Edge of Oblivion (23 page)

He staggered across the polished bamboo floor of the gym one step at a time, trying not to breathe too deeply because it sent the animal inside him into a frenzy of snarling hunger. Morgan moaned again, and the doctor cursed. Xander rounded the side of the folding screen and froze, looking down with his lips parted and his heart a sudden throbbing clench in his chest.

She was lying on her back on a futon unfolded on the floor, arms and legs akimbo, a sheet bunched up around her waist as if she’d been thrashing in it. She was clothed, but not by much: a simple camisole gone see-through with sweat, a glimpse of plain, girlish white panties beneath the wrinkled sheet. Her hair was a tangled dark mess over the pillow beneath her head, her eyes were closed, her skin shone with the Fever and a fine sheen of perspiration. Strands of hair curled mermaid damp across her brow, clung to her neck, and he itched to push them from her skin with his fingers.

Looking at her, every atom in his body, every nerve, screamed,
I want! I need! Mine!

“I told you, it’ll make it worse if you’re—” Bartleby, crouching over Morgan with a syringe in his hand, turned while he spoke. When he saw Xander standing there, he broke off in surprise and came to his feet. “You’re up! How are you feeling?”

Xander’s mouth felt like baked stone. He didn’t take his gaze from Morgan when he answered.

“At this exact moment?” he said, his voice shaking. “Like King Kong on Viagra.”

“It’s the hormones she’s emitting,” Bartleby said, sending a worried glance toward Morgan. As if she knew he was looking at her, she let out a whimper. Her head rolled back and forth on the pillow, and she arched on the futon, radiating heat. Bartleby glanced back at Xander, whose mouth had begun to water. “You can’t be in here. You know that,” he said, moving between Xander and Morgan so he blocked the view.

A low, warning growl rumbled through Xander’s chest. He couldn’t help it.

“Alexander,” said the doctor, careful to keep his voice mild, “I’m only trying to make this easier for her. She is in a lot of discomfort—pain, actually—and though I’ve just given her a shot of morphine, she’ll still be able to feel you here and it will make the pain worse. You need to leave. For her.”

He didn’t move. His brain sent the command, but his feet refused. His entire body was in mutiny. Desire pounded through him in wave over dark, powerful wave, and he stood there fighting it, fighting the almost overpowering urge to rip off that sheet and those innocent white panties and take her right here, on the gymnasium floor.

“Why would Leander send me with a female about to go into her Fever?” he wondered aloud.

His voice cracked over every other word. “Why would anyone be so stupid?”

Bartleby sighed and set the syringe down on a low table that was filled with towels and water bottles and various medical supplies, then turned back to Xander. “He didn’t know. She said it’s her first Fever.”

Xander started. He’d never heard of a female going into Fever for the first time later than puberty. “What? That’s impossible! She’s—how old is she?”

“Twenty-six,” came the reply. “And, yes, it’s almost unheard of to happen this late. But not impossible.” His tone shaded with sarcasm. “Clearly.” He put a gentle hand on Xander’s bicep and gave a small push. It was like trying to move a building.

“I just want to move her somewhere more comfortable,” Xander said, licking his lips. “I can’t stand seeing her on the floor. Just to one of the bedrooms, downstairs.” He glanced at the doctor. “Will it hurt her if I move her?”

Bartleby shook his head. His eyes were worried. “But it might hurt you.” A flush spread across his cheeks.

“The wound is healing,” Xander said. “It hurts, but you know I heal fast. And she probably only weighs a buck ten, a buck twenty at the most—”

“It’s not your wound I’m worried about, old friend,” said the doctor, then sent a pointed glance at the front of Xander’s trousers, at the bulge straining there. Bartleby coughed into his hand and glanced away.

Xander dismissed that. He was under control. If he had stood here with the scent of her readiness pummeling him for the past few minutes and had done nothing to satisfy the screaming need it unleashed in him, he could control himself.

He was relatively sure of that.

He brushed past Bartleby and knelt beside the futon. He leaned over Morgan. His gaze traveled over her flushed face, her tangled hair, her chest...

