by Holley Trent
She choked a bit on her bread, but that didn’t count as actual words.
He didn’t immediately follow up, having taken a bite of his own sandwich. When he’d swallowed, though, he said, “I know you’re hesitant, and you’re entitled to be, but I think the best way for you to get to know me and me you would be for us to share lodging. We’re overdue for bonding.”
“I’m not moving in with you. I have a job in San Francisco. I’m just here for a visit.”
He rolled his eyes in that same fairy Yeah, sure way Heath always did to Simone.
“I mean it, Ethan.”
“You may think you can stay away from me, but you can’t any more than I can stay away from you. Maybe that’s not obvious to you. You don’t recognize the tug, and that’s because you’re human and you weren’t born knowing these things.”
She shoved some of his potato wedges into her mouth and scowled at him. “Well, aren’t you just cocky as shit?”
“Call me what you want. I’m speaking the truth and in the best phrasing I can manage. The prince and princess tell me that I can be too intense, and I know that’s a flaw of mine, but I don’t see how I can’t be in this situation. You are my mate, and I’ve been starving for the past six months Dasha, do you understand that?”
“Obviously not in the literal sense, big guy,” she muttered. Nothing scrawny about him—that was for damned sure.
He drew in a long breath through his nose and gave his head a hard shake. “You’re killing me. We’re not sharing the heartache equally because you’re not a fairy. If you felt what I do, you wouldn’t poke fun at me.”
“I’m not poking fun at you. I think, all things considered, I’m handling this situation pretty well.” She slapped his hand away from her sandwich. “You’ve got your own!”
“You should share.”
“Ugh.” She handed it to him and folded her arms over her chest. “And what heartache are you talking about? I didn’t dump you or anything. I didn’t even know we were supposed to…be…” She made a rolling gesture with her hand. “Well, you know.”
“Mates.”
“That.”
“Am I such a bad man to have as a mate? Do I disgust you so much that you wouldn’t touch me?”
“You’re jumping to conclusions, Ethan.”
Nothing about the man disgusted her. The food theft was annoying, yes, but he was a big guy and needed to eat. Someone had to make sure he was eating, and she didn’t mind the job so much.
“So, you would have me?” he asked.
Duh. “My issue isn’t with you, particularly. I just…wasn’t in a good place to be with anyone at all. I feel like I’m being made to just get over my hesitations before I’m equipped to do so. I need time.”
“How much time?”
“I have no way of knowing.” She took one of his pies and unwrapped the foil. “Just being in this car with you right now is more togetherness than I’ve had with a man in a long time.”
“There are witnesses.”
“Yeah.” She held the pie against her lap and pondered that. “Maybe that’s the salve. Having people around makes me feel safe.”
“I would hope my presence makes you feel safe and not that of so many strangers.”
“I know that would be the ideal, but unfortunately, that’s not where my brain’s at right now.” She held the pie out for him to take a bite, which he did. Sighing, she settled lower in her seat and nibbled at the crust.
He didn’t say anything for a long while. He ate, tidied up the mess, and gave the bags a toss into the trashcan a few feet from his window. Then he hit the button to summon the carhop.
“Still hungry?” she asked.
“I’ll survive until morning. I don’t think returning to The Hearth without the princess’s milkshake would be wise, and I think the place is about to close.”
“Oh.”
He put the order in—she couldn’t help but to notice there were a few extras Simone certainly hadn’t asked for—then turned to her, his green eyes beacons in the low light. “Might I make a proposal?”
“What kind?”
“If it would make you more comfortable in the meantime to be near me only when others are around, then consider that I share a suite with Sully. Do you trust him?”
“Yes.” She didn’t have to think. Simone trusted Sully with her life, and Dasha believed Simone generally had impeccable judgment.
“We wouldn’t be alone, not really. He’s around all the time and wouldn’t let anything get out of hand. Stay with me tonight. I’ll give you space, if that’s what you want, but I’ve got to be perfectly honest and say that I’m dying to make love to you. Would you let me if he were nearby? Or someone else?”
At some point while he was speaking, Dasha’s mouth had sprang open and she must have looked like one of those slack jawed carnival clown heads that players sprayed water at to try to pop the inflating balloons coming out of their heads.
Did he just come right out and…
She closed her mouth only to scoff.
Yeah, he did.
He’d asked to fuck her, and some quiet voice said, “Yes.”
Seconds passed before she realized the voice had been hers.
Piece of shit verbal filter… I hope that doesn’t become a habit.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Even if Dasha had wanted to back out of spending the night with Ethan, she’d barely had time to get the words out before they were standing in front of his suite’s door and he was fiddling with his keys.
He’d carried Simone’s food back ahead of Dasha and had apparently burned up the road getting back to The Hearth. He’d stood in the parking lot waiting for her.
She couldn’t run, and didn’t have time to object before he’d slipped his arm around hers and pulled her upstairs.
She didn’t really want to object, but still battled that niggling feeling that she should run because that was what she was so used to doing.
But if she were really married to the guy—and she had no reason to believe that she wasn’t—getting to know him in an up close and personal capacity made sense.
