Cyborg Nation (21 page)

Her muscles began to ache from the effort to be still as his mouth poured fire into her veins with each tug on her nipple, each rough caress of his tongue across the exquisitely sensitive bud of flesh. A sound of distress escaped her as she finally yielded to the need she couldn’t ignore any longer and shifted her hips in search of something hard to press her mound against and discovered he’d pinned her lower body with one thigh. Her clit quaked in discontent when she failed to find any part of his body to rub it against.

She lifted her leaden eyelids to peer at him as Gideon lifted his head to study her face. “Why do you hate me so much?” she whispered plaintively.

Something flickered in his eyes. “Do I touch you as if I hate you?”

He
withheld
as if he hated her, she thought in dismay as he dropped his head to drag open mouthed kisses along the column of her throat as if to demonstrate how he
didn’t
hate her when she knew better, knew he’d set out for some reason unknown to her to make her life a living hell. “Your … programming,” she gasped hesitantly, still unwilling to anger him enough to pull away. “You said....”

He paused, lifted his head again. “I said I knew how and where to touch you to give you more pleasure than you could imagine,” he said, his voice rough.

She swallowed uncomfortably, the sound loud in her ears. “Yes.”

In the dim, omni-directional lighting of the room, she saw his brows draw together, a flicker of anger in his eyes … and something else. Pain? He tensed as if debating whether to draw away or not and she felt her belly tighten in disappointment.

Instead, he seemed to decide to punish her for pointing out his origins as a pleasure bot. His touch became more pointed, more demanding, lifting her from the plateau where she’d hovered when he’d allowed himself to be distracted and forcing her up the slippery slope that she knew was going to lead to painful disappointment because he wasn’t going to let her crest it and fall into the pool of ultimate bliss on the other side.

She couldn’t find it within herself to care for the moment. His lips felt wonderful as they crawled along the sensitive skin of her throat and the side of her neck, the light touch and faint movement enough to send waves of scouring heat through her. He sucked her earlobe when he reached her ear as he had her nipples, stirring more currents and then sent a headier jolt through her as he covered her ear with his mouth and sucked at it lightly before tracing the swirls. Shivers chased up and down her body, colliding in a delightful explosion in her belly that made her suck in a sharp breath.

Lifting his mouth from her ear, he covered her lips, thrusting his tongue past the delicate, yielding barrier and raking it over hers. The friction of his tongue rubbing against hers alone would’ve been enough in and of itself to enrapture and enthrall, but the burst of his taste inside her mouth, the infinite appeal of his scent overwhelmed her senses, intoxicated her. And each stroke of his tongue over hers, each inhalation of his scent was like another shot of his potent elixir--sweet, drugging, innervating. She shook with the force of the currents flooding her in hard waves, shifted restlessly, not only because she couldn’t be still, but because she needed to feel the brush his skin against her and couldn’t prevent the search for a touch.

The faintest of brushes would have been enough to feed the need, but he held her and at the same time held himself aloof, pinioning her legs with the weight of one thigh, her upper body with the weight of his arms across hers. It was torture, exquisite, exciting, but still torture. It wasn’t enough to feel his mouth on hers. It wasn’t enough to taste him, to feel his essence flowing into her like a river of lava. She wanted more,
needed
more. She had to feel him all over, feel his taut body pressing into hers, feel the abrasion of his heated flesh brushing hers.

Briefly, he deprived her of even the one point of intimate contact as he lifted his lips from hers. A faint sound of disappointment escaped her, became a moan that was equal parts pleasure and dread as she felt his lips nibbling a trail of fire down her throat and realized his goal. She tensed, waiting, hopeful, dreading almost as much as she anticipated the touch she knew was coming.

His lips closed around one pulsing nipple, sending an electrifying charge through her that seemed to fry nerve endings as it moved through her. She uttered a choked gasp in spite of all she could do. “Gideon! Please!” she gasped, a mournful note of desperation in her voice.

