Ice-Cold Lover

by Mel Teshco

  From close behind, too close for her peace of mind, he asked, “Are you okay?” His husky voice was like warm honey drizzled over her anesthetized nerves, bringing them back to life.

  “I’m fine.” She turned and snared the glass he proffered, careful not to make contact. She would not fall victim to a desire to be touched. She was certain she wouldn’t want him to stop at just brushing against her fingers! Hell, she wanted his hands all over her, stroking and caressing.

  But she’d wither and die before allowing anybody—this man in particular—to feel or see her wings. It’d shatter her spirit, having to watch his face contort with shock, his stare glaze with disgust. A man like Pascal, who’d dated and bedded the crème de la crème of beautiful women…well, she wouldn’t need a psychology degree to analyze his reaction.

  In truth, her self-image phobia was nothing short of trivial when compared to what she and her dad lived with every day—the ever-present danger of being captured and studied, caged like wild animals.

  Quite simply, no one could ever be allowed to discover her secret.

  He raised his glass and took a swallow, ever-watchful. “My god, you really don’t like to be touched, do you?”

  “Do you have a problem with that?” she countered, all too ready to find an excuse to leave, all too ready to find a reason to stay.

  “Yes. As a matter of fact, I do.” His eyes flashed. “But I’m a patient man. I can bide my time.”

  She didn’t want to think about the implications he’d voiced. Things wouldn’t be any different after tonight, no matter how much either of them might wish otherwise. “No,” she whispered, throat tight. “Tonight is all we’ll ever have.”

  Chapter Two

  “That’s where you’re wrong,” Pascal refuted, setting his glass onto an occasional table with a sharp clack before striding toward her.

  Resisting the urge to backpedal, she instead lifted her drink and drained it dry. When he took away her empty glass, his fingers brushed hers, sending a scalding flood of heat through her.

  “One night won’t be enough,” he murmured huskily, “for either of us.”

  Heaven help her, she didn’t have the strength to voice further objection, didn’t have the willpower to pretend to resist the man she wanted more than any man ever before. And when he deliberately cupped her face with gentle hands—as though dealing with the finest piece of porcelain—his mouth dropping to cover hers, she was powerless, mesmerized.

  She gasped, her wings twitching uselessly beneath their restraint. He kissed her with a tender mastery that was exquisite. His tongue slid past her lips and twined with hers, sending a jolt of heat down her spine before ricocheting straight between her thighs and hardening her nipples into sharp buds.

  He drew back, his amber eyes searching her face. “I’d bet my life that you’re anything but an ice queen.”

  Anger spiked alongside desire, pushing her straight into self-protect mode. “Is that what this is all about? A bet? A quest to break down my defenses?”

  His head reared back farther, his stare narrowing. She gritted her teeth. Had she hit too close to the truth?

  “Some bets are best left at the gaming tables,” he said. “I wish only to know the woman in my arms. Inside and out.”

  Goose bumps raced over her suddenly chilled skin. She could never grant him that wish. “Then you’ll be sadly disappointed.”

  “I doubt that very much.”

  His throaty voice made her breasts ache and she throbbed in places only he could make better. She might be human in almost every way, but not for the first time, she had to wonder if her sexual needs weren’t all gargoyle.

  Of course her cold persona was a sham. But why, when she’d fucked male escorts who were the best and most learned in the sex industry, had she been left frustrated and incomplete, as if she were an unlit firecracker primed to explode? Oh, she’d enjoyed the sex, the act of joining, but after the residual effects of pleasure had dulled, she’d become an empty shell. A husk.

  No longer. She knew somehow that she was on the cusp of detonation. Every fiber of her being acknowledged that tonight, Pascal would light that fuse.

  “There’s only one way to find out,” she whispered.

  A pulse jerked to life at the side of his jaw. “No small talk, no getting to know each other first?”

  She guessed it wasn’t often someone blindsided him. “No.” Her head tilted, her eyelids sweeping half-mast as she studied his sensual lower lip, his strong jaw with its shadowed beginnings of stubble. “I’d prefer we skip the mental foreplay and cut straight to the chase.”

