She touched his lower lip, studying him, her face grave. “You like to fight.”
His lips pulled into a slow smile. “And I’m good at it.”
It felt hazardous to her, but then everything did. Maybe she and Tiago would face a short life, but she was facing that possibility on her own already. With Tiago acting as her guard and protector, they would have a fighting chance, and she would no longer be alone. “You would be giving up everything.”
He gave her a small smile. “You would be giving me everything that matters.” Then his smile vanished and his face turned hard. “But if you take me, there’ll be no one else for you. I won’t tolerate it, faerie.”
She already knew that. He was far too dominant and possessive. She could have told him that he was everything she could have hoped for, and far more than she had ever dreamed she might actually have. She might have confessed that she was every bit as possessive and jealous as he was. She should have reminded him that all her weapons were still poisoned and she knew how to use a gun.
Instead her lower lip stuck out. She pouted at him. “I haven’t even had you yet,” she grumbled. “Here you are talking about forever and only, but how do I know you’re any good? I don’t think it’s exactly fair for you to be stomping and snorting about the possibility of anybody else yet—”
He glared at her in disbelief. “Who keeps stopping?”
Her mouth fell open. “I get to say no if it’s not right, mister.”
“Did I say you couldn’t say no?” he demanded. “No, I did not, even when it damn near castrated me. But it’s a little much if you say no, and then you start complaining about the results, Niniane.”
She narrowed her eyes and sneered at him. “Can I help it if I get cranky when I’m not sexually satisfied?”
The brutal angles of his dark face tensed, and his obsidian gaze grew vivid. His Power sharpened and turned predatory. He ran his hands up the side of her body. He stood. “Poor little faerie,” he murmured. “Are you sexually dissatisfied?”
“Maybe a bit,” she muttered. She blinked up at him. Good gods, he was built like a brick shithouse. He went long and grew wide, and he was looking at her like she was his newest favorite snack. She was doing much worse than teasing a tiger. She started to babble. “You’ve got to admit we’ve had some pretty frustrating moments in the last few—”
“Didn’t I tell you once to shut the hell up?” he said gently. He took her dress in both hands and tore it from neckline to hem.
Sequins exploded everywhere. They showered the room in sparkling silver lights. She gawked at the wrecked material that hung off her arms. Maybe she needed her head examined. Tigers were pussycats in comparison to this walking, talking holocaust of a male. Then her teeth clicked together as she found her voice. “How could you, you stupid man? I loved that dress!”
“So did I,” he breathed. He stared at her, transfixed. He had already removed her thong, and she wore no bra. She was as exquisitely made as his imagination insisted she would be, with round pink-tipped breasts in full, ripe bloom, a narrow rib cage and an even tinier waist, and a flat stomach that flared to trim hips. There, between slender thighs, was a small shadow of black hair.
He knew how silken that private, luscious tuft of hair was. He had stroked it so briefly not long ago.
And, good Christ, she still had on those four-inch stilettoheeled fuck-me silver shoes.
He met her gaze and said from the back of his throat, “I’ll buy you a thousand pretty dresses, a mountain of pink lipsticks and a queen’s ransom in jewels, and I will never let anyone hurt you again.”
Her pixie features shivered. The anger faded away to be replaced with things that were much more breakable and precious to him: trust and hope. She let her head tilt to one side, and holding his gaze, she slipped the ruined dress from her shoulders and let it fall to the floor.
He stepped forward, and it felt so right to pick her up in his arms. Pivoting on one heel, he carried her to the couch. He went down on one knee and laid her slender, curved body down on the cushions, then divested himself of his weapons, laying guns and fighting knife within reach on the floor.
She slipped off her shoes and stroked up his muscled arm, watching him. When he was through, she whispered, “Now your shirt.”
He took a deep breath. Then he reached back, grabbed his shirt and dragged it over his head and flung it on the floor. He held her gaze as he unbuckled his belt and unzipped his fatigues. She felt herself growing drenched as she watched him undress, revealing, bit by bit, the massive architecture of his body. He stood, and the heavy muscles of his chest and arms flexed as he toed off his boots. He kicked off his fatigues.
It was the most beautiful gift, to feel this extravagant fullness of desire.
She gorged on the sight of his nude body. His strong, sleek legs went on forever, his flat abdomen rippling with an eightpack. His erect penis jutted over heavy round testicles that had drawn up tight underneath, unmistakable evidence of his own desire. She reached out and stroked him. He was so big she couldn’t close her hand around him. As she massaged his penis’s thick, broad head with her thumb, he sucked in a hissing breath and the muscles in his powerful thighs quivered.
She had enjoyed sex for a long time and made no apologies to anyone for it. She had bounced and shimmied through the 1960s with too much glee to be embarrassed or self-conscious now about their surroundings. But something had happened to her along that journey. She had grown, not indifferent exactly, but detached, unmoved by pretty men and frothy flirtations. Even though she loved sex, she found she no longer wanted any. She had stuffed herself on a banquet of dessert and walked away from the table unnourished.
This was the sweetest hunger she had ever known, leavened by the tenderness softening his hawkish face and how much she loved him. She caressed him, her fingers trailing along the huge velvet length of him, watching as sensual pleasure flushed over him and the tight clench of his body loosened.
