She sighed. “Damn it. I’m sorry.”
“If we’re not going to sleep together, I have to get the hell out of here.”
“Is that another ultimatum?”
“Yes.”
“If we sleep together, things are going to be more difficult for you.”
“How so?”
“You know how—the addiction will become more intense.”
“I don’t think it gets any more intense than the rock-hard erections I’m walking around with all freaking day.”
She shook her head. “It does, I promise. It gets worse.”
“So let me take the risk.”
She closed her eyes, and he admired the thick black lashes resting against her cheeks. She was exquisite in a way few women were. Not so much because of some outlandish beauty, but because she looked as rare as she was, like some bird you might only spot once in your lifetime and spend the rest of your life craving the sight of again.
He knew what craving Lauren felt like. He’d spent the weeks after Vegas almost in a cold sweat with wanting her again. His dreams had been filled with the erotic sensation of sliding into her, feeling her clench around him. Her scent, her taste, her touch had haunted his days until he’d have given everything he owned to have sex with her just one more time.
So, yeah. He knew the risk in sleeping with a witch. He knew and he still didn’t care about the consequences.
When she opened her eyes again, she nodded. “You’re sure you want to take that risk?”
“Yeah.”
“You’ll stay here with me as long as I ask you to?”
“Yeah,” he lied. Even with Lauren’s body to distract him, he wasn’t sure how long he could tolerate her creepy cousin, but he would stay as long as it made sense to do so.
Despite his pressing urge to get the hell out of here, he was beginning to realize he didn’t have much to go back to. Something about being with Lauren made his life in San Francisco feel empty and pointless. She had a cause she was personally committed to. Even the work she did as a scientific researcher had purpose and meaning. What did he do? Come up with campaigns to persuade people to part with their hard-earned cash for crap they didn’t need or want. Some purpose.
Her gaze turned dark, and he could see a desire in her eyes as clear as what he felt in himself. So she had it bad, too. All thoughts of life purposes fled as he relished getting her naked again. She might have thought avoiding sexual contact was in his best interest, but he knew differently. The only thing he needed was her—over and over until his lust was gone, addiction or no addiction.
And having spent a few years in college dedicated to the pursuit of getting high, he knew what it meant to be addicted. He was the kind of guy who knew how to embrace excess.
And he knew how to go too far.
LAUREN KNEW IT WOULD BE extremely difficult for Carson.
But when faced with the choice—give him a brutal addiction, or let him walk into the hands of killers—what could she do?
And to make the choice even more obvious, she wanted him as badly as he wanted her.
When she was near Carson, she could barely resist touching him, tasting him, clinging to him and devouring him. She had not felt this way about a man before—not quite in this way. Not quite so desperate.
“Come back to the room,” she said, and she led him away.
She didn’t dare touch him where Sebastian might see. There was always the risk that Sebastian, with his all-seeing talent, might spy them anyway. If he did, there would be some kind of hell to pay.
But with this situation, no matter how they looked at it, there was going to be hell to pay.
As soon as they were behind the closed door of the room, she pulled Carson to her and kissed him with the absolute yearning she’d been feeling for days.
His tongue plunged into her mouth, caressed hers, as he moaned and roamed his hands over her body. Lauren pressed him against the door and unfastened his pants, found his cock beneath his boxers, grasped it through the thin fabric.
“Damn,” he whispered. “I’ve missed you.”
He dipped his head down and bit her neck, licked her shoulder, pushed her breasts up and kissed the tops of them. Then he turned her and pinned her against the door where he had been a moment before.
Lauren closed her eyes and concentrated on the feel of his hands and mouth against her. She’d craved this sensation for so long and now she reveled in it. He tugged at her skirt, baring her thighs to the cool air, an exquisite contrast to the heat consuming her. Without warning, he dropped to his knees, and pulled her panties down. For a few moments he just looked at her, his eyes feasting on her with such intent her insides contracted with sharp longing. She wanted to spread her legs wider, tempt him with even more of her flesh. Finally she could feel his hands moving up her thighs, and his fingertips scarcely touching her pussy, teasing her.
She gasped and squirmed closer, chasing those elusive fingers.
And then his lips and his tongue were there, caressing her, stroking her. Warm liquid sensation. Hot tingling pleasure. Heaven.
Lauren leaned against the door and opened herself to him, her breath quickening. He held her hips as he licked and sucked at her clit, torturing her and edging her closer to the brink of orgasm with every second that passed.
It had been too long for her. She hadn’t taken a lover since she’d been with Carson three months earlier. Three long months of denial, of wanting him but thinking she’d never have him again. To have that hunger satisfied now was nearly more than her senses could take.
“Stop,” she whispered, not wanting to come too soon, feeling herself getting close.
“Mmm,” he moaned as he continued to pleasure her.
“No,” she laughed, trying to squirm away but failing. “I want this to last longer than a minute.”
He stopped and looked up at her. “Trust me, this will last all night if I have any say in the matter.”
