“Was it bad news?” Ethan asked.
I glanced at him. “You didn’t peek at the note?”
“It’s not my note,” he said.
“It wasn’t sealed, just folded over, and you didn’t peek?”
He frowned and said, “No, it’s not my note.”
I looked at him. I’d been attracted to him from the moment I met him, or my tigers had, or hell, I didn’t know anymore, maybe it was all me. Maybe the beasts just opened up things that were already there? Who the hell knew? Sex with this man wasn’t a fate worse than death. Was it sex with a stranger that bothered me, or just sex in general, or both? I was betting both. I looked away from Ethan, stared at the pale wall with its copy-of-a-copy painting beside the dresser and its TV. I’d try it, and if it felt too weird, I’d say stop, and wait for Alex; at least I’d already slept with him.
“Yes, you can touch my back,” I said, but couldn’t make my voice sound completely happy about it.
But Ethan took me at my word, not my tone. His fingers trailed down my back and kept going until he was tracing the edge of my butt.
“That is not my back,” I said.
He drew his hand away from me. “I’m sorry,” he said, softly.
“No, it’s not you, it’s me. I always have a problem with having to have sex.”
He sat up, drawing the covers over his lap so he stayed covered. It meant I had to hold on to the covers to stay as covered as I was, but I appreciated the attempt at modesty on his part. “I can call Alex. He’s working, but you can ask him how soon he could be here.”
I looked at his face, so careful, so . . . hurt. I remembered then, a little late, that he’d spent his life not being wanted by the women of his clan. Shit. I sighed, and said, “I can’t explain all my issues right now, but just give me a minute. I do want you. I am attracted to you. I just didn’t expect to wake up beside you before we’d even had sex. I didn’t expect to miss out on the crime fighting while I had to heal.”
I hugged my knees to my chest. “I’d gotten used to the extra healing that I get with the metaphysics. I thought the super healing was because of the lycanthropy and the vampire marks; I didn’t realize it was tied this much to the ardeur.”
“And that bothers you?” he said.
I nodded. “Yeah.”
“Why?” he asked.
“I can go days without feeding the ardeur now. I was so happy and it was going to make being a U.S. Marshal so much easier, but now I know the price of not feeding. When I’m hunting bad guys I need the extra healing, so that means I still have to feed regularly. Do you know how hard that is on an active warrant of execution out of state?”
“No, but I can imagine.” I could feel some tension go out of him, so that he was just sitting on the bed, not waiting to get up and call Alex.
“May I touch the back of your body?” he asked, “and did you hear the difference in what I asked?”
I thought about it for a second, trying to work out why I was getting in my way so badly. Finally, I said, “Yes, and yes.”
He touched my back again, but this time I tensed. “It really bothers you that you have to feed so often.”
“Yes,” I said, and hugged my knees a little tighter. “It’s almost impossible to do the out-of-state warrants.”
He laid his hand on my shoulder, not petting, more comforting. “But you can go days without feeding if you have to, and from what you’re saying, that wasn’t true before.”
I thought about it. “No, I mean, you’re right.”
He scooted on the bed so he was sitting behind me. I fought the tension in my shoulders, not liking his being where I couldn’t see him. I’d slept nude in a bed with him for hours. He’d already proven he was willing to risk his life to keep me safe. He’d trusted my ability with a gun enough to take a knife wound and throw himself on the mercy of a Harlequin. What more did I want from him?
He put his hands on my shoulders. “You’re still tense. What can I do to help?”
“Help me do years of therapy in the next five minutes,” I said.
“I don’t understand,” he said, and I didn’t have to see his face; I could hear the puzzlement in his voice.
I shook my head and hugged my knees harder. “Ignore me.”
“I don’t want to ignore you,” he said, and his voice was moving closer. He moved my hair to one side, and I felt the heat of his body hesitate before he laid his lips against my back. When I didn’t protest, he kissed me, and when I didn’t complain about that he kissed me again, a little lower on my back. The bed moved as he kissed his way, ever so gently, down my back. I began to relax a little more with each kiss, my arms unclenching, letting my spine straighten so that I was sitting up straight by the time he reached the end of my spine.
He rolled his tongue in small circles at the base of my spine until I shivered for him, and then he plunged his tongue downward, tracing between my cheeks. It brought a surprised sound from me. He bit me, gently, on one cheek.
I whispered, “God.”
“I take it you liked that,” he said, voice already growing deeper.
What was I supposed to do, lie? “Yes,” I said my voice a little shaky.
He bit me again, a little harder, but still not hard. I half-rolled, half-fell onto my side. He bit farther down my cheek, harder yet. It made me shiver again, my breath catching in my throat. He touched my thigh, lifted, and I opened my legs for him. He set his teeth in the last bit of cheek, before he got to other things. He bit me this time, hard enough that it made me gasp and try to sit up, but his hands were on my thighs, and ass, and sitting up wasn’t happening. I was suddenly staring down my body to find his face between my thighs, looking up at me.
