“Do you?” The male body was easily aroused. He could take her now, but this was about her pleasure; about claiming her in a way that would keep her close. Safe.
“This is about you,” she said sternly and traced his mouth with a finger.
He nipped at her finger. “You have to enjoy the foreplay. I want you to climax.”
She froze over him. “Why?”
“Your breasts are sensitive. If you don’t want to ride me, kneel up and I’ll play with your breasts.”
Her thighs tightened against his, but he didn’t think it was a sexual tease. Her hands had stopped moving over his body.
“Why do you want me to climax?” she asked.
“So that you’ll stay near me and I can keep you safe.”
She stared at him for an impossibly long moment.
“I can’t read your expressions,” he told her. “You have to tell me what I should know.”
She dropped her head forward, hiding her face against his throat. Her breath gusted warmly against his skin. “I just realized that you and I are both using sex for the wrong reasons.”
“You don’t want to climax?”
She laughed and drew back to look at him. She kissed him briefly, then wriggled off his lap.
It was cold without her.
She found her sweat top, turned it right side out, and slipped it on.
He liked how her breasts moved as she did so. Then they were gone, hidden. He looked down at himself. His arousal still thrust against his jeans. Putting his shirt back on would hide it, but… “Why don’t you want sex with me?”
“I do want sex with you, Seth. But I want it to be making love.” She sighed and ran her hands through her hair. “You were right. We need to talk.”
“That wasn’t what I said.”
“You said I should tell you what you needed to know.”
Okay. He had said that.
Vanessa stood near the cold fireplace and fought the temptation to simply return to Seth. If she couldn’t see his eyes and didn’t look into his face, then by touch it felt as if he loved her. He was hot and sexy and his caresses devastated her. She wanted to believe that passion could break whatever hold the Void had on him and restore his emotions to him.
However, life wasn’t a fairytale. He wasn’t a prince to be woken with a kiss.
Yet Seth’s uncle thought she was Seth’s best—only—chance of regaining his emotions. And Callum Arkwright might be right because Seth wanted sex with her to keep her close, to keep her safe. For a man who no longer felt anything, Seth was extraordinarily focused on maintaining a connection with her. She decided to start with that point. This awkward discussion of emotions, when one of them had burned out his emotions, had to start somewhere. “Why do you have to keep me safe?”
She wondered if he’d again use the justification of the Stag Agency needing to regain her dad’s support. It was a solid, impersonal reason.
Seth stood and prowled to the window. “I don’t have emotions, but I have memories of them. I remember that you’re important to me. Your happiness is important to me. I want you to be safe.” He looked out at the night, at the fire burning in rivers of beauty and power across the mountains. “I should have sent you home when I first encountered you on the trail.”
“Staying was my choice, and I’m glad I did. I’m glad I’m here with you, Seth.”
He shook his head. “You came to the mountains on the slight hope of finding a phoenix feather. Forget all the distractions of my mission tracking Josh Brosky. While I was at the Hunters Lab, you had a chance to speak with the phoenix. I knew when I accepted the phoenix’s mission to free the fantastical creatures that while I was gone, there was a risk you would negotiate with the phoenix for a feather.”
Vanessa had thought her discussion with Seth would be difficult. She hadn’t guessed that it might baffle her. “Why would talking with the phoenix be a risk?”
“Because of what you might have traded for a feather.”
She left the fireplace and perched on the arm of the sofa. “What do you imagine I could trade with a phoenix? What could I possibly offer it?”
“You don’t see how special you are, Vanessa. You attract people. You’re intelligent, connected, and motivated. You would be a perfect human servant for a phoenix.”
She stared at him, dumbfounded. “A servant? You thought I’d sell my soul for a feather? The phoenix isn’t like that!”
“I’m not criticizing the phoenix—or you. It is a pragmatic being, and it has its own allegiances. It knew to hold you hostage so that I’d do its will.”
“Yes, but…it regretted that.” She twisted her fingers together, agitated, and hating the distance between her and Seth. His tone was so analytical, even when he spoke about her. And he’d misunderstood the phoenix. “It regretted trapping me as its friends were trapped. It meant its apology, too. It gave me one of its feathers.”
