Chapter 17
17
Though she’d ventured a fair distance into the tunnel, Rutger had caught up to her. He checked the surroundings as he closed in. This seemed a dead end. Ahead was a parked train carriage, left here since the invasion.
A service door off to the side might be where Cyn planned to go?
Assuming her brain could plan when the Lure had her? Maybe people just backed up and tried a new path if their first choice failed to lead upward?
She didn’t seem to register him following behind her. Watching her for a few more seconds wasn’t a crime. It soothed him to know she was okay and gave him time to calm down, after what had happened at the camp. Too much death. Way too much.
Killing ghoul guards, who were really only possessed people, it bothered him. He remembered the people he’d once known in every damn face, even when they weren’t there.
With Vargr disappearing to chase after the last ghoul guard, he’d made finding Cyn a priority. Why had the beaster decided to do that alone? He might get swamped by stinkers or find himself in the middle of the tail-end of this attacking force.
Vargr might never return.
He would be sorry if that happened. The beaster had a foul mouth, but most did. He also possessed a woman Rutger was attracted to in the way the north pole of a magnet wants to fuck around with the south end. It was a painfully intense attraction. The things he’d been imagining doing to her…
Her dark hair was black enough to dive into. And the slink of her curves when she sauntered from point A to point B was criminally sexy. Rutger huffed out a sigh. His dick had been getting more exercise recently than it had for the previous five years.
There was nothing he could do about the fool, Vargr, but he could look after her, this not-quite-human woman. When Maura relapsed, he’d figured out she and Cyn had been separated. They had Maura tied down and safe. Cyn had wandered away down this branch of the train tunnel, bloodied, and probably Lure-affected.
“Got you,” he said, wrapping his hand around her arm. He expected this to be easy, as in pick her up, carry her back, then tie her down until Vargr returned. When she wrenched her arm free of his grip, Rutger gaped.
The force in that yank had been stronger than should be possible with puny human muscle. If he’d not opened his hand, her arm bone would’ve snapped, her flesh might’ve torn. Nanites were in this one, for sure.
In spite of her twisting to get loose, he grabbed her long black hair and restrained her.
She latched an arm around a handle on the train and would not let go. With great patience he lifted each finger away from the steel, curled those fingers into her palm, then pried her off the train. Cyn promptly, with the flexibility of a monkey, grabbed another bit of train.
“Damn,” he muttered.
Frustrated, he debated tying those hands, realized it couldn’t be something thin or she’d hurt herself, so he pinned her face down and ripped off his shirt. He used it as mummy wrapping all the way down her arms, fastening them at her back, then he picked up the squirming female.
Toting her the whole way back to camp was a little painful—she kicked him several times—but he managed. Proud of his accomplishment, he set her on her feet near the extinguished campfire and turned her to face him.
Those pretty irises with the red sprinkles lacked any recognition of her surroundings.
“The Lure?” Tom, a wing-soldier with a startling head of fair hair—he even looked like an angel—arrived and grounded his rifle.
“Yes.” Gently, Rutger turned her head this way then that, using a finger and thumb grip on her chin. She licked her blood-spattered lips, and for a second he swore he saw life in there. More awake than some Lure-affected he’d seen up close.
Blood had spilled down her front, soaking the breast area of her shirt. The buttons at the top were no longer a pearl-gray, they were scarlet. Her arms were too.
It was the lips that troubled him. Holding her by the back of her hair, he wiped his bloody hand on her shirt.
“Did she bite that ghoul guard, Tom?”
“Yes, sir. ’Fraid so. He’s a mess. A dead mess with his throat gnawed. Dead is good, so I don’t care.”
“Uh-huh.” He frowned. He did care. This was wrong. Surely the Lure didn’t do this, make you rip out throats with your teeth?
Fuck.
There were bits of flesh stuck to her shirt.
