My Dangerous Pleasure

by Carolyn Jewel

  Her reactions trickled through to him. Disbelief, a little fear, a big dose of arousal, curiosity. He drew back and brought his body back to human form and fought for control of his instincts. With his human hands, he drew his fingers along her waist, over the outside of her breasts, to her shoulders, her throat, her face.

  She put her arms around him, touching him, stroking. “More,” she said. “More.”

  CHAPTER 33

  Paisley threw her head back and closed her eyes. She breathed in slowly as Iskander’s tongue slid across her arm. The buzz that echoed back to her was beyond amazing. He pulled away, still holding her wrist, and made a shallow cut in the side of his throat. With his other hand, he cupped the back of her head and brought her forward.

  Water sloshed around them as she moved closer to him. Her fingers slid along his torso, over solid muscle and sleek skin. The zing of the first touch of her tongue to his blood spread through her like fire. Iskander’s hands tightened on her. The center of her chest flexed.

  Heat flashed through her, a sensation that they were without physical support, floating. A weight settled in her, a pressure against her mind, and she had to concentrate on letting that pressure past and into her. Iskander’s presence in her head became a brilliant heat.

  They separated, though he continued to hold her. Her vision went crazy. Straight lines refused to meet at what ought to be corners, colors were more saturated, and there were shades she couldn’t put a name to. With a great deal of effort, she forced her eyes to focus. The world came back to normal with a stomach-churning wrench. He peered down at her, still in her head. His face was recognizably human now, his skin the familiar brown. The muscles of his torso were as perfectly defined as ever. She touched one of the blue stripes on his torso and felt a buzz under her fingertips.

  His expression was serious. That was different for him. He put a hand to her chin and tilted her head so she looked into his face. His beautiful, lovely, normal everyday human sensual face. She wanted him to smile because his smile always made her happy.

  “Anything you want,” he said. His mouth curved while his hand caressed the side of her face, and that sent shivers through her belly and to all the other sensitive parts of her body. She put her hands against his chest. His warm, naked chest. He brought her hand to his mouth and kissed her palm, then each of her fingers, and each touch of his mouth brought her closer to the edge. He straddled her, taking his weight on his thighs. “The copa’s working.”

  “And?”

  “Like I said, that’s very interesting. For us both.”

  She moved her legs only to have him smile darkly and shift his thighs a little wider apart, an adjustment that brought his pelvis closer to the tops of her legs. He took her first finger and licked, and while he was doing that, she stared at his nearly closed eyes. One of the lines of his tattoo went down the center of his eyelid. His sooty lashes lifted, revealing irises that were an out-of-this-world blue. The middle blue line of his tattoo colored his sclera, too. How on earth had he managed to dye the white part of his eye?

  He kissed her index finger and then pushed himself back so that the water sloshed against the opposite side of the hot tub, but then he headed back. At the last minute, he slid his hands into the water and underneath her thighs; then somehow, her thighs were over his and his hands were supporting her bottom.

  “Oh, my.” She threw her arms around his shoulders.

  Then he kissed her, and it wasn’t the kind of kiss where she wondered for even a second whether he meant it. His mouth was gentle and then not, and one of his hands moved up to cradle the back of her head and pull her toward him. Iskander made a sound in the back of his throat that made her feel desirable and adored.

  Paisley allowed the experience to slide over her, to inhabit her. She wanted to memorize every moment of this. He held her tight against his groin so it was impossible to miss his erection. He tightened his arms around her. With no warning, he picked her up and rose as if she weighed nothing. She wrapped her legs around him and held on tight. In two steps they were out of the hot tub, and he was walking inside the house with her.

  “We’re dripping water all over.”

  “It’ll dry.”

  She nodded, and before she knew it, they were on his bed, and he was stretched out on top of her. He looked into her face and smiled. “Ready?”

  “Yes, sir, I am.” She smiled back. Her body was ready for him. Now. Right now. “For what?”

  “While you’re still feeling the copa, try to touch your magic. Because it’ll be hot if you have some magic when we do it.”

  His gazed locked with hers. She wondered if she was hallucinating the brilliant color. He dipped his head and took her nipple in his mouth until she was moaning. When he stopped, his eyes were practically glowing, even after she blinked. “This is different,” he whispered. “With the others it was just sex. But that’s not us.”

  “We aren’t having sex.” She managed a grin. “In case you haven’t noticed.”

  He smiled at her, that lovely, wonderful, sensual, incandescent smile. His hand trailed up the inside of her thigh. “You need to let me do something about that, then.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like make you forget your name. Which I will do in just a minute.” Her chest tingled where his palm lay on her skin. “Do you feel that?” She nodded. The sensation increased. “Hold on.” He lowered himself to her and kissed the side of her throat. His mouth was firm, insistent, and the whole time the tingle in her chest intensified. When he drew back, he said, “I do this with Maddy’s wilders all the time. Help them use their magic for the first time.”

  “I don’t want us to talk about Maddy.”

