by Inara Scott
“My turn?” she murmured.
He did not respond.
“I’ll take that as a yes.” With a quick motion, she pulled her dress over her head and dropped it to the floor. A matching lace bra and panties greeted his hungry eyes. She left on her strappy gold sandals.
He closed his eyes for a minute and then opened them again. “Who are you?” he asked. The words sounded forced, each syllable falling from his mouth as if with a great effort. His eyes filled with pain and wonder.
Kaia shook her hair over her back. She knew he was looking at perfection. Full breasts, rosy pink nipples protruding through the lace of her bra, a flat stomach, smoothly curved hips. Long legs, accentuated by her high heels. Every man’s desire, reflected in one woman’s body.
She held out her hand and stopped him at the edge of the bed. She got down on her knees, opened his pants, and pulled them down over his thighs, careful to brush against his length several times as she did. He did not move or protest, and his eyes closed again. She could not help but notice that his face was not full of pleasure, as it should be at this point. No, when she studied his features what she saw was struggle, a battle for control.
He was still fighting.
She wrapped her arms around his legs and pressed her cheek against his groin. For a moment, she rested there, feeling him leap against her, his body trembling in her arms. Something in the epic war he was waging with himself made it difficult for her to continue. She should have taken advantage of the weakness she knew was there, pressed him hard, stripped him naked, and wrapped her legs around him until he begged for mercy.
For some reason, she couldn’t do it. She was frozen, and all she could do was hug his knees and pray for the strength to do what must come next. The strength to fight her own desire and satisfy the wishes of her queen.
Unexpectedly, Garrett leaned down and tucked his fingers under her arms. Gently, he tugged her to standing.
“Take off your shoes,” he said.
“What?” Kaia blinked.
“Take off your shoes,” he repeated. “I need to see you without them. Without any of this.” He waved his hand over her body, indicating her bra and panties. When she did not immediately react, just stood there, staring, his mouth twitched a little, almost a smile, yet too strained to be considered such. “Please?”
Wordlessly, she reached around in back to undo the clasp of the bra. His hand came forward, removed the garment, and flung it to the ground. He took the weight of her breasts, one in each hand, and closed his eyes again, as if he was holding something precious.
Kaia froze, astonished at the intensity of the sensation that ran from her nipples to her belly. In one quick breath, the tide had turned, and she felt the struggle he waged in her own chest. Never yield, she reminded herself desperately, never let a man take control.
He released her and indicated lower. “The rest.”
She pulled a strap over the back of each heel and kicked the shoes from her feet. The loss of height put her at a disadvantage to him, and she did not like it. She liked being of a height with the men she seduced.
He cupped her buttocks in his palms, hooked his fingers in the elastic that stretched across her hips, and tugged. The scrap of lace fell to the floor. She stepped out of it and stood naked before him.
“Incredible,” he sighed. “Just incredible.”
Kaia nodded, but unexpectedly, she felt no triumph at his words. She was a faerie, and when men saw her they saw their own fantasies. She was his creation, really, and the creation of all the men who had come before him. Where was the victory in that?
He held her breasts again, but this time leaned forward and touched his mouth to one rosy tip. Pleasure so intense it might almost be called pain rushed to the spot. Kaia had to catch her breath. She put her hands on his shoulders to steady herself, but could not seem to will herself to push him away. He leaned against her. The backs of her knees hit the bed, then her bottom, and she was lying down, looking up at him with wide eyes.
He removed his briefs without taking his eyes from hers. Dark fire burned her from afar, moved up and down her body, promised her pleasure. When he covered her body with his she shuddered, and opened her legs so he would rest between them.
A fire raged in her. Control had shifted, irrevocably, from one side of the bed to the other. He seemed to know this, and some of the tension eased from his shoulders. He practically smiled as he dropped his mouth to her breasts again, and she moaned at the sensation of his tongue swirling in circles around her inflamed nipples. He stayed there for several long, aching minutes, just licking, nibbling, and sucking. He increased the intensity until she was moaning and thrusting her hips against him.
