His Absolute Betrayal - Elise's Love Story: The Billionaire's Continuum (#2) (A Contemporary Romance Novel) (24 page)

I gave up screaming.  My body writhed in climax.  He wasn't even thrusting into me.  I didn't even know what this was.  Sex involved thrusts and pushes, right?  Except this wasn't that.  Just one constantly, continuous thrust.  Heavy rocking, harder and harder, until... what?

I couldn't breathe and I grabbed at Asher's hand with one of mine to try and pull it away.  Mad with passion, my other hand kept rubbing hard against my clit.  I didn't know which I wanted more: breath or an orgasm?  Both seemed equally as important at the moment.

His grasp on my mouth relaxed until I could breathe out of my nose.  I did, fast and frantic.  Asher's cock swelled, digging deeper and deeper.  Just a little at a time, but it felt like more with each passing fraction of a second.  In, hard, rubbing, grinding, an eternal thrust.

He gave in to me just as I'd given in to him.  My core clenched and wrapped around his cock while he trembled and shook.  His seed filled me deeper than I thought he'd ever filled me before.  His orgasm claimed him and he came.

"That was..." Asher started to say, but he stopped, at a loss for words.  "Fuck," he said.  "Jessika, that was amazing."

I whimpered beneath his hand, licking at his palm.  Inside me, his cock twitched, sending small spurts of cum to join with the aftermath of my quivering orgasm.  I tried to whisper to him, but my words came out as muffled nothingness.

He moved his hand away and kissed my neck.  I shivered, a tingling sensation coursing through me.

"You aren't mad?" I asked, voice soft.

"Mad?" he asked, confused.

"I uh..."  Well, what had I done?  "You were sleeping and..."

Asher shrugged, squeezing me in his arms.  "I wouldn't mind waking up like that every day," he said.  His lips formed a grin as he kissed the side of my neck.  "Besides, we—"

A commotion in the hallway cut him off.  It sounded like some kind of riot.  In the hospital?  It didn't make much sense, to be honest.  Footsteps pounded outside the door; someone running down the hall.  Then they stopped outside our door, swung it wide open, and came in.

Thankfully Asher and I were beneath the blankets, but he still shouldn't have been in the hospital bed with me.

A wide-eyed, frightened looking nurse rushed in and slammed the door behind her.  Her fingers trembled and searched for the lock above the doorhandle.  Her eyes obviously saw it, but she couldn't seem to make her hand twist the lock to lock the door.  It took her a moment and she didn't even seem to notice me and Asher in the room with her.

Asher took that moment to slip himself out of me.  I sort of wished this could have been done in any other way.  Face scrunched up, I tried ignoring everything uncomfortable about this situation and moved my panties back into place.  Quickly, Asher climbed out of his side of the bed and fixed his underwear, then snuck over to grab his pants.  He had them halfway on and up by the time the nurse locked the door and turned around to greet us.

She stared at him in disbelief as he fixed his underwear, pulled up his pants, and buttoned and zipped them.

"Hello," I said to the nurse, offering a light wave.  I decided maybe it was best if I stayed in bed for the time being.

Asher nodded to her, too.  "Good morning.  Is there a problem?" he asked.

The nurse opened her mouth to speak, but then she stopped.  I hadn't been able to see it when she was trying to lock the door, but she had something gripped in her other hand, held tight against her stomach.  She tried to speak again, mouth opening and then closing, but then she gave up.  Thrusting her arm out, she handed Asher the rolled up newspaper.

Asher took it, unrolled it, started reading it, stared at the front page, and...

He almost fell.  Stumbling backwards, he hit the edge of the hospital bed and sat down.  He kept staring at the paper, confused.  I couldn't see what was so wrong with it, what had the nurse and Asher unable to speak.  I tried to look, tried to grab it from him, and he pulled it away from me sharply, not letting me have it.

"Asher, can you tell me what's going on?" I asked, my tone more than a demand.

This was a hospital!  We were being interrupted by some random nurse, of all people.  Granted, we probably shouldn't have been sleeping together in the hospital bed, and Asher shouldn't have stayed overnight like that, and the sex was definitely not a hospital-approved activity, but still.  We should at least have some sort of privacy.  What was that riotous clamor coming from the halls before, too?  It still sounded really loud.

