On a shaky exhale he slowly pulled out, and then thrust back into me with so much force the headboard knocked against the wall. I slid my hands down his backside, gripping the hard muscle beneath my fingertips as I tried to pull him even deeper inside me.
“Is this okay?” The cords in his neck stood out in sharp relief as he fought to hold on.
“Yes.”
He groaned, feral, his lips so close to the overly sensitive skin of my neck I felt it more than heard it. Whatever thin filament of restraint he’d been clinging to seemed to snap with another sharp thrust of his hips. And then another. And another.
“Mine,” he growled, the speed of his thrusts increasing, his voice taking on a deep rumbling timbre I’d never heard from him before. I answered with an incoherent moan, writhing beneath him, pinned to the mattress by his strong hands and the relentless pace of his hips.
He’d been a patient and giving lover earlier. Now, he was using me, my body—my blood—for his own pleasure. The realization that he wasn’t going to let me out of this bed until he’d thoroughly had his way with me thrilled me. A desperate cry tore from his throat, nearly sending me spiraling straight into another orgasm.
“Please,” I begged breathlessly, not even knowing what I was begging for. I canted my hips upward, matching his thrusts, mindless in my desperate, urgent need. My lungs couldn’t pull in enough air. My body couldn’t get enough friction. There was nothing in the world but his breath in my ear, the pounding, relentless thrusts of his body into mine, and the shimmering orgasm he was about to give me that still remained frustratingly out of reach.
“Frederick—”
“I . . . want . . . to . . . feel . . . you . . . ,” he gritted out. I was nothing but mindless sensation. “Cassie, come for me.”
When I came, Frederick quickly drew another finger between his lips, biting down and then sucking on it desperately. I was still in the throes of pleasure when his hips slammed into me one final time, my blood on his tongue, my name falling feverishly from his lips. His whole body went rigid above me, his back arching, his hands fisting the sheets on either side of my head so tightly his knuckles were white.
We were silent for a long moment after that as we lay side by side on his mattress. My head lolled on his chest, the gentle designs he was drawing on my arm with his fingertips making me drowsy. The only sounds in the room, aside from the steady rhythm of our breathing, drifted up to us from the street below. Cars honked, and people carried on, just like it was any other Friday night—even as my life had suddenly and irrevocably changed.
SEVENTEEN
Rash of Chicagoland Blood Bank BreakIns Confounds Local Hospitals [from page 5 of the November 14 Chicago Tribune]
John Weng, AP—Chicagoland hospital administrators are scratching their heads over a wave of recent blood bank breakins among donation centers in Chicago’s Near North Side.
“We expect a certain number of donations to go missing each week,” said Jenny McNiven, volunteer coordinator at Michigan Avenue Children’s Hospital. “Our blood drives are mostly volunteer-run, and mistakes happen. But what we have seen in the past forty-eight hours cannot be explained by simple human error.”
According to McNiven, three different centers had breakins over the weekend. In each case, volunteers showed up to their morning shifts to find refrigerators’ doors hanging off their hinges and most of their contents removed. A pair of elbow-length white satin gloves left behind at one of the centers is being analyzed by the Chicago Police Department’s forensics team for clues.
“I don’t know why anyone would do something like this,” McNiven said. “As pranks go, this might be one of the worst. Blood saves lives.”
Frederick—and his bare chest—were waiting for me in the living room when I stumbled out of his bedroom at dawn the next morning. He was on the sofa, leafing through a newspaper with a slight frown on his face.
“Good morning.”
At the sound of my voice he looked up, setting his newspaper to the side.
“Good morning.” He smiled at me, a bit shy—which was a bit ridiculous, given how we’d spent a good portion of the previous evening. I was a little surprised to see how coiffed and put-together he looked, given that I could tell without even checking a mirror that I was sporting the most ridiculous bedhead in the history of the world.
Then I remembered that he’d left the bedroom with an apology shortly after midnight and hadn’t slept beside me at all.
“What time is it?” I asked. “I need to be at work at eight-thirty.”