He came down over her, and it felt more right than anything he had ever experienced to pin her down with his weight. He braced himself on one forearm and caressed her cheek and the side of her neck as he stared down at her. He was coming to a place he had never been before, a new and necessary place he hadn’t even known to miss. It had all started with those first steps he had taken toward her in New York.
She still wore that breakable, breathtaking expression. She whispered, “It’s been quite a while for me.”
He stroked down the delicate line of her throat to her breast. He drew around her nipple and watched the succulent little bud tighten. He managed to remember to suck some air into his lungs. She was beautifully built and so small, and he was a great, crude, hulking brute of a male. “I’m glad you smacked me over the head and slowed me down,” he whispered. “You need time.”
He shifted to one side, lying on his hip beside her, his heavy erection resting on the curve of one of her hip bones. She shivered as his long-fingered hand played down her torso, stroking, drawing circles, pinching gently at her nipple, tugging the slender gold curve of her navel ring before moving down to tease the plump, hypersensitive flesh between her legs. He found the fluted opening of her labia and stroked. Her breath started coming in light pants as the most intense pulse of need she had ever felt careened through her body and jettisoned caution out the window. She gripped his forearm. “I don’t care. Come inside.”
He looked at her with a quick frown. “I care,” he murmured. “We’re going to make you ready. Ease your leg up, faerie.”
She obeyed, bending her leg and propping it against the back of the couch as her gaze clung to him. He bent down to stroke her mouth with his as he eased a finger inside.
They both hissed at the sensation. Her stomach muscles trembled, and she whined high at the back of her throat at the sharp stab of pleasure.
Tiago started to sweat as that needy sound broke against his lips. He swallowed it down with greed. She was so sumptuously juicy and tight,
her inner muscles clung to his finger. His cock jerked. Keep it slow and easy, stud. This is the most important thing you will ever do in your life. When her hand came down on his cock and she petted him, he thought he might explode.
He clenched his teeth. “Stop it.”
She froze, looking at him with uncertainty.
He managed to give her a tight smile. “Let me make this about you,” he gritted.
“It’s about us,” she whispered. She took her hand away from his cock and laid it against his cheek, and she lifted her head to kiss him.
His eyes closed, and he blissed out, kissing that ravishing sex kitten mouth as he fucked her so tenderly with his finger. Her hips moved with the rhythm of his hand, her liquid silk drenching his hand. He found the stiff little bud of her clitoris with his thumb and rubbed it as he suddenly drove his tongue hard and rough into her, and she gave a surprised muffled squeal and climaxed.
Shaken, he growled low and husky in her mouth. He licked at her lips and eased a second finger inside her dainty, tight sheath, and she arched her torso in response, stretching her body as she rotated her hips. “You’re going to kill me,” he breathed. “And I’m going to die so goddamn happy.”
She gave a sexy whisper of a giggle, the long heavy lids of her eyes shuttered. His keen predator’s eyes picked up every detail about her in the shadowed room, how her pale skin flushed dusky with arousal, all the way from her cheeks to her breasts. Her glossy lips were parted. He watched as her small white teeth dug into her plump lower lip as he began to rub her clitoris again.
When those fabulous eyes of hers flared open and she met his gaze, he felt a profound shock of connection. He took a step closer to that necessary place.
“I want to come with you inside me,” she whispered. “Please.”
He muttered something, he didn’t know what, and rose over her.
She opened wide to him as he settled between her legs, looking down his torso as he carefully positioned his penis at her entrance. He braced his weight on his forearms, pushed the wide, warm head in and held rigid, panting.
It burned just like she knew it would. He felt so much better than she had imagined, like velvet-wrapped steel, and he was being so freaking careful it was driving her insane. She braced her feet on the couch and drove her hips upward, impaling herself on him as she raked her nails down his back and growled, “Come on.”
She totally unzipped him. His beast came roaring out as he slammed into her. He pulled almost all the way out, looking down at her in incredulity, and then he slammed back in, and it was such a tight, liquid slide back, and he felt such a sweet tiny trail of fire along the skin of his back where she had scored him with her nails, just as he had fantasized for what seemed like forever, and she let her head fall back and, good fucking hell, she bared her throat to him in submission—how did she know to do that—and he went hurtling headlong into a climax.
He shuddered, gushing into her, taking her along with him as he ground his hips against her pelvis. She clamped her thighs against his hips as her climax rippled through her, deeper and richer than the first one. He slid a hand under her ass to hold her tighter to him as he rocked in her, his face buried in the slender stalk of her neck.
She stroked the edge of his ear, kissing his temple. I love you. Was it all right to say it now?
His head came up. He looked severe, desperate. He shook all over. “I’m not done,” he gasped. “I’m not—I need—”
Oh gods, she had heard of this, what a Wyr was like in a mating frenzy. She grabbed him by the chin and made him look at her. Her eyes blazed with their own fallen light. “I need everything you have and everything you are. Don’t stop.”
