Bond with Me

by Anne Marsh

  “Not anymore,” he said.

  Sex, Brends decided virtuously. He was going to give Mischka all the luxurious, self-indulgent sex she could handle. She was wound so tight she was making him hurt.

  Maybe he’d make her ask for it. For a long, delicious moment his mind veered wildly off course, contemplating the possibility of Mischka Baran naked, wet and spread—just for him. He could lick that pink, creamy skin from the bottom to the top. Could savor all the bits she’d kept so carefully hidden away from the world.

  Right.

  Not happening.

  His companion wrapped her arms around her middle. She was wearing a peach-colored cardigan with buttons that drove him to distraction. As if she thought he’d rip the damn thing off her if she didn’t hold on to it. What would it take to make her let go?

  “Stop staring,” she said. “This is a working dinner. Not an invitation to have sex.” That was his female: blunt as a two-by-four.

  He was offering her any favor she wanted—what more could she possibly want? Because clearly, she wanted more from him than really hot sex and a convenient quid pro quo.

  “I don’t go to bed with strangers.”

  That caution might have been warranted. She didn’t trust him—and she shouldn’t.

  “After everything we’ve been through, love, how could you consider me a stranger? What more do you need to know?” If she wanted details, he could produce details.

  Her sigh was not encouraging. “I can’t give you a list, Brends. It doesn’t work like that. Screw this. You want to be a dildo with legs? No, thanks.”

  “You want happily ever after?” He growled. This was a first, he thought. He’d always been enough for the females in his life before. None of them had ever questioned what he could offer.

  “No.” She shook her head, that wicked hair of hers sliding along her cheek. “Not happily ever after, but something in between, Brends. Sex isn’t enough.”

  “You’ve never tried it.” He pointed out the obvious. She didn’t know what she was missing.

  “I’m not a virgin.”

  He’d never understood the virgin fantasies some of his darker brothers enjoyed so much. Now, he did. To be the first, the only. To mark her so indelibly. Yeah, he’d like that.

  “Fine.” The stab of possessiveness was unexpected, so he ignored it. Or tried. “But you’ve never had hot, no-strings-attached sex.” He eyed her confidently.

  “So I’m particular.” She shrugged. “I don’t hop into bed with the first man I meet when I’ve got an itch to scratch. I like to know the man I sleep with, Brends, and I don’t know you.”

  “Tell me about your first time.” Deliberately, he switched the conversation back to sex. That, he was comfortable with. He didn’t understand this need for emotions she kept dragging back into their conversation. Either she wanted him, or she didn’t. It was that simple.

  She shook her head. Hell, he was tired of her denying him all the time. He wanted her moaning Yes, yes and Give me more. So why was he sticking around? Because, that little voice he couldn’t quite shake whispered, you know the rogue will come after her, sooner or later. Sometimes when you hunted, you pursued—and sometimes, you hunkered down and waited for the prey to come to you. This was a hunker-down-and-wait moment. He knew it in his bones.

  Because she intrigues you, some other, unfamiliar voice whispered.

  “This isn’t about me, Brends. This is about you. You want me to open up to you, to let you into my head.” In bed, his head supplied, but this time he kept his mouth shut. “But first, you need to let me into yours. I don’t know who you are.”

  You don’t want to, he thought, but what he said was, “There’s nothing to know.” Before she could protest, he smoothly added. “Although I think you should consider it. The really hot sex part.”

  “Really.” She eyed him. “Thanks for the update, Captain Obvious.”

  He smiled slowly. “Of course, that would mean being a very bad girl, wouldn’t it, Mischka?”

  She shook her head. “I told you: Pell comes first. I’m not abandoning her, Brends. I need to know she’s safe. That she’s not in over her head. She never stops to think.”

  Thinking was the last thing on Dathan’s agenda for Pell tonight, so there was no point in pursuing that avenue. “The problem as I see it,” he said, leaning forward, “is that you don’t know how to be bad.”

  “No.” Was that a touch of wistfulness he heard in her voice? “No, I don’t.”

