Insatiable: A Dark Romance Read online

  “Rats are only human allegories to a certain extent,” I explain, even though we both already understand what I’m saying. “Without a human trial, we’ll never be able to fine tune the drug. This could make a difference to so many people. Serious, long-term injuries. Potential paralysis cures.”

  “You have a great deal invested in this, and we understand why…” He gives me one of those pitying looks I am so sick of receiving. “But this drug has not met the standards to be put forward for human trials. Another round of animal testing and perhaps we will consider it.”

  Another round. That’s years of work. I don’t have funding for years, and I’m not guaranteed to get it either. This company, Edison Enterprises, has taken me on, but my work is a long way down their list of priorities. They have four different products available for getting an erection past eighty, but this potentially life-changing treatment is barely of interest to them.

  This news is crushing. Anger rises in me, but I push it back down. Can’t be the cripple who cries in business meetings. That would be another level of pathetic.

  I thank him for his time and I leave the office. My hope, my dignity are both utterly shredded. Bad news travels fast. By the time I get to the cafeteria to get a cup of coffee, which technically has a more dangerous LD50 than the drug I’m trying to get onto the market, people are already expressing their sympathy with back slaps and those muted half-smiles I have come to hate so much.

  By the time I get back to my lab, the death has spread. The research techs who have been on this project can smell failure, so the laboratory is empty apart from me. They’re off polishing their resumes. Soon I’ll be getting requests for referrals. I’m betting there’s already at least one of those emails waiting for me. I’m the only one who really cares about this treatment. Regenermax doesn’t mean anything to these people. It means everything to me.

  Alone in my lab, I pull the samples we had already started to synthesize for a small-scale human trial. According to the paperwork I received upstairs, they’re to be destroyed. I have several dozen doses of what could be—should be—life-changing, lifesaving treatment. And I can’t give them to anyone who needs them because bureaucrats worry more about grumpy rats than they do about saving human lives.

  I pick up a vial. Hold it up to the light. It has a silver iridescence to it. It’s beautiful. It represents a leap forward in medicine that the board can’t understand. Everything is called revolutionary now. When I can’t sleep at night because of my leg, I watch infomercials where orange peelers are described as revolutionary. The word has lost its meaning in the wider world. But this actually is a revolution. This is the real thing. The future. And there’s no way I’m destroying it because a man who doesn’t know a carbon bond from a couch tells me it’s too risky.

  My leg is throbbing. It’s always worse after a day of walking around, and when I’m alone with nothing to distract from the pain.

  I look at the vial again. And I start to think.

  Scientists throughout history have tested their inventions on themselves. We wouldn’t have a polio vaccine if Salk hadn’t dosed himself and his family. Hoffman tested LSD on himself. And I guess the Curies technically discovered the effects of radiation on themselves too, albeit far too late. So, will taking this make me a Salk or a Curie? There’s no way to know.

  What I do know, is that I’m in pain.

  Pain that will never go away. Pain I’ll never adjust to. Because it is the pain of death, creeping slowly through my body one little bit at a time.

  Nobody is here to stop me from putting the vials into my bag. And nobody blames me when I head home early. Nobody ever thinks to suspect the man they pity. I’m too pathetic to worry about as I leave the lab with thousands of dollars’ worth of illicit, unapproved, highly toxic drug.

  Regenermax is stable at room temperature, so it won’t need any special handling. I have enough to treat a single person for months. At this stage, I’m not necessarily intending on taking it myself. Right now, I just want it to survive. This is all I have worked for, and I know they’ll destroy it if I leave it behind. That’s not going to happen.

  I retreat home, to the apartment that is too small and too dark to ever be nice. Small spaces save money. They’re also easier to get around in when you’re caught in the throbbing throes of your nerves sending panicked signals, the same way they have for many years, never really learning the nuances of this broken frame. My body rejects my injuries. It wants to be strong again.