  “We’re talking about your magic, cupcake. Concentrate. Can you hold on to that? Like you’re reaching inside and pulling hard. If you catch hold, don’t let go.”

  The bizarre thing was that she could. She could touch the sensation quivering inside her and pull it through her, from nowhere to inside her chest. In her head.

  Iskander’s eyes opened wide. “You sure you’ve never done this before?”

  “I’ve had sex before. More than once, too.”

  He laughed and his hand went between her legs and stroked her. God, she was so close. So close. “You’re a natural. I’ve never seen anyone get it so fast.”

  She moved out of his embrace and touched him, starting with that amazing torso of his. She got an echo back of his physical reaction to that, the arousal. Her fingers landed on two of those blue stripes that ran down his body. She felt the resonance through her fingertips, and the sensation seemed to move from there along her arm and into her chest. “You like this, don’t you? Me touching you like this?”

  His eyes flickered to dark, dark blue, and the tension of his sexual arousal raced through her. “What do you think?”

  She took a breath. “Are you going to change?”

  “I want to.” He put his mouth at the crook of her neck, and his teeth nipped at her before he whispered, “Are you asking me to, Paisley?”

  Was she?

  “Maybe,” she whispered. “Yes.”

  She felt the change in the size and shape of his body first; then he drew back, and she could see him, and all she could think was that he really was a kind of demon and that the centuries of human fear of creatures like him didn’t touch her at all. He was Iskander and she knew him. She touched him, explored his body, and kept losing herself in pleasure.

  After a bit, he pulled himself over her, positioning his body and using a knee to nudge apart her legs. His hide was warm leather against her skin. Not human, and she was going to let this happen. She wanted it to happen. Her body and mind were ready and more than willing. She shifted, tipping her pelvis to give him the access he needed. Her need to have him inside her seemed unendurable.

  “Now. Iskander, now.” She arched her back, and then he pushed inside her, slowly, his eyes locked with hers. All the sensation in her body focused here, bet
ween her legs, inside her.

  “You feel good.” His pelvis rocked forward. “So good. Paisley, yes. ” He drew in a long, slow breath. She could hardly believe this was happening, that he wanted her and that he was hard, and she was already at the edge of arousal and about to fall over, and, oh, God, he pulled back his hips and then pushed inside her again and this felt better than anything she’d ever experienced in her life.

  He pushed up on his palms, taking his weight off her. But the pressure of his hips against her remained, his legs touching hers, and he was moving inside her, and he fit even though she could feel that she was tight around him. She was aware of him in another way, in the tingle that went down her spine and the resonance in her head, and she recognized that because he looked into her eyes and said, “Yes.”

  After a while, after their bodies slid and touched, and after she thought she would lose her mind, he pulled out of her and turned her over. He hiked her hips up, and his hands went around her waist. When she’d braced herself, he slid himself inside her again, and the difference in the angle made her groan with pleasure.

  “Is this all right for you?” he asked in his rougher voice. “Tell me it is. Because it’s better than all right for me.”

  The best she could do was gasp his name.

  His nails were sharp; she felt them on her skin every now and then, once when his hand smoothed the length of her spine, another time when his other hand tightened around her hip. Her breath was tight in her chest and she responded to the way he held her. As they moved together, she felt him adjust the grip of his hands around her waist, and that worked for her. Her breath hitched in her chest. His skin was hot where he touched her, his body hard and inside hers. She rocked her hips in time with his, taking the roughness, feeding off it. Every stroke, every caress took her closer to mindless pleasure.

  “Please,” she said.

  “Please what?”

  “What you’re doing. Lord, Iskander. Please.”

  He drew himself over her again, thrusting inside harder than before. She raised her knees, trying to take him deeper. He let go of her and withdrew so she could turn around, which she did. He bent his head to her chest, and his tongue flicked over her nipple. She knew from the touch of his mind with hers that he wanted things a little faster. Rougher.

  He went still. “Is this all right?”

  CHAPTER 34

  Iskander let his mind slip around hers, finding the desire and letting her feel his and taking them both higher, and it was fierce and lovely, and he never wanted this to end. During a moment when he thrust hard inside her and then stayed there, buried deep, she arched against him, wrapping her legs tight around his flanks.

  Her body shivered with incipient orgasm, and she pushed him onto his back and straddled him, leaning forward to get the best angle for taking him inside her while he lifted his pelvis toward hers as she came down. He knew she saw him, saw precisely what he was.

  She leaned down and pressed her mouth to his torso. The touch of her tongue on him was exciting beyond belief. She ran her fingers along the muscles of his torso and belly, and he gripped her hips—he was careful of her because he was bigger and stronger like this and his instinct to procreate was edging out of control. He rocked up and deep into her, and he knew he was hitting exactly the right place for her, because her face got that flush of pleasure that always drove him crazy. He circled his arms around her and rolled them over so that she was on her back.