“Too hard?” he asked. The side of his face rested on my thigh, his other hand wrapped around my other thigh, holding my leg wide and up.
“A little,” I said, and my voice was breathy.
“Do you like teeth everywhere?” He was strangely serious with his face on my thigh. But considering what his face was so close to, it was a serious question.
“No, not everywhere.”
He smiled, a quick flex of his mouth, making the dimples even deeper. “Then no more teeth.”
Honestly, a little biting along the inner thighs was nice, and if it was done right a little teeth in more intimate places could work for me, but I didn’t know Ethan that well. Erring on the side of caution seemed like a good idea for the first time.
“No more teeth down there,” I said.
“Anything else you don’t want me to do?”
I thought about it. He stretched my leg out and let part of it rest lower down on his side, while he used my other thigh as a pillow. It was all strangely casual.
“Let’s try not to mark me where I’ll have to explain it to the other cops.”
“But I can mark you where they can’t see?”
“Depends on the mark, but if I’m in the right head space I like to come away with marks.”
“What can I do to get you in the right head space?”
“You like to leave marks?” I asked.
“Only if you enjoy it.”
“What do you enjoy?” I asked. The mood of sex and seduction was easing into something more normal.
He smiled and it was almost shy. That seemed the wrong word when a man had his head resting on my thigh and was looking at the most intimate parts of my body, but it was still the truth.
“Tell me,” I said.
He frowned up at me, and said, “You really want to know.”
“Of course I do.”
He rubbed his hand over the outside of my thigh, more petting it than anything. “Why ‘of course’?”
“I want you to enjoy yourself, too.”
He grinned, wide and sudden, his gray eyes filling with something close to laughter. “Oh, I’ll enjoy myself. I want to make sure you enjoy yourself.”
“Why?” I said.
“If you enjoy yourself, then ther
e’s a better chance you’ll want to be with me again.”
It was perfect boy logic. “But I still want to know what you enjoy, Ethan.”
He looked perplexed. “I like sex with girls.”
That made me smile. “I think we have that covered.”
He grinned again, and then again that shy look came over his face. “I want to touch as much of you as you’ll let me. I want as much of you on as much of me as I can get. I want to do as much as you’ll let me do.” The shy look gave way to something much sadder.
“Once I feed the ardeur we’ll lose a lot of control.”
“I don’t want to lose control too soon,” he said. “I want it to last.”
I nodded. “I do need to feed and get back to crime solving, but . . . How long has it been for you?”
He shook his head, rubbing his cheek against my thigh. “I don’t want to say, it makes me sound like mercy sex.”
I rubbed my foot along his hip, and let him see in my face how amazing he looked cuddled down there. I still hadn’t seen all of him bare of the covers, but if everything else was half as nice as what I had seen, it would be worth seeing. I let him see that I saw him. I saw him as beautiful. I saw him as desirable, and I realized that the ardeur wasn’t just about sex anymore. It was more and more about giving people their heart’s desire. Ethan wanted what a lot of people wanted: to be wanted. We all want to be desired. I did my best to let him see that I did.
His face showed a soft wonder, as if no one had looked at him like that in a very long time. I held my hand out to him.
“I thought I was doing this first,” he said.
“Trust me, I want you to go down on me, but first I want to kiss and cuddle. Once you do me orally I’m just going to want you to fuck me.”
His eyes went wide, and he shivered.
“What?” I asked.
“The way you talk.”
“Something wrong with the way I talk?”
“No,” he said, “it’s great. It’s just . . . perfect.” He went up on all fours to crawl up toward my head, and I was able to see him completely nude for the very first time. All the talk had made him soft again, so that that flat, ridged stomach was edged by the soft, dangling bits of him. It made me, as it usually did, want to go down on him while he was still soft and I could fit all of him in my mouth without working at it.
His face was over mine when he said, “You watch my bits the way some men watch breasts.”
I blushed, I couldn’t help it. I glared up at him with his knees between my spread thighs, a hand on either side of my shoulders, both of us buck naked. I tried for dignity and promptly failed. He was smiling that big dimpled smile of his that I already knew was his really pleased smile.
“I didn’t expect you to blush.”
I kept glaring at him while the blush faded. I tried to fold my arms across my chest but with bare breasts my cup size, it just didn’t work.
He lay down beside me, propped on his side, and watched my face. “I expected a lot of things from you, Anita, but not this.”
“What? That I’d blush?”
“That, and you’re so . . .” He touched my hair where it lay on the bed, gently, as if he weren’t sure I’d let him do it. When I didn’t protest he touched my cheek. “Sweet,” he said.
“I am not sweet,” I said.
He smiled. “Endearing?”
I frowned at him.
He laughed.
“You haven’t known me long enough to be that amused.” But I was smiling slightly as I said it.
“You’re just not what I expected.”
“What did you expect?”
“Someone harder, harsher.” He looked down my body. “You are beautiful.”
I shrugged.
“You are,” he said.
“Thanks, you’re not so bad yourself.”
