by Selena Scott
“You’re letting the warm air out,” he scowled at her, closing the shower door after her and taking the opportunity to crowd her under the falling water.
“Ah! It’s so cold!” Martine lunged forward and adjusted the handles.
“Jesus! You trying to burn my skin off?” He slapped her hands away from the knobs and re-adjusted.
A scuffle ensued. A very slippery scuffle that quickly evolved into mouth on mouth and hands in very interesting places.
“Mmm. Fuck. We need to slow down. You need to rest.”
Martine jerked away from him, offended by the suggestion. “Me? I am a demon hunter. I’m designed for physical exertion. I do not need to rest!”
He laughed and kissed the scowl off her pretty mouth. “I meant that your pussy needs to rest. You’ve never had sex before and we pretty much blew the roof off last night.”
To complement his words, he slipped his hand between her legs and gave her a friendly little rub. Martine had to admit that as good as it felt, there was a little pinching sting there as well.
Her lips pouted out. “Shoot. How long do I have to rest my… what did you call it?”
His eyes shot to hers. He wasn’t rubbing his hand against her anymore, but he couldn’t seem to bring himself to take his hand away either. He just sort of held her there. His other hand drew a line up her back, making her lean into him. His voice was gravelly when he spoke. “I called it your pussy.”
“Huh. Did you make that up?”
His eyes closed as he laughed. “No. That one’s been around for a few centuries. You’ll only have to rest it for a day or so.”
“Do I have to rest anything else?”
“What do you mean?” he asked, a hint of something like suspicion in his tone.
“I can use my mouth, can’t I?”
“Uh—FUCK.” Arturo blinked and she was on her knees, her tongue painting a circle around the head of his cock. His hands buried themselves in her wet hair and he attempted to focus his suddenly fuzzy vision.
Of course she would be eager and zealous and affectionate and joyful when she was licking him from stem to stern. Of course.
It only made sense considering they’d had four hundred years to be doing this and they’d only started when the demon was absolutely chomping at the bit to destroy them.
He pushed those thoughts aside and braced his back against the shower wall. He reached down and held her jaw, gently, and thrust into her wet heat. Her eyes flew to his and he could have sworn that if her mouth hadn’t been full of his cock, she would have smiled. He showed her how to swallow him down, but the plan backfired when his knees went abruptly weak and he started to slide down the wall. His hands in her hair, she followed him all the way down until he was sitting on the shower floor.
His orgasm took him by surprise, and so did the fact that she deftly swallowed all of it right down. He came in three hard spasms into her mouth and she took it all. He sagged to one side as she popped up off him, wiping her mouth and grinning. He tugged her into his lap and rocked his forehead from side to side along her collarbone.
“Anything,” he murmured. “I’ll give you anything.”
***
She hadn’t asked for anything more from him, but Arturo suddenly found himself in a tremendously giving mood. If she’d asked for the Titanic, he would have personally scuba-dived every piece of the wreckage up from the bottom of the ocean.
Four centuries of being an asshole and one good blow job had him turning into fucking Santa Claus.
He didn’t care. He was walking on mother effing sunshine that morning as he and Martine finally emerged to see six people smiling at them in the kitchen. The smiles ranged from smirks (Tre and Thea) to full-on grins (Caroline and Jack). Jean Luc just had his hand clamped over Celia’s mouth who seemed to be in the throes of some sort of giggle-fit. The only intelligible words that she managed to get out sounded something like ‘alien karate’.
Whatever. Arturo didn’t care. Let them stare. Let them laugh. Let them grin their shit-eating grins. He’d gotten laid by a goddess last night. And she was smiling up at him like he’d invented sunshine.
He poured a cup of coffee from the carafe and handed it to Martine before pouring himself one.
“Awwwwww,” Caroline crowed from across the room, her hands bundled under her chin, her heart in her eyes.
Still, Arturo ignored them all.
He got a cup for himself and rooted around in the fridge for some breakfast. The others had obviously already eaten, although he wished they had food they could shove in their stupid grinning mouths and perhaps somewhere else to put their prying eyes.
Arturo came up with a leftover bowl of fruit salad and two forks. Martine was already sitting at the table with the group and he frowned. He did not want to eat breakfast with this group of idiots.
“So,” Tre said.
Here we go, Arturo thought.
“You’re looking mighty relaxed this morning, Arturo. And Martine, you’re practically glowing.”
Arturo scowled and tossed a bowl down in front of Martine, started shoveling fruit salad into it.
“Actually,” Thea cut in, “I was thinking Martine looked a little… green.”
“You mean she looks sick?” Caroline asked, peering across the table. “She doesn’t look sick to me at all. Ohhhhhh. You mean green because of the light the two of them made when they had sex?”
Jean Luc snorted half his coffee up his nose.
“Oh,” Celia said, looking around at the group. “So, we’re just speaking candidly about that, then?”
“I mean, something blows all the lightbulbs in your bedroom ‘round midnight, I think you’re allowed to mull it over the next morning,” Jack said through a clenched jaw that looked suspiciously like it was holding in a grin.
