27. Clair
CLAIR
Clair stared at the big Hybrid in disbelief.
“Infected? You mean with the Savage Syndrome virus?”
She couldn’t make herself believe it, but Kaelus was already nodding.
“Yes,” he ground out. “Sendar injected me with it. Please, Clair—run while you still can!”
Though her heart was pounding so hard it felt like it was trying to break out of her ribcage and run away, Clair shook her head.
“And leave you to go crazy down here alone? I don’t think so!”
Kaelus looked desperate now.
“Then if you’re going to stay, lock down my right wrist,” he begged. “Please—make sure I’m restrained so when I lose control, I can’t hurt you.”
His words sent a cold finger of dread down her spine. He hadn’t said, “if I lose control”—he’d said, “when I lose control.”
He must feel the virus working on him, Clair thought.
Hurriedly, she snapped the metal manacle over his right wrist, securing it to the arm of the black containment chair.
At once, a look of relief came over Kaelus’s face.
“Thank you,” he said hoarsely. “But Clair, you can’t help me—please just run away!”
“No, I won’t leave you!” she exclaimed. “You said Sendar did this to you—he might still be around, waiting to finish the job. I won’t leave you here helpless and strapped to this awful chair!”
“But I can’t…I don’t know how long I can…
can fight it off.” He shook his head, the look of agony coming over his face again…
followed by the naked, hungry lust she’d seen moving under the surface earlier.
“You don’t know what I want to do to you, my curvy little wife,” he growled and his voice was different this time—wilder… more primal, Clair thought.
“What…what are you talking about?” she whispered, putting a hand to her chest.
“I want to fuck your soft little pussy with my tongue,” he growled, his eyes blazing red. “I want to hold you down and put my tongue inside you and taste all that sweet honey you make for me!”
“You…you did that last night,” Clair pointed out breathlessly.
His eyes flashed.
“Not as much as I wanted to. I didn’t get enough of you—I can never get enough of you, my sweet little Lissa’ra.”
His use of the sweet Kindred nickname he’d given her felt like a slice from a knife.
Because it wasn’t just Kaelus who was talking to her, she realized—it was the primitive, animal lust that lived inside every male.
A Kindred kept that part of himself under control better than any human man ever could.
But now that control was slipping, and she was seeing the savage desire underneath.
“But I don’t just want to fuck you with my tongue,” Kaelus growled.
“I want to fuck you with my cock—I want to skewer that soft little pussy on my shaft. I want to stretch your soft little cunt open on my mating fist and pump deep inside until I fill your sweet slit to overflowing with my cum! I want to put you on your hands and knees and fuck a baby into you. And you can cry and moan—it won’t matter.
I won’t fucking stop until you’re dripping with my seed! ”
“Kaelus!” she gasped. Her lab partner had never spoken to her this way before. Kaelus was never crude—he was grumpy but intellectual—never low and nasty.
Her shocked look must have done something because for a moment, it seemed that the real Kaelus swam back to the surface.
“Please, Clair,” he said hoarsely, his eyes going briefly gold again. “Please, just go—I don’t want to hurt you!”
“You’re not going to hurt me,” Clair said firmly. “Because I’m going to help you get through this.”
“What? How?” he demanded.
Clair tried to think how to explain—there was no time for the detailed scientific data she and Maera had been working on. She didn’t know how long this moment of clarity would last before the viral lust overcame him again.
“The cure for the Savage Syndrome is sexually transmitted,” she told him. “Just like the virus itself. And it’s made by the body of a woman who’s been drinking veloria nectar—which I have.”
His eyes widened as he seemed to comprehend her meaning.
“Clair, you can’t,” he rumbled. “You can’t risk yourself like that!
I don’t know how long these restraints will hold me—what if I break free and…
and…” He shook his head, a look of pure agony coming over his face.
“I’d rather die,” he said in a low voice.
“I’d rather die than hurt you the way those males on Glenvarren hurt their mates. ”
“You’re not going to hurt me,” Clair said with more confidence than she felt. After all, he was very large and he’d already bent the metal of the restraint holding down his left wrist.
Also, you haven’t had that much veloria, whispered a little voice in her head. How do you know you’ve had enough to help him? Enough to neutralize the virus?
Clair didn’t know. But she’d just had a veloria nectar shake an hour ago and she wasn’t going to leave the man she loved strapped to a chair where that sadistic bastard Sendar could come and do anything he wanted to him!