His mouth moved over her rib cage, across her stomach. Lower. Kaia froze. She had never let a man do this to her before. A few had tried, but she had diverted their attention with a few well-placed kisses and the soft sweep of her tongue.
This man was different. This man did something she’d never experienced. He paid no attention to her halfhearted protests, her soft tugs at his shoulders, her attempts to close her legs. This man put his hands on the insides of her knees, spread her like the petals of a flower, and dove in.
First, he explored her core with a single finger, brushing against her clitoris like she had brushed against his penis—lightly, almost accidentally, repeating the caress until it was clear this was no accident. Kaia’s head flipped from side to side on the pillow, her eyes pressed shut with the intensity of the sensation swirling through her body.
“More,” she moaned, “more, please.”
The finger dipped lower, and slipped inside her at the same time something soft and moist sucked gently on her clitoris. Kaia’s body bucked, as Garrett applied pressure from the inside and out. She was hot, slick, the energy of her entire body focused on his mouth, his hands, and his fingers.
The pleasure mounted within her, building toward a peak that she’d never encountered. It drove her to move restlessly against him, to press her hips up into his mouth. He sucked and thrust his finger in a rhythm that sent her hard against him, yearning for more. He withdrew his finger, knit several together, and entered her again, and the pressure intensified, along with the need. Kaia panted, her breath escaping in soft cries of need. And all at once it happened—the pressure exploded in a kaleidoscope of swirling heat and pleasure.
“Ahh,” she sobbed, her body shuddering and shaking as the waves ran through her.
Garrett waited until she stopped shaking to withdraw from her, and rolled over to where his pants lay discarded on the ground. He pulled a condom from his wallet and put it on. She wanted to say that it didn’t matter—she could only become pregnant if she coupled with a man during the brief time each year when she went into heat—but the words wouldn’t come. Her brain didn’t seem to be attached to her body.
He sat beside her on the bed for a moment before kneeling over her again. It only took a minute, but in that time a tiny bit of the fog that surrounded her lifted and Kaia realized what she had done.
She’d allowed a man to pleasure her.
No, worse, she’d allowed a man to control her pleasure.
She’d broken Zafira’s essential command.
As he prepared to enter her, Kaia shook off the haze of pleasure with brute force of will. She pushed him down onto his back, furious with herself and furious with him for driving her to utter madness.
“Let me please you,” she cooed.
He nodded, though she could see a hint of a question in his eyes. He had picked up on her anger, but not enough to fear what would come next. When he lay stretched out in front of her, Kaia straddled his thighs. She spent several moments teasing his erection to even greater heights, caressing its length with her fingers and lips before pillowing him between her breasts.
Now it was Garrett’s turn to moan, to thrash around on the pillows, and beg her for release. Each time he seemed close to orgasm she grabbed the base of his erection and sq
ueezed gently, knowing it would prolong the moment.
“Damn, that’s good,” he said, jaw clenched and rock hard.
When he was at the edge of insanity, Kaia slid onto him by slow, teasing inches, bending low over his chest, arching her hips and pulling away, leaving only his head in contact with her flesh. She did it several times in a row, and he slowly grew more and more impatient with the game, finally locking her hips in his hands and holding her against him so he could bury himself to the hilt.
That was when she should have left. She should have taken him to the edge of paradise and when he was at his most exposed and vulnerable, pulled away. She should have stood over him for a moment to laugh, snapped a picture to prove her kill, restored her true form, and flown away. It wouldn’t have been the victory she’d been sent to claim, but it would have been better than nothing.
Yet she couldn’t do it. When she felt him fully inside, fully a part of her body, she froze. His eyes opened and locked on hers. In them she saw the familiar lust, the desire and greed for pleasure and release that she saw in all men. But she saw something more, too.
Tenderness.