I didn't know.  I could hear voices, people shouting, something happening.

Asher smiled wanly at the nurse.  "Maybe you should sit down and explain this," he said to her.

"Explain what?" I asked; he ignored me.

I sat up, angry.  I didn't want to be angry, but how else was I supposed to feel right now?  Refusing to accept this, unable to understand, I grabbed Asher's arm and tore the paper from his hands before he could stop me.  Oh, he tried, too.  He tried to take it back, he tried to stop me from reading it, but I didn't even have to read much of anything.

Right there, right on the front page, was a picture.  This wasn't a regular newspaper, but one of those sensationalized ones for gossip and rumors.

It didn't matter what it was, though.  In huge print, with a large picture right below it, were the words:

JESSIKA LANDSEER SEX TAPE REVEALED

~*~

Y
ou can find the rest of this story here:
His Absolute Insistence

P
lease enjoy this sample from the dystopian paranormal romance novel, "Breathless," by Cerys du Lys

~*~

I
am dead.

This is how I feel, this is what I know, but a small part of me refuses to believe it.  Wasn't I alive just yesterday?  I have a doctor's appointment to go to next week and I need to leave a reminder for my office manager.  He's forgetful and even though I told him about this a month ago, he won't remember.

But, no, I don't have a doctor's appointment next week.  That's already past.  It's been four months, two weeks, and three days since the day I should've gone to the doctor.  It was only a routine check up, anyways.  Not absolutely necessary, but it would have provided peace of mind.

My mind is anything but peaceful now.  I don't know if I still have one.

Five months ago I was sitting on my couch eating take-out Chinese and watching the news.  I never knew why I enjoyed watching the news, but it seemed like the adult thing to do, you know?  Granted, wearing my pajama pants with cartoon versions of cats and a grey athletic t-shirt didn't help my illusion of adulthood.  Nor did eating directly out of the lo mein carton with a pair of wooden chopsticks, but still.  Sometimes it's good to feel more adult, even if the rest of your life isn't exactly there.

There was a breakthrough announcement on the news that night, too.  I remember them hyping it up at the beginning, saying it could change the face of humanity as we knew it.  Dutifully, I watched through dull segments involving a local bake sale and a church's outrage at a movie theatre refusing to remove a supposedly risque poster from their front lobby.  Maybe I should've switched the channel, though.

What did this breakthrough announcement have to do with me?  Was it another cell phone?  I loved my cell phone as much as the next person, but the way they came out with new ones every year (and they always have new features that seem suspiciously like the old ones), I would never understand why people got so excited about those things.  I wanted mine to work, I wanted to call people on it, and I'd like to be able to occasionally text someone and maybe check my email.

The announcement wasn't about a phone, though.  I stabbed a potsticker with my chopsticks and nibbled on the edges while some NASA scientist explained their newest discovery.

Hibernation, hypothermia, an isolated virus that could mimic these conditions at a safe level.  Once they finished with more rounds of experimentation, they could use this knowledge for extended space travel.  The goal was to induce a type of suspended animation in astronauts so they could travel to distant planets with minimal necessities.

It sounded like a bunch of Star Trek mumbo jumbo to me.  I'm not stupid, I graduated college with a marketing degree, but this had nothing to do with me.  In a hundred years when people finally colonized Mars and someone built a restaurant chain up there, they could call me in to help figure out their branding, but none of this affected me right now.

This was what I thought then.  In four days, everything changed.

I wander through the city, confused.  I am cold beyond belief and nothing I can do will warm me up.  I try holding my hands tight against my chest and huddling on the ground, but it doesn't help.  I've tried putting on more clothes, but this doesn't work, either.  I've tried taking off my clothes, too.  I go inside and outside, but no.

My skin is a pale blue like the color of pure water.  I feel sick and I know I should go see a doctor, but there are no doctors anymore; not for me or anyone like me.  I am one of them and I am hated.  I understand this, but I don't want it.

