by Holley Trent
Not from him. Not from this unpredictable—
He bent, breath tickling the side of her face and neck, and somehow her hand was on his cheek, stroking the coarse beard instead of pushing his face away.
“What is it you think I’ve done?” he whispered.
“I know what you have done,” she said raspily. He smelled like warm, earthy sweetness. Like he’d bathed in cocoa and moisturized with heated honey. Sweets weren’t her favorite, but she pondered just once making an exception.
She gave her head a clearing shake. “I…you have been working. You said so yourself.”
“Yes.” He toyed playfully with the scalloped top of one of her hair combs. Her arm was around his waist. She didn’t remember putting it there. “I hadn’t planned on taking the job. Easy work, but slow and tedious. The djinn are feuding again. My friend asked that I assist him with mediation efforts. Basically, to keep the sides away from each other while they sorted out the mess. We were between realms for more than a week. Pay was excellent, though, even if I’m not entirely sure yet how to turn it into cash. Have you need of any rare pearls?” He chuckled. “I’ve got many ropes of them.”
“Oh.”
So he couldn’t possibly have been responsible for the theft of that gold. Blaming him had been easy because she’d wanted it to be him.
She’d been looking for any excuse to hate him.
“I’ll ask you again. Tell me the truth. What did you think I was doing? Hmm?” His subtle movements of her comb had her edging closer to him as she predicted each movement, fearing pain, though she didn’t think he’d hurt her. It was all reflex. Reasoning didn’t play into the scenario at all.
“Nothing,” she murmured. “It does not matter.”
“No, I think it does. In your kitchen, you looked at me like I’d caused you a loss of some sort. What did I do in your imagination to incite you in such a way?”
“It does not matter, Tarik. Let us do away with this tedious discussion.”
“And on to others, then?”
“Like what?”
“You tell me.”
Her hand was inside his coat and beneath the side of his rough shirt. Her fingers played up the ridges of his ribs. His body wasn’t so different than others’, at least not on the outside. She had no way of knowing what was within.
“I have…nothing to say,” she said.
“Do you have anything to do?”
“What a silly question. Of course I have things to do. I have a saloon to run, and a sheriff to watch. Cougars to manage, and—”
“You have all that to do, and yet you were going to run from me and here.”
“I was not.”
“You were. You were leaving the kitchen. You hadn’t even told me hello. A man could get offended by that sort of callous treatment.”
“You are not a man.”
“A male, then. Is that how we’ll have our fun this evening? Arguing semantics until we’re so frustrated that we lose control?”
“I never lose control.” And yet her fingers were on his cheek again and tracing the diagonal of his smile line. Pressing the brown flesh and watching the gold blaze beneath for the span of a breath. Feeling the satiny edge of his upper lip, wondering if his mouth’s softness would be evident against other things. Needing an answer, she pressed the back of her wrist against them.
They were soft, and she was appalled at herself.
She couldn’t step away, though. His arm was around her. She couldn’t push him back, either, because he’d taken her wrist and put it back where it’d been.
Staring down at her with a glint of mischief in his molten eyes, he brushed his lips against her pulse point.
Her breath caught on the tickle of the hair beneath his lower lip, and for some reason her fingers were shaking. She closed them into a fist as his mouth seared up her forearm. “W-what are you doing?” she eked out.
He’d made his way to the tender crook of her arm and paused there. “In English, it’s called kissing. In Spanish, dando besos. We can delve now into the tongues you’ve known longer, if you like, or we can decide we’re done with the lecture component of the evening and move on to the demonstration parts.”
She wanted to throttle him for his audacity to stand there and smirk at her.
But she didn’t. She offered him her other wrist, which he peered down at with humor for a long while before taking it.
She told herself it was simple curiosity on her part.
“Novelty. That is all,” she murmured.
“What is?”
“This. You touching me.”
“I can show you all sorts of new things, if you’d like, Butterfly.”
“There is nothing new under the sun.”
“You’ve experienced it all, then?” His smile couldn’t have been more of a warning sign than bright white letters painted on his face. The disrupter was going to get her into trouble. Her centuries-long streak of careful behavior and being “better than” would end, and she’d end up being that wild and dangerous wretch she’d been after she’d had Yaotl—the thing she swore she’d never let herself be again.
“You haven’t experienced me,” Tarik taunted.
She scoffed, even as her fingers caught in his collar, and then again as she tried to pull him down to her height.
“Perhaps that is for the best,” she told him.
“I think we both know it’s not. You have me here.” His grin widened and gaze danced across her face. “So what do you want from me?”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Lola didn’t know. Tarik could tell by her lack of eye contact and inability to stand still.
He’d never known her to be fidgety, and yet there she was shifting her weight and burning hot as a fire poker.
It wouldn’t do to tease her. She’d shut down and she might not let him get close again. He couldn’t risk that—not when he was so keen on disproving that it was impossible for creatures like him to be to be true and to be kept.
