He leaned back from me on his knees and just looked down at me. “Wow,” he said, and his voice came out in a hoarse growl. An innocent word, said in a tone that made it anything but innocent.
“God, what a view.” And his voice was still that low, growling bass, as if it should have hurt to talk. He trailed his hands down my thighs until he ran out of hose and traced fingertips along my bare thighs. He slid his hands under my buttocks, cupping my ass. He lay down with his hands still cupped under my body. He propped himself up on his elbows and stared up the length of my body at me.
My voice was breathy. “That’s why you kept the braid in.”
“Yes,” he whispered, and began to lower his face down toward me, the way you’d move in slowly for a kiss. He hesitated. “The angle’s not quite right.” He lifted me up, as if he could hold me forever in his hands like an offering to himself. My feet came off the bed with his lifting. I was left with the choice of either holding my own legs up with my hands or putting my feet around Micah. If I hadn’t been wearing high heels I wouldn’t have worried about it, but the heels were not meant to stab into someone’s back. Nathaniel might have enjoyed it, but Micah wouldn’t.
He licked between my legs and the sensation stole my thoughts, my words, and my good intentions. I put my legs around his body. The shoes ended up resting on his lower back, the toes on the swell of his buttocks, the tip of the heels pressed into his back.
I waited for him to protest, but he didn’t. He slid his face between my thighs, plunged his mouth into me, against me, over me. He kissed between my legs as if it were my mouth. Exploring with lips, tongue, and, lightly, teeth. He kissed me as if I could kiss him back, and the sensation of it made me move my hips against him, so that it became like a kiss. A kiss of his mouth between my legs, my hips rolling up to his mouth, my thighs pressing against his face, my heels digging into his back.
I felt a spasm pass up his body, shivering up his back, his shoulders, to his hands, making his fingers tighten around my ass.
He raised up enough to talk, his mouth shining. His voice was breathy, strained. “I can’t decide if the heels feel amazing, or just hurt. Can we lose them?”
I scraped one shoe off on the bedspread and used that foot to push the other shoe off. I put my feet back on his back, feeling the warmth and swell of him through the hose. “All you had to do was ask.” My voice was breathless and lower than normal. It’s called a bedroom voice for a reason.
He smiled at me and lowered his face slowly downward. He kept his gaze on my face as he slid between my thighs. Those chartreuse eyes rolled up to me as he licked between my legs, so that it gave the illusion that his face ended with the green-gold of his eyes.
“God, Micah, I love your eyes like that.”
He growled, and the sound of it vibrated across my skin. It made me cry out, head back, eyes closed. The growl turned to a purr as he drew the most intimate part of me deeper into his mouth. That purring growl sang across my skin, vibrating, building. He drew as much of me into his mouth as he could and sucked as hard and fast as he could.
That heavy, delicious warmth began to build between my legs. Micah drew that warmth, that weight of pleasure with his mouth, drawing it out and out, more and more, building it with every movement of his lips, every caress of his tongue, until with one last flick of his tongue he brought me. That weight burst over me in a rush of warm pleasure that pulsed through me, over me, again and again as if as long as Micah sucked, the pleasure would never stop. I was left gasping, eyes fluttered shut, boneless, helpless. I was wrecked, ruined, drowned in the pleasure of it. I felt the bed move, felt Micah over me. I tried to open my eyes, but the best I could do was flutter them enough to see light and shadows.
“Anita,” he said, voice soft, “are you all right?”
I tried to say yes, but no sound came out. I could think it, but that was as far as I got.
“Anita, say something. Blink if you can hear me.”
I managed to blink, but even when my eyes fluttered open, I still couldn’t focus. The world was blurred colors. I put up a thumb to let him know I was okay, because talking was still too hard.
He leaned close enough that I could see his face clearly. “Now I’m going to fuck you,” he said.
I managed to whisper, “Yes, please, yes.”
CHAPTER
8
He put his hands under my thighs and pulled me off the mound of pillows. Pulled me so that my lower body was flat to the bed, but my upper body was still a little propped up. He put a finger inside of me, just a finger, but the sensation of it writhed me across the bed, made me cry out.
“So wet, but so tight. You’re always so tight after I do you by mouth.”
He was kneeling between my legs, his body so hard, so ripe, so ready. I said the only thing I was thinking.
“Fuck me, Micah, fuck me.”
“You’re tight, Anita, really tight.”
I raised up on my elbows. “But wet. I’m so wet. You’ve made me so wet.”
He licked his lips and swallowed. I could see his pulse jumping in his throat. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
“If it hurts, I’ll say so.”
He looked down at me, and his face didn’t look lustful now; it looked nervous, uncertain. I knew he wanted to try to shove himself inside me, but he was afraid to. How many women had hurt him? How many had told him he was a freak, a monster, simply because he was so very male? I sat up enough to wrap my hand around the hard length of him. Just holding it in my hand threw my head back, made me cry out. I stared at him, knowing my eyes were wild, squeezing my hand around him until his head went back, his eyes rolled into his head.
