He subsided, leaning on his braced arms so his head was beneath one of the showerheads, directly in line with the pounding spray, and closed his eyes.
The simple act of trust fisted an ache beneath her heart. And when a shudder ran through him at the first slide of her slickened hands along the line of the claw scars, it tightened that ache even further. How long had it been since he’d been touched for the sake of touching, not as part of a transaction, but simply because the other person wanted to?
Twenty years, logic said. And for a change there was no dissenting vote. He had been in this realm for almost as long as her mother had been gone, and he had been essentially alone that entire time, forced to hide his true nature from all but Candida, who had been a loner in her own right.
Reda’s heart ached as she laved his broad shoulders and arms, the back of his neck and then down again to the tight muscles of his buttocks, which clenched rhythmically as she worked on him, and then as she moved lower to his thighs and calves.
He was breathing fast, taking great, deep drafts of air that went off-rhythm when she angled one of the nozzles to rinse him, then slicked her hands down his body once more to chase the suds away.
Done with the back of him, she moved around to his front again, thinking to repeat the process, maybe steal a kiss. But he straightened away from the wall, catching her against him with one hand on her lower back, the other at her nape. His eyes, when he looked down at her, were deep and dark with emotion. “Gods. Reda.” Dropping his head to press his forehead to hers, he inhaled as if to say something, but then let out a sigh and whispered simply, “Thank you.”
They flowed into the kiss as naturally as breathing, and this time there wasn’t just heat and desire; there was a new give-and-take, a sense that he wasn’t solely trying to give her pleasure, he was taking some for himself, as well. One kiss turned to the next and the next, and then he was fumbling with the shower controls to turn off the water and bring up a strange, soft light that surrounded them on all sides.
“What— Oh!” A tingle ran over her skin from head to toe. When it was gone, she was dry. Even her hair was merely damp, and the usually unruly waves were tame and soft to the touch. “Magic,” she whispered, her voice catching on the word.
“The wolfyn have some redeeming qualities,” he said huskily, and scooped her up in his arms, so she was cradled against his chest.
She squeaked and struggled a little, but then subsided to nibble her way up his neck as he carried her into the main room. And she gave another small, “Oh,” at the sight of thick blankets piled on the bed and a fire in the hearth. The room was warm and suddenly cheery, and the sight made her throat tighten, because he had done this for her. Even in the heat of things, he had wanted her to be comfortable.
She swallowed past the lump of emotion. “You’re a prince.”
“I was, once.”
Hating the hollowness in his voice, she said, “You will be again. When we—”
He kissed her, cutting her off. Then, still kissing her, he lowered them both to the wide mattress, so she lay beneath him with her legs alongside his, his thighs between hers and the long length of his erection pressing against her stomach, pulsing with an inner beat that resonated deep within her.
Desire washed through her like a friend she’d only just met, feeling so much sharper and more important than ever before, building higher and higher still as they kissed and he notched one thigh between hers, creating intimate pressure as he stroked a hand from her rib cage to her knee and back again in a feather-soft caress that seared her skin and made her want to beg.
New wetness gathered, new aches sprang to life, as he shaped her, touched her, but also arched into her touch, and paused to absorb the sensations as she licked his throat, then pushed on his shoulders to roll him onto his back so she could move lower, then lower still.
“Wait, Reda. I— Ahh.” He gave a full-body shudder at the first touch of her tongue along the distended vein on the underside of his shaft. “Gods.”
He made a move to touch her, but then she took another stroke with her tongue, a long lap from base to tip, and he fisted his hands in the soft, heavy bedding instead, then groaned when she did it again, finding the places where the textures changed and he was particularly sensitive. Where in the past she had been take it or leave it on oral sex, now she reveled in it, storing up his responses and glorying in the way he was submitting to her.
Soon his body was strung tight, his hands working in the bedding, his heavy length jerking in her mouth in movements that spurred new heat inside her.
He said her name, caught her hand, urged her up his body, and then, when they were chest to chest, rolled them so he was in charge once more, pressing her into the bedding with his good, solid weight. Both of their bodies were damp with excitement, slippery with passion, and as he settled between her thighs, his slick, hard length slid naturally into position, poised for entry.
Reda shifted against him, teasing them both with the slide of his blunt head through her slick folds. But then she stiffened. “Wait,” she said, almost too late remembering that this might not be her reality, but it wasn’t a dream, either. “Do we need something?”
He struggled to focus through eyes gone nearly glassy. “Something?”
“Protection? For, um, diseases and other things.” Please don’t make me explain this.
“Oh.” His expression cleared, turned rueful and maybe a touch sad. “No diseases for my kind, to give or get. As for the ‘other things,’ because of the way my mindspeak works, I must feed from my mate’s throat before a child can be made.” She wanted to ask, but didn’t. It must have shown in her eyes, though, because he shook his head slightly. “No. Never.”
Guilty at the surge of a relief she had no right to feel, she reached up to soothe the hollow echo in his voice with a kiss that started soft and almost drowsy, and shifted something inside her. The softness gained an edge, the drowsiness fled to a demand and the guilt turned to greed, and the desire not just to have him inside her, but to have him, to belong to him and him to her.
