Page 101 of Primal Mirror

A big, gorgeous, prowling predator.

He was also brutally protective. Never would he hurt her—or allow her to hurt herself.

She raised her hands to her breasts. She didn’t know what to do at first, just cupped them…and felt sensation shoot through her. Especially when he growled his approval and ripped off his shirt to throw it atop his jacket.

His hands dropped to his belt and so did her eyes…the belt, and the rigid bulge underneath. Her hands tightened on her breasts of their own volition, but she eased up when her nipples protested with a sharp twinge of pain. “They’re too sensitive,” she found herself saying in a whisper, as if in apology.

“See, my sweet, delicious Auden, you know how to play this game.” Sliding out his belt on that silken statement of approval, he folded it in half, then prowled over to run the strip of leather up her leg, over her abdomen, and up to tap against one heavy breast. “Because that’s what a good girl does. She tells her lover what feels hot, what doesn’t, and every single one of the naughtiest fantasies inside her beautiful head.”

A kiss, the belt thrown aside as he knelt on the bed and circled her throat with his hand while pressing her lips open with his own lips and tongue. There was nothing tentative or exploratory about this kiss—it held the stamp of ownership, as did the hand around her throat that tightened the merest fraction just then.

She shuddered and clutched at him with her hands.

Breaking the kiss, he smiled again, those wild eyes so inhuman that she felt it: she was in bed with a predator. Claws and teeth…and a cock that wanted to mount her. Her cheeks flushed at her own thoughts.

“So, my Auden likes this.” He ran the pad of his thumb over the skitter of the pulse in her throat. “Maybe I’ll get you a necklace with a little lock pendant on it. A reminder of who you call lover—the only man you’ll ever call lover.” A kiss proprietary and raw, his hand stroking her throat as he made love to her mouth in ways she hadn’t known were possible.

Then he kissed his way across her cheek and whispered in her ear. “The necklace would be for when you’re in public. In private, I might just put a collar on you and have you wear that and nothing else.”

Auden’s entire being felt as if it was liquid. She ached, but she didn’t know for what.

“Shh.” Another kiss, his hand cupping her breast—but being careful not to brush her nipple. “Does this hurt?”

“N-no,” she gasped out. “But my…nipple. I think it’s too tender.” There was no awkwardness in admitting that, in referring obliquely to the reason why her breasts ached and her nipple was unbearably tender. Because it was Remi. Her Remi.

“There you go, being my good girl again.” A nuzzle, a stroke of her hip that was so affectionate her eyes burned. “I know what you need.”

Removing the rough warmth of his hand from her breast and throat, he said, “Offer your breast to me.”

Desperate to have him come back, she cupped her breasts as she’d done before, and said, “Please.”

His pupils expanded and then he was dipping his head and all that dark hair was brushing over her sensitized skin as he gently—so gently—suckled a wet kiss to the underside of her hypersensitive breast. The heat, the wet, it was everything and it was too much.

She cried out.

Just as Remi inserted his hand into her pants and nudged up with his knuckles.

Her thighs clamped around his hand, her hands tight in his hair, her body and mind flying apart in a surge of pleasure as primal as the man who’d given it to her.

The last thing she remembered hearing before she lost her senses was Remi’s growl in her ear. “Oh, you’re going to be one hell of a playmate. I can’t wait to have my mouth on your pussy…and your pretty, pretty mouth on my cock.”

Auden’s brain exploded.

Chapter 40

Henry will one day understand that I did him a favor. Auden was never suitable to take over his position as head of the Jackson family. Had the biograft succeeded, he’d have ended up with a child with an active ability; the graft was designed to expand her neural pathways and trigger a large-scale psychic expansion outside of her passive main ability.

I had hoped for a significant Gradient increase in her already-existing basic Tp. It seemed to me that “stretching” Auden’s mind to make her more powerful had a higher chance of success than attempting to trigger a wholly new ability. That the endeavor failed has cost Henry nothing—Auden was already a useless part of his genetic legacy. He can no doubt create another child soon enough.

—Shoshanna Scott’s private notes (20 February 2076)

AUDEN SWAM TO consciousness with the awareness that someone was stroking her breast to hip and back again with a lazily feline touch. Shivering, she opened her eyes to look into those so wild, she’d never mistake them for human.

“There you are.” A purr of sound before Remi brushed his lips over hers.

She was so, so glad that the Arrow who was protecting her mind had created a second layer of shielding so that nothing of her emotions got through to them. Because she’d lost control at the end there, become nothing but a creature of flesh and pleasure.

“I didn’t get to see all of you,” she complained, her voice coming out rough.

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