  He could hardly breathe for looking at her. She obviously wasn’t in the habit of sunbathing because her skin was the same pale, pink-flushed white everywhere he looked. No tan lines on her upper torso. He was familiar with the arousal that got fed by his magic; he felt it whenever he had sex with a vanilla human. He’d felt it with Maddy, too, but he’d never come close to asking Maddy to let things go this far.

  He took her right hand in his and deliberately set a finger on the scar on her wrist. He scratched with a talon and watched the blood well. She picked up on his hunger and moaned. He might have done the same. This was like getting a direct line to her magic. She shivered. He brought her wrist to his mouth. The taste of her blood sent a shock through him. He got a tingle of magekind from her, and it was like a drug.

  With his other hand, he stroked the length of her body. Hell, she felt so soft and smooth, and the whole time he touched the injury Rasmus had caused. It set him on fire, doing this, connecting with the place where so much magic had flowed through her. The fingers of his other hand slid down, touching her pubic hair, sliding past to the slick folds of her body and the spot that would break her apart for him.

  Then her hand, her human hand, found his cock and held him just tight enough. Moved just enough. Fucking perfect. She got her other hand on him and let him know she wanted him closer to her, so he did that but without letting go of her wrist and without stopping the suction that kept the taste of her in his mouth.

  She slid down his body so that she was the one on her knees, between his spread legs, a hand on his cock, and—

  “Yes,” he said. He let go of her arm. “Fuck, yes.”

  Her mouth closed over his dick, and her free hand cupped his balls. He put his hand to the back of her head and let her give him the best blow job of his entire life.

  His orgasm just about took off the top of his head, because she worked him with exactly the right pressure but mostly because she was Paisley and not some woman whose name he wasn’t going to remember the next day.

  When he floated back to his body, he realized he had her wrist clutched in his hand, and when she looked up, he let her feel what he did—the visceral reaction to her scent, her skin, the anticipation of coming inside her, how all of it was tied up with his magic and hers.

  “Feel that?”

  She nodded, her eyes focused on him. After which he returned the favor and gave her head until she was writhing and calling his name and her breath was coming in short pants, and he made damned sure she came as hard as he had.

  She made a tiny sound in the back of her throat when he thrust inside her, human this time. Both of them human so she’d be safe. She was slick and hot around him, and even though he was usually one to talk a lot when he was fucking, he didn’t say anything because he didn’t have the words for what he was feeling. He just did her missionary because he could watch her face and the arch of her neck and the way her mouth parted, and he could feel the way his cock was surrounded by her vagina. Her muscles gripped him, and her hands touched his shoulders and slid down his back, touching now and again the traceries alongside his spine.

  Once, when that spot on her wrist brushed against the outermost line down his spine, it was like mainlining a shot of pure magic. Her hands cupped his ass, urging him on, and of course he was going to give her whatever she wanted from him. His own breath came in gasps, because he was heading for another climax.

  His skin slid against hers, slippery with her sweat. He knew his eyes were changing, and he let her see that, the transformation threatening to take him again. In the back of his mind, he was hoping she’d tell him yes, that she was ready now for whatever happened. Only she didn’t, so he held back because he didn’t have her permission for that, and he didn’t want her at risk of having a child she wasn’t ready for or didn’t want.

  He hit an unbearable peak, when he was convinced he wouldn’t break through to his orgasm, and he moved harder in her, faster, and she held him tight and then she came. She threw back her head and shuddered beneath him, and her throat was exposed to him, and the plain truth was that he lost it. Her body was clenching around him, and he dropped his head to her throat and bit hard enough to draw blood at the underside of her jaw. The moment her blood hit his mouth, he came.

  Hard. And he held her there, feeling her coming still, his own orgasm separating his mind from his body, and hell, he just about died from the pleasure.

  CHAPTER 35

  Two days later

  In half a daze, Paisley listened to Iskander’s p
hone call. The room was still dark, but she didn’t know what time it was because Iskander didn’t have a clock. Early, though. It felt early.

  “What’s up?” he said in a low voice. Not at all sleepy. Because, as he’d told her, his kind didn’t sleep. They just faked it if they needed to. He kept his body close to hers while he talked to whoever was calling him, though he didn’t say much except at the end. “On my way as soon as you get someone over here to keep an eye on Paisley.” He listened some more. “Yeah. He’s good. Nine. She’ll need a ride to work.” He disconnected the call and kissed her shoulder. “Gotta go in a bit.”

  She rolled over. “I’ll make you breakfast.”

  “It’s four in the morning. You stay in bed.”

  She didn’t, though. He’d eat leftover cake or brownies for breakfast if she didn’t make something decent for him. She grabbed one of his shirts and went downstairs while he got dressed. In the kitchen, she put on coffee and made a batch of buttermilk pancakes. Her mother’s recipe and one she hadn’t altered. She microwaved some bacon, too. He came down just as the first pancake was coming off the griddle.

  When he was done eating, he took his empty plate to the sink and then paused, head cocked. A few seconds later, she got the vibration in her chest that meant his backup had arrived.

  “Be careful, okay?” she said.

  He kissed her. “Always. See you later.”