Loving the Man Page 5

  Katia ignored David’s curious scrutiny as he learned this new fact about her. Instead, she stared at Max. “How should I know? I’m not a midwife! I imagine there have been no cross-species children before because the species avoided each other like the plague. That and the fact that there just aren’t many children born any more. The radiation saw to that. Most of us are infertile.”

  “Is there still risk of genetic abnormality?” Max asked.

  “What, like you or me? Or him? Of course there is!”

  “I meant physical or mental deformity,” Max said dryly, “but I’ll defer to the answer given.”

  Will was staring at her. “Do you mean there is no reason why there shouldn’t be interspecies breeding?”

  Katia shrugged. “We’re all the same species. Some of us have just been -- altered. And if you want my opinion, there will be more and more mutants born, not just of people like us, but of normal humans as the altered genes kick in. In fact…” She paused, frowning over memories she thought she had long forgotten. “It’s what they intended. Adapt the species to deal with radiation, with almost total deprivation, then let evolution take its course. The new species will evolve from all of us. And as things settle down, there will be more children.”

  Will’s eyes closed. He seemed to be smiling. Max stared straight ahead, taking it in. It was David who looked at her.

  “What they intended,” he repeated softly. “You’re saying the mutations are nothing to do with radiation poisoning as we always believed? It was deliberate?”

  “Oh yes!” She laughed, a small, savage sound even to her own ears. “It was meant to be protection, just one of a number of experiments conducted across the country, across the world. Ask Max -- he used to track radiation clouds and try to limit their impact. They’d already built a huge protective roof over London -- the Dome to you -- and over some orchards and farm lands with imitation ultraviolet light. They were building an underground city somewhere too. Somewhere else, they experimented with small doses of radiation to try to increase resistance to its ill effects. Up here, they poisoned the water with genetically altered material.

  “Don’t look like that. It was all benevolently intended. They put a lot of work into it. I put a lot of work into it, establishing the strands that would withstand radiation and deprivation. But they went too early. The effect of the radiation already in the atmosphere was an unknown, and they didn’t give us time to do the tests. Someone panicked, and they put the genetic material straight into the water.

  “Some were affected quite soon, others not at all -- at least not visibly. In others, the altered genes became active later on, or in their children. Before it all descended into total chaos, we came to the tentative conclusion that it was something to do with the amount of radiation poisoning already in the individual’s system…”

  Her voice was calm, sardonic, with only the faintest edge to betray the churning fury she had imagined long gone. “So there you have it -- why this place alone is a comic book city of the damned.”

  She could hear their hearts beating, the man’s strong and quick, the lupi’s slower, steadier, more like the vampire’s. From nowhere she remembered her long-dead grandmother’s favorite saying: “We’re all Jock Tamsin’s bairns.” We’re all brothers and sisters under the skin, all God’s children. Not any more, Gran, not any more…

  “Jesus Christ…” David whispered.

  Katia shrugged. “Quite the opposite. Though a step up on Frankenstein who at least didn’t create a monster out of himself.”

  Tearing her gaze free of David’s shock, she laughed at the almost identically stunned expressions of the others.

  “It’s a moot philosophical point,” she observed, “as to which is the real monster in this world. Man or mutant. The perpetrator or the consequence?”

  Chapter Six

  She stood up. “Well, I’ve waited a long time to make that speech. Now that I have, sod off and let me go about my evil life.”

  She walked across to the corner, deliberately drawing the clean bodysuit from the makeshift line. As she hoped, her obvious intention of dressing caused a general departure. After all, they’d got what they came for, and rather more information than they’d wanted. She heard the murmur of Will’s voice, and David’s, and movement toward the door.

  Damn it. She’d have to leave this place now. Too many people knew she lived here.

  She put one leg into her suit, then the other, drawing it up to her waist, where it hung by itself. Then, her back to the door and the departing guests, she let her cloak fall, supremely indifferent to their presence, to their leaving, to all she had told them, to all she had done, all she had become…

  The door closed with a quiet, definite thump. But his smell still lingered, like an echo.