She sighed and decided it was time to take control of the situation. Lauren lifted her foot up and pressed the stiletto heel of her sandal against his throat. “Don’t make me get rough with you.”
His eyes locked on to her sex, revealed so clearly in this position, and she almost came from the erotic expression on his face. “You’d really stab me with your shoe?”
“Would it turn you on?”
“Maybe.”
“Then maybe I would.”
His gaze traveled up her torso to her face. “I dare you.”
Instead, she kicked him gently, just enough to make him lose his balance and fall backward. A moment later, she was on top of him on the floor.
“Don’t take it personally,” she said as she hovered a few inches from his lips. “I don’t want to come so fast.”
“I’ll make you come at least a dozen times. You know me.”
“I know me, too. I want to take it slow. This is dangerous stuff, this addictive sex, you know.”
“Seems like everything in my life is dangerous all of a sudden,” he whispered.
His gaze half-lidded, he looked drunk, and she didn’t know if it was from the whiskey he’d been drinking in the bar, or from her, or both. She’d guess both.
Lauren tugged off her clothes, and straddled Carson again wearing nothing but her heels. Being naked while he remained clothed with only his pants undone should have made her feel overexposed. Instead, she felt the thrill of power and control as his gaze roamed her assets and his hands slid over her body. She leaned down and kissed him long and deep as he grasped her breasts and tugged at her nipples, and that tugging went all the way to her core. She moaned into his mouth, then rocked her hips against his, stroking her sex along his hard cock, but not allowing him in.
“I want inside you,” he said.
“You have protection?”
He pulled his wallet out of his back pocket, and Lauren took the packet from him, tore it open with her teeth and took out the condom. She sheathed him, and mounted him i
n one smooth thrust of her hips.
Having him buried deep inside her, she thought, should have relieved a bit of her craving. Instead it coiled tighter, made her feel more desperate, more needy. She began riding him at an urgent pace, her gaze locked with his as he held tight to her waist and thrust in time with her. He looked as desperate as she felt.
“Don’t stop,” he gasped. “Don’t ever stop.”
She couldn’t have if she’d wanted to.
She watched his face rapt with pleasure, savored the feel of him bringing her closer and closer to orgasm, and she knew they’d be here all night, satisfying their cravings, making up for lost time.
She wanted to memorize every inch of him, commit him fully to memory and live right here in this moment for as long as she could.
She rocked faster against him, her body tensing as she watched his own body tense.
And as she felt him reach orgasm, she gave in to the sensation, as well, crying out at the jolts of pleasure that shot through her. It went on until the intensity was almost too much to bear, and then it subsided, leaving her spent.
Lauren collapsed, gasping, on the floor, her skin damp with sweat and her body tingling. Carson stretched out long beside her, and pulled her leg over his hip.
“It’s been too long since we’ve done that,” he said, looking even more drunk now but sounding completely sober, if a little breathless still.
“Yeah.” She stretched, closed her eyes and inhaled his scent.
And at the same time it had been not nearly long enough, because their absence from each other’s bed had not cured Carson of his need for her. Next time they parted ways, it would be much, much more difficult for him. And maybe for her, too, given how well their bodies worked together and how powerful their chemistry was.
She winced at the thought of what he would go through, the physical and emotional withdrawal, the lifelong disappointment of never feeling such pleasure again. The weight of guilt settled in her stomach, now that she was satisfied enough to think more clearly.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t have done that to you.”
He laughed. “Oh yes you should have. And you should have done it sooner, so what the hell are you apologizing for?”
“I just meant, it will feel worse when we’re apart again.”
“You’re already planning our breakup? Why don’t we stick around for a while and start driving each other crazy before we start thinking about splitting up?”
Because she would be dead soon—her vision dictated it. But she would not tell him that. Not yet.
“Under normal circumstances, sure, that makes perfect sense. But in case you haven’t noticed, we are enduring the most abnormal of circumstances.”
“Oh right,” he said, mock-surprised. “You’re a witch, and I’m supposed to get all addicted to you because I’ll never have sex even remotely as good as this again in my life.”
“Don’t be a smart-ass. You know how you felt after Las Vegas. Do you really want to endure that feeling times ten or twenty? Or worse?”
“I can’t even imagine.”
“I’ve been through it with someone once before.”
“And what? He went insane and jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge because he couldn’t have sex with you anymore?”
“Something like that.”
She didn’t want to explain the whole story. She’d only been nineteen, and she hadn’t quite understood the gravity of her power over humans yet.
But he persisted. “Tell me what happened.”
“I had a mortal lover my freshman year of college. We dated for about six months until my mother caught wind of what I was doing and told me she’d stop paying my tuition to Stanford if I continued.”
“So you broke up with him then?”
“No, actually, I dropped out of college for the rest of the semester and messed around with the guy for a while longer.”
“And where’s the part about him going crazy when he loses you?”
“He dropped out of school, too. But we eventually burned out on the relationship because it was too intense. I broke up with him, and it was a downward spiral for him after that. I feel like I ruined his life.”
