Chapter 9 #2
Amara didn’t argue. She didn’t even hesitate.
She tore aside his shredded tee and latched onto his neck with a primal little growl of ownership.
Nick felt his blood bursting into her mouth and his cock simultaneously bursting inside her core.
He roared out in pleasure, in warning, in ultimate domination.
He came as hard and fast as lightning, just as she had claimed, the electric charge of it scrambling his brain until it was fried with ecstasy.
Amara was struggling to drink even as orgasm after orgasm rolled through her writhing body.
Nick shuddered with his sense of ultimate privilege, content in knowing that this time he had not just been given her at random.
This time, he had earned her. He had fought for her, defended her, and earned his entitlement inside of her.
He was catching his breath and trying to coordinate the strength in his legs as she licked his wounds closed. She dropped off of him and he straightened their clothing.
Now that all Morphate urges had been satisfied, Nick turned around and was suddenly struck with the very human understanding of what he had just done.
The entire room was staring at them, having watched his every thrust into her, heard every cry he’d wrenched out of her.
The intimacy between them that had no privacy as it was, had just been displayed in public with the heedlessness of two dogs fucking without a care of who watched or who was embarrassed by it.
He had behaved utterly like an animal from the moment he’d first caught Mina’s open and admittedly provocative scent.
He wouldn’t have touched her, but he’d still been stirred by her, the beast inside reacting purely by instinct.
But it was also instinct that cleaved him to Amara alone.
Mina would only have pissed him off eventually if Amara hadn’t intervened.
When he had responded to the scent of an available female, it had been Amara’s body that he’d craved to be his only solace. His only relief.
Now everyone in the room knew it.
Nick backed up against Amara’s warm, lush body, pressing her between his back and the wall he’d so artfully used to wring deep pleasure from her.
“God, I can’t believe I just did that to you,” he said in a voice strangled with a confusion of human emotion and satisfied Morphate instinct. “In front of everyone. Like some kind of savage.”
His heart was racing so hard and his chest hurt with shame for his behavior and anxiety for Amara’s sensibilities.
Fucked-up DNA or not, they had been raised with a lifetime of humanity.
She had to care. She had to care that he had just taken her like a common street whore against the nearest convenient wall.
Remembering the type of woman her mother had been and how hard she had struggled to avoid that fate, he felt lower than dirt.
Nick felt her hands slide around his waist, hugging him with possessive warmth. Her cheek pressed against his back as one palm crept up to lay flat over his thundering heart.
“It isn’t the same world anymore,” she reminded him with a whisper. “None of the old rules apply. I know you already understand that, but I want you to know I understand it, too. Nick … I’d fuck you like that in Times Square if you asked me to.”
“I think this is as far as my public displays will go,” he said grimly. “I will not share you with the rest of the world, damn it. Not if I can help it! I just … I couldn’t stop,” he said quietly, his tone dropping in defeat.
“I know. Be easy on yourself. We’ve only been altered for a few days. It’s clearly going to take time to gain control. Look at them all. Every last one is responding like animals. Just as we are.”
Nick did as she asked, looking at the others in the room. Only, it wasn’t the submissive turn of gaze after gaze as they tried to keep from accidentally challenging him that caught his attention.
No.
It was movement.
From the dead woman Amara had killed. Only she wasn’t entirely dead. She should have been, considering the vicious twist in her neck, but she moaned and stirred and he felt Amara stiffen at his back, so he knew he wasn’t imagining it.
“I’ll kill the bitch again!” she hissed, suddenly surging to move around him. But he reached out to grab hold of her, drawing her back to his side and pressing a soft, shushing kiss to her temple.
“Easy, baby,” he soothed her. “Let’s just see what happens. I don’t think she’s a threat to you.”
“Said the man who got a hard-on when she walked up to him,” she scoffed.
“Hey, what happened to realizing it was going to take time to control this?” he demanded with irritability even though he knew she was right and, if the tables had been turned, he would have likely blown a gasket.
But she hadn’t responded to the aggressive approach of the other males in the least. Not that he’d given them the opportunity to get that close to her.
That and he’d been touching her for himself and wouldn’t have known otherwise if she had.
“I’m sorry. I want to promise it won’t happen again,” he said with soft regret, “but I don’t know what I am anymore. ”
It was all too true. He kept vacillating between the man he had been and the powerful beast he had become. As he watched a dead girl slowly right herself on what had obviously been a broken neck, he realized it went far beyond being a bigger, badder sort of animal.
The entire room was watching with rapt interest as, over the next half hour, Mina recuperated from her “death” enough to draw herself up onto her knees. She frowned, her wary eyes looking at the woman she had once called a friend in friendless circumstances.
“Well, hell, Amara,” she pouted, her voice rasping as if her vocal chords might still be twisted around a bit. “You didn’t have to get so bitchy about it.”
“That wasn’t bitchy,” Amara said darkly. “Come near him again and you’ll see bitchy. Next time, you stay dead. Got it?”
“I wasn’t dead,” she argued. Mina bit her lip. “I saw the whole thing. Saw him fighting.” She pointed to Nick, then thought better of it and snatched her hand back against her chest and looked down.
That was when Nick’s first victim stirred.
Eventually, all the Morphates fully recovered their lives and, with a bit of rapid healing, their total health.
Not a one had the least desire to try his luck a second time, although there were a few permanent enemies made.
Nick was determined to keep his eye on the big blond who sulked and glared from across the room.
It was still an attitude of aggression and very near a challenge and Nick wasn’t going to turn his back on him until he started to respect the way things were going to be.
Mina departed for the farthest corner from Amara herself, but other than irritably shooing away any males who came sniffing after her, interested in perhaps licking her wounded pride, she didn’t show any obvious resentment for what had happened. Yet.
However, Amara was satisfied enough to relax in Nick’s grip.
It took only fifteen minutes before the next approach took place.
Since it was a woman closing the distance, Amara’s relaxed state, such as it was, flew away instantly.
She sniffed the air warily, but Nick didn’t scent any threat of sexual challenge from the beautiful brunette.
She was tall and, like Amara, generously curved in all the right places.
She had intriguing and intelligent eyes and was clearly a Morphate by the scent and sensation she gave off in strong waves as she came cautiously close.
“Devona,” Amara greeted her warily, making Nick realize they knew each other.
“Don’t concern yourself,” Devona said with a hand held out in calming encouragement. “I am not here to poach your territory, Amara. I don’t think Mina even meant to, really. You know what she’s like. She was a bitch in heat before she even became … well, a bitch in heat.”
Nick chuckled at that, and he saw Amara’s eyes narrow on him. He disarmed her threat by swatting her hard on the backside. “Come on,” he scolded her. “They aren’t all after our bodies.”
“I’ll believe it when I don’t see it,” she muttered, moving to cut him off when he went to extend his hand to Devona. She stood stubbornly in front of him, her arms folded tautly beneath her breasts. “What do you want, Devona?”
“To get out of here alive,” she said softly.