The hand that held her head tilted it to the side harshly. His mouth left hers to run the tip of his nose over her raw lips then up the side of her exposed neck until it ended up behind her ear and at her hairline. Clara lifted her dangling, tip-toed feet off the ground and hooked them around his middle. Reid used his free hand to heft her up on him and trap his burgeoning erection between their bodies.
“No,” she said, straining up again, more to convince herself than him. “I can’t let you consume me.” The last part came out as a plea.
He lifted his nose from her ear and stared back into her eyes. This time the annoying rush of budding tears blurred her vision. “Remember this, dear Clara.”
“Why?”
She couldn’t see his lips, poised a hairsbreadth from hers. Their words created tiny kisses between them. It was too hot, too kind—too much for her.He’s going to go cold on me now.Clara didn’t think she could bear it if he did.
“Because I’m going to give you everything you want,” he said, so low she wasn’t sure she heard him.
“And if I want to leave?”
The soft brushes of his lips shattered her. “I’m going to follow.”
It scared the crap out of her.
“I’m always going to follow your scent.”
Clara gripped his shoulders as he pressed her back into the hard wall. Her body tensed and her heart raced while the Cyborg laid down the law.
“Santino is as good as dead—
“—what?—”
—and your body now belongs to me.”
“What?” The hazy heat went lukewarm. Reid pulled away and her legs dropped, her feet weakly touched the ground.
“You forgot one important thing, Clara.” He moved away from her and the space he created made her feel even more exposed than when she was being prepped for surgery. “The facility owns the surgery, your body for the next three months, and the baby we’re going to make. I own it.”
What was lukewarm went to cold. The desperate shocks of lust continued to stab holes through her. “I refuse!”
Her eyes followed his deft fingers as they loosened the cuffs of his suit, the one she barely managed to rumple, and she watched as he exposed his wrists. She only stood straight because the wall at her back forced her to. A knotted pressure tightened her pussy.
Reid breathed in deeply, and she knew he smelled it. He worked his coat off smoothly, and any signs of the desperation he unleashed on her minutes ago was gone.
“Don’t get undressed,” she said. He shrugged out of the blazer in one move, catching it on his fingers, and turning to the one chair in her room to throw it over it. “I’m—this isn’t happening? I’m leaving. I’m supposed to choose the sperm? In a lab? This isn’t part of the contract,” she was rambling, her tongue thick and tied and she knew it. “I’m not supposed to have a real father for my children.”
Reid ignored her and rolled his neck like he did often, drawing her eyes as it always did to land on the thick curves of his Adam’s apple, the veins, and the almost invisible hint of facial hair. Clara backed up toward the corner and where the side of her bed met the wall, moving to climb over it and toward the door he blocked. He watched her the entire time, steadily, and without emotion.
“Clara.” His voice was laced with warning.
Her feet hit the other side of her bed and she stopped. For some reason, she didn’t really want to make it to the door, didn’t want to escape. She didn’t want her hand to leave the bed, not when her doctor watched her like a flower he wanted to pluck or prey he wanted to fell.
“I can’t do this with you.” She forced herself to step away from the bed. “This’ll complicate everything. Everything.” She indicated them and the bed. The idea of it all. Clara shivered. It made her want to give in and lie down on the bed like a willing sacrifice. “Go ahead, kill Santino, make it long and painful. I’ll stay here and follow the terms of my contract. But we both know this won’t work. I’m never going to be with a man again. And if you impregnate me instead...instead of other, safer seed, I won’t just have to share my child with the government, I’d have to share him with you too.” The stupid tears she wanted to curse to hell reappeared to glaze her eyes as she spoke. Her heart felt like it was in her mouth.
His eyes flashed that familiar dark light that reminded her of the dog. Clara glanced at the door, wishing it was with her.
Reid stepped away from her and moved toward the door. “Follow me, then,” his said stiffly, taking her by surprise.
He waited for her, and she dared one last look at her open bag, so close to being packed, before she swallowed and left the room with him. He took her arm, his heavy fingers reigniting her need, and led her back to the same medical lab where he had reconstructed her womb.
The air was chillier than the rest of the facility and as Reid ushered her in and powered on the tech, he appeared right at home. Clara wasn’t sure what to do, disheartened, sad, nervous, even scared, scared that she condemned her ex to death by this Cyborg without a guilty thought.
Her body was flushed with desire, her pussy still clenched, searching for something to fill it. Her eyes landed on Reid’s back where his white button-down shirt clung to him. That prospect had passed and what was between them now was strained and growing icier by the minute.
She frowned. It was as if the whole day had never happened.We never talked about my predicaments, I never waited for him in his office, Marsha and her girlfriend aren’t here. We never kissed. I never felt his massive erection.
