WastelandRogue (3 page)

He first straddled her to pull the door shut. Once in that
position, he decided to try to give her blood again.

“No more arguments, Rye. I haven’t the water to keep you
cooled down, so you’ll have to suck up your pride and drink my blood.”

She lay unresponsive. Had her body gone into hibernation?
While normally that could be a good thing, she had the blood poison flowing
through her veins. She’d never heal if hibernation turned into a coma.

Sevrin pulled the petrified-wood-handled knife from the
sheath in the side of his boot.

“You better appreciate this,” he said, clenching his jaw as
he sliced into the soft flesh of his inner forearm. He held back the groan rumbling
to escape his throat. Grasping Rye by the back of her head, he pressed his
bloody arm to her mouth, forcing her lips to part. “Drink, dammit.”

Unable to get her started, he put his arm to his mouth. He
had never tasted blood beyond the occasional drops that oozed from a split lip
obtained in a fight. The salty warm liquid had a metallic flavor, unusual yet
palatably sweet.

He jerked back Rye’s head and angled her into position. He
stuck his fingers between her lips and pried open her mouth. Helpless and
vulnerable, she succumbed to his guidance. Then with a grip on her jaw, he
moved his mouth against hers and spit his blood to the back of her throat. He
withdrew and waited a few moments.

Her lack of response prompted him to take another hard suck
at his wrist. Filling his mouth with more blood, he repeated the insertion of
it into Rye’s mouth.

She gagged on the second, larger dose and then gulped. Her
tongue shot out and whipped expeditiously over his lips. He leaned in, allowing
her frenzied licks to swirl into his mouth. With a wildly smothering kiss, she
sucked on his tongue. Drawn to the aggression that matched the uninhibited
passion of sex, he held her face. Hit with a ravenous need of his own, he
hungrily kissed her.

Rye’s soft lips yielded to the force of his. Her mouth
opened to the press of his tongue. For several moments, he licked the interior,
savoring the rise in energy between them.

When her teeth scraped his bottom lip a little too hard, the
pain stung him out of his irrational indulgence and he jerked back.

Rye let out a ferocious growl of annoyance at the
interruption. She grabbed his arm and pressed her wet lips over the cut. She
clawed at his arms and shoulders with greed. Her hold tightened, her fingers
dug into his biceps and her moans grew louder as she wildly slurped at the
slice in his skin.

An onslaught of unexplainable sensations and emotions
gripped him. Sexual desire became predominant. His pulse hammered away at his
insides. A sensual heat spread through his body, strangely timed, yet
familiarly exciting.

The tightening in his groin continued. His cock throbbed
hard, fighting against the constraint of his pants. He thought of it loose,
thrusting into the constrictions of Rye’s cunt. The beat of his heart quickened
at the prospect of discovering her vagina a tight, welcoming passage.

Then suddenly, his head went light, his mind dizzy. He
forced his thoughts on the pain in his arm, the unnatural draining of his
blood. It pried his attention away from the edge of his sexual fantasy and back
to Rye feasting on him.

“How much do you need?” he asked, attempting to force her
free of his arm. “Rye, how much?”

He thought of what she said, how she told him she’d need too
much. Would she deplete him of blood if he let her?

To see if her cuts were healing, he yanked the coat out from
between them and chucked it to the back cargo area of the steam-trekker.

Naked beneath him, Rye writhed with gluttonous delight. For
a moment, he thought of her pride, her concerns of someone watching her in this
state. He better understood her wish to hide this primal side of her
lamian
nature. But did she not realize humans were also mindless victims to the
euphoria of a different pleasure?

He examined her visible wounds. Their healing was the best
indicator for setting a limit to her intake of his blood.

“That’s enough,” he said when he saw the worst gashes in her
belly had already healed shut.

He tried pulling his arm from her mouth again but she had
sunk her teeth into his flesh, using them as anchors.

“You have to stop, Rye.” He tugged and twisted, struggling
to get her unhooked.

She fought his attempt and remained latched on.

In a rise of panic, Sevrin grabbed a fistful of her dirty
hair and wrenched her head back, ripping her teeth out of his arm.