Mouth askew at the gore on this beautiful female, Rutger straightened. “If that waterfall bath of yours is good for cleaning a whole woman, I’m taking her there.” Tom nodded. “You can come too.” And chaperone me , was his distant, back-of-the-head thought. “She’s got blood and guts all over her. Tell Vargr where we are if he comes back!”
“Will do!” someone yelled.
He hoisted her onto his shoulder again.
“It’s safe there.” Tom said, ambling after him. “There’s a whole wall come down to one side.”
They climbed through the most leftward wall hole where the train had emancipated its back half, and he saw what Tom had indicated—a wall of rubble had been deposited over the cars stuck here. Half of most were buried to the right. Getting through to the rest of the motorway would take digging. Which meant the ghoul squad couldn’t get to them without hitting the camp first. The building structure looked generally sound. Still, he blessed the columns they passed with a once-over.
No visible cracks in these, but he was no engineer. Before it had gone over the edge, the front of the train had gouged a path through cars, the roadway, and more.
The waterfall was dead ahead, past the last crushed vehicles. One of those was a semi with a voluptuous chick painted on the driver’s side door. A baseball cap on the dash rested on a skull that was thoroughly stripped of flesh.
“Rats been here,” Tom said, gesturing at the semi with his rifle.
“Yeah, they get everywhere.”
Right at the edge, there’d been an office for the Trainway and Motorway. The dented sign hung at an angle. The office wall had been demolished by the impact of the train. A big chunk of the outer building wall was gone.
He peered at the world outside, smelled the fresh moisture in the air. The rain was roaring down, drumming past, making the waterfall a proper cascade.
Dusk had come and the light faded. The Lure should be lessening.
Beyond the streaked curtain of rain lurked an opposing building. A nice big chasm separated them from it. If the waterfall was a constant, it’d erode away enough that this part of the scraper would collapse. Such was the nature of the world. All things came to an end.
But not him, not yet.
Not her either.
He lowered Cyn until her boots touched the smashed floor.
The falling water curled and splashed into the office space because of a fracture of the facade, pooling on the floor to the depth of her calves. A big square desk perched in the pool like a wading bird. Staplers lay underwater along with paperclips and pens. Pieces of bright plastic swirled in the flow. A lip of concrete at the original doorway was trapping much of the water.
“Ummm, sir. Do we need to strip her?”
He eyed Tom, feeling as if he were an intruder, wanting him gone. “Hell, no. Just her boots.”
Though they were already wet.
Painstakingly, careful not to get brained by a wild kick, he and Tom drew off her boots, then decided that after all, her jeans may as well be saved from the water too.
They sat her on the desk to perform that delicate operation. Unzip. Roll them under her butt, tug, roll, tug some more. At least her arms were pinned back.
Taking the jeans off gave him such a damn hard-on, and Tom too.
“At least one of us can wait outside while I wash her. And it won’t be me.” If his words sounded harsh, like he might punch Tom if he stayed, so be it.
“Sure. Sorry. But… Outside?”
The lack of much wall was a problem. “Go,” he snapped. “Face outward.”
By pushing her under the cascade he washed most of Cyn, and the spilling of said water over her shirt made much of her cleaner. If not perfectly clean. It also did the inevitable—stuck the cloth to her like a second skin. It also dragged her panties down a tad lower so he could see her mons and the start of her pubic hair, and he knew where that led.
He held onto her biceps, above where it was wrapped by the soaked cloth of her shirt. Distressing how bad this made him feel, seeing her dull eyes. He knew how whip-smart she normally was. Did the Lure ever leave permanent marks on the brain? Maura seemed fine.
Cyn’s wet belly skin gleamed.
Her cunt was also glued to the delicate white underwear cloth. The swell of those lips, the split between them. Spellbound, Rutger rubbed his jaw, a little annoyed with himself for being attracted to a woman who was already bondmated.
She was that, wasn’t she?
What if?
He looked into her eyes again, saw her nostrils expand as he raised his hand to her. Then, to his most extreme shock, she leaned over and licked the length of his finger. He withdrew his hand, feeling the lingering frisson where her tongue had run over his skin.