He squeezed his eyes shut, banishing the sight of hard pink nipples straining taut through the sheer, clinging fabric of the camisole, of her breasts, so full and round.

“Morgan,” he whispered, opening his eyes. She made a little sound in her throat and her brow furrowed, but her eyes didn’t open. “I’m going to move you to a more comfortable place, to a bed. All right?”

She didn’t answer. He smelled the drug the doctor had given her, smelled the chemical harshness of it in her blood beneath the amazing, opulent scent of the Fever, and knew it wouldn’t last long. Her body was burning through it even as he knelt there.

He gathered the sheet around her, carefully slid his arms beneath her body, and pulled her against him, cradling her to his chest. He lifted her and stood up. Her head fell against his shoulder, she breathed a little, discontented sigh. Her skin was hot, so hot—

The fingers of one of her hands curled around the front of his shirt. Eyes closed, she burrowed against him, inhaling, breathing his own scent into her nose. Then she made another sound in her throat, but this one was purely erotic.

A shudder wracked him. He had to get her to that bed, and fast, and then he had to get the hell away from her.

Without another word to the doctor, he crossed the darkened gym, kicked open the doors, and headed toward the stairs.

Morgan was on fire.

Everything burned, everything hurt, her skin and her muscles and her bones. Even her thoughts —chaotic and disjointed as they were—scorched a painfully blazing path through her brain, pounding one word over and over.

Mate. Mate.
Mate.

She’d never felt anything like this incinerating, elemental urgency before but supposed she shouldn’t have been so surprised; her own mother had her first Fever late, though not as late as this.

Once Morgan passed puberty without a sign of it appearing, then twenty, then twenty-five, everyone just assumed she was an anomaly. That possibly her powerful Gift of Suggestion came with a darker side. Infertility.

But no. She was fertile. Now she felt it to the very marrow of her bones.

And there was a male holding her. An
Ikati
male, not the human doctor that had tended to her since the first signs of the Fever hit. She smelled the difference between them, the power, the strength of this male carrying her in his arms. She smelled his lust, dark and deep.

Her lids were so heavy from the drug she couldn’t open her eyes, but she
could
inhale, and she took that heavenly scent of lust into her lungs. This close, it was thick and sweet like candy, delicious.

It sent a spike of heat straight down between her legs.

She made a little noise of longing in her throat. The male began to walk faster.

There came the sound of heavy doors being kicked open, then light behind her closed lids that hurt enough to make her turn, wincing, and bury her face in the hard chest she was cradled against.

Movement and breathing, her body swaying with his steps, the motion rhythmic and calming except for the pressure of her breasts against his body, the aching awareness of him and his beautiful scent like something she wanted to eat.

Yes, taste him
, her mind urged, churning.
Taste all of him! He is what you need!

She arched her back, slid a hand up around his neck, and opened her mouth over the column of his throat.

Salt and musk and masculinity, heat and rightness, the throb of his pulse beneath her lips. He stumbled and cursed, yanked his head away, but she wanted more, she wanted to run her tongue over all his smooth, lovely skin, and then she wanted to bite him and straddle him and take him deep inside

—

“Touch me,” she whispered, arching into him again. His arms tightened around her. He made a low, rough growl deep in his chest.

They kept moving.

Faster now, down a set of stairs, another, the male breathing hard and nearly stumbling several times as he hurried along. Her nose was in his hair, her lips were on his skin, her teeth nipped at his earlobe, his shoulder, the soft spot between his collarbone and neck. It sent shivers through his body, delicious ripples of hard muscle that drove her own need even higher. She heard the sound of another door being kicked open, then there was cool darkness and she was abruptly deposited onto a bed.

“Morgan,” a voice said, hoarse, and then she knew. His voice sent a wash of pleasure through her body, pure and sweet, like sunlit honey.

He would help her, help ease the pain. Though he despised her, it was his
job
to keep her alive and well. At least for a while.

“Xander.” She writhed against the mattress, reaching out blindly. “Please, Xander.”

