Newu

Chapter 8 ... Finally.

I wish I could say that things got better after the publication of the last chapter, but they didn't. They became significantly worse. That being said, I am hopeful that the worst of it is over and I can get back to the business of writing with something close to regularity.

Once again, I cannot go any further without offering my deepest thanks, appreciation and admiration for my editors. The ever present Sophie and Freya, along with three new ones who offered their help on the Discord server. Ben, RazorDrive, and Flying Doc, the credit for this chapter being edited so quickly and made available to the public is entirely yours... Thank you.

This chapter picks up immediately after the last one ended as our hapless hero enjoys the morning after the night before.

I hope you enjoy

Nova

**********

The corridor stretched out endlessly. The light was gradually being swallowed by the shadows until the hallway faded into blackness. The stark, featureless, grey concrete that lined all four sides of the tunnel and the dank, stale and stagnant air made it clear that I was in some sort of facility that was - somehow - deep underground.

The air smelled... old.

Everything was muted yet heightened at the same time. I could hear my heavy breaths echoing off the walls, the dull, almost deafening sounds of my footfalls on the floor, the racing beat of my heart in my chest. Everything was exaggerated, yet seemingly far away. My mind seemed to be in a fog, I couldn't remember how I got here, nor could I work out exactly where '

here'

was, but as my awareness slowly faded back to me, I realized that I wasn't alone.

Looking around, it became apparent that I was in a small group. Faces I couldn't quite place, but not only was there a flash of recognition to all of them, I seemed to instinctively know that they were all also Evos. I could feel my mind reach out for theirs, but nothing happened, it was like my powers were there, just not available to me. That should have been more concerning than it was if it wasn't for something else.

We were running

We were running for our lives

Suddenly, as if that one detail cleared the haze from my mind, my surroundings snapped into razor-sharp clarity. A sense of dread - abject, indescribable terror - gripped at my chest. My heart was pounding against the prison bars of my ribs, desperately to free itself from the panic that threatened to overwhelm it. Every hair on my arms and neck was standing on end, and my chest burned from the exertion of running as fast as my legs were able to carry me. This wasn't some lazy jog, this was a panicked, sprinting flee from a threat that I couldn't quite comprehend. I didn't know where it was, I didn't even know

what

it was, but I knew with undiluted certainty that being caught by it would mean death.

I kept running.

The hallways were labyrinthian hallways, all of us instinctively sticking together as we randomly took one branching corridor after another. My eyes flicked around, not knowing if we were being led, or if we were blindly following... watching as one member of my group after another cast a glance over their shoulders and back along the corridor behind us, their eyes widening with something between horror and disbelief. Despite the featureless nature of the walls, I somehow seemed to know that despite the directions we took, we kept ending up in the same place as we started. Through it all, I could feel it... whatever it was. The low rumble of a growled breath, the heat of... something. Whatever was chasing us was gaining ground.

No... we weren't being chased... We were being hunted.

I chanced a look of my own, straining my neck to look behind me and back along the path we had just taken as I stumbled to keep running... The

thing

that met my eyes filled me with a terror, unlike anything I had ever experienced before. It was hard to describe exactly what

it

was: A beast of some kind, the size of a grizzly bear but jet black. Its hair was more like a porcupine's spines than anything else and despite the darkness of its coat, I could still make out the razor-sharp edges of each individual needle. There were thousands of them. The face was different, akin to something like a Chinese dragon, but the eyes burned. Not like a glowing red of a cartoon villain, but burning with literal fire, the smoke from them pouring over the dagger-like fangs that lined its jaws and hung in the air like the pawl of death, swallowing the light from the corridor behind. Its talon-capped paws padded patiently on the floor as it strode purposefully after us, the lights above it flickering with each footfall before being swallowed by the all-consuming smoke.

The creature wasn't running. It didn't need to, there was nowhere for us to go, and the beast knew it. We were cornered, we were trapped and despite its calm pace, the danger was inextricably and undeniably gaining on us. The terror gripped my chest like a vice. The disparity between my sprinted fleeing and our pursuers' casual strides didn't seem to matter, nor did it matter how hard I pushed myself, how fast I ran, or which direction we turned; it was gaining ground.