It took her breath away. He slid his hand up to cup her cheek. Without moving his hips, he pulled her face down to meet his, and captured her lips in a deep, sensual kiss. Their tongues met, danced, captured a moment of stillness.
“Are you ready?” he whispered.
She didn’t know what he meant, but she nodded. His eyes rolled shut and he tightened his hands around her waist. He thrust fast and hard, and to Kaia’s immense surprise the pleasure mounted again, and the pressure and heat built up inside of her, but in a different way, a more subtle pleasure that came from her entire body. Before she knew what was happening he was exploding inside her, and the sensation of him pulsing and jerking inside sent her back over that mountain again, and for the second time in her life Kaia’s world shattered into perfect shards of glass.
Chapter Six
“Faerie! Faerie, wake up! Zafira’s looking for you!” The chipper, delighted voice of the queen’s imp slowly penetrated the haze of sleep. Kaia slitted her eyes and stared at the tiny creature bouncing beside the bed.
He was no more than a foot high, with a child’s face and body, and white skin and blond hair that glowed softly in the dark room. A set of stubby horns protruded a few inches from either side of his head, and a pair of feathery white wings whirred softly as he hovered next to her face. Like all imps, he managed to combine innocence and devilry in one tiny, obnoxious package.
“Wha... ”
She barely finished the word before he flicked her with his thumb and third finger, right between the eyes. She jerked backward and almost knocked Garrett in the head before she caught herself.
“Wake up!” he repeated, readying his chubby fingers to repeat the gesture.
She caught his hand and gave him a baleful look. “Touch me again and I feed you to a banshee.”
Unrepentant, he pulled his hand away and continued to smirk at her. “You’ve really stepped in it this time,” he chortled. “The queen’s got half of Faeria out terrorizing humanity just to work off her irritation with you. You’ll be lucky if the banshee is all you get.”
Garrett mumbled something in his sleep and threw his arm over her breasts. Kaia glared at the imp. “You don’t have to be so damn happy about it,” she hissed. “And be quiet. You’ll wake him.”
The imp’s eyes widened as he took in the sleeping form in the bed. “Is that him? The boggle said you were with Zafira’s man but I didn’t know he was so, well... manly.”
Kaia picked up Garrett’s arm and, as gently as she could, moved it to rest on the bed next to him. Gingerly, she rolled to a sitting position and eased out from under the covers. Unable to resist, she bent over the bed to study Garrett’s face one last time, his lips loose with sleep, his face vulnerable in the soft glow of the imp. He shifted positions again, and Kaia waved her hand over his face.
“Sleep,” she murmured.
He relaxed into his pillow, his mouth falling open with a soft snore.
“I brought him down, too,” she said to the imp, fighting the first surge of panic as she thought about what she had done. “Like Zafira wanted.”
The imp tsked. “You know the rules, Faerie. You let him take control of you. The boggles saw it. You can barely stop yourself from making calf-eyes at him even now. The queen would flip her lid if she saw you.”
Kaia rolled her eyes to conceal the cold fingers of terror that dug into her stomach. “Oh, hush. I am not making calf-eyes. And I don’t know why she has to spy on us all the time.”
Boggles, like most of the Fey, were shapeshifters who used their talent in service of Queen Zafira. Unlike other Fey creatures, however, their true form was unclear. They most often took the form of a hulking black dog with enormous teeth and crimson eyes, but they could have transformed into anything the night before.
The imp shrugged. “Why does Zafira do anything? Seems to me the stupid one is a faerie who knows she’s being spied on and lets loose with a man anyway.”
Despite the gravity of the situation, and the certainty that a dire punishment was soon to be doled out by an angry Queen Zafira, the imp’s words brought back the feeling of surrender—and the ecstasy that followed. For one brief moment, Kaia considered picking up that arm, burrowing back under the covers, and snuggling close to Garrett’s side.
Kaia almost laughed aloud at her moment of fancy. Garrett wanted her body. He didn’t want her. Men fell for the sensual spell of the faeries, but in the end they wanted human women, women with souls and hearts like their own.
