it too. The Beast Kindred’s head fell back and his hand slipped into Cassandra’s hair, but he didn’t try to force her down.
He only stroked her long brown hair carefully, his big fingers gentle, despite the obvious effort it cost him to remain still and not thrust into her mouth.
His eyes were almost completely clear now, Severin noted—the milky film fading more with every second Cassandra kept her mouth on him. With every soft suck of her lush lips, his mind came back a little more.
Data, Severin reminded himself desperately—this was data.
The improvement was undeniable. Ravik’s posture had relaxed. His vocalization was coherent. His motor control was improved. His aggression was nil. His focus was entirely on Cassandra, but not in a predatory way. In a mate-bonded way—a protective way—a pleasure-response way.
Cassandra’s mouth was delivering topical analgesic and dermal regenerator to a burn site while simultaneously exposing Ravik to her saliva, scent, breath, and emotional care, Severin observed, attempting to be scientific. He really did need to know which element mattered most.
Was it her mouth? Her scent? Her warmth? Her willingness to kneel between Ravik’s thighs and take him in her mouth and swirl her tongue around his…
No. Severin attempted to push the thought away.
“Hmm,” Ravik rumbled as Cassandra kept sucking. “Feels good…feels good when mate sucks my cock.”
“It…it sounds like it’s working.” Severin’s voice came out slightly ragged. “You’d better keep it up, though—that’s a sensitive area,” he added.
Ravik groaned again, deeper this time.
Cassandra’s eyes flicked up to Severin, and for one dangerous second, he thought she saw too much—saw the hunger in him. Saw the way his hand gripped the table…saw the rigid line of his shoulders and the fact that his fangs were fully descended now.
But if she noticed, she said nothing.
She only looked back at Ravik and continued sucking the head of his cock.
And Severin stood at the end of the table, his burned hand throbbing, his body aching, his mind racing, and watched the woman who might be the key to saving them all wrap her warm mouth around his best friend’s shaft.
For science, he told himself. For healing. For Ravik.
All of it was true…but none of it was the whole truth.