I could feel the heat of the smoke around my ankles. I could smell the sulfur in it.

Then, the last turn of the last corridor, the final means of escape, and the inevitable dead end. The group of us pressed against the solid concrete wall, all watching in heart-stopping terror as the creature rounded the corner, paused, eyed us with those orbs of burning fire, and closed in on its prey. I summoned every ounce of power I could muster, forcing my way through the block that seemed to be stopping my mind from reaching out to the others, pushing it to the palm of my hands, and hurling it with air-cracking fury down the corridor at the beast.

The walls around the creature exploded in a hail of dust and debris, the ground shook and the ceiling threatened to fall in. But the beast barely seemed to notice; the blast that would have turned any other living thing into a pulped stain on the wall washed over it like water off a duck's back, only the chunks of concrete bouncing off it seemed to be noticed at all. It didn't even break its stride. It simply shook its back to dislodge the debris and closed on its prey.

I slid down the wall in exhaustion. Slumping to the floor.

There was nowhere to run, nothing to fight back with, nothing I could do. Death was coming, and all I could do was watch it approach.

I woke up with a start. Sitting bolt upright in bed, Becky laying in peaceful slumber next to me; my senses were on a razor's edge, my arms stretched out in front of me and into the room, I could

feel

the power gathering against my palms. My fingers were vibrating with an energy that I wasn't aware I possessed, summoned by an instinct that went far beyond the powers I had given myself at the editing station. This was pure energy and I was ready to obliterate anything in sight.

Every sense was alert and seeking out the threat, my eyes darted in every direction, searching for the danger in every shadow. My breathing was ragged and heavy, the hairs on my arms and the back of my neck stood on end, and the cool air of the bedroom kissed the cold sweat that glistened off my body as I blinked into the darkness.

Sleeping in the bunker may have been physiologically different for an Evo than sleeping in the real world, but it made no difference at all to dreams.... Or to nightmares.

Dreams, I have been told, are a communication of the subconscious, a primitive and primal version of the conversations I had with Jeeves on a daily basis, but I didn't need my constant companion to tell me what this dream meant.

Something was coming.

* * * * * * * * * * *

Alright, let's face it; there are few things in life quite as good as sharing a shower with someone. Especially when that shower is one of those enormous walk-in constructions with enough room to easily fit 5 people and jets spraying at you from every angle. And even more so when you are sharing that shower after a night of indescribably good sex.

For the purposes of a fair contrast between this, and every other type of shared shower, I will refrain from mentioning that the only item of clothing my voluptuous lover would be wearing while we were in there was the delicate - and conveniently water-resistant - lace collar around her neck.

I hadn't really given it much thought on the previous night. But Becky and Philippa shared a fairly large house, pretty close to the city center, in an area I knew to be quite expensive, with impressively large bedrooms,

and

it had a shower that wouldn't be out of place in an episode of 'cribs'. Either these nurses had gotten one hell of a deal on the rent, or their profession paid them a lot more than I thought it did. Either way, thinking about the amount of money that the nurses would be paying for this place made my inner-broke-student's eyes water. Having access to money, it would seem, was not necessarily enough to get me out of the 'financially poor' mentality.

The moral of all this is to say that for the briefest of moments, I was more taken aback by the size and splendor of the shower than I was with the beauty slipping out of her negligee next to me. A fact that she found utterly adorable... and pretty hilarious.

I couldn't tell you when she had put the negligee on; I assume she had felt cold in the night and had donned the silken garment while I was sleeping before curling back up against me. All I knew was that I woke up naked, and she didn't. It was a disparity that was quickly rectified as she brushed the delicate straps off each shoulder and let the negligee flutter to her ankles just in time for my eyes to focus on her. Any remaining tension gripping my chest from the dream that had woken me a few hours before vanished in a heartbeat.

