Page 28 of Damien’s Mate

It didn’t hurt to move now, with the morphine in her system. Nothing hurt. She turned towards Damien, resting her head in the hollow of his shoulder. His arms came around her, warm and safe. “You’re okay,” he said.

She felt his breath on her cheek. Breath. Life. He would keep her from suffocating.

Her lips found his. She felt him tense and start to move away, but she needed him so she pulled him closer. She was floating in a warm river, they were floating together and his lips were on hers, his arms around her, his tongue tasting her.

His breath was keeping her alive, keeping the cotton clouds from covering her. He relaxed and they fit together perfectly, wrapped around each other, floating and floating until they were far, far away, under dragon-filled skies.

Damien lost track of how long they lay there entwined, kissing. The feeling took him away, the image and sensation of floating down a warm river slowly enveloping him, as if it came from outside himself.

He was filled with desire, but there was no sense of urgency, no need to push further, to demand more. His whole world became nothing but Lila. The heat of her, and the scent; the softness of her lips and her skin and her hands on him.

He shouldn’t be doing this—she was hurt, for fuck’s sake. He didn’t know how bad. But she’d begged him not to leave her.

She’d sounded scared, and he hadn’t thought anything could scare her. He wondered how close she’d really come to dying after she got hit, and he held her closer because if she’d slipped away, he would have lost something precious he could never get back.

He could somehow sense feelings coming from her, too. Fear of being alone, a deep longing, and a feeling of safety because he was here.

He’d never made anybody feel safe before.

His heart swelled with that, and then he couldn’t let her go because he didn’t know if he’d ever get the chance to feel this again, something so pure and right, like he could be good for somebody, even if it was just this one time.

His dick throbbed—it was hard as a rock with her thigh pressed against it, and he wanted her so bad and yet he didn’t want it, he wanted this to be just what it was, her kissing him like his life force was giving her strength, and him keeping her safe.

Finally the kissing got slower and slower, and then she snuggled into him with a tiny sigh and he knew she was asleep.

And still he didn’t move. He just lay there, feeling her breathing, thinking about how close both of them came to never taking another breath, and against all odds here they were.

In this crappy motel room, holding each other. Warm and safe.

He thought he would sleep but he didn’t. First he didn’t want to; he was keeping watch for her, like he’d promised. But his throbbing dick wouldn’t go down, and the longer he held her the more he wanted her, like a physical ache.

Finally he got out of bed. He needed a shower.

He hadn’t washed off the dust and sweat from the explosion and chasing after the ambulance. He probably smelled like an orangutan.

He stripped off his clothes in the tiny bathroom and started the shower running. There wasn’t even a tub, just a tile shower stall with a dingy plastic curtain.

He sluiced himself off under the inadequate spray. The place was too low-rent for free shampoo, so he just rinsed out his hair and hoped for the best. Then he ripped open the tiny cake of motel soap and rubbed himself down.

His dick was still standing up. He wouldn’t be surprised if touching Lila, kissing her, had given him a permanent boner.

The scent of her was still in his nostrils, like it had been burned in his brain, and without conscious volition he stroked himself with his slick, soapy palm, leaning against the wall of the shower, finally claiming a half-painful, almost desperate pleasure as the water streamed down.

Lila woke slowly, still feeling the warmth from where Damien had been holding her. The morphine was wearing off after only a couple of hours, burned off by her shifter metabolism.

She wondered if she should take more. Damien was nowhere to be seen, but he’d left the vial and syringes on the bedside table, and there was a dim light spilling out of the bathroom.

She could hear the water running—Damien was in the shower. She listened to it dreamily, until her shifter hearing picked up a rhythmic sound, and then a soft, strangled moan that a human would never have been able to hear.

He was masturbating in the shower.

Immediately, the sensations came flooding back to her. His hands on her body, the tight hot roll of his shaft against her leg. She knew he was touching it now, stroking it.

The vision was so strong it made her gasp. Damien’s lean, tight body glistening with water; his swollen dick aching for release, slick with soap as he moved his hand rhythmically up and down..

There was an answering ache in her core and heat flooded through her. She knew how he felt between her legs, filling her, stroking inside her.

Her hand slid into her pants, touching her folds, already wet at the memory. She could hear his breathing coming heavier, through the thin wall, faint thuds as he pulled faster on himself, pleasure building, driving himself near to coming.