It's hard to walk sometimes, but other times I manage it fine.  I feel clumsy, as if I've had too much to drink at the bar, but I don't think I've had alcohol for months.  I can't remember.

And then it happens.

As much as I feel it, I'm not alone.  A majority of the people surrounding me are like me, but different.  They give in to their urges or they think differently, or there's something that separates me from them.  I think it's the fact that I can't give in no matter what.  I have a doctor's appointment to go to next week, afterall.

The others around me stand up and stumble forwards after the intruders.  Men and women, regular, just like us except with peach-colored skin (or tanned, or darker, it makes no difference) rush through the city streets.  They bash through a storefront window with a baseball bat.  The crashing sound of glass makes me shudder.

The others chase them with a speed none of us knew we had.  I watch them run, legs creaking, frantic to catch the people breaking into the convenience store.  The people in the store yell at each other, screaming.

"Hurry!  Grab what you can and go!  We don't have much time!"

I don't know what they're grabbing, but I know why they don't have much time.

Most of them make it out fine.  A younger man drags behind, though.  When he went to jump out of the front window, he cut his leg on the broken glass and fell onto the concrete sidewalk.  One of his group stopped for a second and looked at him, trying to decide what to do, but when the rest of his people run off to safety, he abandons the young man.

The young man is stuck, limping.  He won't escape.

I can't watch and I turn away.  It hurts; it's painful.  I know why they do it and I'm tempted to do it myself.  The feeling of warmth and closeness like a lover's embrace.  Heat and intimacy.

Except nothing they do is loving.  They are ruthless and vicious and in their obsession for warmth they'll destroy the man.

I hear him scream and I want to cry but I run away as fast as I can.  My feet slip on the sidewalk and I stumble, hitting against the side of a building, but I keep going.

Why is it like this?  Why?

After I ate a can of warmed beans, I felt better.  It wasn't hard to get the can of beans, but it was difficult to heat them.  Fortunately, I knew of a place on the outskirts of the city in a wooded area where there was a house with a gas generator and a microwave.  I knew it wouldn't last forever, but it suited me for now.  If I used the generator sparingly and made trips to get gas in the middle of the night, I could sustain myself for awhile.

That's how I imagined it going, but it didn't always work like that.  The problem was that, while the warm beans slipped down my throat easily and warmed me up, filling my stomach with a soothing heat, it never lasted.  While eating them, I felt wonderful, though.  I felt human and alive, like myself once more.  If I flipped on the TV—if there was anything actually on TV—and sat on the couch, propping my feet up on the coffee table, maybe I could forget about all of this for awhile.

The beans kept me feeling warmer for half an hour or so, but then the chill crept in.  I didn't have enough energy or beans to keep eating forever, though.  It also didn't help that I felt like I'd eaten a Thanksgiving dinner after only half a can of the things.  I could only eat once a day at most without feeling wretched and sick.  Most of the time I ended up going two days in between meals.

For now, for a little while, I felt nicer, though.  I walked through the hallway to the master bedroom and grabbed a bathrobe off the back of the door, slipping my arms into the sleeves and tying it into place.  Finding a book by Nicholas Sparks on the bedside table, I snatched it up and fell into bed.  I slid beneath the thick blankets, hoping to keep warm for a little while longer, then opened to the dogeared page in the book and began reading.

I read for a few minutes before the chill started.  My feet grew colder and I started breathing slower, more shallowly.  I felt tired, so tired, but I wanted to read a little more.  I needed to know what happened to Ally and Noah.  Did everything turn out fine?  It was darker outside than I remembered, but I could still read.  I needed to, desperately desired it, and yet...

I folded the corner of the page I was on and carefully placed the book on the bedside table once more.  Curling my knees up to my chest and closing my eyes, I lay in bed.

No one knew what exactly happened, and least of all Evan.  He wished he knew, because maybe that would put some sense into all of this, but even if he did there wasn't anything he could do about it.

News stations reported an accident and a breakout.  Contamination or something, but no one needed to act concerned.  It was best if people remained in their homes and closed the doors.

Of course, no one did that.  Why should they?  Well, Evan did it, because apparently he was an idiot.  That's what his roommate told him at the time before he rushed out of their apartment and into the streets.