With one hand resting on her thrust-out hip, she looked at me with a mirthful smirk and one raised eyebrow. "So, what do you think?" She asked playfully.

"Incredible," I said with a smile, stepping towards her.

"I was talking about the shower," she replied, with a playful lyricism to her tone.

"So was I." I grinned back, stepping closer, wrapping an arm around her, my hand pressing into the small of her back and pulling her close.

Her giggle echoed off the walls as she slapped my chest, before being silenced by the searing kiss I pressed into her lips. The kiss was deep and it was passionate. This was a different Becky to the previous night; although her submissive streak ran deep, it didn't consume her, at least not right now. The new thoughts that filtered from her mind to mine were ones of playful seduction, teasing, the warming knowledge that before her stood a man who truly desired her, and although she would kneel and obey in a heartbeat if commanded, she had something different on her mind this morning.

She placed her hand on my chest and pushed me away, that glint flashing in her eyes, and a hungry smirk curled her lips as she stepped backward and into the shower. I moved with her, her hand keeping me literally at arm's length but also, somehow, pulling me with her. Neither of us wanted me to be any further away from her than that. Without removing her eyes from mine, she reached for some levers and knobs on the wall, deftly flicked a few of them, waited a few moments, and stepped backward into the stream of steaming water.

Damn, I wish my shower heated up that fast.

It was another one of those instances where the visions in Becky's mind told me exactly what I needed to do as she stepped through the stream and pressed her back up against the smooth tiled wall underneath the showerhead. I stopped, nothing separating us but the streams of water, the steam of the heat from it, and the lustful need filling the air between us. I leaned myself against the wall to the side, my already swollen manhood starting to throb and resisting the urge to grasp it while I watched Becky's hands start to move.

It was slow and teasing; her one hand on her neck as her eyes closed and her chin tilted upwards, the other on her stomach. Both hands caressed the skin as they moved. It was almost like she was mapping herself, committing every curve, every goosebump, and every nerve to memory before moving on to the next as both hands slowly converged on her chest. Her eyes may have been closed, but her mind was a dancing, swirling kaleidoscope of color, each new sensation causing a flash of light in the vortex of raw feeling. Conscious thoughts were like words, the internal monologue that I had heard from people every day since my awakening, but physical touch was different. It was color. Pain was a flash of blood-red, pleasure a bolt of Sunfire yellow that burned away to the throbbing blue and green afterglows. Every single physical sensation that the body could be subjected to could be boiled down to somewhere on the rainbow between pleasure and pain, and the twisting, swirling whirlwind of colors that consumed her mind was filled with the varying shades of sensation.

The dull vibrating yellow as the tips of her fingers teased over her throat and onto the top of her chest, the tingling purple as her body tried to ignore the ticklish spot on the side of her abdomen, trailing over it as both hands moved towards her voluptuous chest. The brighter flash of yellow as one hand trailed onto the mountain of her breast, slowly approaching the diamond-hard peak as the north-bound hand cupped and lifted the other breast from below. The explosion of red as her fingers grasped a nipple, squeezing it hard, twisting, the reds and the yellows merging into a throbbing, vibrant orange that fell straight to her core. There was only one conscious thought echoing through her mind. She wanted to be watched, she wanted to be seen.

No, that wasn't right... She wanted

me

to watch. She wanted

me

to see her. She wanted to share this most private of moments, this most intimate of acts... with me.

The hissed gasp that came from her lips as she tugged and pinched one of her nipples, followed by the throaty moan as she released it, filled her mind with another display of red and yellow fireworks. The throb as the blood flowed back into the sensitive nub pulsed red through her psyche, offset by the warm, constant yellow as her other hand kneaded and caressed her other breast. But there was something else, a flickering burning white echoing in the background... anticipation. My eyes refocused on her body in time for me to watch her torturing finger start to slowly and softly circle around the ridges of her areola and her cupping hand released her breast and started to trail down her stomach. I could almost feel the throb of excitement in her clit as it peeked from between her lips, both her mind and her clit, knowing what was coming. It took me a few moments to realize that her eyes had reopened and were staring at me with a dilated intensity that, to this day, I struggle to put into words.

