Adriana #4
Adriana didn’t remember how she’d gotten back into her townhouse, didn’t remember the ambulance dropping her off, as it must have.
She’d somehow found her way up to her bed, her blue chinos neatly folded over the antique trunk she’d found for the foot of her bed, blankets pulled up to her chin.
She was still wearing the borrowed station polo, her bra and panties in place.
Only her pants and her socks had been removed.
She was glad that she had possessed the state of mind to kick them off in her fevered state, because nothing made her skin crawl more than being under the covers with socks on.
When her eyes had fluttered open, hours later, she’d felt carefully tucked in, knowing that was ridiculous.
Suppresene is a hell of a drug.
Even so, Trapp had only pushed two units, and the piddly amount was burning through her system.
She was curled up on the sofa, wrapped in a quilt her aunt Rita had made her, her skin cold and clammy to the touch as fire curled in her belly, licking up her insides, threatening to reduce her to soot and ash. If only you knew a firefighter.
The unexpected sound of the doorbell made her jump; the very first time she was home when it chimed, she realized. Her legs shook like a newborn colt, trembling all the way down the stairs.
It was just after dawn. Barely, she realized, opening the door with a trembling hand. The first light of day had only just begun to break over the horizon, thready golden fingers pushing through the gloom, promising an afternoon of sunshine after a week’s worth of rain.
Trapp stood on her stoop, the expression on his face unfathomable.
“I rescued your bag from the rig. You’re welcome. And since your keys were in it, I thought I’d bring your car home before it got towed.”
She could see it there, out on the street, parallel parked in front of one of the neighbors’ cars. She knew the ambulance must’ve brought her home last night, but it hadn’t fully penetrated until that moment that Trapp had been the one to do it.
“Pretty sure that’s grand theft auto . . . Thanks.” Adriana bit her lip, head still reeling, realizing she needed to eat something and was likely dehydrated. “Did you . . . did you put me to bed last night?”
He looked away, staring down the sloping hill of her street for a moment, giving her a good, long look at his striking profile, his sharp jawline and high cheekbones, his thick black eyelashes curling back like a fucking giraffe’s.
It wasn’t fair for him to look the way he did, to be smart and come from money. It wasn’t fair at all.
“Yeah. Don’t worry. I told Oleg that the shift must’ve been too much for you.”
She snorted, unable to help herself. Long, overnight back-to-back shifts were hardly out of her wheelhouse.
Trapp’s mouth twitched. “Well, it was a big adjustment for him in the beginning, so fortunately, he believed it. Yeah, I helped you get in. You were fine to walk, but this place has a lot of fucking steps.”
At that, she did laugh. He wasn’t wrong. He’d put her to bed, tucked her in, peeled off her socks, fully knowing how she felt about wearing them under the covers.
He held out the keys to her car. Adriana knew this was the point she was meant to take them, to say goodbye, let him leave.
Let him leave for good, leave forever. She would have to see him occasionally at the clinic, but they could be professional.
They were both professionals, after all.
She’d had forty-eight hours to see that for herself.
Her fingers brushed his as she took the keys from his outstretched hand, like an electric shock.
“And I got you a bottle of Suppresene.” He shook the bottle, twenty-five coated tablets rattling around like a mini maraca.
“It’s not as strong as the stuff we have on the truck, obviously, but it should help .
. . I just wanted to let you know, I didn’t report that on my run sheet.
I didn’t have to; I didn’t pull a full two units.
They give us a tiny bit of slack for aspiration waste on non-narcotics.
I didn’t . . .” He trailed off. “Anyway, I thought you might still need—”
“I do.” She knew that he knew that. Knew he could smell the heat still making her shake, burning her from the inside out, leaving her clammy and feverish.
Thank you. Goodbye. “Do you want to . . .”
His eyes were locked on hers, holding her captive in their dark depths as his head nodded.
“Yeah.”
Adriana didn’t look back as he followed her into her townhouse, closing the door behind him, turning the lock with a click.
She ignored him when he murmured something about her needing a security system, not slowing as her shaking legs carried her up the first flight of steps, moving past her living room and kitchen, continuing up to the bedroom.