I slid my hand up over him, caressing the soft, luscious head. I leaned back on my elbows, looking at him. “Fuck me, Micah. Fuck me before I stop having little spasms inside me. You made me so wet, so tight, my body is still having little mini orgasms. I want you inside me while my body is still spasming.”
He bent over and kissed me, his mouth still wet from me, still tasting like meat and that fresh taste, almost like rain. People can make fish jokes, but not every woman tastes the same.
He drew back from the kiss, kept himself propped up on his arms. But his body was already pushing against me.
Feeling the weight of him against me made me fall back against the bed. He kept his body above mine so I could see every inch of him as he began to try to push his way inside me.
I was wet enough, but he was so wide, so very wide, that he had to ease his way in, and even easing had a level of force to it. He had to force his way in. If I’d released the ardeur, I would have been more open, more ready for him. The ardeur alone without much foreplay could make my body ready, eager, and more open. But we both wanted me tight, both wanted to feel him fight his way inside me.
The tip vanished inside me, with so much left still. Watching him push inch by inch inside me made me cry out, made my body rise up, so that my hands went around my own thighs. So that I held my legs up and made my body a little ball. So I could see, and feel, all of it.
Halfway through his eyes closed, and he stopped moving, head down. His voice came strained. “So wet. God, so tight. You keep gripping me with your body. It’s like the farther in I push, the more you spasm. Just me pushing inside you, causing small orgasms.”
“Yes,” I said, and my voice was breathy, it was eager. “Yes, the sensation of you inside me, when I’m this tight, this wet. It’s amazing. Oh, God, Micah, don’t stop, don’t stop.”
He raised his face up then and met my eyes. He searched my face as if he thought I was lying to him.
“You’re serious?”
“Yes, God, yes.”
“You’re wet enough, but we’ve never tried this when you were this tight, Anita.” Eagerness fought in his eyes with worry. “I can push in faster, but I don’t want to hurt you.”
I stared into his face and said what I was thinking. “I don’t know whose ghost you’re fighting ri
ght now, but it’s not me. Whoever you thought you hurt, it wasn’t me. Fuck me, fuck me, fuck me the way we both want you to.”
I watched him decide with our faces inches apart, our bodies already wedded to each other. I watched him decide. His hips moved forward, shoved himself inside me. I’d told him to stop being careful. He took me at my word.
He shoved himself inside me, fought to push his hardness inside me, as far and as fast as he could. I was too tight and he was too wide for speed, but whereas before when he felt resistance he’d hesitated, now he shoved harder. My body resisted, and his body crashed through. He shoved all that hard, wide meat inside me. He forced his way in, while my body was still trying to figure out if it was a good thing or a bad thing.
On one hand it felt amazing, so hard, so long, so wide, and all inside me. God, it felt good. It flung me back against the bed, tore screams of pleasure from my mouth. It made me writhe around him, wriggling and struggling, caught between orgasm and my body telling me that maybe we shouldn’t be doing this. About the time I thought, Too much, too wide, slow down, and actually drew breath to say it, the orgasm stopped being spasms and was suddenly full-blown. It caught me off guard as a lot of intercourse orgasms did. It turned almost-pain to unbelievable pleasure. It made me throw my body around him, over him, fling my upper body against the pillows, over and over again like a puppet whose strings had been cut. I writhed and screamed, and fought, and danced under him. And he shoved himself as far inside me as he could, hitting the end of me when there was still some of him yet to go.
He drew himself out of me, and it rubbed, because orgasm was tightening me around him, trying to hold on to all of him as he pulled back out. He began to shove himself inside again as far and hard as the tightness would let him. He fought his way in and out, while I writhed and screamed. I had to hold on to something. My hands found his shoulders, his arms, and drew blood down them. Too much pleasure, too many sensations, as if all that pleasure spilled out of me in the blood that ran down his body.
His voice came gasping. “Feed the ardeur soon, Anita, please. God, soon. I’m not going to last much longer.” I’d forgotten what we were doing. I’d forgotten about the ardeur. I’d forgotten everything but the sex. It took only a thought, and the ardeur was suddenly there. But I was too far gone in orgasm, pleasure, our bodies. Always before, the ardeur had felt like more, like its own presence, but now it was only another part of the sex. It was like an extra layer of heat added to a bonfire that was already burning down the room.
It tore sounds from my throat, raked my nails down Micah’s back, and only then did I realize he was on top of me, not above me, but pressed on top of me in a more standard missionary position. I hadn’t remembered when he changed position.
The ardeur had opened me to him, and he was finally able to shove himself in and out of me, not fighting my body now but sliding in and out. He came to the end of me before his thrust was finished, but there was no more of me, nowhere else for him to go. He raised up on his arms for a moment so I could gaze down my body at the meat of him going inside me, over and over and over, and the orgasm was almost, almost, almost. I could feel his body changing rhythm, feel that he was close. The ardeur couldn’t feed off of Micah until he orgasmed. He was too dominant, too controlled; only orgasm let his shields down enough to be food for me.
