Total pages in book: 165
Estimated words: 159487 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 797(@200wpm)___ 638(@250wpm)___ 532(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 159487 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 797(@200wpm)___ 638(@250wpm)___ 532(@300wpm)
And still, they waited.
No grabbing. No demanding. No resentful sighs. No making her feel like she owed them because they had made her come.
Cassie swallowed against a sudden lump in her throat and told herself not to get emotional about two alien warriors having basic manners. But somehow it felt like more than manners—it felt like care. The kind of care she barely knew what to do with because no male had ever offered it to her before.
Then the bite wound pulsed and she felt the need beginning to creep up on her again.
37
CASSIE
Cassie sucked in a breath as the wound pulsed again.
At once, Severin’s arm tightened around her.
“What is it?” he asked in a low, worried voice.
She didn’t answer immediately because she was too busy staring down at her arm. The reddish-gold shimmer had returned beneath the skin—faint at first and then brighter, pulsing in a slow, hungry rhythm that seemed to echo between her thighs.
“Oh no,” she whispered.
Ravik lifted his head from where he had been nuzzling her shoulder.
“Cassie?”
The second he said her name, the pulse grew stronger. Heat rolled through her—not as sharp and frantic as before, but deep and insistent. Her body, which had been relaxed and satisfied only moments ago, tightened all over again. Her nipples went hard against Severin’s forearm and her pussy gave a helpless little clench that made her cheeks burn.
Severin saw it and seemed to know at once what was going on.
“Cassandra,” he murmured, “Is the need returning?”
She closed her eyes tightly and clenched her hands into fists.
“I really, really wanted the answer to that to be no,” she said, her voice coming out strained.
“But it isn’t?” he asked.
“No.” She exhaled shakily. “It’s better than before—not as awful. Not as…desperate. But it’s still there and I feel like…feel like it’s getting stronger.”
Ravik’s hand stroked over her hip, slow and soothing.
“Cassie needs more pleasure?” he rumbled.
“I don’t think that’s exactly it,” she said, though even as she spoke, her body throbbed again in a way that made the words feel like a lie. “I mean, yes, probably, but it feels different now. Like before I needed to come so badly I couldn’t think straight. Now it’s more like…” She trailed off, deeply wishing she could disappear under the heated coppery sheets and never come out again.
“Like what?” Severin urged softly. “Come on, sweetheart—we can’t help if you don’t tell us what you need.”
She opened one eye and glared up at him.
“You know, I’m getting really tired of having to describe every humiliating thing my body does and every embarrassing thing it needs.”
“I know,” he said, and he actually sounded sorry. “But I can’t help you if I don’t understand.”
Cassie sighed. Damn him and his calm voice and his gentle hands and his big blue eyes that somehow made this feel like a medical crisis and foreplay at the same time.
But Severin was nothing if not patient. He just waited until at as she couldn’t stand it and had to speak.
She swallowed hard.
“It feels like I need…” She stopped and tried again. “It feels like my body wants what Ravik gave me earlier,” she finished in a rush, her cheeks getting hot as she spoke.
Ravik went very still and Severin inhaled slowly behind her.
“Seed,” he said. “You’re craving male seed. I thought you might.”
Cassie covered her face with both hands.
“I cannot believe this is my life.”
But it was. She was infected with a zombie virus that was making her need to drink man milkshake, as her girlfriends at college used to call it. Cassie could feel the thirst making her throat feel dry as a desert and she knew instinctively that water wasn’t going to quench it.
The bite wound on her arm pulsed again—hotter this time—as if confirming the diagnosis.
Severin shifted carefully, and she felt him reach for her arm.
“May I?” he asked again.
She nodded from behind her hands and let him pull one away from her face so he could examine it.
Once more, he turned her arm toward the amber light and studied the wound. His thumb brushed the edge of the glowing skin—not the puncture marks themselves, just beside them—and Cassie’s body jerked. The sensation went straight through her body, hot and electric, making her thighs press together as a jolt of pleasure ran through her.
“Sorry,” he said at once.
“It didn’t hurt,” she muttered. “It…God, it felt good.”
“Hmm…” He sounded thoughtful. “The glow is responding to arousal again, but not in the same pattern as before. The pleasure of coming while Ravik tasted you reduced the inflammatory response, but the viral markers may now be seeking the next biological component.”
Cassie lowered her hands and looked back at him over her shoulder.
“Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”
His expression was strained, but honest.
“I think your body may be demanding male seed because it recognizes the proteins and mating factors as part of the anti-viral response. Ravik’s seed lowered your viral load earlier. But that was only one Kindred strain.”