Yes, but what if he does? Whispered the little voice.
Not that she was ever going to find out, Penny told herself firmly.
“Grab a quick shower and get ready for First Meal,” V’rex told her, breaking her train of thought. “I’m cooking this morning.”
“That sounds good,” Penny said gratefully. “But no meat, okay?” she added quickly as he turned to leave.
V’rex frowned.
“I noticed you didn’t make any for Last Meal last night either. Any particular reason?”
“You don’t know, do you?” Penny had been pretty sure he didn’t know about the source of the meat here in the Compound, but it was still a relief to have it confirmed.
V’rex frowned.
“Know what?”
“I’ll tell you after breakfast,” Penny promised him. “Because if I tell you before, it’ll ruin your appetite. Right now, I’m going to get a shower.”
“Fine. No meat. And I’m not sure if I want to know what you have to tell me or not.” V’rex shook his head and let himself out of the bathroom, shutting the door behind him.
Penny stood up and swiped at her eyes again, trying to get control of herself. God, she was all over the place this morning! She hadn’t felt so hormonal in ages and it wasn’t like it was time for her period—that had stopped after she’d been on the Mother’s Milk for a while.
As to the reason why her cycle had stopped, well, Mother Toone had explained that a female’s monthly cycle was actually completely unnecessary—at least according to the Compound.
“Why, with the right hormones, my sweet, the female body doesn’t have to go through a cycle at all,” she’d told Penny, when she asked haltingly where her period had gone to. “All you need to do is balance things just right and her body can be in a constant state of readiness to get pregnant—do you see?”
“Like a constant state of ovulation,” Penny muttered now, to herself. She was always most sexually needy during that part of her cycle—most women were, she knew. And the damned weird hypno-whisper-induced dreams didn’t help anything either!
Thank goodness things hadn’t gone any farther than they had, she thought grimly, as she stepped into the steaming shower. She’d been one step away from either biting off the top of V’rex’s dick…or straddling him and sliding down onto it.
Another shiver of erotic energy ran through her and she turned the water setting to freezing cold.
“N-no!” she told herself, through chattering teeth as the frigid water pounded her body, raising goosebumps on her bare skin. “N-no, I c-can’t think of him like th-that!”
She had to get out of here before something worse than what had happened last night occurred. She had to escape the Compound while she was still sane enough to do it!
Forty-Three
Gods! V shifted uncomfortably as he reset the branch trimmers and tried to concentrate on his job in the greenhouse. But he had a hell of a lot on his mind this morning which made it pretty hard to care if he was trimming the branches of the long rows of trees as symmetrically as possible.
For one thing, he couldn’t stop thinking of how he’d woken up that morning with the head of his cock deep in Penelope’s sweet mouth. Gods, her little hands had been so soft and her mouth had been so hot… She’d been licking and sucking him with sensuous pleasure, as though she loved the taste of him.
Then, of course, she’d woken up and the whole thing had turned out to be just a crazy dream brought on by those fucking hypno-whispers. But for just a moment, V had thought that she was acting of her own volition—that she wanted him as badly as he wanted her.
Well, she did want him, he reminded himself, thinking of the surge of sexual desire he’d felt coming from her when they’d been talking. What had brought on that particular blast of lust? Oh right—she’d said she would be upset if their positions were reversed and V had said something about how she would have been shocked if she’d woken up with him licking her soft little pussy.
Hmm…Was that what had turned her on so much? His talk about going down on her? Sometimes V wished he could read a female’s thoughts, like a full-blooded Kru’ell One. But if he was able to do that, he would probably have the need to feed on a female’s emotions to survive too. No, far better to be only a half-blood and be able to feel her emotions without needing to feed on them.
But it was worth noting that what had turned her on was the idea of his tongue between her thighs. V’s shaft surged under the ridiculous red garment he had to wear here. Gods, how he wanted to taste her sweet pussy! Like all Kindred, he had a biological need to go down on a woman once he had chosen her as his future mate. And he was definitely feeling that need now.
But he sensed that even though the idea of him tasting her turned Penelope on, he would have to take this slowly with her. He frowned. The first thing he had to convince her to let him do was suck the nectar from her full breasts. She’d left sticky trails of the stuff on his side, where she’d been rubbing against him that morning and he’d had to wash off in the food-prep sink while she was in the shower.
The stuff was almost as viscous as honey and it had to be hurting her to have her breasts so full. But V was pretty sure she would rather die than ask him to help her with the problem. She was a stubborn little thing—it was one of her attributes he most admired, though it made earning her trust difficult.
But she couldn’t go around with the nectar leaking from her nipples all day where people could see—it would be like a public
