She flushed all over, groaned into the kiss, hips moving in time to the stroking fingers, as their breasts heaved together. Her mind swam, her senses hyperaware of everything happening between them, the electric connection of the places they touched, the gasping sounds they made in the room, moaning into each other’s mouths while her body felt every place the sheet touched her back, her ass, her spread thighs. And Marun, a beautiful wall of heat at her front, firmly circling her clit. Izzy’s belly tightened. The heat flashed through her. She’d wanted it hard and fast, but suddenly it was all too much. Izzy tore her mouth away from Marun’s.
“I can’t—” She gasped, her hips still moving, the fireball of pleasure flaring through her.
“Don’t worry, love. I’ve got you. It’s okay.” Fingers pinched her nipple, tugged. Her thighs shook. “Come for me. I’m right here.”
At Marun’s low command, Izzy’s entire world went supernova. Pleasure blazed through her, white hot and incinerating. When she resurfaced, she had no idea how many minutes later, she was a rag doll in the bed, twitching and gasping for air.
With her whole body still tingling, she reached up to touch Marun’s face, to trace the seductive outline of her lips, exhaustion tugging at her limbs. “God, I feel so selfish.” Muscles pleasantly weak, she pushed herself onto her elbows, clumsily kissed Marun’s mouth, and clasped her full breasts in her hands, scoring the thick nipples in her palms. “Let me take care of you now.”
Marun smiled down at her, started gently pushing Izzy’s hands away. “It’s not a tit for tat, darling. I wanted to please you, and that’s exactly what I did.” The gentle smile took on a bit of smugness. “I did please you, didn’t I?”
A slow flush worked its way up Izzy’s chest into her face in a tingling wave. “You know you did.”
“Good. That’s all we need to do for now.”
But after waiting for so long for her wife to come back, there was no way she was going to let sleep come without tasting the ambrosia between Marun’s legs. Izzy pushed aside her fatigue.
“Sure, baby,” she said, and then grabbed the curling ends of Marun’s braided hair and dragged her woman’s mouth back down to meet hers.
“You’re tired, love,” Marun protested against Izzy’s mouth but she went down easily enough on her back at a light touch. Now that she had her there, Izzy’s appetite flared with a rush of moisture over her tongue.
“I’m not too tired to make love to you,” she murmured.
Thick breasts the size of juicy, East Indian mangoes quivered under her hands and then her tongue. The stiff peaks hardened even more in her mouth and she groaned with pleasure, sucked, and fluttered her tongue against the delicious flesh. “Not after I’ve been dreaming about this moment for years. Even if I wanted to kill you at the same time.”
The soft thighs fell open with the grace of butterfly wings, and Marun watched her, eyes hungry and dark, a hand touching Izzy’s hair. With the revealing of her hot center, the rough hair there matted from the thick stream of her arousal, the knee-weakening scent of her floated up and flexed Izzy’s fingers into the thickness of her thighs. Delicious. Marun looked absolutely edible, the aroused petals of her sex, the aggressive thrust of her big clit, bigger than Izzy’s and the perfect size to suck and drool all over.
“You say the most romantic th—oh!”
Izzy smiled into the wet thatch of Marun’s sex and then she was done smiling as she was swept away by the scent of the delectable flesh under her tongue, the smooth thickness of her clit, and the clench of her fingers in Izzy’s hair. Her noises. Low moans. And the slow circling of her hips clasped in Izzy’s hands.
Izzy moaned as her arousal came rushing back, new moisture flooding between her own legs, with the motion of her head between the warm clasp of Marun’s thighs.
She moaned into the hot flesh and pressed down into the bed, fucking her hips into the mattress but trying to ignore her own desire to come again so she could pleasure Marun.
But if the noises her wife made were any indication, her pleasure wasn’t even a question.
“Look at me, baby. I want to see your eyes while I fuck your beautiful mouth.” Tremors shook Marun’s thighs. “Open your eyes for me, love.” A gasp and slow thrust against Izzy’s mouth. “Please.” Marun pushed her question home with a rough grip in Izzy’s hair.