She was going to touch herself, she wanted me to watch, she wanted me to see, but more than that, she wanted me to know. She was doing it to thoughts of me, as she had done countless times in the last month, her fingers finding her pleasure in the darkness of lonely nights, in the bright haze of the mornings, and in the vision-filled dreams between. This wasn't a show to turn me on, we both already knew that ship had long since sailed, this was genuinely her pleasuring herself over me, showing me what thoughts of me did to her, and she wanted me to know.

Even over the sounds of the shower, I could hear her heavier breaths as her hand passed her navel, her fingers flexing against her skin like a pianist preparing to play. Her body was an instrument, and she was a master at her craft. Her eyes fixed on mine as the tips of her fingers finally reached their destination. Her tongue darted out to wet her dry lips as her finger brushed over her wet ones, tracing the outline of her folds.

Three fingers slid through and into her center, gliding effortlessly between her folds. The middle one teasingly probed her entrance as the fingers on either side of it spread her open. She wanted me to see. The glistening wetness that had nothing to do with the shower, the almost imperceptible tremble in her legs as the bright flash of yellow pleasure burst through her mind and through her sex. Stroking that finger upwards, dragging her wet arousal with her and finally brushing it over her clit. The slightly harder pressure, the slight drag upwards, the drawing back of her hood, and the explosion of yellow fire behind her eyes as she pressed that lone finger into the sensitive bundle of nerves.

Her breathing - dear God, her breathing - I could have gotten off from nothing more than closing my eyes and listening to the hitched, quivering breaths, the soft, pleasured moans, the gasps and gulps of air as her fingers teased and ignited every nerve in her core. My eyes were seeing, but it was the colors in her mind that held my attention. Every subtle movement had an effect; her finger dragged a little higher and the yellows exploded, too high and they started to fade. Press too hard and the yellow would tinge with red, not hard enough and the colors would barely change at all. This was so much more than simply watching what her hand was doing. It was like she was teaching me exactly where and - more importantly,

how

- to touch her. The only thing more erotic than the nature of the lesson, was the soundtrack it was taught to; the breathless, hitched, and panted breaths of pure passion.

Breathless breaths: An oxymoron that echoed off every surface and resonated through every fiber of my being. It was my new favorite sound on earth.

Becky's thoughts changed in an instant, more than colors, more than sensation; behind her lidded eyes came the images and the visions that I had experienced in the hospital. Desires, fantasies, even memories flashed through her mind, burning along her conscious thoughts and filling the air between us with charged sexual energy.

Her fingers pressed harder into her clit at the memory of her first taste of me, our combined juices coating my cock as I lay immobile in the hospital bed. The hot, pulsing throb as my seed spurted powerfully into her mouth, the eye-fluttering sensation as my essence bathed her tongue before she swallowed it down, making me a part of her.

The fingers circling, her ring and index fingers holding and squeezing either side of her clit as the middle finger ground her nub in its small orbit, the hitched breath and the soft, gasped moan as memories of the roughness of my claiming her the previous night throbbed through her core. The feeling of her collar around her throat for the first time as her pussy tingled and ached from the brutal, indescribably satisfying pounding it had endured. The dull pain at the roots of her hair from where I had pulled it, the burning sting on her asscheeks from the strength of my spanks. The undeniable power and strength in my hands, my arms, my body, and my mind. Yet the absolute safety and tenderness she felt when they were wrapped around her. The sound of my voice as I said the words that warmed every part of her.

Mine

Her middle finger dragged her hood up and down over her sensitive ball of nerves as her mind delved into the fantasies we had not yet explored. The feeling of her ass stretching around me as I slowly sank into her. Claiming the last part of her. Her face pressed into the pillow, her teeth clamping into the material of it as the pleasure and pain overwhelmed her. Another of her on her knees, looking up at me through squinted eyes as I painted her with my seed, feeling each hot rope landing on the skin of her face, her throat, her chest before rubbing it lovingly into her flesh.