He seemed deaf to her entreaty, and yet he tugged harder, danced his tongue over and around the nearly painfully engorged bud with more purpose and far more devastating effect. She fought for breath, sucking tiny snatches of air into her constricted lungs as her body reached a surfeit of what it could take and yet could go no further, bound to the earthly plain by her body’s need to feel him inside of her and a stubborn refusal to give her release without it. Mindlessly, she begged for it, pleaded—thought she did. She found that she was only murmuring ‘please’ like a litany, over and over.

He stopped, lifting his head to study her and she felt like crying. “Give me what I want,” he said hoarsely.

She didn’t have to consider it. “Yes,” she gasped desperately. “Don’t stop!”

He shifted, sucked only the tip of her other breast into his mouth, flicked his tongue over it. “You will contract?”

“Contract?” she asked vaguely, even though what she really wanted to do was tell him to act now, talk about it later.

He dipped his head to toy with her nipple again, just enough to have her gasping for air. “Co-habitation. You will contract with us?”

Her mind was so awash with need she couldn’t think. Co-habitation? Us? There was something that didn’t seem to fit. He was waiting, though. He wasn’t going to give her what she wanted without an answer. She lifted her head with an effort to look down at him, thoroughly confused. “Us?”

Gideon studied her face carefully, struggling to decipher her expression when his mind and body were on fire with need and working against any ability to reason at all. The doubt in her voice alone was enough to give him pause, however. She was wavering, he thought dimly, within his grasp. Fuck the comrades in arms shit, he decided. “Me.”

She nodded, but he could see she hardly knew where she was, that he’d pushed her well beyond any ability to fully grasp what he was demanding. “Say it.”

She groaned, arching her back to lift her breast to him. He gave her what she was demanding, more because he couldn’t resist than because he thought he needed to push her more. By the time he lifted his head again, he had to struggle to focus on his objective. “Say it, Bronte.”

“Yes,” she gasped. “Please?”

A shudder went through him. Grasping her clothes, he peeled the uniform off of her with hands that shook so badly they fumbled clumsily, his mind completely unable to grapple with the mechanics of removing the damned thing. He ended up tearing it off of her when he hit a snag and couldn’t figure out how to untangle it. Grasping her thighs, he shoved them upward, bending her knees, and then pushing them wide enough he could wedge his hips between them with more haste than finesse. She was so wet for him when he reached between them to fumble with the mechanics of fitting their bodies together a red haze of insanity closed over him, compounded by the discovery that even when he’d managed to align his cock with her opening her body resisted his efforts to claim her immediately. His mind ceased to function at all then. Gritting his teeth against the near painful pleasure of feeling her heat and wetness engulfing him, he dug his toes into the mattress and heaved upward, thrusting frantically. Sweat beaded his flesh as he struggled, partly from the fire burning him up, partly from the exertion, and partly from the sudden fear that he wasn’t going to get all the way inside of her before he spilled his seed.

His teeth gritted determination and the moisture of her body finally combined to allow him to attain his objective even though it felt as if her body was clutching his cock so tightly it threatened to peel the skin off him. He had to stop to catch his breath when he’d sheathed himself completely inside of her. Impatient, she rocked her hips against his, demanding that he move. Tremors ripped through him with the effort to remain still, to keep from coming, to try to remember what it was he needed first. Unable to grasp the elusive thought, but certain it was vitally important to him, he pushed himself up on his elbows so that he could study her face, hoping it would come to him before he lost his tenuous grasp on his control.

“Say it,” he rasped hoarsely when he finally remembered.

“Yes,” she repeated obediently.

He could tell she didn’t have a fucking clue what she was agreeing to and couldn’t have cared less at that moment. “You will contract with me on co-habitation,” he said determinedly.

“Yes.”

He ground his teeth together as she bucked her hips against his, sending hard waves of need through him and bringing him perilously closer to a complete loss of control. “Say the words,” he ground out hoarsely.

“I’ll contract with you.”

He’d already gathered himself to move when a sudden doubt shook him. “Gideon.”

She lifted her eyelids a fraction to peer at him. “Gideon! Please!”