“Come on, Faerie,” the imp urged. “You know she doesn’t like to wait.”
“I know, I know.”
An image of Zafira pacing the marble dais filled her mind, and Kaia began to shake. It took all of her willpower to refocus her energy and her magic on the process of releasing herself from the confinement of her human form. In a moment of dizzying intensity, her body became light and insubstantial. Like petals opening to the sun, her wings unfolded from her back and filled the room with a bright iridescence. Garrett sat up in confusion, and Kaia realized she had been so focused on shapeshifting that she had inadvertently released him from his slumber.
“Sleep,” she said again, waving her hand over his face.
He fell back into bed, and Kaia and the imp flew out through the open window.
§
Garrett squinted at the clock beside the bed. Six a.m. He was usually on the way to the gym by now, squeezing in a workout before heading into the office, but this morning his body felt heavy and lethargic. He rolled over to the side and reached for Kaia, but found the bed empty and cold. An image of a bright light and Kaia’s face, high above the bed, flashed before his eyes. And something else... what was it? Wings?
Yes, beautiful, translucent wings, surrounding her naked torso in delicate, swirling lines, the tips catching the edges of the light in a warm yellow glow.
A vivid dream, he supposed, but one that left him with a deep sense of foreboding.
“Kaia?” His voice echoed in the empty room. He waited a moment and called again, listening for some sound from the bathroom. Brushing teeth. The toilet flushing.
The room stayed quiet.
Dread, cold and dark, landed like a stone in the pit of his stomach. Hoping there might be some explanation for her disappearance, he hauled himself out of bed and investigated. Other than Kaia’s dress, shoes, and underthings, which still lay on the floor beside the bed, there was no sign that the room had ever been inhabited. No toothpaste marks in the bathroom, nothing in the wastebaskets.
And she was gone. Long gone, judging by the cool linens. The pillows bore no trace of the imprint of her head. He could not even find one of her hairs on the sheets.
Sinking back down onto the bed, he replayed the events of the evening. There was Ted, his woebegone friend, looking at Kaia with his big, sad eyes, and Kaia, radiating pleasure, hu
mor, and a direct, unflinching sensuality.
There was his bizarre, out-of-control behavior on the dance floor, followed by the hours of conversation over bottles of wine. There was a woman who made him laugh even as she guarded all information about herself. And there was the woman he’d made love to, the perfect mix of uninhibited sensuality and innocence. He could still see the expression on her face as he moved his mouth along the curve of her stomach... and lower... She’d been surprised, nervous, and finally ecstatic, shaking with pleasure.
When they danced at the club, he’d had the feeling that his overwhelming hunger and need were one-sided. At the hotel, when their bodies were making the most exquisite music he’d ever heard, everything had changed. Their lovemaking became a mutual dance, one that was effortlessly synchronized. She had driven him to the edge of release and held him there for longer than he’d thought possible, working his body like an expert, and at the end she had dissolved just like him.
They had dissolved together.
Could she really be gone?
He spied a piece of paper that had been pushed under the door and picked it up, hoping it might be a note from Kaia, but it was only the “express checkout” receipt. Kaia Verde had stayed five nights at the Avalon, and during that time, she had charged a five hundred dollar dress and a few bottles of water to her room. There were no other distinguishing features to the bill. Her address was not printed on it, nor was there a phone number at which she could be reached.
There was, on the other hand, a note in bold at the top of the receipt that read, “Credit card not authorized. Please see front desk for payment.”
Damn. On some level he had expected it, but it still hit him like a blow to the gut.
He hadn’t wanted to be right about her.
Garrett dropped the bill on the bed and headed for the bathroom. He turned on the shower and stepped inside, letting the cold water jerk him back to reality. He had a busy day ahead. He had meetings from eight to eight, and in between he had to stop by the Manor to see Lexi, his six-year-old niece. Lexi was staying with Garrett’s grandmother, Portia, while her parents were away.