  His ice princess was clearly gaining her second wind. She’d snapped the laptop lid shut with a little more force than was necessary, so he figured she was working up to tossing his ass out her door. Still, she’d just handed him a delicious clue to who she was.

  His Mischka wanted desperately to throw caution to the wind and be a bad girl. But she either couldn’t or wouldn’t.

  He was betting on the latter.

  His good-night kiss scorched her toes. “Dream of me, dushka.” Lifting his head, Brends stared down at her for a long, hot moment. She was tempted to drag his head back down to hers.

  “You dream of me,” she countered.

  His slow, hot smile wasn’t fair. “Deal,” he said. “We can compare notes tomorrow.”

  Watching the door close behind her Goblin, Mischka had to ask herself just when he’d become her Goblin—and why she was tempted to run after him.

  Just one night. One night of smoking-hot, irresponsible, impossible pleasure.

  Emphasis on irresponsible.

  She couldn’t. Pell was out there, just waiting to be found, and Mischka had a perfectly satisfactory life of her own to live. Alone. Besides, bad boy there was a Goblin. No way was she dating a paranormal, and selling him her soul was definitely off-limits.

  He probably hadn’t reached the street, was probably still trapped in her antiquated lift, when she remembered the book he’d returned to her earlier. Pulled it to her.

  She should have been angry that he’d been in her flat uninvited. Instead, she was curious. He’d found her Victorian erotica, a favorite she kept in the bedside table.

  He’d obviously flipped through the book. Clues. He was handing her clues, one after the other. If she wanted to, she could connect the dots. Discover what he fantasized about.

  The thin silk of her favorite panties marked a page in the book. Almost, she could imagine the silk was still warm. He’d held them. Touched the silk that had touched her skin.

  She recognized the message.

  Page fifty-three.

  If she dared.

  Ten

  “A bathhouse? You’re taking me to a bathhouse?” Pell glared up at Dathan as if he’d just suggested she join him in a puppy slaughter and wiener roast.

  Of course, she’d probably never visited a bathhouse before. Had never dared. The rumors flew, fast and furious. Some said bathhouses were entry points to other realms, highways to underworlds, and you never knew what you might encounter. Those rumors were undoubtedly exaggerated, and yet there was still a strange sense of exotic, erotic excitement in the air. The bathhouse was a strange pleasure palace: a hot, damp world whose main trade was sex. Anything went in the steam rooms and soaking pools. For all her bravado, his Pell was strangely naive.

  He ran a possessive thumb over her mouth. Fought the urge to back her up against the wall and plunder her mouth with his tongue.

  Maybe after their house call on his brothers.

  Or, hell, during, if she was up for that. He let himself indulge in the fantasy as he shouldered the door to the sauna open and strode down the narrow hallway that disappeared behind the desk. He shucked his shirt and dropped it on the floor. From the looks of the mess, they were the last to arrive.

  “I don’t think—” she began and then stopped.

  Dead in her tracks.

  Without looking around, he reached behind him and wrapped his fingers around the delicate bones of her wrist. She was so small, this human female of his. He had an uncomfortable f
eeling that this night would make that clearer than he wanted.

  “Good,” he said, urging her gently toward the bright shadow of the open doorway. Steam billowed out in a thick, wet cloud. “Don’t think. Act.” If there were only a mental incantation he could use to make her lose her inhibitions—in the approximately three seconds they had before she got a real good eyeful of naked Goblin—he’d have done it.

  Instead, he just kept drawing her forward.

  “I’m not going in there. Really, Dathan.” There were some things that she apparently felt the need to protest. At length. Stripping down to her skivvies in mixed company was clearly one of them. He was starting to wonder how many of those stories she’d told about her travels were merely stories. Clearly, most of them couldn’t have been autobiographical. He ignored the twinge of pleasure that thought afforded him.

  “Suit yourself.” His hands went to the waistband of his jeans, pushing the denim down his muscled thighs.

  “Lady?” A small, high-pitched voice right behind her ear had her shrieking. Damn, it was going to be a long night.

  The voice in her ear belonged to a daemon.

