Freaks Under Fire by Maree Anderson Read Free Book Online Page A

alien part of her had burst to life, demanding more.
    And then Tyler was exerting pressure with his palms, turning her, and although she could easily have resisted, Jay surrendered to his will.
    Now both his hands settled on her hips, holding her slightly away from him. Facing this way, unable to observe his face to gauge his expressions, waiting and wondering what he intended to do next, only heightened the anticipation throbbing through her veins. And when he swept his palm over her buttocks, a thready moan that was so needy, so full of want, so…
human
that it seemed to come from another being altogether, escaped her lips.
    His fingertips gently probed the area surrounding the scabbed wound on the back of her thigh. “And this one?”
    Jay shook her head to clear the haze from her mind. “It is taking longer to heal because it lodged so deeply in my flesh. The last two projectiles resulted in some loss of function and I had difficulty digging them out.”
    She sensed movement behind her, and realized that Tyler had knelt. His fingers hooked the waistband of her underpants, and before she could offer to remove them, he skimmed them down her thighs.
    Jay’s exhalation exited her throat in a series of feline-like mewls. She didn’t understand how having someone she cared for remove a piece of her clothing could affect her on so many levels. Her capacity for logical thought was rapidly shrinking. Her ability to sense the world around her was diminishing as more of her receptors diverted to analyze what Tyler was doing to her, and why her nerve endings seemed to be sparking beneath the slow stroking of his palms down her flanks.
    Right now, she would be fortunate to hear someone knocking on the bedroom door.
    “If you were human,” he murmured, his cheek resting against her left buttock, “this would leave a horrible scar.”
    “It will heal without scarring,” Jay felt compelled to remind him. “My dermis is extremely resilient. And I’m sure I recall mentioning I do not feel pain the way humans do.”
    “I’m grateful for that,” he said, coaxing her to lift first one foot and then the other to remove her underpants from her ankles. “God, I’m so grateful you aren’t human, Jay. Because if you were, you’d have died. I’d have lost you, and I couldn’t bear to lose you again.”
    He surged to his feet, his arms wrapping around her hips and urging her flush against him.
    Jay swallowed, tried to speak, but the words caught in her throat and died unspoken. Just as well, for she suspected anything she uttered would be garbled and likely make no sense whatsoever.
    The walls of the bedroom seemed to contract, cocooning them both in a haven that blocked all intrusions from the outside world. There was only the fabric of Tyler’s jeans scraping the backs of her thighs, the heat of his body blanketing her spine, the pressure of his fingers as they flexed against her waist, the brush of his worn t-shirt across her shoulder blades, the warm caress of his exhalations against her bared skin.
    One of his hands drifted from her waist, but before the protest that bubbled to her lips could escape, he had swept back her hair to expose her nape and pressed his lips to a highly sensitive spot below her right ear.
    Jay gasped. Her diaphragm heaved as she fought to inhale sufficient oxygen, fought to contain the sensations sweeping through her—sensations that were scrambling her rational thoughts and turning her into a creature that yearned for nothing else except Tyler’s heat, Tyler’s caresses, Tyler’s kisses.
    Tyler.
    At some level she comprehended the danger of letting emotions swamp reason and she struggled to regain the ability to think clearly and logically—a futile effort, for no matter how she tried to think logically she didn’t know what to do—what to say, how to act.
    Remain passive and let nature take its course?
    State clearly to Tyler that she welcomed the next step, so there could be no