  I microwave dinner. I avoid my cell phone and the text messages I am sure will already be piling up. I don’t want to be part of the world anymore. I want to escape from the events of the day, the bitterness of defeat not because I couldn’t formulate a treatment, but because a bureaucrat wouldn’t sign off on it.

  I get angrier and angrier with every passing hour. This is bullshit. This doesn’t make sense. I want to take my cane and beat the hell out of them for stopping the next phase of trials.

  The vials are still in my bag. I start to wonder what’s stopped me all this time. I could have started taking this weeks ago, but I was waiting for official trials. Official results. I was playing by the rules. I was trusting others to do the right thing. In the end, it was pointless. In the end, I have only myself to blame and myself to cure.

  Earlier, in the laboratory, I wanted to drink one of the vials. But it was daytime then, too bright to entertain that behavior. Light suppresses illicit impulses. The dark of night is freeing.

  Nobody will ever know that I took a dose. And if I can prove that the formulation works in humans, who have far more advanced capacity for emotional regulation than rats, then perhaps trials can be put back on the table.

  Or at least, I’ll be able to walk without pain.

  I began this journey in the attempt to help many millions of people. In the end, I might only be able to help myself.

  The decision is already made. It feels like it was made a very long time ago. Almost as if it was inevitable. Maybe some part of me knew how this would end even before I began. I feel a sense of fate sinking through me. Not the airy-fairy type of fate people swing crystals to, but the rock-solid connections of cause and effect that inextricably lead from one thing to another. The moment I started working on this medicine, I was going to end up taking it.

  It’s just a matter of following through.

  I uncap a vial. Think about whether it would be better to mix it with something or do it straight, like a shot. I choose shot.

  It hits the back of my throat. I swallow immediately. There’s a metallic sensation around the back of my teeth that spreads unpleasantly across my tongue in the aftermath, but it’s not too bad.

  I settle back down into my chair and I wait.

  Five minutes in, it feels as though absolutely nothing has happened. The dose I took should have been more than enough, and in rats the effects seemed to be somewhat immediate even if they took a few hours to days to fully manifest.

  I wait, watching the clock. Waiting to feel better. Waiting to feel worse. Waiting to feel… anything at all.

  It turns out that there’s something worse than having my life’s work shot down by a paper pusher. It’s finding out that it never worked at all.

  Disappointed beyond compare, I hobble to bed and go to sleep.

  Chapter Three

  Briarlee

  “Come with me,” he growls. His voice rolls through my body, makes me quiver. I feel almost as though I am under a spell. I wonder if I have been drugged, but I didn’t feel this way until he walked into the club and spoke those words to me, and my drink hasn’t left my hand since it was mixed by the bartender.

  He is pure masculine. He is magnificent. I am aroused. More than that, I am awed. This is a fantasy I didn’t know I had. I’m not alien to the concept of a one-night stand. I’ve just never had one before. Is this how they happen? A handsome stranger decides to fuck you and you let him because you’ve never seen anybody so hot before, let alone been
to bed with one?

  It’s been a hard day. A hard week. A hard year. I lost my job three months ago, and I can’t seem to find another one. I’m single, and I have no kids. If things don’t turn around soon, I don’t know what I’m going to do. People keep telling me that things will get better. If I just hang in there, maybe I’ll magically become more employable. I’m lucky I still have friends with husbands and families willing to find sitters and drag me out to the bar to enjoy myself.

  I’m ready to be swept off my feet. I’m old enough to know that no man can ever really rescue you, but looking into this guy’s eyes, I’m willing to suspend disbelief. He’s not offering to save me. He just wants to fuck me. But maybe, right now, that’s enough. Something about the way he makes this easy is almost enough to seduce me on its own.

  No good girl fucks a guy she just met. No smart woman lets a man put his cock inside her without even knowing his name, because good girls and smart women understand things like consequences. I understand them too, but… fuck them.

  He releases my chin, turns and walks away from me. It’s my choice to follow. I can sense that what’s about to happen is going to leave a mark on me forever. He made his intentions very clear up front. He’s going to fuck me.