  He laughed, the rich sound warming her senses, fanning the flames of her need. His arms spread outward. “Then I’m all yours.”

  This time it was she who came to him, the sizzle of electricity between them palpable even before she slid her hands inside his warm jacket. She drew it over his broad shoulders, down his lean, muscled arms while all the time his gaze snared hers.

  “I burn to hold you, to feel you,” he said hoarsely.

  Oh, I burn for that too. “Don’t…don’t say anything more,” she said, gulping back a sudden, insane weakness to voice consent. Instead, she forced her eyes away from his and focused on undoing each button on his shirt, baring his chest with its crisp sprinkling of dark hairs that arrowed to his navel, his flat belly.

  She parted his shirt, pressing kisses to his golden skin that tasted faintly of spice and delicious, erotic male. She flicked her tongue over his hard nipples. He groaned and said throatily, “You don’t play fair.”

  She drew back, catching his stare again as she helped him shrug out of his shirt. “All’s fair in love and war.”

  “When has either one ever been fair?” he rasped, his chest flaring in and out as though he’d run an exhilarating race and won, his toned torso looking every inch as though he really was an athlete.

  “You tell me?” she said, crouching to undo the clasp on the waistband of his tailored pants. As the fastener parted, she took hold of his zipper and pulled it downward ever so slowly.

  His breath caught. “I’ve never been in love,” he managed to voice. “But I’ve seen the results. Not pretty.”

  “You’ve clearly never met my parents.”

  He toed off his boots. “A love match, then?”

  “Yes.” Soul mates.

  “So you’re looking for the same?”

  Once, such a question would have caused her to die a little inside. Now she’d almost come to accept the fact she’d never find great love. Not in this lifetime. Not with her wings. “No.” She shook her head. “No. Definitely not.”

  When she tugged his pants down his muscular thighs and calves, it was done with a little more force than necessary. But anger gave way to another rousing swell of desire when her eyes lined up directly with the bulge of his erection barely contained by his jocks.

  Oh, mercy.

  “Why not?” he asked, stepping out of one pants leg and then the other before peeling off his socks.

  She swallowed past a suddenly parched throat. It appeared he’d left her to release his cock from his underwear. She looked up. “Would you ask me that if I were a man?”

  He grinned. “I wouldn’t be in this position if you were, so I guess we’ll never know.”

  “I guess not.”

  She leaned forward, dipped her tongue into his navel. And his moan edged into a ragged gasp when she licked around its outer rim.

  As the faint suggestion of salt and musky male hit her taste buds, she suddenly wanted to sample his cock, suck the head and shaft into her mouth, over her tongue, down her throat.

  She straightened, realizing she too was breathing heavily. Without thought, she placed one hand in his, allowing him to draw her beside him into his spacious bedroom, toward his huge four-poster bed draped in a patterned spread of red and black.

  Talking seemed unnecessary. He turned to her. But before his hands could tug her close and outline her waist, her back…
her wings, she instructed hoarsely, “Lie down.”

  A smile played on his lips as he dropped his hands to his sides and moved onto the bed. He stretched out. God, she found it so sexy when a male didn’t try to dominate, when he was happy to succumb, even just for a little while.

  She only wished she too could be so at ease.

  She swallowed yet again, her throat drying further at the sight of Pascal on the bed. Even in his underwear he was sinfully sexy, and though it was perverse to want to see his flesh while not granting him the same satisfaction in return, right then she didn’t much care.

  He watched her intently, his voice a rasp as he murmured, “Just for the record, I’m not averse to the idea of finding what your parents had. True love definitely has its appeal.”

  She smiled, perhaps a little too brightly, while inside she ached with a longing she’d genuinely started to believe was long suppressed. Her vision blurred at the edges, tears threatening to spill free.

  Pascal frowned. “I didn’t mean to—”

  She shook her head, cutting off his apology before things became too personal. Awkward. She moved closer to the side of the bed, trailing her fingertips just above the waistband of his jocks.

