Page 14 of Breaking Danger
He wasn’t smiling at her utter inability to form a sentence, as any other man would be. Striking a woman dumb was probably every man’s dream. That strong arm tightened around her waist as he lifted his head slightly to examine her closely. Not a lover’s look. A doctor’s look, making sure she was all right.
Okay, now she was embarrassed. Granted, the sex had been off the charts, but she had to come back from ecstasy, which wasn’t as easy as it seemed. Her thighs were coated slick with his semen now, the lips of her sex felt swollen, incredibly tender. His big body curved over hers was so close she had to dig her fingernails into her palm to keep from touching him. She twisted slightly and came against his still-erect penis and heat flashed through her, unstoppable. A great, rolling wave of it, and her sex clenched.
Oh God.
“You just—” he said. With his chest so close to hers, that deep voice seemed to sink right into her diaphragm and vibrate upwards instead of entering her head normally through her ears. “You just what?”
Sophie shook her head sharply. She placed her hands against that massive chest, palms flat against his pectorals. Oh God. She wanted to push him away slightly, gain a little breathing room, get away from this magnetic field he exerted, but her body betrayed her. She could feel every muscle against her palms through the thin cotton tee.
She had always been disciplined, focused. Right now she dug deep into her depths to find just a little of that discipline and pull away.
“I just need to use the bathroom,” she said, finally pulling her dressing gown tightly around herself. With every ounce of her being she wanted her voice to be cool and matter-of-fact, but she was breathless. She didn’t even know if she’d said the words or if she’d just mouthed them.
His arms opened immediately and she almost staggered at the sudden lack of support. A big hand shot out to her elbow, then he withdrew his hand when it was clear she was steady.
Or at least she looked steady. He watched as she walked across the room, tightening her silk robe again, as if he hadn’t already seen, already touched, her naked flesh. In the bathroom Sophie leaned her hands on the rim of the sandstone sink, blew out her breath and looked at herself in the mirror.
What she saw astonished her. She was expecting to see her usual pale face overrun with embarrassment. What she saw was a rosy version of herself, rested and relaxed, the exact opposite of the person she’d been seeing in the mirror these past few weeks.
Things had been very wrong at Arka Pharmaceuticals, where she worked. Much as she’d tried to ignore it, concentrate on her work, which was both fascinating and incredibly challenging, warning bells had been clanging for some time before she allowed herself to notice anything. Orders from administration made no sense. The protocol timelines were increased—doubled, at times trebled. They’d be taken off one line of testing and put on an entirely new one and pressed for results. That’s not the way science worked. Science worked by reason and slow deliberation, neither of which were present in Arka’s leadership.
She and Elle had been deeply worried even before people started disappearing. It had been like doing science in a whirlwind. And then the disappearances started.
Sophie was used to seeing a pale face in the mirror, fine lines of worry starting to etch a permanent path. She had started losing weight, when she had no weight to lose. Hollows were appearing under her cheekbones because she found it almost impossible to eat, given that her stomach was usually in knots. She’d stopped sleeping and the purple bruises under her eyes were starting to look permanent.
Now she was looking at a woman with wild bedhead spiraling around her pink, flushed face. It looked like she’d put three or four pounds back on, all of them from eating fabulous food.
Here it was, the end of the world, and all it took was the best sex of her life to make her feel better. Shaking her head at her own folly, she stepped under the shower for a quick wash. Not much in the world worked, but her building still had hot water.
Who knew how long that would last?
It might be her last one in this lifetime so though she was fast, she was thorough. The hot water revived her, except when she swiped between her legs with the washcloth. Everything down there was supersensitized, slightly swollen. It was as if the tissues themselves bore a cellular memory of Jon’s presence inside her body. Her legs trembled when she washed herself and she had to stand for a full minute, arms braced against the tile wall, under the hot torrent until the trembling passed.
Sophie kept some yoga outfits in the bathroom so when she walked back out, in a thin tee shirt and yoga pants, she felt more in control of herself than when she’d walked in.
Jon was exactly where she’d left him, by the window, looking down at the destruction below with a drawn face.
“Jon?” she asked softly, putting a hand on a massive shoulder.
Oh God. Touching him made all her senses flare. It was the lightest touch, her palm lightly pressed against his shoulder blade. Under her palm was warm hard muscle and a sense of vibrancy, of unusual power and strength, like the engine of a racing car temporarily idling.
“Would you like to shower at some point?”
He pulled in a sharp breath and turned, ice blue gaze so very sharp and intense. “Do I dare? What if we run out of water?”
Sophie didn’t have many answers to what was going on but she did have an answer to that. “The building has a huge reservoir on top and I don’t think too many people are left—” her voice wobbled as she thought of all her neighbors. “Are left alive. The building has a mini heliostat so the electricity will keep pumping the water until it’s finished. I have a second bathroom with a hip bath and that is filled with water. I have filled every large pot and pan and bucket with water. The water will last at least a week. The water will outlast?—”
Us. She stopped herself before the truth could come tumbling out. The water she’d stored would outlast humanity, at this rate.
She tilted her head, studying him. He was tall, visibly very strong. There was a stunner in a holster on the floor next to his Superman suit, some kind of gun in a shoulder holster. But still?—
“How did you make it here?” she asked.
Someone screamed. A woman. Not close, maybe from a building across the street. It wasn’t a scream of fear but of rage. Sophie waved a hand at the window, encompassing the fallen world outside. “How can anyone survive out there?”
It wasn’t an idle question. He was here to rescue her and get the case with the live virus and the vaccine, but unless he had a tank right outside her front door, she had no idea how they could manage to get five feet without dying or, worse, without being turned.
Something of her terror must have been showing. He lifted a big hand, cupped the side of her face. His deep voice was soft, almost tender. “I’ll keep you safe.”