That was close enough. Even if she hadn’t acknowledged she knew it was him, he couldn’t hold it any longer. Even as she spoke the words, the muscles along her channel rippled around him, milking him. Uttering a choked groan as his body responded by trying to pump his seed into her, he fought the urge down, trying to focus on something else,
anything
else. As desperately as he wanted to give in to the screaming demand of his body for release, he realized dimly that he had to give her what she needed first … what he’d promised in return for her promise.

He settled closer, watching her face as he moved his hips rhythmically to stroke his cock along her channel. Her face went slack with pleasure, her lips parting as she panted for breath, little sounds emanating from her throat. My woman, he thought, memorizing her face, savoring her scent warmed by her heated flesh, carried on her breath. His control slipped a notch. Gritting his teeth, he fought to hold on to it even as his body, with a will of its own, began to move faster, to thrust deeper. The little sounds she made deepened, became moans, reached inside of him and twisted his guts into a pretzel. His balls tightened, threatened to explode.

Gasping at the pain/pleasure that ripped through him, he shifted an arm beneath her hips, tilting them so that he could reach the bundle of nerves deep inside of her that would push her over the edge. He knew he’d found it when her moans grew sharper, harsher, when he felt her muscles contract around him and quake. Groaning, he yielded control to his instincts, felt it ripped away from his grasp as her cries escalated into a keen sound somewhere between a sob a scream, her body tensing abruptly before it began to convulse with ecstasy. His heart seized in his chest painfully. His belly tightened, forcing the breath from his lungs in a harsh grunt and then squeezing, forcing his seed from his body to bathe her womb.

His mind darkened as the red mindless haze lifted, carrying away every ounce of strength with it until he would’ve flattened her with his weight if not for his braced arms and even then it wasn’t the strength of his muscles that held his weight but the unyielding steel beneath the muscles. Wanting nothing more than to yield to the peace that beckoned, he struggled instead to fight it off as vague thoughts flickered through his mind, teasing him, warning him that yielding was the worse thing he could do.

His member had gone flaccid inside of her, expended. He still didn’t want to withdraw. It was his. He wanted to stay there, connected to her flesh to flesh. He realized after a few moments, though, that she was dragging in short, pained breaths. His chest was compressing her lungs despite his effort to hold the bulk of his weight off of her. Summoning the strength to move, he lifted his hips to withdraw from her body and shifted his weight enough to fall to one side of her.

Even that little expenditure of energy seemed to sap the last of it. He held on to the last thread of consciousness tenaciously. It took unbelievable effort to move even his mouth and tongue to form words, to force them from his chest. “You gave your word,” he managed, the words slurred and drunken with exhaustion. She didn’t respond and he was tempted to give up and accept what he’d managed to get from her. He found he couldn’t. He had to be sure. Opening his eyes, he studied her face. “Mine,” he managed, dragging her close and curling his arms around her possessively. “You said....”

“Mmm.”

He lifted a hand to her face, curled his fingers and palm around her chin. “Say it, Bronte,” he demanded.

A faint frown appeared between her brows, as if she was struggling to think of what he wanted. “Yes, Gideon,” she mumbled finally, snuggling her head more comfortably on his shoulder. “I will.”

Uneasiness still gripped him but he discovered he couldn’t fight his exhaustion any more.

She was studying his face when he regained consciousness. He stared back at her warily as memory returned. His body realized she was still curled naked against him before his mind caught up, responding instantly. She felt it. Her eyes widened as he insinuated a leg between her thighs and curled his hips to press his erection against her.

“Did you mean it?” she asked huskily.

He swallowed against a sudden, hard knot of doubt. “Did you?” he asked uneasily.

A frown flickered over her face and then one corner of her lips tipped upward. “
That
was what this was all about?”

“If I say yes will you be angry?” he asked cautiously.

She thought about it. “Maybe.”

“Then no.”

She laughed, a throaty, pleasing sound that seemed to reach inside of him, fisting around his heart and squeezing at his lungs. Lifting a hand, she stroked her fingers lightly over his cheek. Her touch made his skin tingle, but it also made his belly clench reflexively. He held his breath, wondering what else she would do, struggling against the urge to push her back against the bed and explore her with the newfound knowledge that everything he discovered was his.