  Katia closed her eyes, let her head fall back as if that would somehow expel the pain, ease the ache behind her eyes.

  A faint, brushing sound on the floor gave her an instant’s warning before his hands closed on her naked shoulders.

  “Katia,” David whispered. “Katia.”

  She couldn’t help it. Though her eyes squeezed shut all the harder, she let her head rest back against his shoulder. “I thought you’d gone. Why are you still here with the monster?”

  “There are no monsters here. That’s a story to scare children.”

  Blindly, she reached behind with her hand, touching his warm, rough cheek. “Oh David, you are so…”

  “So what?”

  “Wonderful,” she whispered. “Why can you not see what I am?”

  “I do see. I love you.”

  Her mouth opened, emitting a harsh gasp. “There is nothing to love! If ever there were, it’s long gone. There’s no love in me, David, no feeling at all…”

  “There is. There is.” His cheek nudged hers, his questing lips closing over her mouth.

  She couldn’t believe he was doing this now. Her whole world scattered in turmoil under the tender attack. His hands moved on her naked shoulders, turning her. Breaking the kiss, he touched the wetness of her face with such gentleness that the tears flowed faster.

  “Vampires don’t cry,” she gasped out. “They don’t!”

  “I’ll make it stop,” he whispered. “I promise.”

  His lips replaced his fingertips, softly kissing the tears from her cheeks, her eyes. Through her wonder, she became conscious of her own bare breasts pressing into his coat, of his warmth seeping into her. Without meaning to, she moved in his arms, so that her hardening nipples rasped across the rough wool. She became fascinated by the texture of his skin, brushing her lips along the line of his jaw. At that, he stopped kissing her eyelids and returned to her mouth.

  She opened to him immediately, everything in her reaching out to him in blind, desperate need. The delicious weakness of last night’s kiss returned with a vengeance, only now it refused to be passive. This time she kissed him back, not only accepting his tongue in her mouth, but pushing hers into his, eagerly searching out every corner, licking his teeth, his cheeks, darting back to dance with his tongue.

  The kiss deepened as each fought for control. His tongue twisted around her murderous incisors. He sucked them as though they were normal and sexy to him. Desire flooded Katia. His fingers stroking up and down her naked back and sides sent wild shivers of pleasure straight to her core. She reached up to hold his face in both hands, writhing against him, pressing her hips into his until she could feel his bone hard erection in her abdomen.

  She moaned as his hand slid round to find her breast, his palm closing, gently squeezing, sliding over it until his fingers could pinch her nipple. She thought she would die of that pleasure. But when he bent to replace his fingers with his mouth, she caught sight of the pulsing vein in his throat and the blood lust rose with fury, mingling and blending with her sexual thirst until neither her body nor her mind could separate them. She closed her eyes to stop herself from falling on his bare, enticing neck, and when he turned his hand’s
attention to her other aching breast, she began to tug off his coat with suddenly fierce impatience.

  Helping her, he managed to shrug it off while still sucking on her breast. Katia stepped out of the suit she had begun to put on with such despair only minutes before. That was all forgotten. Her only reality was the man who held her, her own raging need.

  Judging by his breathing, his urgency was as great as hers. While she tore open his shirt, and fastened her lips to his taut, male nipple, his fingers fumbled at his jeans, unfastening. Katia slid her hand down over his broad chest and flat, muscled stomach to help him. She loved the feel of him, warm and smooth, hard and deliciously sexy. As his jeans were pushed unceremoniously down over his hips, she finally got her hand on his cock. It was thick and long, as she’d seen in her dream, throbbing with heat, its blue veins straining against the skin. There was more to this life than sucking blood after all…

  A fresh flood of moisture poured down Katia’s thigh. Impatiently, she stood on tiptoe, writhing against his cock, rejoicing in his groan of need. Fitting it between her thighs, she wriggled until her clitoris brushed it. Her eyes closed with the rushing pleasure, but she wanted, she needed more.