He growled, withdrew, and flipped her over so fast her head spun. He yanked her body into place so that she was kneeling on the floor, bent over the couch. Then he knocked her knees as wide apart as they would go and shoved into her from behind. She shrieked into the couch cushion at the invasion. At this angle he felt bigger than ever, and when he drove in, he went in deeper.
He froze, bent over her, his heavy thighs pressing against the back of hers, his chest pressing against her back. She could feel how his heart hammered in his chest. His voice shook. “Are you all right, faerie?”
She turned her head to nuzzle at him. “I couldn’t be better. I’m small and noisy; I’m not breakable.”
He slid one arm underneath hers to spread his hand at the base of her throat. His fingers spanned the width of her collarbone as he ran his lips along the line of her jaw. “You could have fooled me,” he muttered. He couldn’t hold still any longer and started to move again. “You are so mine, young lady.”
She caught her breath at the gorgeous sensation. “Yes, I am, aren’t I?”
He closed his eyes, and his face tightened as he picked up the pace. She was a fever in his blood. “Mine,” he growled.
“Yours,” she told him.
He covered and surrounded her. Soon he drove into her with long hard powerful thrusts. She flung out her hands to brace herself. “Mine,” he whispered into her ear.
She whimpered, “Yes.”
He gripped her by the chin and turned her to look at him. His eyes blazed white-hot as he slammed her into the couch. He bared his teeth at her.
There you are. Her lips formed the words but she had no breath. He was so deadly, so beautiful, so sexy, so everything.
“Mine,” the monster hissed.
Oh my God, yes.
A look of wonder came over his face. The climax blasted up the base of his spine. It was like riding the lightning, channeling the storm. His Power roared over her as he convulsed and spent himself. She screamed as it catapulted her into a climax with him. She clenched on him with everything she had and shook so hard she thought she might shatter into pieces, and for a few moments she thought she knew what it must be like to be him, for she felt like she was flying.
He wrapped both arms tight around her and crushed her back against his chest.
Here was the necessary place. Now that he had reached it, he said, “Of course. Now I understand.” For the first time in his very long existence, Tiago knew what it meant to come home.
THIRTEEN
After several moments, his tight clench eased, and he carefully shifted his weight off of her. She collapsed forward, shaking. He rubbed her back. “I took you at your word, faerie,” he said, breathing hard. “Now you tell me you’re all right.”
All right? All right was an ice cream cone on a warm afternoon, a press conference in which nothing disastrous happened, or hell, just a day that passed without her uncle succeeding in killing her. She was far too complicated for just all right. She was deliriously happy, outrageously scared and completely immobilized.
“I’m fine,” she said into the cushion. “But all my muscles have turned to Jell-O. I could use some help.”
He kissed her shoulder. “Of course. Just a sec.”
She could hear a pleased smile in his voice, and it sounded very male, which in turn made her smile.
He cleaned her with a cloth, his touch light and gentle. “That better not be your shirt, you lunatic, because thanks to you I’ve got nothing else to wear,” she murmured. She yawned. So many things seemed impossible. Walking. Getting from here to, well, anywhere. Making a decision. Facing other people.
She grimaced at that thought. Ew, actually.
He told her, “I’m using the inside of your dress.”
“Okay.” When he finished, she managed to push off the couch. She wasn’t kidding about having muscles made of Jell-O. Everything trembled.
He handed her his shirt. She turned the wadded material over in her hands, as her exhausted mind tried to deal with locating the neck and armholes. By the time she had it figured out and had pulled the shirt over her head, Tiago already had his pants zipped and was buckling his belt. The indirect light shining from the hall limned the wide arc of his back and shoulders, and one high cheekbone and lean cheek. He armed himself agai
n with the two guns and the knife in its thigh sheath. He looked completely comfortable with the arm holsters strapped across his bare chest. He rotated his shoulders to settle them into place.
She took a deep breath at the sight of him, even as she swayed. He angled his head at her and lifted an eyebrow in inquiry.
“I can’t, oh God, I can’t,” she told him. “But I want to.”
A white smile slashed across his features and lit up his face. He looked energized, alert. He strode over to her, tilted up her chin and gave her a quick kiss. “You look gorgeous and edible, and I want to too,” he said.
She snorted as she looked down at herself. “I look like a train wreck.”
He ran a finger down the side of her neck as he surveyed her. Her silken black hair was tangled, and he had kissed all the makeup off her face. Her bare lips looked bitten, swollen and blushed with dusky color, and her eyes were smudged with exhaustion even as they held a wry smile. His black T-shirt came down to her narrow knees and gaped at her neck and arms. Her fingers and toes were painted pink. She looked like a woman who had been thoroughly made love to, and his groin tightened as he thought of all of the places he had not yet explored on her delectable body.
“You’re my train wreck,” he told her. “And you’re more beautiful than ever.”
She glowed up at him. Then she looked toward the hall. Her glow faded, replaced with tension and shadows. She sighed. He could see her visibly picking up the burden of her journey. It was a self-contained, lonely expression. She had accepted him, but she hadn’t yet assimilated his presence. He knew that would take time.
She bent to pick up her shoes and started for the doorway.
He put a hand on her arm. “What are you doing?”
She blinked at him, puzzled. “We’re leaving, right?”
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