“Me?” She laughed incredulously. “That’s ridiculous. The Order knows they have five Guardians out there to deal with—six, now, with you—not to mention the Wardens that go with them. And you think they’d be worried about one little human whose greatest contribution to the fight against the Darkness is as a glorified volunteer travel agent? Are you high?”
He glanced at the floor with obvious confusion. “I am on the same level you are.”
“It’s an expression, rockhead. It means you’re clearly out of your mind. I am absolutely no threat to the nocturnis. I’m not a Warden—” She held up a hand to cut off his protest. “I have no magical abilities, let alone training, and my supposed ‘talent’ is about as useful as a bikini at the South Pole. What the hell could they possibly hope to gain by coming after me?”
“I do not know, but we cannot dismiss the possibility given the evidence at hand.”
“The ‘evidence’ being that I got lucky enough to be nearly killed three times since last night.” She scowled at him.
He glared right back. “The Order might be indiscriminately violent and evil, but they always have a plan. They would not come for you so many times unless they had something to gain by it.”
“I’m N-27 on their BeelzeBINGO cards?”
His fingers suddenly tightened their grip on her. “You should not make jokes about your safety.”
“Well, what the hell else am I supposed to do? Curl up in a ball and sob? That doesn’t help anyone, and all it does is make my face splotchy and my eyes swollen. No, thanks.”
Baen looked like he wanted to shake her to see if some sense would settle back into place, but even in that moment, she knew he would never do anything to hurt her. She didn’t know where that utter confidence came from, but it was there. She trusted the Guardian more than she had ever trusted anyone in her life. He might drive her crazy, but he would die before he let anyone hurt her, even himself.
“You make me insane,” he growled at her, staring down with his expression hard and his eyes blazing. “You scatter my thoughts and test the very bounds of my self-control. Why do you affect me this way?”
Suddenly, the urge to continue bickering with him slid away. She found herself trapped in the flames that flickered behind his dark eyes, caught up in the intensity of his regard. All at once, she no longer believed he was angry with her. This was not the gaze of an angry man. This man hungered for her.
The bottom dropped out of her stomach, and Ivy felt her heart begin to race like a thoroughbred just released from a starting gate—that giant leap from a standstill to a blazing gallop. Her breathing stuttered, her throat tightening until not even air could pass through. She went suddenly cold, then hot, her skin contracting and then flushing until her nipples stood at attention and it felt like her panties might burst into flames.
And all that happened even before his head began to dip toward her.
When it did, her brain shut down.
His mouth didn’t settle on hers; it seized, conquered, and pillaged. A sharp nip had her lips parting on a cry, and he swept inside to claim and explore. She felt like he’d planted a flag on her, but for some insane reason she didn’t even care. To hell with independence and being a modern woman—that had never made her feel like this.
Once the initial shock of the kiss wore off, Ivy found herself back in control of her own limbs, and she celebrated that return to voluntary movement by wrapping her arms around Baen’s shoulders and trying to climb him like a maple tree. He offered not a sound of protest and instead reached down to cup her ass in his hands and help by lifting her against him. She immediately hooked her legs around his hips and clung like a lemur.
A horny lemur.
He didn’t even grunt at taking her weight, like it didn’t even register with him. He just kept feasting on her, and damned if Ivy didn’t nibble right back. Their tongues tangled in the hottest kiss she had ever experienced, but all it seemed to do was stoke the fire inside her to another level. Plug her into something, and she felt pretty confident she could heat half of a major metropolitan area through the worst blizzard ever recorded. And that was without counting the heat she could feel pumping off her partner in this crazy experiment.
Baen pressed against her, his hands kneading her bottom in a way that turned her knees to jelly and made her thighs quiver. In their current position, her hips cradled him, making her keenly aware of the hard bulge behind the zipper of his jeans. It pressed up against her most sensitive flesh, and she couldn’t suppress the urge to rock against it until her clit throbbed in time to her heartbeat.
With a low rumble that vibrated in his chest and made her think of hungry predators, he took two steps forward and lowered her to the narrow single bed, pinning her to the soft mattress. She arched up against him, the feel of weight pressing into her making every nerve ending in her body come alive.
She wanted to howl with relief when he stroked his hand over her, but too soon the fabric of her clothing muffled the sensation. Never in her life had she wished harder for real magical abilities so that she could be rid of the pesky material with a quick snap of her fingers.
Baen took care of the problem.
Sliding his mouth from hers, he trailed kisses across her jaw and down her throat, nipping and laving the skin as he went. As soon as he reached the collar of her shirt, he made a frustrated sound and his hands came up to grip the fabric and rip it from her. Buttons pinged against hard surfaces, and the hissing sound of tearing cloth filled her head. Part of her said she should be angry at him for destroying her clothes, but that part got a quick beat-down from the other ninety-nine percent of her that didn’t care how they got naked, as long as it happened fast.
She reached out to help, shrugging out of her top and fumbling with the clasp of her bra. Too impatient to wait, Baen shifted a fingertip to reveal a handy, razor-sharp claw, and sliced through the fabric. Her breasts spilled into his hands, and he lifted them to his mouth. His tongue dragged over one stiff peak, rasping the sensitive skin until she moaned and clenched her fingers in his short, dark hair.