  David’s hand stroked her thigh, then lifted her leg until it lay over his hip. Growling low in her throat, Katia jumped so that she could wrap her other leg around him too. He steadied himself with one hand on the wall, just before she impaled herself on his cock.

  It had been a long, long time for Katia. She had forgotten the feel of a man inside her. Had anyone ever felt like this? David filled her, reached impossibly far inside, stretched her to the breaking point. And yet the sensations bombarded her. Her muscles contracted and released quite involuntarily around his cock.

  “Jesus Christ,” she said unsteadily. “If you move, I’ll come.”

  He smiled, suddenly more predatory than she. “Oh, I’ll move,” he promised. “And you’ll come.”

  His hands held her buttocks, kneading. Katia tried to rise on his shaft, but he held her still. “Sh-sh.”

  Looking into her eyes, he stayed perfectly still, and when she was also, she felt his cock twitching within her. Every tiny movement caused exquisite pangs of pleasure, leading her along that barely remembered road from the past, when bliss came from another person. She smiled. “That feels good…”

  His movements grew. His hips drew back, pulling out of her until she mewled with displeasure and then pushing back in. Her head fell on to his shoulder.

  “Oh God, David…”

  Heat curled and grew within her, causing her muscles to contract again around him. His hips began to move in slow, sensual circles, stirring her pussy into a melting pot of pleasure. She moved with him, meeting him, squeezing him.

  He walked forward, carrying her to the couch while she rose and fell on his shaft, drawing him deep inside her, massaging him and herself. He laid her down tenderly, kneeling between her legs.

  “Oh now,” she begged. “Now…”

  He smiled, and without releasing her gaze, he lowered himself into her eager arms, and kissed her mouth. He began to fuck her slowly, with strong, deliberate strokes, far more serious than what had gone before. His tongue pushed into her mouth with the same sensual rhythm, and she sucked on it, biting it in her passion.

  She came quickly, writhing and trembling under him as the blinding orgasm washed over her. His mouth left hers, his eyes avidly watching every expression on her face as she silently came and came. All through it, he continued his thrusts, even and strong, holding her there long beyond what she had thought was possible.

  And when her convulsions finally calmed, he reached down and grasped her buttocks, lifting her hips to change the angle of his penetration, still watching her every reaction as he found new and forgotten places within her. Only when she gasped out with the strength of the thrill did he begin to fuck her again, and this time, he pounded her in a desperate frenzy of passion, bringing them both to swift, astounding bliss.

  There had never been anything like this man coming in her arms, shouting out his uninhibited joy as his hot seed shot up into her womb in stream after stream.

  This time it was Katia who reached for his mouth, kissing him thoroughly as their climaxes slowly died and they came back to earth. More moving than anything was the fact that after only a moment, he shifted his weight off her, just as if she couldn’t bear it far more easily than he could bear hers…

  It was a long, long time since she had been treated like something breakable and precious… had she ever been treated that way?

  For a little while he was silent, gathering his ragged breath, but his arms still held her, his cock still nestled inside her. He laid his cheek on the top of her head so that his blond hair, damp with his sweat, fell across her face. She smiled behind it, and slid her hand downward to rest on the curve of his hip. She liked that bit of him…

  In return, his hand moved from her waist upward to cup her breast. Lazily he said, “You are the most beautiful creature.” His thumb began to flick across her nipple, stirring her sated senses. But his words had brought reality back for her.

  “Now tell me it was a good fuck and bugger off.” She managed to keep her voice light, so that he would think it didn’t matter to her.

  He moved his head, leaning down to lick the nipple his fingers had just made pebble hard and erect. “I can’t do that,” he said apologetically.

  “Why not?” she managed.

  “Because I haven’t made you scream yet. All the books say you have to scream with pleasure or I haven’t done it right.”

  Laughter caught at the back of her throat. “Oh trust me, David, you do it right!”

