“Come up here.” Strong hands urged her upward to straddle his face.
His tongue slid against her, effortlessly finding her clit. His hands kneaded her ass cheeks—plumper than her own. Softer. Her real body was tight, lean, hard with muscles she’s built at the gym where they’d met. The gym where he’d never paid a second of attention to her before today, when her rising need had made her focus on him.
Persephone shook away these thoughts. She needed to come, to lose herself in exploding pleasure. To be swept away by fantasy, not reality. She looked down at his face, his eyes closed as his mouth worked on her.
“There,” she murmured, rocking against him. Letting the sensations swirl inside her from deep in her belly. “Oh, yeah. Right there. Right there.”
She’d intended to ride his cock one more time before using his shower, helping herself to whatever was in his fridge, perhaps lifting the contents of his wallet before leaving him sleeping in the tangled, sweaty sheets left behind after their marathon fuck session. However, she wasn’t going to turn down the delight of his lips and tongue against her. It was better, in fact. Taking this pleasure from him without having to focus on his.
He muttered something against her. The vibrations sent another surge of pleasure, up, up, twisting tight and coiling. She cried out as her thighs trembled. Her cunt clenched, throbbing. His tongue swirled on her clit, sending her over the edge at last.
She rode it, shaking and crying out. The climax eased. She rolled off him and limply fell back on the bed.
Silence.
A low chuckle turned her toward him. Persephone pushed herself up on her elbow to look into his face. “Thanks.”
Marcus or Marco or whoever he was smiled. Yawned. “You’re welcome.”
She glanced down at his cock, no longer hard. “You sure you don’t want...?”
“Oh, I want.” He rolled to face her and put a hand on her hip. “Just can’t right now. Surprised I was able to so many times already, girl. Something about you...”
Well, yeah. There was that. She smiled and touched his face. For the briefest moment she thought about letting the pretense drop. Instead, she let her fingers press the spot between his eyes. Gently. Softly.
His eyes closed. He began to snore. She studied him a moment longer, thinking how much nicer he’d been than she expected. Of course, she wasn’t going to be around in the morning to find out if she was wrong about him. And the next time she saw him, he wasn’t going to recognize her, so it wasn’t as though she’d even have to worry about either an awkward conversation or getting the blow-off.
“Good night,” Persephone whispered into his ear.
He didn’t stir. She got off the bed. Long slim legs and big boobs wavered and shifted. When she looked in the full-length mirror, her real, true image stared back at her. Five foot two. A-cup breasts. Thick, muscled thighs and biceps. Her body was strong and fit, and never let her down, no matter if she was running from the cops, breaking and entering or letting some rando with a hard cock have his way with her. This body, she thought as she cupped her breasts and flicked her nipples erect, was no wonderland. It was the real deal.
Without a glance behind her, she got dressed. She did raid the fridge, snagging a piece of cold pizza and a soda, along with a couple bananas from the counter for later. She did not, however, take his wallet. Didn’t even sneak a couple twenties from it. He’d been a good lay but more than that, seemed like a pretty decent guy...
Clearly, she was slipping.
Pushing that thought from her head, Persephone kept her head down once she reached the street and headed for home. Light was tingeing the sky when she got back to her place. Maybe she’d be able to sleep now.
The sound of feet scuffling behind her as she stopped to pull her mail from the box didn’t make her turn. She knew who it was without looking. She said nothing as Kane Dennis moved beside her to check his own mail.
“Morning.”
She pursed her lips. “Mmm.”
He laughed, the sound of it low and rich and rippling through her in a way she hated because of how much she liked it. She pulled out a sheaf of junk mail, the only kind she ever got. Pretended it was something important, like she was a real person who paid bills or got postcards from friends. She shot a sideways glance at him.
Six feet of lean, long legs. Broad shoulders. Taut stomach. Faded jeans, form-fitting Henley under a plaid shirt, unbuttoned but rolled up to his elbows to expose his finely muscled forearms. She was such a sucker for forearms, and his completely slayed her.
“Still having a problem with the hot water,” Kane said conversationally. “Not trying to be a pain in the ass about it, but if you could take a look?”
“Now?” Persephone tucked the mail into her bag.
“It would be great if I could grab a hot shower before bed,” he told her.
She tucked the inside of her cheek against her teeth at the thought of Kane beneath a spray of hot water, sluicing over the perfect body... She shook it off. “Sure. I can come up now.”
“Great,” Kane said with a smile that tried to get its way inside her, despite her every effort not to let it. “See you in a few?”
“Yeah, sure,” Persephone said without returning the smile. “See you in a few.”
There were twenty patients on the fourth floor of Wyrmwood, ten in each wing. Samantha had never been told she had to take care of them in any certain order, but she almost always started at the far end of A wing and worked her way down toward the end of B wing. Dispensing meds. Taking vitals. Her role as a nurse was very limited, which was a good thing, since she’d never had any kind of actual medical training. Her degrees had been fabricated the same as the rest of her history. Still, none of her required tasks were difficult, and she’d been trained to call on other staff if anything did get out of control. It made her wonder, more than once, what the Wyrmwood powers above truly intended her function, and that of the other nurses, to be.
Glorified babysitters, she thought as she loaded the tray with necessary pills and vials of liquids for each room and pocketed her stethoscope and thermometer. Or more likely, part of the experiment, whatever it was. The cameras everywhere, the security. The out-of-date uniforms and strict rules that controlled after-hours behavior. The deathly quiet working atmosphere, no cell phones allowed. No outside reading material. It all seemed designed to drive the staff to madness right along with the patients, that was for sure.
She paused outside A1 to look through the porthole. The patient inside, sixty-year-old Helena, liked to draw elaborate spirals but had been denied the use of a pen or pencil since she’d stabbed an orderly with the point. She’d been allowed soft chalk, though, and routinely covered the walls and floor of her room with intricate designs every day, only to wipe them all away and start over when she’d finished. She never gave Samantha any trouble and was amenable to halting her work long enough to take the drug cocktail she’d been prescribed. She didn’t make eye contact with Samantha. She answered when spoken to, but nothing beyond that.
“Do you need anything?” Samantha asked the standard question that was rarely answered by any of the fourth floor’s patients.
Helena shook her head, already reaching for the thick block of blue chalk. She turned from Samantha without another word. Outside, Samantha took one last peek into the porthole, but Helena was already back to her drawing.
In a normal job, there’d be patient histories. Records she’d have been able to pull to see why the patient had been put here in the first place. She supposed it didn’t matter much. They paid her well enough not to ask those sorts of questions; more important,