Total pages in book: 165
Estimated words: 159487 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 797(@200wpm)___ 638(@250wpm)___ 532(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 159487 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 797(@200wpm)___ 638(@250wpm)___ 532(@300wpm)
“Feels better!” Ravik rumbled, nodding. “Mate’s kisses make Ravik feel better.”
His sentences were already improving, Severin noted. Good.
“Good!” Cassandra exclaimed, echoing his thoughts and clearly relieved at the result. “Now will you let me kiss the other hurt places better too?”
Ravik nodded.
“Make Ravik feel better. Thank you, mate,” he rumbled.
“You’re welcome. Now just sit still and let me get you healed up,” Cassandra told him.
She went to work, kissing all the red burn marks over his broad chest and abdomen. Severin watched because he had to…because every kiss was a treatment…because every contact point appeared to correspond with improvement in Ravik’s verbal coherence and eye clarity.
Because he was a scientist and this was data.
Liar, whispered a dry little voice in his head. You like to watch them together. You’d like it even more if you could join in.
Severin pushed it away. He needed data—this situation was providing it. Therefore, he had to watch and it didn’t matter if the scene playing out in front of him also made his cock hard and his fangs ache.
Cassandra stopped several times to reapply the burn ointment and he watched the way the salve glistened on her lips before she pressed them to Ravik’s skin again. Ravik sat perfectly still now, allowing her to treat him with a look of such deep, almost worshipful trust that Severin’s chest ached.
His best friend had come back for her…the thought landed with unexpected force.
Ravik wasn’t all the way back—not permanently. But he’d come back enough to trust…back enough to speak. He was back enough to feel pleasure and comfort and gratitude—all the softer, gentler emotions the Hunger Virus had stripped from him.
Cassandra was not merely suppressing his best friend’s symptoms, Severin thought—she was reaching Ravik on a deeper level.
Every time she touched him, every time she breathed near him, every time she used that sweet, bossy voice on him, the virus lost a little more ground. Severin could almost imagine it as a cellular battle—viral neuroproteins attempting to bind to Ravik’s olfactory-limbic pathways while Cassandra’s volatile endocrine markers displaced them, stimulating dormant mate-recognition circuits and reactivating higher cortical function.
It wasn’t a cure—not yet. But it was the first real weapon they had against the virus.
And if Severin could isolate the active compounds—if he could identify which part of her scent profile had this effect, which pheromonal fraction, which hormonal metabolite, which immune-marker cascade—maybe he could synthesize it. Or bind it to the anti-viral he’d been modifying in the lab. Or use it to create a carrier agent capable of crossing the blood-brain barrier and delivering the serum where it needed to go.
Again he thought that he needed samples. Skin oils. Hair. Sweat. Saliva. Blood. Possibly vaginal secretions, given the dramatic improvement after last night’s contact. He needed Ravik’s blood before and after exposure. He needed his own essence tested against—
“Hey—I’ll help you with your hand in just a minute, okay?” Cassandra said suddenly.
“Hmm? Oh, that’s fine. Fine,” Severin said, his deep voice sounding slightly strained.
He looked down and realized his uninjured hand was balled into a fist on the edge of the table. His burned hand throbbed. His fangs ached. His cock was half-hard in his trousers because apparently watching Cassandra kiss his best friend’s body back to health was doing things to him he had no wish to admit.
No, that wasn’t true—he had already admitted some of them to himself last night.
He liked to watch.
He liked to watch Ravik with the curvy little human…liked to see Cassandra’s soft hands on the Beast Kindred’s big body…liked the way Ravik responded to her. And he especially liked the idea of being included as he had been last night.
That was the problem—he liked far too much.
Apparently satisfied that he was content to wait, Cassandra turned her attention back to Ravik. She’d healed every burn she could reach, but he was still cupping his shaft protectively behind one big hand.
Severin frowned—he was worried about that particular injury.
“Ravik?” Kneeling between his spread thighs, Cassandra put her hands on the Beast Kindred’s knees and looked up at him. “Ravik, I need to see what you’re hiding,” she said, nodding at his hand. “Can you show me? Can you show your mate?”
Severin gripped the edge of the table harder.
He ought to help, he told himself. This was an intimate injury and Cassandra shouldn’t be forced to treat it. He could handle it himself once Ravik was calmer. Or he could attempt a numbing spray from a distance. Or he could sedate him, though the thought made him grimace because Ravik’s system was already compromised and unstable.
But Cassandra didn’t seem unwilling—she just looked concerned.
“It…hurts,” Ravik rumbled.
“I know, baby. I know,” Cassandra said soothingly. “That’s why I want to see it—so I can heal you. Don’t you want me to kiss it better?”
Severin’s breath went still in his lungs.