  I’m not the sort of girl who does things like this. But I want him to fuck me. I want to be wild. I want to forget everything. I want to abandon myself to stupid blind passion. And in spite of how powerful and dangerous he could potentially be, I feel safe.

  I have no reason to feel safe. This is how girls get hurt, going off with strange men. It’s also how girls get what they want. What they need. And there’s something familiar about him. I almost feel as though I know him, though I am absolutely sure I’ve never met this guy before. I would know if I had. He’s utterly unforgettable in every way.

  My eyes keep running over him as he leads me away from the rest of the crowd. His shoulders. His back. His arms. All so muscled beneath that tight shirt I could use him as an anatomy teaching tool. But I think it’s me who is going to be taught a lesson.

  I would never usually do this. I would never have sex with a man I don’t even know. I would never. But I am.

  He leads me to the back of the club, through a door marked No Entry. He pushes through it and I follow after him, knowing we’re doing something very, very wrong.

  There’s another door at the back that also gives to his hand. It leads to a storeroom. Buckets and bottles of cleaning liquid and a couple of mops, a sink. None of it matters. His hands are on my body, large and powerful and moving over my ass with a hungry motion. I open my mouth to say something, but the words are cut off in his kiss.

  His hand finds the back of my head, his long, thick fingers wrapping through my hair. His lips press against mine and part them, making entrance for his tongue. He kisses thoroughly, hungrily. He kisses me as though he wants to devour me.

  My curves are soft and generous. His body is thick and hard, the perfect foil for me. The ridge of his cock is tenting his pants and pressing against my belly. I am too short for him, but he takes care of that by hiking my ass up onto the sink behind me.

  My legs part, thighs wrap around his powerful waist.

  That kiss is broken, and those eyes glower down at me. I feel a spark of fear that immediately becomes arousal.

  “You ready to be fucked, girl?” His hand runs up the back of my neck and settles around it in a firm grip. He’s holding me in place with that one hand, pushing the zip of his fly down with the other.

  Yes, I’m ready to be fucked. I’m ready for him to take me. I’m ready to slip over the line from grown woman who knows better to lust-drunk girl who just needs a hot man inside her.

  I feel the thick head of his cock. Bare. Hard. Running up and down the slit of my lower lips. I’m going to do this. I’m going to let him fuck me.

  His eyes are locked on mine as he urges his hips forward. The head of his dick spreads my lips, making his way into the wet, vulnerable interior of my pussy. Oh, my god. The heat of his hard cock as it finds the soft, willing lips and pushes past them to get inside me makes my pussy cream all the more.

  His kiss covers my mouth. His cock plunges deep inside my pussy. He has me. All of me. And he’s big. Bigger than I thought. Bigger than I’ve ever had. My cunt struggles to take him, but he makes it stretch for him. My clit is rubbing against his pubic bone as he pushes all the way to the depths of me, his tongue working against mine.

  I moan as my body relaxes in soft surrender. My inner walls submit and allow him to make me the vessel he needs me to be. My pussy is his now, conforming to the shape of his cock. It has been a while since I had sex, but my body knows how to give to a man like this. It knows how to become wet and willing, how to grip as well as give way. He is making me feel more feminine and more desirable than I have in a very long time as he holds himself inside me and gazes into the depths of my soul without so much as saying a word.

  Then he starts to fuck me. Properly. One hand goes to my hip. The other stays at the back of my neck. He plunges inside me, in and out, my lips gripping his dick with every single stroke.

  I’m making feral fuck noises. I’m writhing against him. I’m bumping my hips up to meet his again and again as his hands leave the places where they gripped me to hold me still for his dick and start to roam, finding my breasts. He squeezes my nipples and I let out a squealing moan. He keeps my tits in his big hands, massaging them as he fucks my pussy long and hard. I lean back against the wall, twisting to avoid the taps, my legs spread lewdly wide. When I look down I can see his cock gliding in and out of me. I can see how wet I’ve made his dick. It gleams with my juices with every stroke in and out of my bare sex. Flesh on flesh. No protection.