I’ll make it work, she told herself fiercely.
And the first thing to do was to kiss him and try to share the cure to the virus that way.
Bravely, she stepped forward to stand between his spread thighs. The tent in his tight, black trousers was frighteningly huge, but she tried to ignore it.
Kaelus clearly saw what she was going to do even before she leaned in because his eyes went wide.
“Clair—no!” he rasped. Then his eyes went red again and he spoke in that deep, growling, hungry voice that sent a shiver down her spine.
“Come here, little human,” he growled softly. “Come let me taste those pretty lips. I want to taste your other lips too. Are you going to be a good girl and let me eat your pussy?”
“No—for now, you’ll have to be satisfied by a kiss,” Clair told him.
Then she leaned in and planted a kiss right on his lips.
Kaelus jerked and for a moment, she was sure he was going to bite her. His fangs were long enough to pierce right though her lip or tongue.
But to her surprise—and relief—Kaelus didn’t bite her.
Instead, he kissed her back with a fierce intensity that nearly took her breath away.
His tongue parted her lips and invaded her mouth, and she sucked on it eagerly.
Then she pushed her own tongue into his mouth, reasoning that the more fluids that passed between them, the more likely it was he would absorb the cure.
Kaelus growled and leaned forward in the chair, as though he wanted more. As frightening as he was, Clair found she wanted more too.
She kissed him with everything she had—pouring her fear and her determination into the desperate press of her lips. And for a moment, it worked.
Kaelus’s mouth softened against hers, the invasive thrust of his tongue gentling into a shared rhythm. A low groan vibrated in his chest—one that sounded more like relief than hunger. And she felt his big body relax infinitesimally against the restraints.
His eyes, when she dared to open hers and look, had bled back to a warm, familiar gold.
“Clair,” he breathed against her lips, her name both a prayer and a warning. “It’s not enough. The need… it’s a fire. It’s burning me up from the inside!”
Even as he spoke, she saw it happen—a crimson flicker at the edges of his irises, like embers catching dry tinder. The gold drowned in a rising tide of violent red. His lips curled back from his lengthened fangs in a snarl that was all animal.
“Fuck, your mouth is sweet, baby,” he growled, his voice dropping back into that dark, gravelly register. “But I want the other one. I want to bury my face between your thighs and drink until you scream.”
The shift was so fast it left her dizzy. Clair realized the kiss she’d given the big Hybrid had been like slapping a Band-Aid on a gushing wound. He needed more of the cure-compound, and he needed it delivered deeper and faster.
The scientific part of her brain, running on adrenaline and dread, presented the most efficient solution—fluids and direct absorption.
Her gaze dropped to the terrifying, prominent bulge straining against the front of his black trousers. It was a blatant, physical manifestation of the virus’s imperative. What was between his legs was the source. And if the cure was in her… then her own body was the delivery system.
She had to try something else—something much more intimate than a kiss.
Her hands, which had been clutching his shoulders, trembled violently as they moved to his belt. The cold buckle was a shock against her fingers.
“What are you doing?” Kaelus rasped, his head tilting. The red in his eyes pulsed with interest.
“Giving you what you need,” Clair whispered, her voice surprisingly steady.
She unfastened the buckle, her fingers fumbling with the magno tabs beneath.
Every rational instinct screamed at her to run.
But the part of her that loved this brilliant, grumpy, secretly tender male—the part that had felt his worshipful touch in the dim room on Titus Four when he massaged her and bathed her so tenderly afterwards—would not let him go.
With a final tug, she pulled his trousers open and freed him.
A sharp gasp caught in her throat when she saw what she had unleashed. She’d seen him before, of course, but somehow her brain had managed to blank out how big he really was.
Even in his semi-hard state, Kaelus’s cock was immense. Thick and long, it curved upwards towards his flat belly, the broad head already glistening with a bead of moisture. And as she stared, he seemed to swell even bigger under her gaze, becoming fully, intimidatingly erect.
“Look at that,” he purred, his predatory growl laced with dark pride.
“All for you, my little Lissa’ra. All that hard, aching flesh wants is to be buried in your tight little cunt.
But why don’t you put your pretty mouth on it first?
Suck me and make me nice and wet so I can slide into your hot little pussy. ”