  A full-fledged, itsy-bitsy daemon. Who acted for all the world like a housekeeper, twitching Dathan’s clothes into proper lines on their hangers. Small and red skinned, the half-vaporous creature seemed to flux into existence and then vanish from sight the next. It was nauseating. Couldn’t he stand still? Apparently not.

  “May I help you disrobe? Perhaps you would care for a towel?”

  Hell, yes, she would. She grabbed the large expanse of expensive cotton from the daemon’s tiny hands—it was a wonder that the fabric’s weight hadn’t dragged him down to the ground—and wrapped it around herself. Beneath the concealing folds, she kicked off her sweats and then looked for a place to put them.

  The daemon swooped down, plucking the offending fabric from her.

  “What are you?” she asked. Should she be demanding a coat check for her clothes? Or was she in far greater danger than facing a long, wet walk back to her place sans clothes and shoes?

  “These are the private rooms,” Dathan explained. “If you came to the public rooms, Barq here would use his glamour. Wouldn’t he?” He eyed the little daemon sternly, who chirruped with glee. For a moment, the daemon vanished and in its place stood a blandly good-looking but nondescript man in a standard khaki spa uniform. Then the illusion vanished and the little daemon was zinging merrily about the room again. “He prefers his natural form.”

  “What am I doing here?” She was so out of her league.

  “It’s simple.” His dark eyes laughed at her. “Strip. Warm steam. Hot water. Cold water. More steam. I guarantee that you’ll end up half cooked and blissfully enervated.”

  “You’re sure none of the Goblins we’re meeting eat people?” she asked suspiciously.

  “Yes.” He rolled his eyes. “We have far better taste.”

  The bath daemon was twitching at her T-shirt now, so she let the little creature pull the cotton over her head while she kept a death grip on her towel. “Miss,” it said, and hummed pleasurably as it folded her poor, abused clothes into a set of perfect right angles that the Marine Corps would have envied.

  Dathan was blithely shucking off his boxers.

  And he hadn’t bothered to do more with his towel than drape it over his arm. He could have posed for a Calvin Klein underwear ad. His abdomen all sexy grooves and ridges. His back, though—She swallowed. Hard, white lines, both thin and thick, some ridged and others smooth, made a cruel road map of his golden skin. As if someone had ripped the skin from his back. His wings had been there once, she realized.

  “Get used to it,” he said, and turned away from her, striding toward the steam-belching door on the far side of the room. Somehow she knew he was challenging her to do more than just take off her clothes and enter the sauna; no, he was demanding she enter his world completely.

  “Trust me,” Dathan said, holding out his hand. “Bond with me tonight.”

  The strange thing was that she did trust him. She was the one who shouldn’t be trusted, the one who always ran off. “Yes,” she said, and took the outstretched hand.

  He pulled open the low door. Steam billowed out in thick, white cloud. Strangely scented, but not unpleasant, she decided. “Deep breath now,” Dathan ordered. His fingers stroked a small, sensuous waltz over her the veins of her wrist. Soothing and arousing. “And in you go, darling.”

  “You’ll be right behind me?”

  “Right behind you, love, every step of the way.”

  She could do this. Inhaling, she stepped through

  the darkened doorway.

  “She’s pink.” The deep, raspy voice slid out of the steamfilled room like sandpaper over wood. “Did you bring us a new playmate, Dathan?” The fallen angel stretched his arms behind his head, leaning back against the damp walls as he stared at the two newcomers, his hard bark of laughter drowning out her splutter of denial. “A shy one, Dathan. You brought us a shy one. It’s going to be a long night.”

  “What the hell is he talking about?” Pell hissed, driving her elbow into Dathan’s side. He grunted but looked unconcerned, merely hitching his towel lower on his hips. Washboard abs, she thought. Although she doubted he’d got his from the gym. With a second grunt, he shoveled her onto one of the low benches that lined the room.

  “Relax,” he said. “Vkhin’s a friend.”

  Right. Easy for him to say. He wasn’t the one being eyed up as a potential snack by a damned Goblin. The male on the other side of the room had to be well over six feet tall. She didn’t give a rat’s ass for her chances if she had to fight. In a space this small, strength would count most.