Weakened by desire and the slick sounds of her tongue working between her love’s thighs, she opened her eyes with a flutter of her lashes, drugged by pleasure.
“That’s it, baby. That’s it. I love your mouth on me. Having you right here between my legs is like coming home. No one else belongs here but you. No one.” Marun’s hips bucked and her head flew back, but still she kept her eyes on Izzy’s, the star-like depths capturing Izzy’s attention like she had no intention of ever letting go. “I love you, Isabella,” Marun gasped, moving her hips harder as Izzy basically just held on and kept her tongue moving. “I love you so much, baby.”
A powerful breath rushed from Marun’s wide-open mouth and her center clenched against Izzy’s lips. Released, and tightened again. All the while, her eyes stayed wide, stayed with Izzy as the tremors of completion racked her body, fluttered the muscles of her thighs against her cheeks. Izzy didn’t stop moving her tongue, couldn’t stop her own frantic motion against the mattress. Then she was coming again, a wild burst of bliss.
With her breath coming in uncontrolled gasps, she lifted her head to reveal her smile.
“Yeah? You love me?”
Izzy gasped when Marun yanked her up until they were lying face to face, heart to heart.
“Yes,” Marun said softly. “I love you.”
Their kiss was messy, slick, and salt-flavored. Eventually, their movements slowed and Marun drew back, her eyes drowsy and heavy-lidded.
“And I’ll never stop. No matter what.”
Chapter Ten
With the sun slowly creeping through the window and Marun’s light caress over her naked back, Izzy fell asleep. It wasn’t a plan. It wasn’t even a conscious decision. They were talking about the past, turning over things that happened between them that had seemed so simple then but now had layers of meaning.
When Marun had walked Izzy to class one afternoon and they ran into Izzy’s professor and would-be boyfriend. His scowl in their direction. Then the next time Izzy had seen him, he’d scurried to get away. Marun had apparently scared the French accent out of him a day before with a flash of her gold eyes and threats to neuter him if he so much as looked at another student.
The hesitation Marun had shown when Izzy, giddy with excitement, had asked to marry her. “I didn’t want my family to kill you” was more than the excuse anyone needed not to join their lives with someone else.
Even at the bank days before, the SUV that nearly crushed Izzy into paste before Marun stepped in and basically punched the two-ton vehicle into the street.
“And I’ve been looking into it,” Marun whispered as she lay against the sheets with Izzy hovering above her, their hands joined together and resting on Marun’s belly. “You didn’t mismanage your money, my sister made it disappear.”
Izzy gaped down at her wife, her mouth opening and closing like a landed fish. “But—but that’s not fair.”
If she’d expected anything from these homicidal maniacs it was that they would just go straight for bodily harm, not force her into bankruptcy and destitution. That was worse than nearly getting shoved into a hot oven.
“Are you sure about that?” Marun asked when Izzy voiced the thought out loud. “My siblings and those like them have learned a lot during their time on this earth. Killing someone is quick and sometimes too easy. Driving them to live with no money and no resources is a slow death. Stress. High blood pressure. Losing your pride. Being forced to beg.” Marun’s jaw tightened, and anger flashed through eyes gone gold. “I should’ve figured it out when you first told me there was no money left.”
Weakened from the shock of it, Izzy flopped
down at Marun’s side and shook her head. “Oh my god…” The jagged teeth of anger snapped closed around her throat, stealing her breath. But seconds later, relief came. This meant she wasn’t as shitty at life as she’d been thinking these past three years.
“I’m sorry, Isabella.” Marun gathered her closer, and Izzy went, draping herself over her love’s chest. “You’d think with all this power comes a certain responsibility, but for many of us, it just makes us act like vindictive children.”
Tender fingers trailed down her back, a soothing caress that soon drooped Izzy’s eyelids. Despite her surprise and anger at how some random spirit-gods had ruined her life, she tumbled into a deep sleep.