She hissed with infuriation.

He had never seen a
lamian
look as feral and
dangerous as she did or as intensely desirable. The crimson glow of her
hypnotic eyes drew him to her. His body reacted just as ardently as it had
before, tingling on the inside and hardening on the outside.

Aroused by her heavy breathing, he released his hold on her
hair and dropped his hand to her shoulder. His mind raced with needs he no
longer wanted to control. With the back of his hand, he stroked her tense jaw,
her taut neck and finally her heaving breast. Between thumb and forefinger, he
fondled her rigid nipple, rolling the metal ring piercing up and down.

A sensation of detachment left him in a dreamlike state. He
knew what he was doing was wildly inappropriate, but he couldn’t stop. Leaning
in farther, he aimed to taste her bloodstained lips, feel the softness of them
pressed to his. He touched them lightly with a kiss.

When a sigh of contentment slipped free from him as if he
had found the true meaning of heaven, Rye suddenly thrust him away with
unbelievable strength, ten times his own. The force sent him sailing over the
center console of the steam-trekker. He hit his head on the roof before landing
behind the steering wheel and colliding with the driver’s side door.

“I told you I didn’t want your blood,” Rye protested in a
harsh, adamant tone, which conveyed her remarkable recovery.

Folding her arms up, she partially covered her breasts.
However, the move didn’t conceal all of her nakedness. She sat somewhat
sideways, her back against the steam-trekker’s door and her legs parted.

Sevrin stared at the entry of her cunt. A glistening
translucent wetness to the parted lips suggested she had experienced a stronger
arousal then he had while she drank his blood.

“I’m certainly not in any condition to be fucked,” she said,
closing her legs and twisting forward in the seat.

Aware of his feelings, his actions and his stare, Sevrin
shifted around on his seat as well and faced the windshield.

He shut his eyes and ran his hand over the top of his head,
confused by what had happened and thoroughly frustrated by the lack of relief
for his erection.

“I just knew you’d not be grateful,” he said, wrongly
irritable but unable to command his wayward emotions.

“Grateful!” Her voice rose sharply.

“I didn’t mean it the way you think,” he grumbled, realizing
she thought he meant wanting sex for helping her instead of him giving her
blood.

Although sex hadn’t been far from his mind, nor was it going
to be with Rye sitting naked within arm’s length. He twisted around and looked
in the cargo area behind his seat. There he reached for his coat to cover her
up again. His one and only spare shirt in the vehicle caught his attention and
he grabbed that instead.

“Put it on,” he demanded, flinging it toward her.

It missed her lap and fell to the floorboards. She leaned to
retrieve it.

He sucked in a breath watching her graceful movements. His
anger grew. He had lost control of himself. Every fiber in his body ached for
release. Struggling to ignore Rye didn’t help and he let his exasperation
deflect to her again. “Save a female’s life and do I get a thank-you? Not a
chance. Do I leave her in the ditch like any other Wastelander? Of course not.”

He flipped the fuel switch and then pushed the button to
start the steam-trekker. Opening the pipe from the fuel tank to the heater
coil, he watched the gauge for the rise of pressure.

“Thank you.” Rye’s voice once again had the whispery
undertone of a gentleness he’d heard when she had first spoken to him.

“No thanks is necessary, it’s just a shirt,” he grunted,
annoyed by the unexpected drain on his emotions.

He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. She was scared,
and he was being an insensitive ass. He actually had thought to take advantage.
But why? While under the dirt and blood she was the most beautiful female he had
ever encountered, it wasn’t like him to have the kind of all-consuming sexual
urges that he didn’t even want to try to resist.

“While this shirt is…um, nice,” she smoothed her hands over
the thin garment she clutched to her chest, “I was actually thanking you for
the blood.”

“Oh?”

“I
am
grateful and if I hurt—”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“But you cut yourself to feed me, and then…You hit the door
awfully hard. You have every right to be angry with me.”

“No, I don’t.” Feeling less irritated, he looked over at
her. “I haven’t eaten today, so don’t mind me. I get cranky when I’m hungry.”