His dick climbed higher, his erection seeking new heights, lengths, whatever.
“Is Vargr back yet?” he said over his shoulder.
“I’ll go check?”
“Yeah, you do that, Tom. Give me your shirt so I can dry her first. And get her some leggings if you can find them! Her jeans will never go back on.”
Wet legs and jeans were a problem.
He caught the shirt as it was tossed then crouched to dry her legs as well as he could, given that she was squirming.
The jeans would get stuck, unless she was back in her mind again, able to pull them up. He imagined her sitting down and wriggling those skinny jeans up her legs. Her panties shifting. Ugh. Too far, man. He would do himself an injury imagining that.
The Lure effect was overcome by mating with your bondmate. Vargr was negligent for not fucking her enough.
What if…
What if one could have more than one bondmate?
This was not exactly moral what he was considering. Rules were rules. Law was law. He should wait. Rutger blinked, thought some more, then popped her up on the desk again and held her there while he waited.
When he heard Tom returning, he half-turned.
The leggings were thrown in.
Pretty black ones with pink tentacles all over them. “Hmmm.” He scrunched them with his fist. “And Vargr?”
“Not back. Should we try to find him? I’m willing. To look.”
It was a good question. Orm was badly wounded, that left only three beasters plus him. Though Toother was as good as five men. It was unprecedented for the Ghoul Lords to send a squad down this low. The only possible target he knew of was this female. He stroked a thumb up her arm. Any attack might come via the motorway or the train tunnel.
“Go by yourself but only a small distance. Use your judgment. Take Little Mo if you can, it seems to detect those things. Station Toother on the tracks beside the camp, and don’t go so far that you cannot see him. Okay?”
“Got it. I’ll be back in ten minutes tops.”
He gave Tom a thumbs-up then turned back to Cyn.
Back to his what if .
He wouldn’t fuck her, but he could see if he could reverse the Lure, a little.
Ten minutes, tops. He could do that. Ten seconds even, what with her watching him and sitting here before him mostly naked.
No one else to watch though he felt both dirty and exultant unzipping to pull out his cock and begin that slide and pull on shaft and head as he jacked off. Did he imagine the fascination in her eyes? More intelligence there than before?
He squeezed the head of his cock, anticipating what was about to happen. He could fuck her on that desk, if he were an asshole. If. First time ever he’d wanted to be an ass.
The shift of her thighs as she parted them, spreading wide, it was not imagined. He could see part of her cunt for the panties had rolled aside. Groaning, he upped the speed of his hand, wishing he could fuck her mouth.
But no. No.
He kept going, going, and he grunted as ecstasy peaked.
The gush of come onto his hand, splashing and dripping into the pool, filling his fist, it left him riveted in that perfect instant of pleasure. His dick jerked, pumped out a final spurt. If only he was inside her.
He swallowed, inhaled long and hard through his nose.
This could not be just normal lust. She’d reciprocated, thrust her chest at him, arched as he poured over his hand. The place smelled of jizz.
For the first time, she sat quietly and did not attempt to escape.
Her pussy glistened with the slickness of what seemed cunt moisture. Hand trembling, he checked, and yes, it was her wetness, not water. He let his finger slide further until it cruised under the sodden cloth, was so goddamned tempted to finger-fuck her when she moaned, but he didn’t. Not yet.
That hand trembling was an oncoming problem, and he had a good inkling as to what it was: PNT or Post Nanite Trauma . Not that anyone else called it that. Sucked, but joking was better than knifing himself. Rutger grimaced, staring at his hand instead of at what he wanted to stare at—her. He should be able to hold until they hit the perimeter of Worshipper camp.
“Damn.”
Swallowing come had benefits too, just not as good as actual cock-in-pussy sex. Carefully, his heart thump-thumping, he raised his cupped hand to her mouth, offering her his come. After a long slow second, she dipped her head and lapped, licked at his palm.
Fuck fuck fuck.
If this worked, if the Lure went away, Vargr was going to need some talking to.
If he survived.