  “I don’t believe you. I don’t believe you’ve come at all.”

  She gasped as his hand reached down between her legs and found her wet pussy, already tingling with new desire. She said shakily, “You read some very peculiar books.”

  “I love the smell of you,” he observed, inhaling the scent of her breast before he sucked the nipple back into his mouth. Katia gave herself up to the stream of pleasure, letting her own hands wander over his body, finding the hard bones and puckered scars, the knotted muscles and coarse hairs on his chest and stomach.

  He began to slide out of her hold, his re-hardening cock leaving her at last while his mouth’s attentions traveled lower to her navel, and his hand stroked her thigh and her pussy. She gasped when his finger slid inside her. Shifting position, he lay between her legs and nuzzled the short, cropped hair of her pussy.

  Anticipation seized her. She was afraid to breathe in case he changed his mind, in case he didn’t like her that much…

  Strongly, his mouth moved among her folds, teasing apart her labia. As if there was all the time in the world, he covered her aching pussy in tiny kisses, occasionally pausing to lick her most sensitive parts. Slowly, he began to move his finger in and out of her vagina, while his tongue flickered back and forth across her clitoris. The pleasure was staggering.

  She writhed, pushing up onto his hand, into his mouth, which closed on her clitoris and began to suck.

  “Oh Jesus,” she whispered, moving with him. Another finger joined the first inside her. His other hand took hold of her bottom and began to caress, pressing down hard over her anus. While he sucked, his tongue flicked her clitoris and Katia came again, bucking wildly in his hold.

  Yet his mouth held on to her, sucking her harder until a new set of convulsions flowed from the embers of the last. Unable to bear it in silence any longer, she moaned, lost in a world of sensation that held only her and David’s terrible, tender mouth that drew orgasm after orgasm from her.

  At last, when she thought she would die of it, she kicked upwards and sprang to her knees, dragging him up and rolling him over on his back. He looked slightly dazed, though his eyes blazed with lust and triumph, and his cock jutted out huge and swollen. Katia took it in her hand, rubbing her fingers across the blue, ribbed veins, purring deep in her throat when she saw
the beads of moisture leak from its velvety purple head.

  Katia sprang onto him, straddling him. “Your turn,” she breathed. And watching him, as he had earlier gazed so avidly at her, she maneuvered her entrance over his cock and slid it slowly home. Her over-sensitized body shuddered. She took in his every expression of bliss as she sheathed him up to his balls and swiveled on him.

  He bit his lip. “Christ, that’s so good…”

  “And this?” enquired Katia, beginning to slide up and down him, squeezing him.

  “You can do that for as long as you like,” he said fervently.

  “I might prefer this,” she teased, moving on him in a different, circular motion that brought his cock in contact with just that spot once more. Astonishingly, the spark caught again.

  “I can live with it,” he said raggedly. He groaned, throwing his head to one side, revealing the full, strong column of his throat. Katia’s gaze became fixed on the vein that pulsed there. Gasping, she fought her need to drink him, to taste him while he came, while she came. A low, animal growl sounded deep in her throat.

  She bent from the hips, leaning down until her hair fell about his head and shoulders like a tent enveloping them both. She found his throat, dragging her lips up its long, muscular column, tracing the path of veins until they closed on the one she wanted. The pulse pumped his blood under her mouth. She could hear it, smell it. The old hunger consumed her, galloping upon her more ferociously than ever because it was confused now with her sexual desire. Somewhere it had become one and the same need. She growled again, licking the vein lovingly, grazing it with her wicked teeth, teasing while she sucked upon it.

  David groaned. His head pressed backward, allowing her greater access. His whole body writhed under her, inflaming her even further with the knowledge that he moved not with revulsion but with desire. One big hand cupped her head, as if afraid she would move it. The other roamed across her back, her buttocks, kneading, arousing, pleading. His hips pushed upward, thrusting his cock deep within her. As the pleasure shot through her, so too did the beating of his blood, the sound of it, the smell of it, filling her.