“Blew all the lightbulbs?” Martine asked and then squinted her eyes at the lamp in the corner of the room, and then at all the recessed lighting in the kitchen ceiling. Her face went slack with delighted surprise. “Oh my God! Arturo! We blew all the lights out!”
“You don’t say,” he replied blandly, staring over his coffee cup at all the Nosy Nancies.
“Say, Martine,” Tre said, leaning forward across the table with an innocuously curious look on his face. “How does one blow all the lightbulbs out?”
“It’s not rocket science,” Arturo cut in. He lifted his hand, shot a ray of blue energy across the kitchen and blew out the single remaining lightbulb in the light fixture.
“Yeah.” Tre looked back and forth between Arturo’s hand and the smoking lightbulb. “Now I only have more questions.”
“Christ,” Arturo griped, grabbing Martine’s hand and standing up.
“Waitwaitwait!! We’ll be good,” Caroline said, shooting a death glare at Tre. “You don’t have to leave. We’re just all so happy for you two!”
“We’re leaving anyways,” Arturo told her. He liked Caroline, probably loved her, in fact. She was the first member of the crew that he’d been drawn to. She’d reminded him so much of Amelia, his first love. But for some reason, right now, her happiness grated on him.
They were all looking at him as if he and Martine were at the beginning of some holy journey together. Look at all of them, with their smug smiles and laced fingers, playing footsie with their lovers under the table.
The only thing they had to worry about was surviving this whole ordeal. After that, they could expect to live long lives characterized by true love and good sex and as many babies as any of them could ever want. He wished them a billion babies. He hoped each and every one of them found themselves up to their ears in babies.
He wished an infinite number of dirty diapers on all these happy hearts.
Didn’t they all realize that he and Martine were rocketing toward destruction? That he and Martine had only a number of days, or maybe even hours of happiness before they obliterated themselves to take down the demon?
“Where are we going?” Martine as
ked, drawing his attention back down to her wide green eyes.
Arturo looked down at her and immediately felt all his sharp feelings start to dissolve away.
She made him… not want to snap at people. How strange.
“We’re going to have some fun today.” He found himself stroking a hand over the glossy strawberry hair at her shoulder.
He glanced back up to see an assortment of shocked and gooey eyes staring at him, as if the sight of him being gentle and sweet was a revelation of some sort.
He rolled his eyes.
“What?”
“I take it you’re skiving out on shifter practice, then?” Tre asked.
“Yes,” Arturo answered immediately, an idea occurring to him. “And we’re taking the van.”
There were more questions, all of which Arturo ignored. He sent Martine up to gather anything she’d need to be gone for the day, and accepted a handful of cash that Jean Luc jammed into his hand.
“Don’t be an asshole to her,” Jean Luc grumbled.
***
The wind filled the van that Martine was certain Arturo was driving much too fast. He’d never driven a car before, but neither of them particularly cared about that. They were immortal after all, until their date with the demon, at least.
Martine, for her part, had never felt so human in her entire life. She wore her usual black leggings, but also one of Arturo’s new T-shirts, soft and roomy. Wind filled the sleeve and tickled her everywhere. Her feet were on the dash the way she’d seen Celia ride before. She’d always wanted to do that.
She wore her hair in a high ponytail and the ends danced in the wind. Arturo had a pocket full of cash, courtesy of Jean Luc, and she was using Tre’s phone to navigate to a destination Arturo didn’t want to tell her about.
They were playing at being human, at normalcy.
They drove for hours, stopping at a gas station for snacks and cheap, gaudy sunglasses. Arturo pulled over one more time and purchased both of them two bathing suits. Martine’s was black, because he knew her. His was also black, because he knew himself as well.
They arrived at the Great Salt Lake, hungry and wind whipped. Martine couldn’t remember a time she’d been so happy in all her life. She allowed Arturo to feed her a ham sandwich and half a bottle of Gatorade while she delighted in the sunscreen-applying, big-hat-wearing, potato-chip-eating, laughing, shouting, radio-playing tourists who swarmed the parking lot.
After changing into her swimsuit in the front seat of the van, Arturo’s eyes on her the entire time, she stood perfectly still while Arturo rubbed sunscreen onto every single part of her skin. She did the same for him, and marveled at his silence. She might have billed him as a complainer previous to this day. But for the first time since he’d sacrificed himself to the demon, she noted that he seemed perfectly content. Happy, even, to be where he was. He squinted out at the lake, made a chuff of surprise as the salt that was caked on the shore crumbled and poked at his bare feet.
And both of them sighed in happy surprise when the water floated them easily enough that they could completely relax their bodies.
“This is incredible for me,” he told her, their shoulders gently pressing together as they floated next to one another. “But then again, I can’t fly.”
“This is totally different than flying. Flying is exhilarating. But it’s also work. I’m exhausted after a day spent in the air. This is primo relaxation.”
Rolling in the water, she turned to look at him.
“Plus,” she informed him, “when I’m flying, I’m alone. Completely alone. Watching everything at a distance.”
“You’re not alone right now.”
“No. I’m not.”
They splashed and swam in the water until the sun was high enough in the sky that they needed shade at all costs. Not wanting to be away from the group when night fell, they piled back in the car. Martine let her hair dry in the warm wind, her hand clasped with Arturo’s as he drove.
