Wicked Whispers

by Nina Bangs

  She needed advice. No, she needed more than just advice. She wanted the warmth of someone’s touch, someone who’d listen and try to understand. Then she wanted to make love to that person, affirm that she was truly alive and human. Only one person would do. Murmur. A demon. Amazing. She returned to her room.

  Ivy paused inside the door. Murmur lay on her bed watching her. He filled up her bed, big and so beautiful she felt like crying. Not the reaction she’d hoped for. “Feeling better?” She didn’t think false cheer would fool anyone.

  “I’m fine. Kick off your shoes and relax awhile.” He patted the bed beside him.

  She hesitated a moment too long.

  He smiled, and she heard his music in her head. It was soft, sexy, and beckoned her with minor chords dipped in chocolate.

  “We’ll just talk.” His smile widened. “For now.”

  She shouldn’t go anywhere near that bed. He was too sensual, and she was too vulnerable. She wanted him, and that close he’d be able to feel the hunger vibes. Heck, they were strong enough to shake the bed. She should sit on one of the chairs. Definitely the chair.

  Ivy walked over to the bed, kicked off her shoes, and lay down beside him. “I need someone to talk to.”

  “I’m listening.”

  His music slid over her body, trailing wisps of lust behind it. She shivered.

  “Cold?”

  “You know I’m not.” She drew in a deep breath and tried to focus. “I’m worried about Kellen.”

  “You want to keep him safe.”

  Ivy turned on her side to face him. “I don’t know what to do.” She was going to tell him. “When I first got here, this place freaked me out. It still does.”

  “Understandable.” He reached over and brushed a strand of hair from her face.

  She waited a second before speaking to absorb the shock of that brief touch. Focus, focus. “I decided to leave. So I got another job.”

  He nodded, a slight widening of his eyes his only reaction.

  “But the job wouldn’t kick in for a few weeks.” She sighed. “Now I’m not sure if I should leave here.” Leave you. “Instinct tells me to take Kellen and run from all these people—dangerous people—who know what Kellen is.”

  “That might be the wisest course in the short term.” He looked conflicted. “But as he gets older, he’ll travel more by himself. One of the Sidhe will eventually see him.” Murmur glanced away. “Or sense him. As he ages, his power will grow.”

  “But he’s never shown that he has any power.” Neither did you until today.

  “He will. No one who looks so much like Mab could ever be powerless.” He sounded certain of that.

  “My father doesn’t have power.” She was grasping now.

  “He does. But he’s tried to suppress that part of himself. Would he admit he had unusual powers?”

  Ivy closed her eyes. She thought about her mother’s refusal to believe in his voices, her refusal to believe. “No, you’re right. Dad never even told us he could see the fae.”

  “Kellen will need someone to guide him, someone who can prepare him to straddle two worlds.” He paused to think. “He needs one of the Sidhe he can trust to help him.”

  Ivy knew her laughter reeked of bitterness. “Trustworthy? Do any exist?” She opened her eyes.

  “There are good and bad in every race. Yes, this one you can trust.”

  That’s all he said, and she believed him. She was finding it all too easy to believe everything he said and way too hard to remember what he was. A mistake? She didn’t know.

  He was silent for a moment, and when he finally spoke he said what she absolutely did not want to hear.

  “You should explore your own power.”

  No. Not now. Not ever. “Maybe. Right now, though, I have other uses for the word ‘explore.’”

  His music wrapped around her, holding her tightly, warming her even as it shielded her from the worry, the fear, the uncertainty. He was everything. Maybe not forever, but at this moment he was all she wanted. She knew her eyes said what her words would probably botch. So she remained silent.

  He turned on his side to face her and his music swelled. “Let’s explore the outer limits, Ivy. And maybe when we get there we’ll find there are no limits at all.”

  11

  Coward. If she were braver, she’d reach out to touch him, allow him to see the neon-bright “yes” in her eyes. Instead, she glanced away before blurting out the first questions that popped into her mind.