But knowing that was impossible, she broke the kiss, pressed her wet cheek to the faint rasp of stubble along his jaw and whispered, “Now. Please, now.”
She closed her eyes, shutting out the daylight, the strange surroundings and the danger beyond, determined to be there, in that moment, with him. Then he growled low in his throat, and thrust home. And as he slid into her—stretching her, filling her and bringing a surge of emotion that she didn’t dare acknowledge—she didn’t need to shut out the larger world, because he did it for her. The feel of him, the perfection of the fit, eclipsed everything else in that moment.
Her mouth went round in a voiceless O of pleasure. She dug her fingers into the heavy muscles of his shoulders as he rose above her, poised there for a breathless second of anticipation…and then began to move.
It was gentle at first, the tempo slow, as if he, too, wanted to store up each individual sensation. She rocked with him naturally, the moves more instinct than volition because she wasn’t thinking, wasn’t planning; she was experiencing. She reveled in the liquid surge of his body against hers, the fullness between her legs, the way the pleasure ramped with each thrust, and the vibration of his groan as her hands dragged to his hips, dug in and urged him on.
As things sped up, there was no difference between vampire or human anymore, or between a fairy-tale prince and a disgraced cop; there were only two lost souls filling in the empty spaces for each other, no longer alone. At least for now.
Needs piled atop greed within her as the pleasure found a purchase, took root and began to grow. And where before her orgasm had been sharp and brilliant, all inner fireworks and satisfying heat, the tension that gripped her this time was deeper and more consuming, tightening her inner muscles, overtaking her senses and suddenly making the moment far more important than it was supposed to be.
This is it, her body seemed to be saying. This is what you�
�ve been waiting for.
Turning away from that danger, she buried her face against his neck and moved beneath him. The move wrung a groan from him, then a reverent whisper of, “Reda.”
Her name had never sounded like magic before.
Willing away the tears that prickled her eyes, she kissed his throat openmouthed as he rode her, bucked against her and drove the coiling pleasure higher and higher still.
She tasted the faint salty tang of his skin, felt the throb of his pulse against her lips. It pounded in tempo with him, with the pulse of needs that drew tighter within her with each thrust, where he pressed into her inside and out, and hit that spot there, oh, yes, there.
From deep within her came the urge to bite down, to take his essence within her and bind them together. Ignoring the faint itch of disquiet, she grazed her teeth along the vein that angled along the side of his throat, nipped lightly.
He hissed, his fingers suddenly digging into her as he slammed home, setting off new sensations that carried a raw power that tempted her to shy away.
She felt him struggle for control, felt herself hesitate, tempted to duck the intensity and the possibilities. Then, because she refused to be a coward with him, right now in this moment, she found his vein again. And bit down hard. She didn’t draw blood, but it was a near thing.
The last remnants of Dayn’s control snapped almost audibly. He flung back his head and then bowed into her, wrapping his arms around her to anchor her body against his thrusts, which rocketed up in tempo and swing, driving them both onward.
His hold was powerful, inexorable, and Reda reveled in it. She loved his strength and intensity, loved feeling small, feminine and overwhelmed—at least here, with him. She loved the way he pressed his jaw to her temple, a kiss to her brow and whispered her name as both their bodies went tight and tense, and the pleasure gathered inside her, waiting, waiting….
He turned his head, softly grazed the side of her throat with a wickedly sharp canine, and whispered her name. Fear and pleasure were suddenly the same, sharp and brilliant, and she gasped and came for him.
Pleasure lashed through her, as keen and sharp as a sword that cut through the loneliness and apprehension and left behind strength and wonder. She arched beneath him, breath sobbing, mouth shaping his name as the waves kept coming. Then he locked himself against her, hips working as he groaned long and low in a mix of words—her name, praise, pleas—and emptied himself into her.
She imagined she felt heat warmer than her own blooming inside, caressed by her inner muscles as they pulsed, milking him of his seed. And she, who had always had a slow-ticking biological clock if at all, felt a small, wistful wish that this one could have counted that way, that they could truly be mated.
And for a change, logic and reason didn’t have a damn thing to say.
He stayed locked against her while the pleasure leveled off and then faded, and the world around them started to come back into focus. She heard the hiss-pop of the fire, saw the brightness of the sunny day outside through her closed lids and felt the shift of the mattress when he levered up onto his elbows, taking his weight off her.
Though she would have liked to linger a moment more, she opened her eyes and met his emerald gaze. And for the first time since meeting him—and she didn’t for a second want to count the hours, considering what had just passed between them—his expression was open and unshadowed. It made him look younger and a little naughty, bringing to mind the kind of man who would go for a gallop to blow off some steam, little knowing that the morning would change his life forever.
She, too, felt changed, but she didn’t want to look at it too closely. Not now. Maybe not ever.
He cleared his throat. “I, uh, feel like I should say something. But I haven’t a clue what.”
A tension she hadn’t even been aware of melted away, easing her neck and shoulders. “Me, too, and me, neither. So how about we say ‘thank you’ and set it aside for now?”
His face softened. “Then I thank you, dear sweet Reda, for teaching me about showers, for taking me into your bed, for touching me and for sharing your lovely, lovely body with me.”