Sully, on the sofa, leaned forward to look at the opening door when Ethan pushed it in. “Hey, Eth—oh. Hey, Dasha.”
Still pulling Dasha along, Ethan dropped the takeout bag on the counter and arced toward the bedrooms.
Sully set down the remote control and crooked his thumb toward the bags. “That for me?”
“Eat if you’re hungry.”
Sully didn’t wait for Ethan to change his mind.
Ethan pulled Dasha into his room, started to close the door, and then apparently thought better of doing so. He left the door open about six inches, and raised an eyebrow at her. “Okay?”
“Okay.”
He dumped the keys and wallet from his pockets onto the dresser and sat to take off his boots.
Dasha remained in place, scanning the room. She hadn’t been in his lair before. Hadn’t been in that particular suite at all, actually. While Siobhan, Caryl, and Daryn had managed to infuse a bit of personality into their temporary space with plants and decorative objects like vases and tchotchkes, Ethan hadn’t even tried. His space could have been any other motel room and not a place he’d been living in long-term and would continue living in indefinitely.
He nudged his boots aside and tossed his socks after them. “What?”
“You don’t have stuff, huh?”
He shrugged. “I guess I don’t. I’m not much of a collector. I spend my money on food and booze. Everything else just collects dust. Come here.” He waved her over.
She hesitated, as was her nature, but then came the reminder that Sully was in the kitchenette. He crinkled the food bag and muttered something about pie.
Still there.
Still safe.
She moved forward and Ethan pulled her between his open legs. With his arms wrapped loosely around her waist, he pressed his chin to her sternum and gazed up at her. Rather
than his usual troublemaking leer, there was simply curiosity in his pale gaze.
“What?” she asked.
“Did I thank you properly for checking on my mother for me?”
She shrugged. “I think so. I seem to recall you doing that in advance. Oh!” She wriggled free of his grip and opened her purse. His heavy gun was easy enough to find. She handed the firearm back to him. “Forgot to give that back to you.”
“Keep it. I have others.”
“I…no.” She shook her head and slipped the firearm onto the dresser. “Guns make me uncomfortable. My father had them in the house growing up, but we never saw them. Having one in my purse is going to make me nervous.”
“I’ll teach you to be comfortable with one.”
She crunched her nose. She didn’t think she would be, but given the circumstances, having some skill with a weapon wasn’t a bad thing. She didn’t have Simone’s incredible strength or the reflexes of the other ladies. All Dasha had was a really annoying scream and sharp fingernails.
He slipped his fingers beneath her purse strap and lifted it off her shoulder. “Heavy. What the hell do you have in there?”
“Everything a lady might need in a day.”
His quickly bobbed eyebrows suggested that perhaps he didn’t buy her excuse. He set the purse aside and then freed the single fastened button of her cardigan.
He hooked his thumbs beneath the plackets and looked up at her with an obvious question. Yes? No?
Swallowing hard, she nodded, and he pushed the sweater down her arms. He smoothed his calloused palms up and down her goose-pimpled flesh and chuckled low. “It’s ninety degrees outside, and you’re cold?”
“I tend to be anemic more often than not. My engine runs cold.” Her skin wasn’t the only obvious evidence she was cold. Exhibits B and C were pointed right at him. Try as she might to convince herself that she was twenty-nine years old and that sexually active grown women didn’t feel shame about nipples, heat crept up her neck and cheeks and her nervous hands made fists at her sides.
“Let’s get you warm, then.” He nudged her back a couple of steps, stood, then walked around to the head of the bed.
He straightened pillows, redistributed the sheet, and tugged the bedspread back into place.
Apparently, he didn’t waste time making his bed in the morning. She always made hers, but that was because she tended to thrash in her sleep and tug the covers out of place. In the evening when she was bone weary and just wanted to collapse into bed, she didn’t want to fuss over sheets. She preferred making her bed in the morning when she still had the energy.
Without further instruction, Ethan shucked his shirt, tossed it over her head to the laundry pile accumulating behind the door, and then dropped his shorts.
Her heart stopped until she saw he did, in fact, have on briefs. Fairy males seemed to be hit or miss regarding underwear. Their commando proclivities had turned into a bit of a running gag between Siobhan and the girls.
He sent the shorts sailing to join his shirt and patted the bed. “Whenever you’re ready.”
“Oh.” She felt silly standing there fully dressed and accessorized to the nines when he was damn near naked and making no effort to hide the state of his arousal except to hold his hand over his briefs’ bulging flap.
Big. Bulging. Flap.
She tittered nervously.
Where’s the vixen I used to be?
Digging deep, she found a little confidence buried beneath that well of festering self-doubt.
She kicked off her flip-flops and untied her chintzy scarf. The vixen had gone into hiding back when her ex had been stalking her.
Stripping might have been easier if Ethan hadn’t been watching her so intently. She knew if she asked, he would have looked away, but she hadn’t done him the same courtesy. When he’d been taking off his clothes, she’d stared and had enjoyed staring. She could hardly believe that hunk of man was supposed to be hers, but apparently the Fates had some mercy on a wretch like her.