He grinned. “You are not your reputation.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means that rumors say you’re this great seductress. That you eat little weretigers for breakfast and possess their bodies first and then their hearts.”
“I told you that feeding the ardeur could make me own you lock, stock, and heart.”
“You did.”
“I wasn’t lying, Ethan,” I said, and I searched his face, tried to see if he really understood what could happen to him. He was so lonely. He so wanted to be wanted and to belong to someone. The ardeur would give him what he wanted, but the price of belonging to someone was that you belonged to them.
“I have almost a dozen lovers at home, Ethan. If the ardeur binds you to me then you get in line, and Jean-Claude, Nathaniel, Micah, some of the others are always at the head of the line.”
“How often do you make love to the men who aren’t at the top of the list?”
I touched his chest, running my hand over the muscled swell of his pectoral. He was so lean that all the muscles showed. He was almost too lean, but not quite; it just looked like his body type.
He pressed his hand over mine, holding it still against his chest. “How often?”
“I don’t keep count.”
“Average?”
“Three days a week, I guess.”
He laughed a surprised sound. It made me look at his face. “That’s a lot better than I’m getting now.”
“That’s if you’re okay with being in the bed with other men and me. Since there’s so many we do a lot of group scenes. It helps everyone get more turns.”
“And you’re the only girl for all of them?”
I thought about that. “No, a couple of them have other lovers.”
“And you’re all right with that?”
It was my turn to look surprised at him. “Are you kidding? There’s only so much time in the day, so a helping hand is great, especially for the men that I’m not in love with.”
He nodded. “So, I could have a girlfriend if I found someone who would have me?”
“I’d encourage it.”
“Because you wouldn’t be in love with me.”
“But you might be in love with me, do you understand that?”
His face was solemn again. “I do.”
“And you still want to feed me?”
He raised my hand up and laid a gentle kiss on my palm. “You’ve already given me more physical contact than I’ve had from a woman in two years.”
I couldn’t keep the surprise and the near horror off my face. “Dear God, Ethan, not even sleeping in big naked kitty piles?”
“I am an outcast, Anita, barely tolerated. I will be their muscle until the day something faster and stronger than I am kills me. It is my only use to the red clan. You don’t cuddle at night with someone you’re sure is basically a meat shield.”
“That’s harsh,” I said.
“It’s my life.”
In my head I thought, It’s not much of a life. “If you come to St. Louis there will be plenty of people to cuddle with, as long as you don’t insist on it all being weretigers.”
He entwined his fingers with mine. “You have such small hands.”
“They match the rest of me,” I said.
He smiled. “Not all of you is small. Your breasts are amazing.”
“Yeah, yeah, my chest is all breasts.”
“No, breasts, and muscle. You’re in amazing shape. You hit the gym like a guard.”
“I work out with our guards as often as I can.”
He gave me wide eyes. “I’ve never heard of a royal that works out with the guards.”
“I’m not big on the whole royalty thing,” I said.
“Our queen thinks you show a lack of respect.”
“She’s right,” I said.
“It’s been wonderful sleeping next to a woman again. I hadn’t realized how much I missed just holding someone in my arms.”
I realized that Ethan wasn’t dominant enough to push the sex forward. I was going to have to be bolder, or we’d be talking for another hour. Talking was good, I
liked that I could talk to him, but I needed to feed the ardeur and find Edward. He needed me at his back.
“Kiss me,” I said.
“What?” he asked.
“Kiss me.”
He looked uncertain then, nervous.
“Has it been two years since you kissed a girl?”
He nodded, and he wouldn’t meet my eyes.
I reached up with the hand he wasn’t holding and touched his face, made him look at me. “Has it been two years since you’ve done anything with a girl?”
“Yes.” He whispered it.
I smiled at him, trying to make it gentle. “You’re going to be good at it.”
“How can you tell?”
“You’re a wereanimal, so that makes you a sensualist, and I’ve seen you fight. You know how to use your body; that translates to the bedroom.”
“I’ve known fighters who weren’t good in the bedroom.”
“They had issues,” I said.
“How do you know that I don’t have issues?”
“Everyone has issues,” I said, “but if the issues are too much I’ll let the ardeur free and it takes away all the doubts.”
“I didn’t think I’d be this nervous,” he said, and he let go of my hand and just looked at me.
“It’s okay to be nervous,” I said.
“Are you nervous?” he asked.
I smiled at him. “I was, but I’m not now.”
“Why not?” he asked.
“Because you’re more nervous than I am.”
“That doesn’t make any sense. Why shouldn’t that make you more nervous? Why don’t you think I’m a pussy for being nervous?”
“You called me sweet earlier; I’ll return the compliment.”
“Sweet isn’t what a woman wants from a man.”
“Oh, I think you’ll find that a lot of women rate sweetness in a man pretty damn high.”
“Do you?”
I smiled up at him. “Kiss me, Ethan, just kiss me, and we’ll go from there.”
“Why not feed the ardeur and take all the doubts?”
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