Rippled (7 page)

“Let me know when you’re close,” I told her as I widened my strokes. Slow, teasing strokes. The kind that would drive any woman—any man—out of their minds.
Stay in control.
I was already losing it. “Don’t come without me.”

So much for making her my equal. I might have been gentle, but my role as a Dom—her Dom—was ever-present.

“I…” She struggled to speak as I circled her clit with my thumb. “I’ll try not to.”

“You won’t,” I corrected her, quickening the pace.

She closed her eyes and grabbed at the bed sheets with both hands. I imagined her nails clawing at my back, imagined them raking across my flesh. I shuddered and released a soft moan. I liked pain as much as the next person, and pain during sex? I loved it.

I wanted to ask her—tell her—to put her hands back where they’d been, but a chill ran through me and sucked the air from my lungs. Every stroke I took, she got a little tighter…wetter. And when I tried to slow my pace—when I tried to hold back—she took over.

She thrust her hips up at me, one solid stroke right after another. I could’ve taken over. I should’ve taken over. Controlled her or maybe held her in place. I didn’t. I was too far gone. And as white started to cloud my vision, I looked right at her.

“Like that,” I panted, trying to balance myself so I didn’t fall or disrupt her rhythm.

“I…I don’t know if I can—” Her breath caught. She screwed her eyes tight, parallel lines of concentration forming on her brow.

“Look at me,” I growled, clenching my jaw. She did, and the pain and lust I found there was enough to send us both over the edge. “Come for me.”

She shuddered. Fought back her orgasm.

“Don’t hold it back,” I told her, clawing at the bed when my arms started to shake. “Let it go. I want to feel you come.”

“W-what about…you?” Again, she shuddered. And again, she held her orgasm at bay. If she was capable of holding back her orgasms, even when I told her to do otherwise, then training here to come on command was going to be easy. “Shouldn’t you…?”

“Don’t worry about me.” I was right there with her. Close. So very close. If she didn’t finish soon, I’d have to go without her. I couldn’t fucking wait.

Come for me, baby.
“Come now.”

She set her jaw. Closed her eyes. Her body tensed, and when it convulsed around me, I let go. Shuddering, I released a ragged breath. She rocked her hips back. My muscles spasmed, and I held her still.

Spent, I pulled out after what felt like hours later and got up to throw the condom in the trash. When I turned back to the bed, Krista was already under the covers, giving me the same desperate, hungry look as before.

“Are you okay?” I asked, climbing into bed beside her.

She was silent for a long moment, then said, “Yes, my Dom.”

Her last words caused mine to catch in the back of my throat. I coughed. Sucked in a breath of air, then relaxed. “Call me Master.”

Chapter Seven

Krista

It was only a day or two later when I found myself back in the clinic. They hadn’t killed me yet, though I wished they had. It wasn’t that I was in pain, really. Sure, the constant needle pricks were annoying as hell, but that wasn’t what bothered me. I was numb. I couldn’t feel a damned thing—although, I guess that was the point. You couldn’t shift if you were numb, right? Not that I’d had any experience in the matter.
Not that you know of.
Every time the ‘symptoms’ came up, they’d rush me to the clinic, dose me up and release me into the wild that was our ‘reservation’ camp. Quarantine was more like it.

Sucking in a lungful of air, I pulled against the restraints around my wrists. An attending checked the straps to make sure they wouldn’t come undone. I wasn’t sure what she expected to happen. I couldn’t shift. But according to Brian, who was very much a shifter, that was exactly why they’d brought me here.

He claimed I was here because I had somehow volunteered—that I had agreed to whatever Malcom had offered me. But that was the thing about being in an enclosure like some kind of animal. Eventually, you lost yourself and completely forgot who you were. That was probably just as well. If I couldn’t remember my life outside this place, it meant I couldn’t possibly want more than what had already been given to me. Or so they hoped.

But I did want more. I wanted out. I wanted to have a normal life.

There is such a thing, isn’t there? I don’t want to be surrounded by guards, clinics, bath houses and recreational facilities. I haven’t shifted at all. Can’t they see that? I’m not a danger to anyone
.

“Krista, lie still. We’re almost done.”

Almost done, my ass.
I bit at the inside of my cheek and fisted my hands. I must’ve been fidgeting. It wouldn’t happen again. The sooner they finished their injections and looked at my vitals, the sooner I could go back to my sad excuse for a living space.

The dim lighting above the examination table buzzed in the quiet room as one nurse after another came to poke, prod and test. This would be my fourth set of injections, and instead of making the appointments further apart, it almost felt as if I was in there every single week. I wasn’t sure why they needed me in there so often. None of the other shifters
were in the clinic half as much as I was.

‘Your genes caused a reaction.’
I rolled my eyes at that. It was one of the first things Brian had told me when I met him. I’d shifted, even if I had no recollection of it. He said they had sedated me so fast, it was no wonder I’d forgotten. Having said that, Malcom and his lackeys still insisted on keeping me drugged, as if having a clear mind would cause me to react again. Unstable. Unpredictable. That was why I was in there all the time and why they kept me doped up whenever they could.

I closed my eyes and winced when one of the nurses jabbed a needle in the wrong place.
Hell, give me the dammed needle, and I’ll do it myself.
I’d seen them do it enough times to know where it was good to poke and where to leave the skin alone—which was a lot more than I could say about them.

As for Brian, he wasn’t just lucky because he’d got the first dose. No. He was lucky because he’d been there when they had created it. Once the embers from sharing my bed with Brian had grown cold, we’d talked for a long time.

“How are you feeling?” It was the one question he always asked after an injection.

My response was always the same. “Fine, I guess.”

“I’m sorry you had to go through that.” He shrugged and ran a hand through his greying hair. “We all have. See this?” He gestured to his hair. “Side effects.”