  “So, have you ever had a wife, children? How old are you anyway?” Her pillow talk needed a little polishing. Okay, so it needed some heavy buffing.

  He remained silent for so long she thought he wouldn’t answer. She took a chance and met his gaze. His smile said he understood exactly how she felt.

  “I’ve lived thousands of years among humans and thousands more in the Underworld.”

  He didn’t glance away. She guessed that proved which of the two in this bed was a giant wuss.

  “I never stayed with one woman for more than a few weeks.” He finally looked away. “Demons can’t produce children.”

  “A few weeks?” That little tidbit shouldn’t make her so happy. After all, she wouldn’t be with him any longer than that. Do you want to be? Ivy didn’t know.

  “Women don’t love demons. They might lust after us for a while, but it doesn’t take them long to sense what we are. Demons have nothing to offer humans except misery. And death. Can’t forget death. No home, no family, no happiness, and then you die.”

  That “you” sounded sort of personal. A warning? “Wow, you fling a mean bucket of cold water.” She rolled onto her back so he couldn’t read her expression, but she watched him from the corner of her eye. “Would you change all of that if you could?”

  “I never think about it. Wishing and hoping don’t work for demons. So why bother?” His face was a blank slate.

  “Well, I’m wishing and hoping for a lot right now.” She wasn’t doing a great job of keeping the tension from her voice.

  He smiled. And Ivy decided that smile looked good enough to keep her here for well over two weeks.

  “But there’s a lot to be said for living in the moment.” He propped himself up on his elbow and leaned over her. “In the end, that’s all we remember anyway. It’s never about the years, it’s about those moments when magic happened.” His smile faded. “Or didn’t.”

  Crossroads alert. Ivy had always chosen the men in her life according to her mother’s feet-on-the-ground rule. Mind over emotion. She’d taken careful steps so she wouldn’t trip, always choosing well-lit roads—men with good jobs and no bad habits and who weren’t prone to talking to themselves. Now was decision time. If she made love with Murmur, she’d be stumbling onto a side road—not paved and definitely not well-lit. Was the destination worth braving darkness and danger?

  Murmur’s music touched her. Not compelling her. Seducing her. The promise of pleasure and much more waited for her in that darkness. Ivy made her decision.

  She reached up and slid her fingers along his jaw. “I’d hope this would last more than a moment. Interesting to see if the reality lives up to the music.”

  She felt his smile beneath her fingers.

  “Oh, it definitely will.” He glided his hand beneath her top and rested his palm against her stomach.

  The warm pressure wasn’t a light touch. It was firm, a claiming, but not in a bad way. “Arrogant male.”

  She absorbed his soft laughter, stored it away behind the door in her mind labeled Memories of Murmur. Ivy hoped she never ran out of storage space.

  “Not arrogant, just honest.” His hair trailed across her body as he lowered his head and covered her mouth in a long, drugging kiss.

  Sensory overload exploded. His lips left her conflicted. Which to concentrate on—their firm pressure or the soft fullness of his lower lip? Which was it, firm or soft? She didn’t know, so she shifted to the taste of him. Again that damn can’t
-decide thing. Was it hot male or dangerous delight? And his scent. It was all her dark fantasies rolled into one. Indescribable. All she needed to know, though, was that it was his scent and it would always take her back to this moment no matter where she wandered in the future.

  He abandoned her lips to kiss a lingering path down the side of her neck before transferring his attention to the sensitive skin behind her ear. “It won’t be long before I run out of uncovered spots to kiss. That would be an unfortunate thing.”

  “Unfortunate. Yes.” Her breathing was doing weird things, making complete sentences difficult. “I have a problem too.”

  “Tell me.”

  His breath fanned her bare stomach where he’d already worked her top up to just beneath her breasts. Her shudder was all delicious anticipation.

  “I have to peel the whole banana before I eat it. I mean, I know lots of people who peel as they go along. That’s just not me.” She raised herself a little so he could pull the top over her head. “I don’t know how people get any kind of pleasure from a partial peel.” Ivy lay back down as soon as he removed her bra. The cool air touching her nipples made them pebble. She yearned for… She knew what she yearned for, but first things first.