  His cock jerked, passion instantly reasserted by her touch. He groaned when her fingers caught hold of his jocks and slowly pulled them down, exposing the bead of pre-cum oozing from the slitted helmet of his cock, the broad shaft roped with veins. He was long and hard, a good eight inches of silky smooth cock with coarse sprigs of hair surrounding its base.

  She knelt on the bed and shuffled forward. With unsteady hands she tugged his jocks free, tossing them aside and feeling decidedly wet between her thighs. “Don’t move,” she instructed hoarsely.

  With more speed than grace, she climbed off the bed and spun away. Stepping inside his huge walk-in closet and past rows of tailored jackets and shirts, she found innumerable neckties draped over custom racks. Plucking four at random, she retraced her steps.

  His fingers were interlaced behind his head in a casual pose but his thick, hard cock looked anything but relaxed. She squeezed her thighs together, demanding huskily, “Spread your legs.”

  He arched a brow but she detected the glint in his eyes as he drawled, “Kink, on our first date?”

  “I’m sure you’ve participated in a spot of bondage before.”

  “Yes, many times. Just not with an ice queen.”

  As she trussed his ankles to first one post and then the other, he deliberately and shamelessly rocked his hips, flaunting the motion of the sexual act with his ever-thickening cock. Need coiled inside her belly and made her panties wetter still. She gave the last knot at his ankle an extra tug.

  He wiggled a little, this time seemingly to get more comfortable. He swept a long look at her deft hands. “You’re well practiced.”

  It wasn’t a question.

  As she tethered his wrists she tried hard not to think about the satiny skin on the underside of his arm, the slightly calloused hardness of his palms, the way his warm flesh under hers generated her own all-over heat flush. She looked up, her eyes level with his straining erection. Oh, stars. She jerked her head up another few degrees and focused on his face. “Do my tying skills bother you?” she asked huskily.

  “Baby, it excites me.” He jerked his head toward his cock. “Arouses me.” His chuckle edged into a groan. “I’m about ready to come and you’re not even undressed yet.”

  Need flared in her belly and arrowed like a homing missile straight to her cunt. Her hands trembled as she did a final check of his bonds before she turned away—fled?—on heels that sank into luxurious Berber carpet. She crossed the room in search of a light switch, finding one near a double set of closed blinds.

  “Wait,” he called out hoarsely.

  She stilled, but didn’t turn to view the man lying spread-eagle on his own bed. It was very nearly orgasmic to see this powerful man trussed up, making him vulnerable and oh so horny. But right now she needed all her wits. It would gain her nothing to collapse in a drooling, panting heap beside his bound and naked body.

  “Don’t turn the lights out,” he said. “I want to see—”

  “No.” Something jagged coursed through her, a painful yearning laced with a bitterness that even now, alongside so much desire, had the ability to deeply wound. “You won’t see me naked.”

  Not ever.

  A bedpost creaked. “Celeste. Look at me.”

  His gentle voice leached a stupid tear from one eye. She swiped it away, angry at herself, angrier at him. She didn’t need his sympathy. She swung to face him.

  “I only wish to see you with your hair down.”

  She closed her eyes. “Oh.”

  She always wore her hair up. It was so very long, probably too long, but with her wings so hideously ugly, the bountiful tresses were the one vanity she kept just for herself.

  She dragged her eyelids apart, then took hold of the diamond-edged slide beneath her coiled hair and pulled it free. Shaking her head, she felt the weight of her hair slither just below her waist, one silver-blonde lock falling over her brow, past her chin and dipping over one of her breasts.

  “Fuck me,” he breathed. “You’re gorgeous.”

  His words, his gleaming stare, caused her blood to run hot. She swallowed, then reached behind her, flicking the switch and plunging the room into darkness. “Beauty is only skin deep,” she croaked, conversely acknowledging the uplifting waves of pleasure that filled her to overflowing as she stalked back to his bed.