When he closed his lips around her and began to suck, her hips bucked up off the bed. It felt like a direct line had formed between nipple and clit, one pulsing in time with the other.
He pressed his weight into her, grinding his pelvis against her and giving her a taste of the pressure she needed. But the barrier of their jeans was driving her crazy. She needed to feel skin on skin, heat against heat. She needed him inside her, damn it.
She moved her hands down to yank at his shirt, dragging the hem from inside his waistband and yanking the fabric up over the top of his head. Unhappily, he let her nipple pop free and finished the job for her. He ripped the shirt off and tossed it aside, his eyes never leaving her beaded flesh.
Before he could dive back to work, she managed to flick open the button on his jeans and tug at his zipper. She couldn’t get it all the way down, though, not with the way his erection pressed against it, stretching the fabric to its limits.
Shoving at his shoulders, Ivy made her priorities clear. “Naked. Now.”
He looked for a second like he wanted to argue, but the logic of her demand must have sunk in. He had himself stripped and ready to go in seconds and reached out to help her wriggle out of her own jeans, as well.
When the clothes lay discarded and forgotten on the floor of the hotel room, Baen eased back into place above her, his bare skin rasping over hers and sending her nerve endings into overdrive.
Dear God, the things he did to her.
Ivy had never felt so aroused, so frantic or needy, in her entire life. She hadn’t even known this was possible. Every inch of her felt transformed into an erogenous zone. She rubbed the soles of her feet along his calves and felt her pussy clench. Her wrists rubbed against the back of his shoulders and tingled where they made contact. Even her scalp felt tight and sensitized, so that when he tangled one big hand in her hair, the tugging sensation made her whimper.
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She burned for him.
The phrase suddenly made sense in a way she had never imagined. Her body felt overheated, her skin tight. When his lips brushed against her, she shivered as if rubbed with an ice cube, or consumed by fever. She could feel her skin grow damp with perspiration and could see the sheen of it on him as well.
They really were hot for each other.
The thought almost made her giggle, but the sound caught in her throat when Baen shifted above her and began to slide his lips down her chest and over her quivering belly. Every one of her muscles from the waist down clenched in anticipation. The long strokes of his hands petting her from neck to knees did little to relax her. They just wound her tighter until she wondered if it was possible for a human being to snap like an overstretched rubber band.
Not the most romantic of notions, but she felt that tense and drawn.
She tried to yank him back up. Maybe another kiss would distract him enough to make him abandon the foreplay. She didn’t need it. All she needed was to feel Baen above her, around her, inside her. All she needed was him.
“Please.”
Her fingers clenched so tight around his shoulders she worried her nails might actually draw blood. He didn’t even seem to notice. He just shook his head, his lips still so close to her skin that they brushed against the top of her mound with every small movement.
“Soon,” was all he would tell her.
Soon would end up being too late if he gave her a heart attack. The possibility looked increasingly likely.
One last frantic attempt to pull him toward her only earned her a burning glance and a new form of torture. He grabbed her wrists and transferred them to one of his big hands, cuffing them in place against her stomach. Then he wedged her thighs open with his broad muscled shoulders and looked down at the core of her like a starving man surveying his first meal in weeks.
Ivy turned the color of poppies and began to shake like a leaf in a storm. She squeezed her eyes shut, unable to look at him looking at her.
She’d had her share of sexual encounters in her lifetime, but nothing—nothing—had ever felt this intimate. Nothing had ever even approached it. She felt absolutely vulnerable, naked in a way that had nothing to do with her lack of clothing. Yet at the same time, she had never felt so safe or so cared for. The dichotomy of it was enough to make her dizzy.
Or maybe that was just the mix of arousal and anticipation racing through her veins.
With her lids clenched shut she couldn’t see the way Baen’s eyes had gone completely inhuman, the whites hidden entirely behind flame-backed blackness, but she remembered her last glimpse of them. They’d been fixed on the puffy pink lips of her sex, on the moisture making them shine, and they had affected her as deeply as a physical touch.
But that didn’t mean that if he kept staring instead of stroking, she wouldn’t rip his wings off and use them to beat him unconscious.
A slow, quiet shift of air registered in her hearing, and it took her jumbled senses a moment to process it as a deep inhalation. He was drawing in her scent like she was warm apple pie, or bread fresh from the oven. Like she smelled delicious.
A puff of air from the subsequent exhale danced across her skin, making her jump. Once again that rumbling sound came to her, full of satisfaction and anticipation. This time, she could even feel it, and her thighs pressed against him in an involuntary embrace.
Unable to survive another moment of waiting, Ivy opened her mouth to encourage him again, but the only sound that emerged was a strangled shriek. Finally, mercifully, he had done with teasing and he lowered his head to press his mouth fully against her sex.
That’s when the world ended, or the sun exploded, or her mind shattered into a billion unidentifiable pieces. Something like that. He began to destroy her with hard strokes and teasing flicks and stinging nips to the very heart of her.