When they got home, the two of them showered and gratefully fell onto their dinners that Celia had made.
“Movie night?” Arturo asked an astonished group of people after he’d helped clear away dishes.
“I’m sorry,” Thea said, pretending to test her hearing with her finger. “Did I just hear you request a movie night?”
“Martine likes them,” he said with a shrug.
Which was how they all found themselves curled up and watching some sports movie about a team with unlikely odds.
“I changed all the lightbulbs,” Jean Luc quietly informed Arturo after the movie ended and the couples were making their ways back to bed. “So try to keep a lid on things tonight.”
“I refuse to promise that,” Arturo replied, taking a sleepy Martine by the hand and striding from the room.
The fatigue of the long day had caught up to them, though, as he closed the bedroom door behind him.
He turned to see Martine stripping out of her clothes with a lazy grace, her eyes focused on some memory.
“That was the best day of my entire existence.”
“I’m glad,” he said hoarsely, watching as more and more of her skin was exposed with each strip of clothing she removed.
He was vaguely aware of getting naked himself. They slipped into bed from opposite sides and immediately met in the middle of the mattress, their tired arms twining around one another.
Their mouths met, hot and open. For as lazily tired as their bodies were, there was an intensity in their touch. They were both torn between gripping tight and letting their hands wander.
Her tongue pressed against his, tracing and searching out the root of his flavor. She had never tasted anything like his mouth. There was something so human about it. He was such a complicated man. Filled with affection and heat and pain and longing. Every time his tongue touched hers, Martine was certain she was healing him and tearing him in two all at once.
She loved it.
She would never want to hurt him, of course, but she accepted the fact that all things good were also layered.
Nothing was ever one thing.
Kissing Arturo meant saying goodbye to him someday, maybe soon. And it was there, present in their kiss, an impending goodbye. It lent an urgency to the twisting path her tongue made against his. But still, they kissed slowly, thoroughly, unwilling to gloss over even a second of the experience.
She ended up with a leg sliding over his hip and his fingers gripping her calf, his other hand cradling her skull as he held her mouth to his.
Martine pulled back and sucked wind hard. “Do I still need to rest?”
She hadn’t realized that one of her hands was clawing into his hip, the other had his jaw in a death grip.
“I better test and see.”
He slid down her body, kissing her with his open mouth all the way down. He parted her legs and swirled his tongue through her heat. Martine was instantly tight with pleasure, gasping and begging, but Arturo truly was making sure she wasn’t too sore from last night’s adventures. He never wanted to hurt her, and certainly not in the pursuit of pleasure. He suckled at her, encouraged when she gasped his name and spread her legs further, her hands tightening in his hair.
“Please, I need you. The way we were last night. I need more. Please, I need more.”
Well, he’d be damned if she was empty and wanting. He’d be damned if he deprived her. He slid back up her body and to both of their surprise, he flipped her to her side, sliding in behind her.
Arturo draped her leg over his thigh and slowly pushed himself inside, spooning her. She was doing that liquid bronze thing again, tight and melting all at once, her gold spread over her like chocolate sauce over an ice cream cone. He pumped lazily into her, belying the incredible intensity of feeling he kept for her in his chest.
It was a different kind of feeling in this position. There was a sort of blunt possession, the pleasure came from deep inside her, from being completely invaded by someone who was taking her apart pie
ce by piece. She reveled in the freedom of it. The strange intimacy of not being able to see the man who was currently inside her. She felt his breath on the back of her neck, his teeth scraping at her hairline.
Arturo intentionally brought his energy to the tips of his fingers before he slid them between Martine’s legs, gently circling her clit.
Her body jolted, her toes curling, her ass jamming into him, her fingers clawing the bed.
“Good?” he asked her breathlessly, stilling his hips until he knew for sure she’d liked that.
“More. Forever. God. More.”
He grinned into her shoulder and did it again and again, prolonging it as long as he could. Their version of forever.
Her legs swam in the sheets, her eyes wide and unseeing. She grabbed a hank of his hair, bore down and clamped hard around his cock. He hadn’t planned on coming so soon, but there was no denying it. She dragged him full body over the edge and into her.
His teeth clamped her shoulder and he scream-groaned his pleasure into every place he touched her.
Martine felt his energy jolt right through her and she reveled in it. In those moments, there was no line between them. Their energy mixed and they couldn’t hide from one another, or the world, or themselves.
It was a perfectly honest moment of pleasure. It was terrifying and wonderful and she would never have wanted it to be simpler.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“Where did you buy that?” Arturo asked Jean Luc two days later.
Jean Luc followed Arturo’s pointing finger across the field to where Celia was unloading groceries from the back of the van.
“Celia?” Jean Luc asked in confusion. “I didn’t buy her. I met her. You were there.”
“No,” Arturo laughed, surprising both of them. “Not the woman. The ring on her finger.”
Jean Luc’s confusion seemed to clear and then immediately cloud. “At a jewelry store?”
“Jewelry store…” Arturo mused, one hand on his chin. He started to stride toward the house but Jean Luc grabbed his arm.