  “Cheerful little thing, isn’t she?” Vkhin shifted. She caught a glimpse of saturnine features through the thick blanket of wet steam. A Hollywood producer would have had a field day with the high cheekbones and the dark eyes; the fallen angel would have spent every day of his career cast as the tortured hero. His face said he’d been to hell and back, lined with scars so old they were merely faint silver. His eyes, however, warned that he’d never left the underworld. He’d brought it with him, buried deep inside his psyche.

  “Try me,” she warned, “and you’ll find out how cheerful I am.”

  “What’s with her?” A second voice moved closer.

  Her eyes opened wide. “Two of them? I thought you were looking for ambience, Dathan.”

  A knowing smile curled Dathan’s mouth and he picked up her hand, the familiar gesture throwing her off balance. She expected him to touch her as he always had. Instead of the soothing stroke of his palms rubbing the tension from her, he sucked one finger into the hot, wet cavern of his mouth. His sharp nip sent a bright pulse of pleasure straight to her pussy. A boneless lassitude was growing on her in the sensual heat of the bathhouse. She wasn’t sure she cared anymore what kinky habits Dathan had.

  “Why are they here?” She did still care about that.

  “Nael and Vkhin? For us.” His dark eyes watched her and this time she finally recognized the slow, heated predator’s gaze. He wasn’t safe at all, she realized. This wasn’t just the friend she’d known for so long. This male was more. More dangerous. More heated. Too much.

  “I’m still Dathan,” he said, correctly interpreting the panic in her eyes. “You know me, Pell. You trust me. Trust me right now. Nael and Vkhin won’t touch you unless you want them to.”

  “You said you wanted to bond with me.”

  “Yes.” His eyes never left hers. “I do. We’re going to, right now.”

  “So why are they here?” She didn’t do threesomes, foursomes or moresomes.

  “Witnesses,” he said reluctantly. Oh, hell no, he didn’t. No way. She shoved upward from the polished wooden seat, but a large hand clamped down on her shoulder.

  “Oh, no.” She didn’t do watchers either. “I’m not into exhibition, Dathan.”

  “How do you know?”

  A larg
e drop of sweat rolled down her cheek. She wasn’t going to win any beauty prizes here. A dark hand came out of the steam, offering a thick towel. Gratefully, she took it, pressing the fabric against her forehead.

  “How do you know?” he repeated when she didn’t answer. That voice was sinful, a luscious lure to think about all the forbidden carnal acts she’d ever read about.

  Ever fantasized about.

  “You think about it, Pell,” Dathan promised. “You think about what will give you the most pleasure and I’ll provide it. Anything you want. Everything.”

  Softly, he moved the towel down her throat, tracing the smooth line of her body. Long and sweet and hot. He’d touched her as a friend. Now, for the first time, he touched her as a lover.

  “Tell me your fantasies.” He made the words a sultry whisper in the lush darkness. Her eyelashes flickered as she considered his offer.

  “What makes you think I fantasize?” The tone was drowsy, a sultry question, but she knew the sudden tension in her bare body made her interest clear.

  At first, she was uncomfortable. After long moments of the delicious, firm strokes pulling along her skin and nothing more, she relaxed. Nothing was expected of her. She couldn’t screw this up. His simple enjoyment of her body was a pleasure she couldn’t have imagined, the simple act of opening up to him more intimate than she’d dreamed possible. Where she’d initially felt vulnerable, she now felt cherished, wrapped in a cocoon of shadows and warmth and a delicious lethargy.

  The padded bench beneath her was all that anchored her and kept her from floating off into the soft pleasure. The cotton towel was a too-hot weight and she preferred the delicious coolness as he slid the unwanted fabric from her.

  His whispered “May I?” promised darker, sweeter pleasures.

  Dathan’s firm hands slid up to her shoulders, then past them. The erotic scrape of his nails against her scalp found pleasure points she hadn’t known existed. Arousal was a slow heartbeat of anticipation centered in her heated core. She didn’t understand why he was the one lover who could arouse her so. She’d pushed him away. She’d been afraid that he wouldn’t really want her, couldn’t want her. She was still terrified that she would lose her friend, that the darkly sensuous lover would replace the male who’d always been there.