“Great. I get to look forward to grey hair now before I’m even forty?”

He flashed me a reassuring smile. “It doesn’t happen to everyone. I honestly cannot say if it’s from the drugs or the shifting itself. But whatever it is has to do with the chemical imbalance inside both our bodies.”

I cocked my head to one side. “Don’t you get tested anymore?”

He lifted his eyebrows. “Not really, no. Vitals and everything are still something they look at, but they don’t need to repress my shifts.”

“Speaking of, you never really told me how you got the virus,” I pointed out. “I know you and Malcom worked together on the formula, and that Malcom ended up working on the virus himself, but what about you? I doubt you volunteered to take the drug without it being tested first.”

Brian sighed and rubbed at his stubble. “It’s…complicated. You need to remember that he and I were friends for the longest time in college. Granted, we’d prank one another when we could, but they were harmless. Or at least, I thought they were.”

“What happened?”

“We went out for drinks one night. He said he wanted to talk about the formula, which I thought was still theoretical. It wasn’t.” He paused and looked up at the ceiling. “Next thing I know, I wake up in a cage in his basement.”

“As a human?”

“No, as a leopard. I’m not sure what all he did to me while I was out, but the smile on his face was proof enough of what he’d done.”

“Weren’t you upset?”

“Of course I was, but more for knocking me out than anything else. Not that I would’ve done it willingly…not at first. He didn’t do any prior testing outside of testing smears and studying how the cells evolved under the microscope. But I knew as soon as I opened my eyes that I could control it.”

“How?”

“A feeling. Almost like a mental switch.”

“Not sure I have one of those.”

“You do, you’re just too drugged to find it. One bad reaction and Malcom reacts even more.”

“What about the government?” Yet another thing Brian had hinted at shortly after I had arrived.

“How did they get involved?” Brian scoffed. “Malcom was so blind—he bragged about what he’d done.”

“Yeah, but it could’ve just been words.”

“Not with his history. All through grade school and into college, he was tinkering and making something new—something that always worked. So, when he bragged…”

“Everyone found out…”

“Pretty much. The government come in shortly after that and have been watching this cage ever since.”

I let the silence fall between us. If what Brian had said about my reaction to the shift was true, I was pretty sure I would’ve shifted just then, and I was even more surprised when he didn’t. How could he act so cool about all this when his best friend had used him—treated him like some sort of pet?

I chewed at my bottom lip, then said, “Why not just bring the media into all of this?”

“Because, anything that happens here could be explained away with two simple words—drug trial.” Brian sighed and closed his eyes.

“Not if we tell them what it is.”

His eyes were on me as soon as I’d finished talking. “Think about that for a moment. When you were a child, or even now, what’s the one superpower you’d love to have?”

I furrowed my brow and gave his question a bit of consideration when he raised his eyebrows at me. “Teleportation or invisibility.”

“Okay, I’ll give you that, but after them, what’s the next thing you’d choose?”

“Transf—”

Brian was nodding before I could finish. “Transformation. Even if we did come out and say what this trial was, it would be seen as a gift, not the curse you and I know now.”

“But we could show them…show them how I react…how they
could
react to the drug.”

“And cause a widespread panic in the process? I can see it now, torches and pitchforks right at the front gates while Marines fall from above. No. For once, Malcom’s right. This has to be handled carefully. Malcom might not be willing to listen, but he isn’t the only one with power in this place.” He smiled. “But that isn’t why I’m here. I’d be here regardless.”

I looked at him from under my lashes. “Why?”

“To take them down…”

‘…To destroy the virus.’

A shrill cry caught my ear and pulled me from my thoughts. It almost seemed as if it was coming from the other end of the hall. I froze. The attendings did the same, their eyes focused on the walkway outside my room. My heart skipped a beat, and I breathed in the smell of rubbing alcohol, bleach and air that was way too clean to be comfortable.

I licked my lips and lifted my head off the table, straining to see around the nurses who shared the room with me. With their backs turned in my direction, I was able to see movement outside the windows lining my cell. And even with two layers of glass between us, I could still see and hear everything.

“Let me go!” the woman cried, her voice on the edge of tears. “Who are you people?” She got a little closer, the desperation in her voice growing with every step. “You have no right to treat me this way. Where the hell are you taking me?”

She was within throwing distance now, and everyone fell silent when two nurses passed my cell, a woman held between them. The woman struggled against their grasp and looked towards me.
At
me. Through me. She studied the machines in my room. The straps on my wrists. My calm demeanour when compared to her own. And that only made her fight even more. She cried out. Spat at one of the nurses. Pulled back against them.

But no matter what she did, no matter how much she fought and screamed, they continued down the hall and into the cell beside mine. Watching her through the glass windows of my room, I glanced at the chair in the centre of hers.

I’ve seen that chair before.

I’d never even bothered to look at the furnishings in the room beside mine. I usually closed my eyes and waited for the hour or so to pass until I was returned to my room. Only now, I couldn’t look anywhere else but at
that chair.

I didn’t know how, but a small memory of what might have happened tugged at the back of my mind. The woman flinched when they pulled the straps tight, and I almost felt the pressure against my own wrists—almost as if I was the one they were holding down.

The woman screamed again, and the room went dark. Blinking, I focused on where the chair had been. When my eyes finally adjusted, I wasn’t just looking at some strange woman—I was looking at me. My reflection.

A memory.

I
was
that woman. Maybe not now, but at some point in time, I’d been in that chair. I’d been the one they’d drugged. Closing my eyes, I tried to remember how I had got here—not only to the chair they had the woman strapped to, but to the fenced-in facility as a whole. But whenever I felt the inkling of some memory, time whisked it away, out of reach.

Another set of screams thrust me back into the present, back to the straps around my wrists and the lights hanging above my head.