She set the scarf on the dresser, raked a hand through her tight curls, and then quickly divested herself of her shorts and tank. Underwear was a must-have part of her arsenal, so she still had one layer of modesty remaining.
“You could turn off the light if you’d like,” Ethan said. “Just so you know, though, I see fine in the dark.”
“Really?”
He shrugged. “Fairy thing. In general, we see a little more than normal folks do whether the lights are on or off.”
She shifted her weight, pondering that. She wouldn’t be able to hide anything either way, but in the darkness, at least she could pretend they were on equal footing. “I’ll turn it off.”
“Come on, then.” He climbed onto the bed, and she hit the switch.
Other than the streak of weak light from the kitchen, the room was all shadows, and Dasha had to feel her way to the bed, praying all the while she didn’t stub her toe.
That’d be sexy as hell.
Finding the left side, she climbed on and immediately under the covers.
Ethan rolled toward her and pulled her close. He drew in a long inhalation, and the ensuing exhalation tickled her cheek.
“Been waiting so long to touch you,” he said, “I hardly know where to start.”
“We could…just lie here for a while,” she suggested.
She needed a minute or two for her blood pressure to come down, anyway.
“Don’t fall asleep on me,” he said.
“I might. Not gonna lie.”
“If you fall asleep, I might have to find some creative ways to wake you up.”
“As my grandmother used to say, there’s nothing new under the sun.”
“Does that mean nothing I can do to you will shock you?”
“I doubt you’ll find a single way.”
The vibrations from his low chuckle against her chest made her nipples bead even harder in her boring bra. If she’d thought she’d be putting on a fashion show, she might have worn nicer underwear.
Experimentally, she trailed her fingertips down his arm, then around his broad back to his spine. “You are a big man.”
Lame.
That went without saying, but she’d felt like she had to say the words—to make the fact known even though it was already incredibly obvious to anyone with functioning eyes.
“Is that not to your liking?” he asked.
“I’ve never been with a man your size.” She meant that in both ways he could have interpreted the statement.
“I think once you try me on, you’ll decide that I fit just fine.”
She laughed. “Oh, is that what you think?”
“Mm-hmm. Touch me.”
“What?”
“Go ahead. Put your hand in my briefs and see for yourself. Tell me if you’d rather toss me back for someone smaller.” He bent and pointed his knee upward as if to improve her access.
“Seriously?” Never one to back down from a challenge, she pulled her hand from his back and slipped it past the elastic of his underwear.
Her fingertips skimmed past the soft thatch of hair and then bumped against the base of his shaft. Tentatively, she looped her fingers around him and tried to touch them together but there was no damn way. He was bigger around than her wrist.
“The fuck?”
He laughed and squeezed his hand around hers. “Yours to keep.”
Oh. My. God.
She wasn’t sure what she was supposed to do with it, and was happy the lights weren’t on, so at the very least, him witnessing her ogling his junk was somewhat more difficult.
“You could break someone with that thing,” she said flatly and pulled her fist up the shaft just to see how much damage he was capable of doing.
Inches and inches of damage, apparently.
“That hasn’t happened, yet,” he said with a chuckle.
“I imagine the vast majority of your lovers have been of sturdier stock.”
“Perhaps so.”
<
br /> She brushed her thumb across the slick head and grinned at his restrained hiss.
“Do much of that, and you’re going to have a mess on your hands.”
“Is your self-control so low?”
He grunted and rolled onto his back, obviously to improve her access to him, and she took advantage of the change.
She worked his underwear down then tossed them in the general direction of the established laundry pile. Crouching between his legs, she skimmed her palms up the insides of his thighs until she found his heavy sac and the base of his thick erection.
With two hands, she could do some serious damage.
“Just so you know,” he said, “whatever you do to me won’t be done for long. I’m an eruption waiting to happen. You could kiss it and I’d probably come just from that.”
“Haven’t handled business lately?” Not that she had room to judge. All of her orgasms in the past year or so had been mechanically induced.
“Wrapping my fist around my cock and slaking off some pressure is just a temporary fix. My body wants more—craves more than that. I won’t be satisfied until I have my mate.”
“And by have me, you mean…”
“Fuck you, Dasha. Fill you with my seed and stay inside you until I’m hard again. Then fuck you some more until my body says I can stop because the monster has been sated.”
“The monster?”
“The thing in me that makes me wild and terrible. I can’t be soothed by just anyone. The beast wants what’s his.”
“You mean me?”
“That’s obvious. If you’d looked at me, you would have known what I thought.”
“So everything’s my fault, huh? You hid your yearning well enough.”
“Princess Simone might disagree. Put your mouth on me, please. I can’t stand you being so close and not touching me the way you’re entitled to.”
“I’ve never been the kind of lady who’d put much stock in entitlements.”
“You should. I belong to you and will serve you as you command.”
Oh. Okay, then.
Dasha settled onto her belly and idly stroked his shaft. Pretty words had been her downfall time and time again. She didn’t want to believe him, but she found not doing so was difficult given the way he was at her mercy at that moment. Flat on his back with his fingers laced behind his head. Her hands gripping his most sensitive areas. She could hurt him without even trying, but he was trusting her not to.