Lauren didn’t think about Kyle often, and she didn’t tell people about him. He’d been this disastrous event in her life that she’d carefully skirted for years—for so long that talking about it now seemed surreal, as if she was recounting something that hadn’t really happened.
“You ever hear from him anymore?”
“No. A few months after we broke up, he tried to commit suicide. And after that, he joined a 12-step program for sex addicts, and that was the last I ever heard about him. I’m not proud of the fact that I nearly ruined his life.”
“So, these elders you mentioned—they forbid you from ever having sex with mortals? What happens if they find out what you’re doing with me?”
“They could banish me from the clan, or have me killed.”
“What?” Carson sat up on his elbow and stared hard at her. “Killed? For having sex?”
Lauren shrugged. “They’re hard-asses. What can I say?”
“Can’t they get put in prison or something for killing people?”
“Witches have had centuries of practice at hiding things. The police are the least of our worries.”
“I guess so, if you have to worry about your own family killing you.”
“Let’s don’t think about that, okay? It’s a worst-case scenario.”
Carson sighed, but said nothing more.
Lauren slid her hand across Carson’s belly, lifting his shirt in the process, and admired the contrast of their skin colors, hers pale with the slightest pink undertones, and his light golden brown. “Where do you get so much sun living in the city?”
“I go out hiking and biking a lot on the weekends. Mostly trails in Marin where it’s sunnier.”
“Ah. Must be a good stress reliever after doing the daily grind all week.”
“Yeah, it is. I try to get as far from the job mentally as I can on the weekends.”
“I’ve watched Macy survive that world all these years, and I don’t know how you guys do it. I think it would kill me.”
“Your job can’t be all that low-stress. Medical research is pretty competitive, isn’t it?”
Lauren shrugged. “Not in the same way.”
“How’d you ever decide to do a study on whether sex makes people dumber? I mean, isn’t that kind of a no-brainer?”
She smiled and traced her finger along the little trail of hair that led down toward his cock fully exposed now with his pants down around his ankles. “I had a vision, actually.”
“A vision of what? People doing stupid things after orgasms? Putting their shoes on the wrong feet and stuff?”
“No, actually, it all started with the side effects I noticed my lovers experiencing.”
“You mean guys were acting like dumb-asses over you? That shouldn’t come as any surprise.”
“I thought it was a phenomenon worth exploring, anyway, and as I was thinking about it one day, I had a vision that the results of the study would be groundbreaking news. So I got started with it.”
“It just seems like such an obvious thing. Do we really need a study to prove it?”
“That’s what science is for—to explain the processes that make our world work.”
“I guess,” Carson muttered and pulled her closer. “Next time, could you do a study about how many orgasms it’s possible to achieve in one day?”
“I think we’re well on our way to finding the answer to that question. Besides, there isn’t going to be any next time for me as far as my work goes.”
“Oh right. I guess you can’t just get a job as a scientist somewhere else?”
She shook her head. “I pretty much have to get myself a new identity now.”
“Wow, that really sucks. Won’t you miss your old life?”
“Of course I will, but it’s not l
ike I have a choice in the matter.”
One thing Lauren had learned to accept along with having the gift of prescience—there were far fewer choices in life than anyone ever liked to believe there were.
She closed her eyes and allowed her body to drift toward sleep. Savoring this moment, right now, was the only choice she was sure she could make.
9
LAUREN SAT ON THE EDGE of Sebastian’s desk and watched as he scrolled through image after image of suspected Order operatives. She had some shaky memory of the men she’d seen in the vision outside her door, and Sebastian wanted her to point out if any of the men in his database looked like the ones she’d seen that night.
So far, no luck.
“Where is the mortal?” Sebastian asked.
“Carson. His name is Carson. He’s probably sitting in the room, bored out of his mind. I don’t think he’s going to be able to stay here much longer.”
“He’s lucky I haven’t kicked his ass out into the street.”
“I don’t think he sees it that way. And if you kick him out, I’ll leave, too.”
He continued to scroll through photos and sketches, and Lauren thought she recognized a sketch that popped up on the screen. “Stop,” she said. “That one.” She stared at it, trying to recall the image that had come to her before.
One of the men had been tall, in his forties maybe, with short dark hair and a receding hairline—nearly bald on top. She remembered his eyes best, which were cold and blue.
“He looks familiar?”
“Yes, maybe…” She studied the drawing, but it was impossible to tell if the eyes were the same in the black-and-white sketch. “We don’t have a color version of this?”
Sebastian shook his head. “No, and no information on this guy, either, other than that he was heard speaking Czech.”
“That matches what I heard in my vision, too. I think that’s one of the men.”
“Let’s keep looking and see if you recognize the other one.” He continued to scroll.
“What happens if we figure out who these guys are?”
“Then I will make a special point to track them down and kill them myself.”
“Sebastian…” She hated hearing her cousin talk that way.
Call Me Wicked Page 9