Chapter Eleven
“Get out.”
The pillow under Izzy’s cheek was growling. She lazily batted at it, mumbled for it to be quiet, but it stirred and the sound only grew louder. Reluctantly, she opened her eyes. Dammit, she was comfortable!
“Isabella Courtney Ransom! You should be ashamed of yourself!” She jolted upright in bed at the unexpected sound of her mother’s voice. In her house. Not on the phone like she should be and was easiest to deal with.
Standing in the doorway of her bedroom, her mother scowled at her and then threw that pissed-off look over her shoulder at someone else. “You told me she wasn’t really in trouble. Did you know about this?”
A glance past her mother told her it was her father wandering through the living room.
“Wha—?”
Izzy’s hands were way ahead of her sluggish brain, though, and scrambled to grab the sheet and pull it over her bare breasts at the same time as Marun, apparently her growling pillow, sat up, too, but didn’t bother with the sheet. She faced Eleanor Ransom with a glower that her mother returned with interest.
“I should have known you had something to do with this!” Her mother pointed at Marun.
“For fuck’s sake,” Marun hissed. The bedroom door slammed shut, powered by an unseen force.
“What did you just do?” Izzy stared from the closed door to Marun’s furious face. Finally, her brain caught up with what was going on.
Her mother was here, in New York.
Fuck.
“Try not to burn your mother to an annoying crisp where she stands?” Marun muttered something in a foreign language that sounded a lot like a curse and left the bed to sort through the pile of clothes they’d left discarded on the floor last night. “All I had to do was sleep with you again for your mother to show up? If only my mother was that easy to summon,” she grumbled, separating a pair of jeans from the pile and holding them up to eye level.
Summon?
“I’m not sure about yours but my mother isn’t a demon.”
“That you know of,” Marun shot back. Instead of putting on the jeans, she frowned down at them.
“Stop.” Shower. Izzy needed a shower right now. A quick sniff of her pits confirmed that decision. Plus, she was pretty sure her whole face smelled like Marun’s snatch.
She rushed to get out of bed and then gasped when her legs tangled in the sheets and she stumbled, almost falling face first onto the floor.
“Take it easy, love.” Marun was instantly there, hands on Izzy’s hips and still wearing nothing but a frown.
Izzy scowled back. “Easy for you to say, that’s not your mother waiting out there.” She planted a quick morning-breath kiss on Marun’s lips before darting for the bathroom.
But when she came back less than ten minutes later, Marun was still naked, but this time lounging on the window seat in the sun. Izzy nearly tripped over her feet. She stood there drooling, wishing her parents were anywhere else but outside her bedroom door.
Marun lay stretched back on her braced arms, her face turned up to the sky while the sun poured like gold over the luscious fruit of her breasts, delectably curved stomach, thighs, and the ripe dip between them. Moisture swam over Izzy’s tongue and she swallowed hard.
“Shouldn’t you get out there to see what your parents want?” Laughter teased through Marun’s voice. Her eyes were closed, and she didn’t move from her sun-worshiping sprawl.
Izzy licked her lips, realized that she was walking toward her wife like some sort of lust-struck zombie, arms already reaching out to touch.
“You’re a little evil, you know that?” she muttered.
“It’s nothing you don’t know already, Isabella.”
Izzy stuck out her tongue and changed her path. At her closet, she dragged out the floral jumpsuit she used to wear all the time in college. It was loose, comfortable, and easy to get in and out of.
“Oh, I remember that.” Marun turned to watch her, head cocked to one side while a faint smile played on her lips. “Does it still have that tear in the crotch?”
“No, I fixed it, thank you very much.”
Marun laughed. “Too bad.”
“Ass.” She left the bedroom to the music of her wife’s laughter. At the sight of her mother’s sour face, all sense of lightness drained out of her like air from a pricked balloon. Izzy closed the door behind her.
Her mother started to say something but suddenly her father was right there.