  This is madness, but it’s the hottest madness I’ve ever engaged in. His hands leave my breasts, find my ass. He picks me up off the sink and holds me up, sliding my pussy up and down his hard rod over and over again. I’ve never been held like this. He makes me feel small, delicate, feminine as my hard nipples rub the muscular plane of his chest.

  There’s no romance here. There’s just lust. Two strangers sating the same need, giving into the same dangerous urges. He pulls me hard against his body, and I feel that thick meat throbbing inside me.

  Our eyes meet. I see nothing but desire in him. He’s not a man. He’s a demon. He wants one thing from me, and he is taking that thing, leaving me weak with desire.

  He pulls me up and off his dick, turns me around, dips to the floor to push me face down against the cool linoleum. His hand is on the side of my face, keeping it to the floor. His other hand yanks at my hips, keeps them high. And then he is inside me again. That hard cock spears into me, those hips spank my ass with slap after slap as he fucks me from behind with more ruthless energy than ever.

  I moan and drool at both ends, my cries echoing around the small room. My pussy grips him ever tighter as his plunging, stretching, demanding cock makes thorough use of me. All thought is driven from my mind. Thoughts are useless to a woman who has become nothing more than a piece of willing fuck meat being taken by a stranger who commands her very core.

  He reaches a hand around beneath me, finds my clit, and rubs it between two fingers. His touch is demanding. I am going to come. He wants me to. He is forcing me to.

  I scream my climax out against the floor, his fingers dipping into my mouth to give me something to suckle on as I shake and grind my hips back against his cock. He comes inside me, his cock throbbing and pressing deep against the neck of my womb. The feeling triggers secondary climaxes, makes me writhe back against him, my body eager for his seed. This is wrong, and reckless, and dangerous, but I can’t be compelled to care. I am trembling all over, feeling weak in the aftermath of the sudden sexual rampage, but filled with a certainty that what I just did was somehow right.

  From beginning to end, our encounter has lasted maybe ten minutes. But it is ten minutes in which I have been branded, changed, taken in a way I have never allowed mys
elf to be taken before. Not just because he’s hot, but because when he looked into my eyes, I felt a sense of connection that I know to be rare in this world.

  He came here for me. I don’t know him, but I get the feeling he knows me. These thoughts are near mystical in nature, but that doesn’t stop them from being true. Nor does it stop my pussy from being covered in and filled with a complete stranger’s seed.

  My lover releases his grip, his cock sliding out of my ravaged pussy.

  “Wear my cum,” he growls. “Keep it against your cunt tomorrow. Don’t change until I see you again.”

  “I’m going to see you again?”

  “I’ll find you.”

  “But you don’t know…”

  “I’ll find you,” he repeats flatly. And he leaves. He leaves me there, smeared in his cum, dripping with his seed. He leaves me with my legs spread, my panties down. He leaves me like the dirty well used woman I am.

  I pick myself up, pull my skirt down, and go back to my friends.

  Chapter Four

  Daniel

  I am stronger.

  I am better.

  These aren’t thoughts. These are truths. There’s no pain in my leg, because there’s no pain anywhere. I spring out of bed in one easy motion, feeling an easy athleticism that I haven’t felt in my body since the morning of that accident.

  It’s like I’m fifteen again, but with the power of a thirty-year-old. I extend my arms and see muscularity that wasn’t there yesterday.

  My cock is hard as hell. Morning wood like never before. I’m horny, and alone. I find myself prowling my apartment, just looking for something to fuck. I almost don’t notice how easily I’m walking. All I ever wanted was to be able to move like a man. Now I can, I don’t care. I just want to have sex.

  There’s nobody to take, of course. What was I thinking? That the treatment would not only repair my damaged tissue but also manifest a willing woman lying spread-eagle pussy up on my couch? In the end, I find myself with my cock in my hand, pumping the cum out with rough strokes. There’s a magazine on the table with a woman smiling at me on the cover.