And why wouldn’t he want to be those things? The two of them made sense together. They were equals in all the ways that mattered, and he’d never felt that way about any lover before. None of the others he’d cared for had been built to last, anyway, and if they didn’t last, what was the point?
“Come.” He walked backward to the chaise, pulling her along, pondering how to direct the scene.
“You must think me silly,” she murmured. “Running a place that trades in flesh and yet being so ignorant about what I want.”
“I hadn’t thought that. I imagine that it’s all so basic to you now, hmm?”
She grimaced and withdrew from him.
He sat.
She paced, spinning her rings as she walked. Her skirts swished. Boot heels echoed against the bare wood.
Slowly, he removed his coat, being careful to lift the slitted back over his wings.
“Basic?” she said with a laugh. “No. I suppose I might think that if I were active in that part of the business.”
“Are you not?”
She stopped pacing and stared at him dead-on. “No.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Most of the girls do not know. I am always able to redirect any man who solicits me. They move on to someone else. There are plenty of rumors circulating about men who have supposedly been in my bed and the stunning feats I have performed. I do nothing to discourage them.” She shrugged and draped his discarded coat over her forearm. “It is good for business. You may be shocked to learn that I have consented to the act one time in my entire existence and have not felt the urge to do it again.”
Shocked was perhaps stating his opinion too mildly.
He didn’t believe it. A woman with her primal allure wasn’t one whom he would expect to seek a cold bed when she wanted a bed at all. The energy that thrummed through her was the kind that creatures like them felt compelled to share and swap, for there was no more gratifying thing to do with it.
“You
do not believe me,” she said. “I care not. There is a reason I choose not to speak so much of my past and my choices, and it is because no matter what I do or say, I will not be believed. It is so typical that—”
He reached for her and caught the side of her skirt. He fisted it, heedless of the wrinkling, and slowly wrapped yards of fabric around his hand. “Hush,” he said as he reeled her in. “Just hush. Yes, I’m incredulous because I don’t know anyone who would choose to abstain from satisfying such an urgent desire.”
He had her pinned between his thighs and began unwinding the unending lengths of fabric from his wrist. Beneath all that useless fluff was a pair of legs, he was reasonably certain. It’d been so long since he’d seen them that he didn’t trust his memory.
“You know nothing of my desires,” she whispered. “You assume mine are as yours.”
“So tell me about them. Show them to me, if you’d like. If you can.”
If he could read her blinks, he might have found a message in the rapid sequence, beyond distress. That was in her scent as well. A note of ominous discomfort—a warning that there was danger. Whether he was the danger or her, he could not guess.
Her gaze turned to the window, and his pride had him bracketing her chin and turning her back to him.
“Should I choose a different face?” he asked. “Is it that this one does not appeal?”
“No.”
“Should I leave? If I am an unwelcome threat to your chastity, tell me that. I will go. I will not pursue. I will not seek to be a companion to you.” Certain she wouldn’t look away again, he let his hand fall from her face, letting his fingertips graze the underside of her stubborn chin and the front of her neck as it went.
She clutched his hand over her sternum before it could descend farther, not that he’d touch her in such intimate places without an invitation. She wasn’t some forest nymph or some succubus who invited all takers because she was going to feast more from them than she gave back.
No, she of secret names was too private for that. Too solitary.
But she didn’t have to be solitary alone.
“I did not ask you to leave,” she whispered as her fingers tightened around his. Her weight was tilted forward, his thighs providing resistance to the stubborn thing called gravity.
He held his breath and tried to keep his body still, his engorging shaft from repulsing her.
She leaned in closer, moving her hands to his shoulders and settling herself at the apex of him. Thankfully, her skirts came between them, hiding his premature eagerness.
Her hands were on his cheeks, gently smoothing his whiskers. Her lips were parted. Brow furrowed with something that looked like curiosity. He didn’t bother questioning to confirm it. He was no marvel, but if she thought he was, he would certainly not persuade her otherwise.
“How do you choose?” she whispered. She was tracing the curves of his lips, pressing her thumb against the plump center of the bottom one.
“Choose…” He took her hand away so he could speak. Kissed it. “Choose what, Butterfly?”
“Whom to lay with. Does it matter?”
His offense immediately surged, but he somehow staunched what would have been a quick volley of words. Perhaps he was learning to be less impulsive and disruptive, after all. He swallowed and looped her arms around his neck. He wanted to be possessed for a change, held by her even if she was cruel, or maybe because she was, and he deserved it.
“Sometimes, it does not matter,” he admitted. “And the feeling is mutual. It’s just a fuck. Just a mutual satisfying of urges with no promise of anything more. It’s what animals do, even the most evolved of us.”
Her arms were slack around him and her body was stiffly upright.
He put his hands to her waist and gave her the tiniest of shakes. She thought too much. That was her problem. Sometimes, wild things needed to just be and not analyze everything to death.