He cried out above me, his hips doing one last thrust that brought me screaming off the bed, bowing my back, closing my eyes. I screamed for him a long time after he had finished, and he lay on top of me, trying to relearn how to breathe. I screamed and writhed underneath him, still caught in the aftershocks of what we’d done.
When he could move, he pulled out of me, and that made me writhe again, but almost as soon as he was out the ache began. That the endorphins had begun to fade that fast meant I’d be sore later. But it was the kind of sore I didn’t mind. The kind of sore that would be like a keepsake, that I could take out and look at and remember what we’d done. I’d remember the pleasure of it with every ache between my legs.
Micah lay oddly, half on his stomach, half on his side. The arm that was toward me was bleeding. He’d have his own aches and pains to remember this by. He moved, propping himself up on his elbows, and I saw his back.
I gasped and said, “Jesus, Micah, I’m sorry.”
He winced. “The nails don’t usually hurt this soon after great sex.”
I nodded. “When the endorphins go quick, you know you’re hurt.” His back looked like he’d been attacked by something with more claws than I had.
“Are you hurting?” he asked.
“A little ache.”
He gave me serious eyes. “When I drew out, there was blood. Not much, but some.”
“We’ve had color before,” I said.
“Yeah, but that’s usually near your period. This isn’t.” His face was serious again. That shadow of old memories, old girlfriends in his eyes.
“How does your back feel?” I asked.
He grinned for me. “It hurts.”
“Do you regret it?”
He shook his head. “God, no, it was a-fucking-mazing.”
“Ask me how I feel,” I said.
“Did I hurt you?”
“I ache already, which means a little.” I touched his face before he could look away. “Now ask me if I regret it.”
He gave me that sad, mixed smile of his. “Do you regret it?”
“God, no,” I said. “You were a-fucking-mazing.”
He smiled then, and it was a real smile. I watched the ghosts fade from his eyes until there was nothing but warm pleasure left.
“I love you,” he said. “I love you so much.”
“And I love you.”
He looked down at the bedspread, which was a little worse for wear. “I better get up off this before we get more blood on it.” He got to his feet, steadying himself on the edge of the bed as if his legs weren’t quite working yet. I couldn’t have walked if a fire alarm had gone off, so I sympathized.
There were spots of blood here and there, almost outlining the upper part of his body. There was also a spot of crimson where his lower body had been pressed to the bedspread. White had been a bad choice for it. I pushed myself up enough to look down at my own body. There was blood between my legs and a little on the bedspread below my body. “Think the maid will call the cops?” I asked.
He started a shaky walk toward the door. I think he was headed for the bathroom. “Not if we tip her enough.” He caught the door as if he’d have fallen without it.
“Careful,” I said.
He leaned against the door for a moment, then looked at me. “You make everything all right for me, Anita. You make me feel like a human being instead of a monster.”
“And you love all of me, Micah, every last hard-boiled, ruthless bit of me. You make it okay that sometimes I am the monster. You know what I do, and you still love me.”
“You’re not a monster, Anita”—he grinned at me—“but you are ruthless. But then I like that in a girl.” He went toward the bathroom still a little shaky but moving better. I settled back on the bed and waited for my knees and thighs to work enough to walk. I might as well get comfortable; it was going to be a while before I could move.
CHAPTER
9
Philly was a pretty city, what little I’d seen of it. The visit so far had consisted of the airport and the hotel room and some amazing sex. We could have been anywhere. The cemetery reminded me that the city was in one of the thirteen original colonies. It was old, that cemetery. It breathed its age and the age of its dead. Breathed it along my skin the moment we stepped out of Fox’s car. Once, a cemetery this old would have been peaceful for me. Too old to have ghosts, maybe a few shivery spots if you walked directly over a grave, but mostly the dead here would be inert, earth to earth, dust to dust, and all that. But now the dead called to me, even through my shielding.
Theoretically, no one could raise the long dead without a human sacrifi
ce. I probably held the record for oldest without one, but even two-hundred-plus years dead should have been beyond me. So why, lately, did the long dead whisper power across my skin?
I shivered, but it wasn’t from the early November cold. In fact, I was too warm in the leather jacket. Micah was suddenly at my side. He helped me slip the jacket off, whispering, “Are you all right?”
I nodded. I was all right, better than all right. Standing there in the power-kissed darkness was intoxicating. It was as if my skin were drinking magic from the very air. Which, with necromancy, wasn’t possible.
Micah asked Fox if we could put the jacket back in the car. I didn’t wait to hear what Fox said; I was already walking out into the dark. I absently trailed my fingers along the weathered tops of the tombstones as I walked between them.
Old cemeteries are crowded things. The ground was smooth and rough, but there was no longer much to differentiate ground from grave, so that I walked one step on the ground, then on the second step walked over a grave. You know the old saying Someone walked over my grave? This was like the reverse of that. I didn’t feel bad, or shaky, or scared. With every grave I walked over, I felt better, steadier, more confident. I took a little energy from every body I passed over, no matter how old. I could have drunk in the power of the dead underneath me and done . . . Done what?
The thought stopped me literally in my tracks. What I hadn’t realized was that Franklin was following me, close. I hadn’t even known he was there.
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