  Her babbling about bananas died as she met his amused gaze. She swallowed hard as he yanked off his shirt.

  He grinned. “I get it. We’re both just half-peeled bananas. But not for long.”

  Ivy returned his smile as her tension faded. She reached for him.

  Somewhere between the time she ran her fingers across the smooth, hard planes of his chest and the moment he moved in to trace her bottom lip with the tip of his tongue, they both lost their half-peeled status.

  Ivy forgot exactly how she shed all her clothes as Murmur deepened the kiss. He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her close.

  She accepted the invitation of his half-parted lips as she allowed her tongue complete freedom. No deep analysis went into his taste because the feel of his bare body pressed against the length of hers took her breath away. She closed her eyes and fought her need to crawl inside of him, to wrap herself around his pounding heart and become one with its beat.

  Thump, thump, thumpthumpthump. She opened her eyes. Wait. Not his heartbeat. Not hers. What the… ? A drum?

  He broke their kiss and rose above her, his eyes glowing red. She should be terrified. She wasn’t. Because within those eyes she saw heat, desire, and need. For her.

  And then his music broke over her, engulfed her, and the drumbeat went on. Thump, thump, thumpthumpthump. A melodic heartbeat growing, expanding, while the rest of the music throbbed with a sensuous rhythm that took form and color around her.

  Fingertips of fire touched her nipples—teasing, warm lips licking at them until she arched her back at the pleasure-pain.

  She couldn’t see, couldn’t think as the drumbeat soaked into her head, her body. Instruments she’d never heard before played an ascending scale of frenzied need, the notes flashing pinpoints of crimson along the length of her body. Touching, touching, always touching.

  The sensations overwhelmed her. Ivy tried to focus, to see him beyond what his music was doing to her. She reached up, searching.

  But a single voice broke from the sexual symphony. Not human. Deep, steeped in erotic purple, it spiraled around her reaching hands, wrapped her wrists in searing bands of sunset colors, and pulled her arms above her head. She was helpless, open to whatever the music chose to do with her body.

  But where was he?

  Ivy writhed, the heaviness low in her stomach demanding, screaming its need. She spread her legs, begging, wanting.

  The music answered her, violins crying that they too needed, wanted. Notes—bright and fierce, muted and gentle—played counterpoint to the wash of melody drowning her body in a sea of sexual hunger. Starving. For his body and for… Not sure. Couldn’t concentrate.

  Those notes became warm lips covering her nipples, a teasing tongue flicking the hard nubs, teeth nibbling, driving her crazy.

  Her heartbeat was now the deep booming of the kettledrum as the notes skipped down a descending scale, his tongue sliding across her stomach, his lips—no, no, not his lips, not his tongue—trailing a path up her inner thigh… And then… She closed her eyes, but the music lived on, building, clawing its way to a crescendo she knew would scatter her across the universe.

  A single thread of melody—clear, haunting—touched her. It slid across the part of her that was already engorged, ready, and she screamed and fought and begged. Then it pushed into her and withdrew. In and out, in and out, it mimicked the rhythm of sex while the drumbeat became a drumroll.

  Colors merged into black, and the black became his eyes. Black? Hadn’t they been red or green… ? She couldn’t remember, couldn’t think, couldn’t care. All she wanted was—

  “Now. Now.” She had no other words, no breath to say them, even if she had more.

  She stared up into those black eyes that were his, or not his, or maybe his, and felt her whole body clench around her silent cry. “I want you inside me now!”

  The bed dipped beneath her, and she sensed that he was now straddling her. She felt him slip his hands beneath her bottom and lift her. The music was a solid wall of sound, and the sound was color.

  The head of his cock pressed between her legs, pushing into her slowly, slowly.

  “Faster, damn it.” She was wet and clenching and almost insane with her wanting, her need to be filled. By him. But where was he? She couldn’t maintain the thought, or anything at all except the sensations battering her, flinging her high and then dropping her only to toss her higher again and again and again.