Her brow furrowed, showing she didn’t understand.

“Was it enough blood?” he asked.

“Apparently.” She sounded surprised, unsure.

She’d be the one to know. He had never encountered allium.
Strictly a poison to
lamians
, the flower wasn’t in abundance in the
desert-dry wastelands, although he had heard that villainous men and marauders
had access to the stuff.

“The allium must have lost its potency,” Rye continued. “You
took a big risk in doing what you did by giving me your blood. I might not have
been able to stop drinking.”

As he saw it she didn’t really stop on her own, rather he’d
forced her.

She stared at him again with her mesmerizing blood-filled
eyes. Penetrating his senses and reconnecting with his lustful urges, her gaze
seized his thoughts. His cock hard and ready, he imagined ramming the length of
it deep into her moist, tight cunt. How he craved the relief of discharging his
semen to ease the pressure in his balls.

Sevrin recalled the firmness to Rye’s toned body from when
he had carried her. He yearned to touch the softer, fleshy areas—her breasts
and buttocks.

Then he shook his head, stopping the wayward thought. What
was wrong with him? Why did Rye have such an influence over his desires? He
just met her.

When Rye began working her arms into the sleeves of the
shirt, she did so with blind awkwardness. Did the red in her eyes make seeing
hard or impossible?

“Are you all right?” he asked, concerned. “Your eyes are—”

“It’s temporary,” she said, leaning her head back.

She put the back of her hand against her mouth and bit into
her knuckle. He saw a trickle of blood spiral around her wrist and drop,
spotting red on the shirt.

“What are you doing?” He reached to stop her.

With a swift and succinct motion, she grabbed his wrist,
preventing him from stopping her. She sucked at the laceration on her finger.
Her intense stare remained steadfast on him. He gazed into her bedeviling eyes,
the sexual draw lessened but the danger remained evident.

Sevrin sifted through the bits and pieces of knowledge he
had about Rye’s mental strength as a
lamian
. He came up empty on an
explanation for the power she seemed to have over him. Was it true what they
said of
lamian
females? Had she vamped him—used mind control to make it
easier to feed off a human? Was it possible? He should have known more about
the species.

As if drawing back a canvas hiding a treasure from sight,
the red in her eyes receded. Once again, her irises glistened as blue as a
lovely summer sky.

“Is that better?” she asked coldly.

Was it embarrassment that had chilled her tone?

“Much,” he answered, not questioning why or how the coloring
changed.

He recalled her previously voiced abhorrence to bloodletting
in front of him. Obviously, she guarded her
lamian
abilities very
closely and for that, he could not fault her. It was always better to be wary
of what others knew about you. Every day he faced one danger or another, never
with the foolish abandon he had with Rye—letting her drink his blood. What was
he thinking?

Rye’s unwavering gaze no longer had a hold on his free will.
However, his heart continued pounding faster than normal. He turned his
attention back to the grime-covered dashboard and spun the black knob to divert
the built-up steam to the engine. The steam-trekker lurched as he pushed down
on the brake pedal.

“Is there somewhere I can take you?” he asked, feeling it
would be better to be rid of the
lamian
as soon as possible.

“Do you know of any accessible mining shafts or sub-stations
close by? I need more rest to finish healing. It’s best accomplished in the
dark.”

Calm, composed, she spoke of getting some sleep as she might
talk about taking a pebble out of her shoe. Was death that meaningless to her?

“I know of one.” He took his foot off the brake and let the
vehicle ramble forward.

Several quiet moments passed with only the hiss and sputter
of steam as the steam-trekker rumbled along the rough terrain. In the mirror
overhead, he stared at the miasma of dust in their wake.

He glanced several times at Rye propped against the door,
her eyes closed. Was she asleep or just resting? The steady rise and fall of
her chest satisfied his concerns about death claiming her. His every intention
was to take her anywhere but home and yet there he was, aimed for one of the
special places in the wasteland that he called his.

“Do you have something you want to ask me?” She made her
awareness of his staring known.