Her heart shuddered in her chest, her eyes threatened to fill, her throat to lock, and she knew she didn’t dare say anything now; that if she did, she would make an idiot out of herself and make them both supremely uncomfortable. So, although it made her the coward, she just nodded jerkily and reached up to kiss his cheek.
Dayn, bless his noble heart, seemed to understand. He brushed his fingers over her cheeks as if brushing away the tears she hadn’t let herself shed, then said, “Stay here and see if you can sleep. I’m going to double-check the wards.”
She nodded, feeling a blush form at the strange intimacy of the moment, with the two of them strangers except in their dreams. He rose from the bed and padded, gloriously naked, to the bathroom, where he pulled on his pants and boots, then threw on his shirt without buttoning it. When he came back over to her, he had one of his short swords tucked in his belt.
That shouldn’t have made him even more appealing than before. She was a modern woman, an evolved human being. But apparently that modern, evolved woman liked men with swords.
Not men, she thought, just Dayn. And that wasn’t logic, reason or practicality talking. It was a fact. And if that put her on the fast track to heartache, maybe that wasn’t the worst thing that could happen to her. Because at least she wouldn’t be sleepwalking through life anymore.
He snagged one of the waterskins as he returned to the main room, and crossed to the bed and offered it to her first. “Thirsty?”
“Parched.” The act of accepting water from him shouldn’t have felt profound, just as the satisfied look in his eyes as he watched her drink shouldn’t have kindled new sparks of arousal. Flustered, she handed it back. “Thank you.”
“Rest. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
Nodding, she lay back and curled onto her side with her back to the fire. With her eyes closed, the noises around her seemed amplified. She tracked Dayn’s movements by the thud of his boots, the close of the door at his back, the crunch of gravel outside and the annoyed call of a bird disturbed by his circuit of the cabin.
He returned within a few minutes, as promised, and his clothing rustled and boots thudded as he stripped back down before sliding into the bed with her. He curled around her, his front to her back, and folded their hands together over her heart.
And as she drifted off to sleep with his warmth surrounding her, she found herself doubly grateful that he wasn’t a wolfyn. Because if he was, she would surely be enthralled.
DAYN AWOKE NEAR NOON, when his internal clock warned that they didn’t dare rest much longer, in case their pursuers were still on the road.
In her sleep, Reda had turned toward him. Now, she was nestled close to his side, her head pillowed on the arm he had curled around her. Her breath was warm on his skin, tightening his nipples and sending tendrils of reaction lower down in his body. But those physical responses were tiny trickles compared to the deep wellspring of emotion that even now threatened to fill him up and spill over.
Affection, gratitude, relief, disquiet—there was all of that and more, a complicated mix that said he probably shouldn’t have made love with her, and definitely not as intensely as things had wound up getting…but at the same time he couldn’t regret the decision, or his eventual loss of control.
They had well and thoroughly loved each other with no pretenses, no expectations and the knowledge that they would go their separate ways at the arch, taking with them only good memories. And if that thought brought a twinge, he ignored it and focused on how damn good he felt suddenly—refreshed and recharged, and ready to take on the world.
Or to take on a pissed-off pack and a countdown to the night after tomorrow—the fourth night—as the case might be.
At that sobering reminder, he touched her shoulder. “Come, my sleeping beauty. It’s time to waken.”
He halfway
expected her to jolt awake and panic at finding them in bed together. As responsive and exciting as his sweet Reda had been, he doubted she’d ever before taken a lover mere hours after meeting him, doubted she was accustomed to waking in a near-stranger’s arms. Their relationship, though, had perforce been compressed, accelerated.
She must have been closer to waking than he had thought, though, because she didn’t gasp or jump away from him. Instead, she smiled, eyes still closed, and said, “If I’m Sleeping Beauty, then my Prince Charming should wake me with a kiss.”
“You think I’m charming, then?” Without waiting for an answer, he leaned in and touched his lips to hers, a chaste press at first, then going deeper when her lips softened and parted beneath his.
Murmuring, she shifted closer to him and slid her arms around his neck, capturing him against her. The move tugged at him, reaching inside and filling a place he hadn’t even known was empty. Fierce joy raced through him as he moved over her, into her, pressing her into the mattress as he kissed her thoroughly, his body awakening to the reality of a lover, his lover.
Her soft moan made him want to pull her up and dance her in a mad whirl around the cabin; the gentle tug of her fingers in his hair made him want to sing at the top of his lungs, though he couldn’t hold a tune; and the feeling of her beneath him, her thighs cradling him as he swelled and hardened almost instantly despite having come inside her only a few hours before made him want to race out into the forest to hunt the most dangerous foe, solely so he could bring her a talisman of the kill. Though from what he’d heard, humans could be squeamish about such things. So maybe he would pick her wildflowers instead.
The sheer ridiculousness of it was suddenly very appealing. As was the thought of slipping inside her once more and rocking them both to oblivion. He could feel the slick wetness of her cleft against him and the excited race of her pulse beneath her soft, feminine skin. And although they needed to leave the cabin, he was dying to lose himself in her, with her.
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