A sheet was pulled over her body; her wrists were caught and pinned. She fought against it; she didn’t want the sheet on top of her. She wanted
him
on top of her.

“Morgan,” he said again, and this time he really sounded as if he were in pain.

She managed to open her eyes, and he swam into view, hovering above her with his lips pulled back in a grimace and a fine sheen of sweat glistening on his brow. His eyes stared down at her, searing, molten amber rimmed in black lashes.

He wants you!
the animal inside her hissed, writhing to be set free.
Take him!

He’d pinned her wrists against the pillow above her head, and she knew she couldn’t get them free. He was far too strong for that. So she didn’t bother to try.

In a single, swift motion, she arched off the mattress, stretched out her neck, and put her mouth on his.

He moaned against her lips but didn’t pull away. He didn’t move nearer either. He just allowed her to kiss him, to suck at his lips and slide her tongue into his mouth, all the while holding her wrists down so hard against the pillow his arms began to shake.

“I want you,” she whispered through frenzied kisses. “I need you.”

“It’s just the Fever,” he groaned, his brow furrowed, his eyes half-lidded, watching her. “It’s the hormones. And the drugs. You don’t know what you’re saying.”

“
I need you
,” she insisted, teasing her tongue in and out of his mouth. He turned his head away, panting, and she took the opportunity to put her lips against his throat again, to press her teeth into his throbbing jugular.

The snarl that ripped from between his clenched teeth was like nothing she’d ever heard and sent a thrill of exhilaration zinging along every nerve.

He surged against her, throwing the length of his hard body on top of her as that snarl kept coming, fierce and animalistic. He kissed her like an animal, too, all teeth and greed and rough intent, an Alpha taking what he wanted without restraint or apology, his hands all over her body, squeezing her breasts and bottom, tangled in her hair.

She moaned and stretched full against him, lost, no longer herself but someone else, someone consumed in flame and flesh and pleasure, in the pounding pulse of two heartbeats, in the roar of desire like the swell of the ocean cresting over her, tumbling, crashing—

And then with a horrified cry, Xander broke away.

She was left breathless, spinning, every nerve like an open wound scraped raw.

“Jesus,” he whispered, backing away toward the door. “I’m sorry, Morgan, I’m so sorry...”

“Please, Xander, don’t go, it’s all right,” she said, struggling to sit up. The room spun. She shook her head to clear it, but the drugs—the goddamn drugs—

“I’m so sorry,” he choked again, then fled through the door and slammed it shut behind him.

Morgan sagged back against the mattress, pain in her skull like needles driven through her eyes, in her body as if she’d been set to burn on a funeral pyre.

“But it hurts...” she whimpered to the empty room.

Then she passed out.

If he were human, D would have had trouble hearing Lix over the thumping bass of the techno music that screamed from the overhead speakers in the VIP section of their favorite bar and nightclub, Alien.

But unfortunately D heard him clear as day.

“That’s bullshit,” said Lix, and knocked back another shot of Patrón.

It was his fifth. He was just getting started.

Watching Constantine disappear around a darkened corner on the far side of the room with a human female wearing a dress so short it was almost a belt, D sighed and ran a hand over his shaved head. “I’m telling you, Lix, there’s something weird going on with Dominus and that
Servus
, Silas. I just don’t know what it is yet.” He shook his head, frowning. “Something’s just not right.”

He’d dreamed of it in bits and pieces, clues that hinted at nefarious plots and well-kept secrets, tantalizing but ever out of reach. Unlike the dream he’d had this morning that had arrived in full—

though he’d edited it in the retelling, a practice he knew would get him killed if discovered—and the one that showed him the full-Blood female and her orange-eyed Alpha had arrived in Rome, he’d been getting morsels of something else over the past few months. Years, even, maybe. It was hard to tell.

“Talk like that can get you killed, D. You better not mention that around any of the
Legiones
; they’re just dying to take us down a notch. They’re only soldiers because they weren’t Gifted enough to make
Bellatorum
, but they’re not stupid. One of them will turn you in just to earn a day off.”