“What?” he exclaimed. Apparently, even an emotional void could experience surprise.
Her emotions were volatile. She didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, and her mouth wobbled. “I traded the feather for you, Seth. I wanted you to be safe. That’s when the phoenix brought me to you at the compound.”
He took a step toward her.
Just for a second, she thought emotion flickered in his hazel eyes. Then it was gone. But it reignited her hope and determination. She joined him by the window.
Even stripped of his emotions, he still expended his energy to care for her safety and well-being. She had to reverse that. He had to accept her gift with the same generosity with which he gave of himself. How could she fill the Void in him if he kept giving?
It was up to her to make him accept her care.
She reminded herself that she had to declare her wants and needs clearly because without emotion, he couldn’t read the nuances of body language and speech. “I want to be close to you, Seth. It will make me feel safe.” It was language he could understand. “But I don’t want sex, yet. Sex is more than a physical act for me. I need to feel an emotional connection.”
He brooded down at her. “You won’t with me. There’s nothing in me.” He tapped his chest with his fist.
She caught his fist and cradled it against her. “I think there is. But I have to match your courage.” She had to give everything, not withhold one ounce of her emotions, and all without knowing if it could succeed, if she would have her Seth return to her.
“Lie down on the sofa,” she said. “On your stomach, please.”
He stared at her.
She put a hand on his chest. “Trust me, Seth. Please.”
“I do.” He turned and stalked back to the sofa, lying down as she’d requested. “I just don’t understand what you’re doing. If you don’t want to have sex, you should sleep. You’re tired.”
She switched off the lights, leaving the cabin dark. She felt her way back to the sofa and knelt by it, resting her hand on his back. “I need you to understand that the Void can’t have you. I intend to show you that you’re mine.”
“You can’t defeat the Void. Even the phoenix couldn’t break the anchor that I destabilized using null-space. I pushed too much of my power through null-space to ever feel again.”
“You’re wrong.” She paused in massaging the tense muscles of his back and pressed a kiss to the top of his spine. “This isn’t about magic. It’s about convincing you to let me be the strong one, just for now. Just for tonight, Seth, I don’t want you to protect me. I want you to surrender to my care.”
His muscles were slowly loosening. “And how will you protect me?”
“I won’t.” She kissed the curve of his shoulder. “We’re safe here. That’s why the phoenix burned the fire away from us. It left us protected. I’m going to use these hours to pamper you.”
He turned onto his elbow to stare at her. “Pamper me?”
His desire for eye contact was a good sign, even if they could barely see each other in the darkness. She
pushed him onto his back, nudging at him till he lay comfortably. Then she began massaging his shoulders and chest.
“Are you sure you don’t want sex, now?” he asked.
She laughed, huskily. “Nope. That would confuse things. I’m caring for you. I’m just trying to think what you’d consider pampering. I’m limited at the cabin. I lack special food or massage oils or…did you ever have any fantasies, Seth? Something non-sexual that I could do for you?”
When he didn’t immediately answer, she paused in the patterns she was tracing over his chest. She wasn’t kidding him or her that this was a proper massage. She was simply enjoying, and hoping he enjoyed, her touching him.
“Most of my fantasies of you have been sexual.” His voice had deepened.
“Oh?” She controlled the temptation to ask him for details. She would, later. But she needed to reconnect him with his emotions first, to rip him out of the Void.
“Do you remember when I visited your office with a broken leg? You brought me into your apartment.”
“I remember.”
“You fussed over me. It started a different kind of fantasy, one that I had no right to, but which would haunt me. On dangerous missions I would imagine that you were waiting for me at home.”
Her breath caught.
He brought her hand to his face. “When I got home, you’d hug me and kiss me and have to touch me to really, truly believe I was safe. And I’d hold you and savor your caring, till we took it to the bedroom and—but you requested a non-sexual fantasy.”