She couldn’t think, couldn’t speak, couldn’t catch her breath. She couldn’t even brace herself against the torment, because there was no way to anticipate what he would do next. One moment his lips closed around her clit and sucked hard until she nearly came, but as soon as she began to quiver and lift into the sensation, he would back off and nip at her labia, then soothe the sharp sting with a stroke of his wicked tongue.
Her heels pressed into his back and her wrists twisted in her frantic attempts to get free, but he held her ruthlessly in place. Honestly, she had no idea where she thought she was going to go, but the sensations he lavished on her were so intense, she didn’t think she could stand them.
He controlled her as easily as a fractious kitten, his grip implacable but always gentle. Her head filled with a dull, hoarse sawing sound, and it took ages for her to realize it was the sound of her own harsh breathing as she struggled for air in the face of the overwhelming pleasure. He was going to kill her.
She felt his shoulders roll as he shifted, then a heavy pressure at her entrance. At first, she felt a wave of relief that he was finally giving up and fucking her, but a long hard draw on her clit put paid to that idea. It also pushed her to the brink of a screaming orgasm. Then she felt something hard slide into her channel and realized it was his finger, long and thick and blunt, and curved just enough to scrape against the spongy spot on the wall of her pussy.
He might as well have lit a firecracker inside her.
She screamed and shattered, the direct stimulation to her G-spot combined with the continued pressure to her clit enough to shoot her into the stratosphere. She had never come so hard or so fast or so damned loudly in her life. What had he done to her?
Whatever it was, he clearly wasn’t finished. He lifted his head from between her legs and sent her a look so hot and so filled with intense male satisfaction that it barely registered that her eyes had flown open when she came. That didn’t mean she could focus on anything—he’d blinded her with pure ecstasy—but it was interesting to note.
“Again,” Baen growled, and Ivy shook her head.
“No. Please. I can’t.”
“Yes you can, little one. Give me your pleasure. Again.”
His finger began to pump inside her, scraping against her quivering inner walls with every stroke. She felt herself beginning to go under, but she fought against it. Right up until the moment he withdrew only to return with two fingers, filling and stretching her while his thumb brushed over her sensitive clit with clever strokes.
Shit. He so didn’t play fair.
Ivy’s head fell back against the pillow and her heels slid to the side to dig hard into the fluffy mattress. She needed to brace against something, because every stroke of his fingers sent her flying further away from reality. She wasn’t a multiorgasmic kind of girl, but Baen didn’t seem to care. The look on his face told her he’d make her come again if it killed him. Or her. Or poor, innocent passersby.
Damn it, she was not going down without a fight, and she had no intention of going down alone.
She saw him watching her, and she caught his gaze with her own, letting him see the need filling her. She arched her hips into his touch, no longer looking to escape, but mimicking the way she would move if it were his cock inside her instead of just his fingers. She undulated like a belly dancer, parting her lips to free the breathless little moans and whimpers that she had previously struggled to swallow. Let him see exactly what he was doing to her, and how much fun it would be if he let her do it right back to him.
Her strategy worked. She saw the first crack appear in his stony armor when he shifted his weight to the side, no longer pinning her lower body in place with the weight of his. Her writhing against his cock must be starting to make a real impression. That only made her more determined.
Wriggling and panting, she pressed her thigh against his length and made sure to rub skin against skin every time she moved. A muttered curse sent a wave of giddy triumph through her, but it didn’t last long. Fingers still working hard between her legs, Baen brought his mouth back into the battle, leaning forward t
o capture her nipple between his teeth before sucking it deep into his mouth.
Cheater. Unless he gave her back the use of her hands, that was so not fair.
She opened her mouth to protest, but found herself choking on a gasp as the clever, sneaky man pressed his thumb hard against her clit and simultaneously teased her entrance with the tip of a third finger. Just the thought of stretching to accommodate another digit had her sheath clenching hard and the pressure of that against his rough stroking sent her dissolving into another hard orgasm.
This time, he didn’t wait for her to beg for anything.
Thank the little baby Jesus.
His fingers slid from her still quivering pussy to grip her hard at the hip, pinning her in place. She blinked up at him, barely able to focus but easily hypnotized by the burning depths of his gaze. He held her there for a breathless eternity, his weight pinning her to the bed, before he finally
Finally
Entered her with a deep, heavy thrust.
Her body stretched around his invading length, the sting she had imagined setting every inch of her on fire. Nothing had ever made her feel so full, so challenged, so perfect. So incredibly, impossibly complete.
She hissed and squeezed him between her thighs. He braced his palm beside her head and began to move back, as if afraid he had hurt her. She would hurt him if he so much as tried to leave her now.
“Are you all right?” he asked, his voice tight and gruff.
“I’m dying,” she groaned, bucking her hips hard against his. “Now fuck me.”
He took her at her word.
Lowering his head and bracing his knees, he began to power into her, thrusting forcefully in and out of her tight heat. Every stroke felt like being plugged into an electrical outlet, and to her shock, Ivy felt her arousal building again.
It almost scared her. After coming twice, harder than she had thought possible, she had ached to feel Baen inside her, but she had never expected to come again. She’d figured no way, she was done. Apparently her Guardian and her libido had other ideas.
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