“And sometimes,” he said, “I am extremely selective. Sometimes, I am single-minded in my pursuit of a particular being and cannot stop wondering what it is about them that stirs me so unceasingly. I cannot stop wondering what would happen if all clothes were off and skin met skin. Would it feel the same as all the others, or would it be something new and better? Could they surprise me? Could they keep me so enthralled that I want nothing more than them? Could they keep me from answering the burdensome hungers I carry as my punishment along with being bound to this place? Could they…become my obsession?”
She swallowed thickly and blinked. Her fingertips were at the back of his head, slowly outlining the place where flesh met hair, strumming the wiry curls.
“You speak of magic,” she said. “That is all.”
“Am I afraid that me drawing to you is nothing more than some sort of magical entrapment?”
Her hands were on his wings and feeling along the top ridges, expression filled with wonder.
“I fear that,” he admitted. “But I find that I do not care if it is. Trap me, if you’d like. I will not mind if you take a long look and decide to keep me.”
“What use would I have for such a creature?”
“Use me or not. Just have me.”
“Why me? Why not some pretty thing with wings and who is curious and adventurous?”
Silly woman.
“I’ve already had lovers like that,” he said, “and I could easily entice others, should I choose. But I want you.”
“Why?”
She really didn’t understand, and he didn’t know if he could explain it to her. Infatuation was a concept a goddess should have understood better than nearly anyone. It was the most dangerous weapon in her arsenal, and he was certain she’d wielded it on him intentionally a time or two.
“I can’t tell you,” he said. “But I’ll show you. Will you let me?”
___
Lola found herself nodding before her supposedly highly evolved brain caught on to the consent.
And then Tarik’s quick fingers were tugging at her hair combs, plucking out the pins, and sending all her carefully tended locks tumbling. “I—”
“Like butterfly wings,” he murmured. “Silken, iridescent.” He was pulling her in close, and at some point, her hands had found his collar and were fumbling with the button there.
What am I doing?
Undressing him, obviously. Two buttons, three, and no signs of slowing.
She may not have had her wits about her, but Tarik was well enough in control.
His chuckle, so low and so close, thundered through her like vibrations from a fast-approaching train. “Slow down, Butterfly,” he murmured. “I want you to actually see what you’re getting.”
“I cannot see through your clothes. I do not possess that ability.”
He laughed again and turned her face mere degrees to the side. His lips brushed against the tender place beneath her ear and made her breath catch. They woke her brain and made her hands fall back in line.
She held masterfully still as he kissed along her clavicle and toward her heart. As the laces of her bodice were loosened and heavy skirt pooled on the floor.
Up again, lips to neck, to chin, to her mouth.
She went stiff again, not entirely certain what to do, but slowly opening her mouth, anyway. Shuddering when the tip of his tongue probed the end of hers. Nearly falling when he worked the organ in farther and tugged her hard against him.
His large hands kneaded up her back and one found her hair, tangling in the strands as he unrelentingly stirred her tongue awake.
She thought she understood. It was tasting and commingling and such a private thing. She didn’t share herself, and that was what was so stimulating about the act. It had no purpose except to titillate, to overwhelm the senses, to loosen inhibitions.
“Now you’re getting it,” Tarik whispered. The words didn’t seem mocking. They were encouraging, rather.
She climbed onto his lap for a better angle. She’d never been the sort to half commit. If she
were going to walk a plank, she was going to walk straight off the end, come what may.
Every time she attempted to control the kiss, he provided an answering parry or a suckle or a nibble, and she couldn’t keep up. Wasn’t creative enough, perhaps. She didn’t know how to do it right. Practice would make it better.
But he was on to other things already.
He tugged aside the nape of her chemise and scratched lightly down the skin of her breasts with his mouth following.
Her breathing stopped in anticipation of where his tongue would lash, but he was a disrupter. Tarik never projected his next move, tricking her every time she thought that surely, he would kiss her here, lick her there.
She thought he’d show her what his lips felt like against breasts.
He was rolling up the hem of her chemise in inches as his mouth made an unpredictable path between and around her breasts.
She didn’t know what to do with her hands except to try to guide him to where she thought he should be, but that didn’t work. He was a statue that couldn’t be moved except by its own volition.
She pushed up onto her knees on either side of his hips, anyway, and gripped the sides of his face. “Why do you tease me this way?”
“This way?” His tongue flicked against one taut nipple in rapid sweeps that had her body arching away even as her fingers notched into his shoulders.
The act seemed somehow deviant, but she was feeling defiant and tilted herself in a convenient angle for him to reach the other one, should he wish to.
He didn’t, though.
Of course he didn’t.
He mounded both breasts together and let out a long, satisfied exhalation as he stared.
And then stared even more, lips quirking at the corners as her cheeks flamed.
“W-what are you doing?” she stammered.
“Committing the sight to memory.” He swiped his tongue across both peaks and blew a shockingly cold stream of air across them. The chill charged into her core and had somehow been rendered warm by the time it pooled in her womb. Liquid heat between her legs.
She tried to climb off him and scurry away at the surge of unfamiliar feelings in her usually predictable body, but he anticipated every move of hers far better than she could his.