Beneath her, she felt Graeme tightening, a hoarse growl surrounding her as the blinding heat of his release jetting inside her sent her racing into another explosion of blinding pleasure. It was never ending, a rapturous pleasure she could never anticipate, found impossible to believe could be so incredible in the cold light of day.
A pleasure that locked them together as the barb emerged and spilled a secondary release as it pushed her past yet another rocking orgasm. Her sheath tightened on him, locking around the engorged shaft, rippling over it, ensuring nothing, no one could tear him from her.
For this moment he was here with her and he belonged to her alone. Not the madness, science or Jonas could tear her from him as long as she held him so deep inside her that she didn’t know where he ended and she began.
Collapsing, Cat found herself sheltered against his chest, held by his powerful arms against the heat of his body and protected, for the moment, by the sheer strength he exuded.
? ? ?
Cat hadn’t expected to dream.
She’d learned years before how to block from her mind the horrors she’d experienced as a child, so nightmares had been rare. Not that she hadn’t experienced many of them in the first few years after coming into the Martinez household. But never like this.
She’d never been taken back to the research center she’d been raised in, where she’d experienced such pain she’d begged Gideon to let her die. She’d pleaded with him to just let her go.
“He would have never survived if you had died, Cat.”
She jerked around, her eyes widening at the image of the fragile woman-child whose life she’d been given. Claire Martinez could have been her twin, even before the minor plastic surgery that had ensured she was never suspected to be anyone else.
She’d talked to Claire many times in the past years since her spirit had been bound to Claire’s through that ancient ritual the night of the girl’s wreck. But never like this. Never in a dream, and definitely never in this place.
“What are we doing here, Claire?” she asked, staring around the enclosing cage warily.
That was all it was, really. A cage. One wall was glaring white, the other three were steel bars reinforced with an electric charge. The only privacy had been a tiny toilet room. There hadn’t even been a shower. Just a toilet and a tiny sink to wash their hands and brush their teeth. Showers were under strict supervision.
“You never left here, Cat,” Claire sighed, staring around the small area as she sat on the cot across from her. “You’ve always been trapped here.”
Cat stared back at her, forcing her heartbeat to remain calm and steady.
“So the past years have been a delusion of some sort?” She didn’t think so. No hallucination could be that messed up.
Tucking a strand of long, caramel-colored hair behind her ear, Claire looked around sadly.
“Where you are physically hasn’t made much of a difference,” she finally answered with somber reflection. “What’s important is that no matter where you went, no matter the enemies you faced, you were still locked in this cell, alone. You never left it after you realized Gideon had voluntarily left you here.”
She wasn’t going to argue with a spirit, she rather doubted there was much point to it.
Claire smiled a bit wearily. “You’ll deny it to your last breath, though, won’t you, Cat?”
“I’d have to know what I’m denying first,” Cat informed her, shrugging. “Why don’t you take us out of here to somewhere nice. I don’t like talking here.”
It was a dream, she knew it was.
“It’s no dream,” Claire snapped, surprising her. She couldn’t remember a time when Claire had ever snapped at her. She’d always been far too timid.
“Fine, it’s no dream.” She watched the girl with narrowed eyes now. “Does that mean when I wake up I won’t be at the Reever house sleeping with Graeme?”
She almost smirked back at Claire, but being cruel to the girl just didn’t seem right.
“Don’t play games, Cat, both our lives are riding on this,” Claire demanded firmly. Not angrily or fiercely, simply with a firmness Cat had never sensed in her.
“Our lives are riding on what, Claire?” Cat demanded. “On me admitting that we’re in the research center? Fine, here we are.” She spread her arms out to indicate the cell they sat within. “According to you I never left it. What now?”
Claire rose slowly to her feet. Her image was clad in the jeans and the loose tank top she’d died in. They were dusty, torn; her feet were bare. She looked like the waif Cat knew those who had loved her had seen her as. Frail. Far too gentle for the life she’d been born into.
“You can’t see that a part of you is still locked in this cage, all alone, can you?” Claire whispered.
“Judd was here.” He hadn’t left. She’d always wondered why he hadn’t left, though. He was strong enough, smart enough that he had to have known when Graeme escaped that night. Yet, he’d stayed.