  She could see little more than shapes and outlines—his bed and side tables, the en suite door and, as her eyes adjusted, his vague, shadowy silhouette. His ragged breaths were startlingly loud, as was the whispered rasp of the coverlet beneath his restless body, the chafe of his ties along the bedposts.

  She shivered with need and her wings rippled in response. Damn. She was so wet for him.

  The bed creaked as he shifted again and he finally murmured, “So I’ve been told. But is it so wrong for a man to appreciate a beautiful woman’s body in all its natural glory?”

  No, not if that woman truly was beautiful all over, normal. “I guess it depends how confident that woman is about her body…about her lover.”

  Let him dwell on that!

  She climbed onto the bed and back between his legs, a feeling like none other—a rush, a high—surging through her as she ran her hands over his taut, washboard belly, along his hard hips, his strong thighs. “It’s been my experience that men get off not being in the driver’s seat. Get off lying on their back while receiving all the attention.”

  When Pascal next spoke it sounded as if he bit out his words through gritted teeth. “Some might say phone sex would be as intimate—”

  He inhaled sharply as she dropped low and ran her tongue along the underside of his cock. Bringing her mouth to the head, she tasted the bead of pre-cum and licked him dry, enjoying its salty aftertaste that was all male and somehow tantalizingly immoral. “You were saying?”

  “You. Are. Killing. Me.”

  She grinned. It was exhilarating, a turn-on, knowing she had Pascal at her mercy like this, his straining cock and heavy balls exposed to the night air and her touch.

  She pushed off the bed and tugged the bodice of her dress down, over her bound breasts and wings before allowing it to drop onto the floor. Pascal shifted again, the bedcover rustling at his impatience and she couldn’t help but smile as she unhooked her corset and let it slip to the floor.

  “Damn, I wish I could see you,” he said.

  She stiffened, her smile freezing. Oh, Pascal. Be careful what you wish for.

  Years of self-discipline stilled her wings, withstood the reflexive urge to stretch them, flap out the kinks and swipe one leathery wingtip along Pascal’s throat, down his belly and along his rigid cock.

  She stepped out of her panties and took a moment to enjoy the caress of air on her bared pussy, on each bony protrusion along the ribs of her un
bound wings and her peaked nipples. It was both exhilarating and disturbing to stand naked before a lover with only the velvet kiss of night to hide her deformity.

  Climbing back onto the bed, she moved over him until the underside of her thighs glanced against his belly, her pussy aligned to his navel. She felt him tense, awaiting full contact. It’d take little effort to move back against his cock until it jutted vertically, before impaling herself on him.

  Instead, she leaned down, pressing kisses along his throat and up to his earlobe. He groaned as she moved to cover his mouth with hers. Her pussy lips slid shamelessly across his skin and she gasped into his mouth when her clit scraped along the puckered ring of his navel.

  His head reared back. His body jerked, straining for hers. “Baby, this is torture,” he growled. “I want to be inside you. I want you to ride me, fuck me.”

  Her core spasmed at his husky words, at the instinctive rhythm of his body as he writhed beneath her, searching for relief, at the thought of her juices on his skin. Tingling warmth became a quivering heat wave and she froze, shocked into realizing a climax had been about to take her by surprise, about to fling her to its starry heights and beyond.

  She sucked in a startled breath. Giving his ear a nip she whispered hoarsely, “We’ll fuck when I’m ready.” Climax or not, this was her night, on her terms. And god help her for being selfish, she wasn’t about to let Pascal forget.

  “Then be warned. I’m a heartbeat away from orgasm,” he muttered thickly.

  In the utter darkness, she clamped a hand over his cock and raised herself high, positioning the slit of her pussy over his engorged length. “Not without me.” In the next breath she dropped onto him all the way, stretching her inner walls to capacity, filling herself with his big, hot cock.

  He hissed as she mewled with a pleasure that bordered on pain. Slumping full-length along him, she waited until her muscles adjusted and accepted him fully. She wiggled a little, testing the waters, and he groaned, the bedposts rattling an encore as he attempted to reach out.