Chapter 280: Hold Me Until Dawn.
"You’re not—" It got away from her and she finished it through her own fingers. "You’re not helping."
I put my hands on her and stopped being able to think in full sentences myself.
Which was the point. Which was the whole point. Two days of a countdown in my head and a name I couldn’t run down and a city coming apart outside, and for the first time since I crossed the walls there was nothing in my skull but the woman above me moving fast and the sound she was trying not to make.
My palms found the soft give of her hips, thumbs pressing into the hollows just above the bone, steadying her without slowing her. The mattress answered every shift of her weight with a low, continuous complaint.
Heat built between us—skin to skin, the slick friction of her moving, the tight, wet pull of her around me each time she came down. Her pussy clenched and dragged along the full length of my cock, hot and soaked, the wet sounds of her body taking me filling the small dark space between us.
"Bram—"
"Yeah."
"I can’t—"
"You don’t have to."
"No, I can’t—" Her hands slid off my chest and found her own sides, fingers splaying as her hips kept moving. Her breasts bounced with every rise and fall, the dark tips tight, a faint sheen of sweat catching the grey light along the undersides.
The rhythm had gone past deliberate into something rawer, less controlled. She was riding me hard now—lifting high enough that the swollen head of my cock nearly slipped free, then slamming back down to bury me to the root, her inner walls gripping and fluttering around every thick inch.
"Then don’t."
"Okay. Okay. Ok—"
She didn’t finish it. The last syllable broke open into a low, continuous sound she tried and failed to swallow. Her head tipped back. The line of her throat opened to the dim light.
Her thighs trembled where they framed my hips, the muscles jumping under the skin. I watched her face the whole time—eyes squeezed shut, mouth open under her own fingers, the soft flush climbing her throat and cheeks as she fucked herself down onto me again and again.
[Extraction viable.]
I didn’t answer it.
[Source responding. Threshold approaching.]
I didn’t answer that either.
There was nothing in me capable of answering. No room for a voice that wasn’t hers, no space for a countdown, no thought that arrived in a full sentence.
The only thing left was the heat of her, the weight of her, the sound of her breathing breaking open above me. The tight, wet pressure of her pussy working my cock in relentless strokes. The way she clenched harder every time she took me deep.
"Bram—"
"I know."
"I’m—"
"I know."
"Don’t—" Her hands went white on the headboard, knuckles locked, the tendons standing out sharp under the skin. "Don’t let go of me."
"I’m not."
"Bram."
"I’m here."
"BRAM—"
She broke.
Everything in her let go at once. Her whole body came apart above me—thighs locking hard around my hips, spine arching, a long unbroken tremor that started low in her belly and climbed until it shook her shoulders.
Her pussy clamped down around my cock in rapid, powerful pulses, milking me, flooding me with fresh wet heat. The sound that left her throat had no words left in it—raw, open, helpless.
I went with her because there was nowhere else left to go. The release hit hard and complete, the kind that empties everything at once and leaves nothing behind but the aftershock.
Her weight came down onto my chest, her breasts against my skin, the rapid hammer of her heart matching the one still racing under my ribs. My cock still inside her, held tight by the slow, involuntary pulses that kept moving through her.
[Extraction complete.]
[Source 2 of 4 acquired.]
I read it lying there with her heart going against my ribs.
Riya had died holding that. Had spent her last conscious minute pushing it out of herself and into her daughter so that I could find it.
And I had just taken it out of her in a borrowed bed while she asked me not to let go.
She shivered, shifting a little, still feeling me within. The small movement sparked off what was already building. My cock swelled even harder inside her, pulsing violently against the tight, slick heat that still held me. She shifted again—barely anything, just the restless aftershock of her own release—and it was enough.
Thick, heavy ropes of cum erupted from me, flooding her in powerful, endless spurts. The release tore through me in long, uncontrolled waves, each one deeper than the last.
I emptied myself completely, filling her with hot, sticky seed until there was nowhere left for it to go. I felt it leaking out around the base of my cock, coating her swollen lips and dripping slowly down onto the sheets in warm, continuous trails.
I put my hand flat on her back.
She was still shaking, small tremors running through her every few seconds, and I moved my palm slowly up and down her spine—warm skin, the fine ridges of bone, the gradual softening of the muscles underneath—until they began to fade.
The room smelled of sweat and sex and the faint chemical edge of the charge that had burned the infected earlier. Outside, the capital kept ending. In here the only sound left was the two of us breathing.
I kept my hand moving, slow strokes along her spine. Her breathing evened out by degrees, the hard race of her heart against my chest settling into something steadier. The wet heat of her still held me inside, soft aftershocks fluttering around my cock every so often. Cum continued to leak from where we were joined, warm and sticky between us.
The lights went out.
One moment the grey wash of the emergency strips still painted the edges of the room. The next, pure black. The kind of dark that erased walls, bed, everything except the weight of her on top of me and the heat of her skin.
Venna gasped. Then the lights flickered back on. Dim. Unsteady. The emergency strips humming back to life with a low electric buzz.
"Bram." Barely a sound. Her mouth was close to my ear, the word more breath than voice.
"Yeah."
"Hold me until dawn."