She cleared her throat, but her voice was still husky. “I like your fantasy, Seth.” He still held her hand against his face and she stroked his stubbled cheek. Ever so faintly he pressed his face into her caress. “It feels very real. You came home to me from a dangerous mission today after days of danger. Let’s act it out. You’re at the door.” She stood and moved back from the sofa so that he could swing himself up.
Their eyes had adjusted to the darkness. He crossed to the door, opened it, and stepped outside, closing it behind him.
Her heart beat fast, anticipation and hope churning through her. That he was willing to go along with the role play had to mean something good.
An instant later, the door opened.
“Seth!” She wasn’t even conscious of acting. She just ran to him.
He swept her up in a hug, burying his face in the curve of her throat.
She held him desperately, tears starting to her eyes. “I love you, Seth. I’ve missed you.”
“I missed you, too.” The words came from his fantasy, but a shudder went through him.
“I don’t like it when you leave me.” She touched his face with urgent little strokes that reassured her he was here with her. Fantasy was blurring into reality.
He kissed her fingers, his arms tightening around her. “Tell me again that you love me.”
“I love you. I love you, Seth.” She kissed him. Kisses and vows, promises and heartache, longing and hope.
His mouth was hot against hers, eager and increasingly greedy. His kisses asked for more and more, and she gave willingly.
She sank against him and he backed her up against the cool glass of the window. She locked her legs around his waist as his hand slid under her sweater and roughly teased her breasts.
“Again, Van,” he growled.
“I love you, and I want you, and the Void can’t have you. You’re mine, Seth Bentham. You’re mine, and you will always come home to me, and—”
“I love you, Vanessa.”
She froze. “Seth?” She searched his face.
He smiled. A man without emotions didn’t smile. “You reached me. You tore me from the Void. I’m yours more than you’ll ever know. I came home to you.”
She kissed him wildly, missing his mouth, finding it. Sobbing his name.
“It’s okay. Okay, gorgeous. I’m here. I’m not leaving you.” He carried her up the stairs while she clung to him like a monkey. At the bed, he sat down, reached over to the bed stand, and grabbed the box of tissues.
Vanessa wiped her eyes and blew her nose and rejoiced in the tenderness in Seth’s expression. “I told you the Void couldn’t have you. You’re all mine, and I’m greedy and possessive—”
“And wonderful.” He fell backwards, then rolled so that she ended up beneath him.
She smiled. “Seth.” All her love and aching need for him was in her voice.
He kissed her tenderly, teasingly, till she grabbed hold of him to deepen the kiss. It unleashed his own raw desire. He rolled again so that she was over him and he could strip off her top. He cupped her breasts. “I remember these. Sensitive. Strawberry nipples.”
“Pardon?” She giggled, unbelievably happy.
He grinned. “Maybe raspberry. I have to taste test.”
Her laughter faded into eager sighs as he kissed her breasts. As exciting as their foreplay on the sofa had been, touching one another now with love brought pleasure to an entirely new dimension. Within minutes they were both naked. Their souls had already joined: her claim on him and his to her greater than any power the Void could summon.
When Seth entered her, the expression in his eyes matched the overwhelming emotional intensity she felt. “I love you,” he said.
Happiness wasn’t a phoenix feather or magic or something transitory. It was Seth and knowing that she had trusted her heart to a man who would treasure and guard it forever. Every beat of her heart held the same truth that she gave him in words. “I love you.”
And loving him was glorious.
Want More?
I’m glad you enjoyed Fire Fall. Although it’s a stand-alone read, it sits fourth of seven books in the Old School series that I’m writing in 2017.
Phoenix Blood
Fantastical Island
Storm Road
Fire Fall
Desert Devil
Amaranthine Kiss
Shangri-La Spell
If you haven’t already discovered it, don’t miss my complete paranormal romance series, The Collegium. Magic, mystery, shifters and demons.
Demon Hunter
Djinn Justice
Dragon Knight
Doctor Wolf
Plague Cult
Hollywood Demon
Alchemy Shift
Catch up with me on my Facebook page, Twitter @Jenny_Schwartz, or at my website.
Jenny
P.S. Thank you so much for your reviews!
Fire Fall (Old School Book 4) Page 17