There was no point in pretending there was another reason for him to be here.
No point in acting out niceties when the fire within her was too impatient to bear.
She was trembling, facing the bed, able to smell him just behind her, his wolf huge and looming.
His hand at her back made her jump, whirling to face him at last, and then he was right there, mouth crashing into hers, lifting her up, the quilt around her falling away.
Adriana didn’t know why she had thought there was a chance to pretend he didn’t exist, to peaceably go on with their lives, ignoring each other on opposite sides of town. When he pushed her down on the bed, she made no move to scramble away, opening her legs willingly as he climbed over her.
She wasn’t expecting the heat of his mouth to reignite the inferno within her so thoroughly.
She didn’t want his kiss. She didn’t want him to kiss her, to be tender with her.
She wanted his teeth and his wolf and his knot; wanted to be ravaged by him until he sated the aching hunger within her, a fire he had started with his nearness, and then she wanted him to leave her alone forever.
But kiss her he did, and there was no pulling away from it.
His mouth was hot, moving from her lips to her jaw, down her neck, pausing to suck the jumping pulse in the hollow of her throat.
“Why do you smell so fucking good, Adi?” His voice was a dark growl against her skin, his hands pulling her sweat-soaked polo over her head as she unhooked her bra, doing her part to speed things up.
It was because of her heat. That’s what she would tell herself later, Adriana promised herself. The heat was to blame, and he was to blame for the heat.
She would ignore the fact that the drug he’d administered had taken the burning, painful edge out of the fire that engulfed her, the only reason she was even able to make it downstairs to open the door.
It had taken the edge off enough for her to get through the next two days completely on her own, if need be, but that wasn’t what she was going to remember.
Trapp’s mouth moved over her clavicle, the hot trail of his tongue making her shiver as he cupped her breasts, full and heavy in his hands.
When his mouth closed over a nipple, already painfully tight from the shallow heat simmering in her veins, sucking hard, it was as if he sucked the moan that came from her throat as well.
It hurt, but the pain went straight to her cunt, and she tightened her hands around him until he did it again, giving the other breast the same treatment.
“You’re not in charge right now, Doctor.” He kissed his way down her body, the opposite of what she wanted, worshiping her skin until she was panting, her breath hard and labored.
“I thought you were going to fuck me through it,” she rasped, hardly able to get the words out, fisting the covers in frustration.
His laughter was low and throaty, hot against her skin. “Oh, I am. But I want to hear you beg for it again, first. And I want to see if this pussy is still as sweet as I remember.”
He stopped to inhale against the soft swell of her stomach, teeth dragging over her skin, biting her gently, over her hips, his tongue tracing the lines of her stretch marks, biting the tops of her thighs until he’d nosed them open.
His forearms came down over her legs, holding them open, spreading her open to his mouth like a feast.
They had spent the rest of the day in bed, that heat a million years ago, when they were different people, when she still daydreamed about him, fantasizing about an impossible future.
Wolves like Trapp Hemming weren’t interested in scavenger mutts like her.
She didn’t know why he’d picked her as a study partner, would never understand why he had played with her heart as cruelly as he had, but no one else she had met before or since him could ever do this to her nearly as well.
The first stroke of his hot tongue made her cry out, strangled and desperate.
Adriana buried fingers in his thick hair, forty-eight hours of rain and sweat making it curl, dragging her fingers over his scalp as he lapped at her cunt.
This wasn’t what she wanted from him, but that didn’t stop her hips from rolling up, trying to meet his mouth, the weight of his forearms keeping her in place.
His full lips fastened around her clit, sucking, licking, making her spine unwind.
“I hate you,” she wheezed, trying and failing again to thrust upwards. “Why did you have to be here, Trapp? Why couldn’t you just stay a fucking memory?”
He had settled into a rhythm, moving his tongue like a hummingbird’s wing, friction in just the right spot, his lips providing suction, devouring her until she broke.
Trapp groaned when she came against his tongue, flooding his mouth. “Sweet like honey,” he murmured, continuing to lick until she pushed him away.