  He pushed harder, deeper, filling her in a way she knew she’d never be filled again. No empty spaces left. Anywhere. Inside or out.

  He paused, and she could hear his breathing—harsh, rasping. Yes, that was the real him.

  Then he began to move. He slowly withdrew until only the head of his cock remained in her. Pause. Plunge. Her whimpering cries punctuated the stretching, the thrusting.

  The rhythm quickened. She grew greedy. She didn’t wait for him to plunge into her now. She rose to meet each thrust, grunting with her effort, breathless, feeling it coming closer and closer. Reaching for it, reaching, reaching…

  The world exploded. Her body exploded. All the colors flashed to blinding white. And the music… The music was Steven Tyler’s primal scream in “Dream On.” Dream on, dream on, dream…

  She shuddered and cried out, a guttural scream of fulfillment. Spasms of unbearable pleasure shook her, and she knew bits of colored Ivy would be raining down for days.

  And if his cry matched hers, she didn’t know, didn’t care. For this moment it was all about her, because he hadn’t been there. She was alone with his music.

  Ivy closed her eyes, savoring the weakening spasms, allowing her breathing to return to normal, her heart to beat to its own rhythm.

  When she finally opened her eyes, he still knelt above her. His eyes were once again green. He watched her carefully. She allowed her gaze to wander the length of his body—sleek, muscular, sweat-sheened. Beautiful.

  She felt a drop of her own sweat trickle between her breasts. “I’ve never known anything even close to what just happened.” And she meant it. The dictionary definition of “orgasm” should read simply: “Murmur.”

  His gaze narrowed. He slipped off her and lay on his back beside her. “But… ?” He reached up to sweep strands of his hair from his face.

  “Where were you? At the beginning I saw you, felt you, but then you were… gone.” She rolled onto her side and walked her fingertips across his incredible chest. “I just experienced the most amazing event of my life, and you weren’t there.”

  “I am my music. I thought you understood that.” He didn’t sound angry or disappointed or anything. His expression gave nothing away.

  “No.” Ivy didn’t know how she could be so sure of this. “Your music is an extension of you,
but I want the flesh and blood Murmur.” God, she didn’t want to hurt him. She tried for a lighter tone. “Not that I’d live through the real deal.”

  He didn’t smile. “Perhaps you wouldn’t.”

  He was kidding, right? She looked down. “I’m sorry. I’m ruining the moment.” Where had this gone wrong?

  Murmur drew in a deep breath and lay still, as though he was thinking. “My emotions ran too strong. The music was a buffer.” He turned his head to capture her with his gaze. “It was safer that way.”

  “For who?”

  He turned his head away without answering.

  That went well. Way to mess up the most spectacular orgasm of her life. Ivy leaned over the side of the bed to retrieve her clothes. After slipping on her bra and top, she swung her feet to the floor and pulled on the rest of her clothes. Then she stood.

  She didn’t know what to say. I never got to touch you. It was reality TV at its best. She’d seen it, heard it, thought that she was sharing it, but when she’d touched the screen no one had been there. “I guess I’ll see you at the meeting.”

  Ivy waited for him to say something. Had it meant anything to him? Should she even expect it of him? He was a demon, and he’d made it plain that his emotions didn’t run on the same track as human emotions. That was the real problem. She kept forgetting the demon part. He’d become just Murmur to her; not a demon, merely a man. And she didn’t know how to change that.

  She walked to the door and pulled it open.

  “Ivy.”

  She paused, but didn’t turn to look at him.

  “Sometimes we have to be happy with what we have and not wish for more.”

  She nodded before stepping into the hall and closing the door behind her. What if what she had wasn’t enough?

  Forcing aside thoughts that would lead nowhere right now, she headed for the stairs. She was supposed to be spying on Ganymede for Sparkle. So far she was doing a rotten job. Before catching up with Ganymede, though, she had to find out what Kellen was doing. She dug for her cell phone.

  “Hey, Sis.”