“Izzy girl!” He grabbed her up into a fierce hug that overwhelmed her with the smell of pipe smoke and black tea. “We were so damn worried about you. I’m glad you’re all right.”
Confused, she hugged him back, though she had no idea what he was talking about. But as she pulled back to get a proper look at him, she saw the dark circles under his eyes. It looked like he hadn’t slept in days. If he’d been that worried about her, he could have just called.
“Of course, I’m okay, Papa. You know I’ve been right here this whole time.” But maybe she should have made the effort to talk to him more between her mother’s badgering phone calls.
A frown puckered his forehead. “What are you talking about? You haven’t actually been missing?”
Missing? “What are you talking about, Papa?”
But her mother talked over her. “I told you she was all right, Trevor.” Her mother put down her teacup with a sharp click. It looked like she’d found her way to the hot water kettle and put together what amounted to a full tea service and set it up on the coffee table. “That woman probably took her off someplace and she forgot all about her responsibilities to everyone else.”
Her mother’s snide reference to Marun instantly triggered Izzy’s defenses and pushed everything else out of her mind.
“Mom, that woman is my wife.” She stressed the last word with a savage bite and crossed her arms over her stomach.
“Don’t be ridiculous, dear. I doubt whatever ceremony you two indulged yourselves in was even legal.” Her mother glanced back at the closed bedroom door and sneered, a delicate baring of her perfect teeth.
Sharp words crowded Izzy’s tongue, ready to fly at her mother like daggers, but the light squeeze of her father’s hand on her shoulder stopped them. “I know, my girl, but it’s not worth it.”
Anger tightened its vice around Izzy’s throat, and she choked out a breath.
Her father squeezed her shoulder again. “Come tell us what happened to you. It doesn’t feel like we’re on the same page here.” With his comforting warmth pressing against her side, he led her to a chair.
“I don’t understand,” she said.
“You’ve been gone for more than a week, Izzy,” her father said. “How could you do that without telling anybody where you were?”
A week?
A twisting feeling of nausea took her stomach. “No. That can’t be right.” The chair squeaked under her as she sat forward. “I went to work at the bakery just a few hours ago.”
Then she remembered the stale smell of the cottage when she’d first walked in. The curtains and windows in the bedroom had been open, too, and she hadn’t left them that way. At the time, she wasn’t sure but…
“Did that woman drug you or something?” Her mother’s gaze sharpened. “Like your father said, you’ve been missing
for over a week. The police are looking everywhere for you. According to them, you left your purse with your cell phone at the bakery and just disappeared into thin air after some sort of violent confrontation.”
“One of the girls who works there swore you’d been killed by some crazy man the police haven’t been able to locate,” her father said, his voice husky with emotion. “I’m so glad she was wrong.”
“The security cameras had all been blown out and the footage completely destroyed.”
Every word was like a blast of ice down Izzy’s spine. She shivered and her teeth snapped together, biting down hard on her tongue. “Show me—show me your cell phone. This can’t be right.”
A cell phone appeared in her line of sight, her father’s. He tapped the screen and the time appeared. The day of the week. The date.
It had been nine days since she last walked out of her front door.
“No. That’s not possible. I was just at work last night and walked back home this morning.” But Marun had told her again and again about losing time. That this was part of what it meant to be a demi-god. Or whatever identity Marun claimed.
Her father put his phone away and pulled up a nearby footstool to sit next to Izzy. Grateful for his closeness, she gripped his hand.
“Last night, Isabella? No.” Her mother dismissed what she said with a scornful sniff. “Your father and I got on a plane the same day the police called us. We stayed in town for a few days with Taylor, worried sick about you, then had to rush back home when your sister had an emergency. A real one.”
“When your neighbor called to say she saw you come back home early this morning, we got on the first flight back out here.”
All this had been going on while she and Marun were talking—and other things—for just those few hours? It seemed incredible. Impossible. But her parents were here, talking about a long week of worry. Her father’s hand, grasping hers like he was never going to let go, was trembling and cold.
Love, Blood, and Sanctuary Page 28