Charming (Exiled Book 3)

by Victoria Danann

  The female with him winked at Ana. They got off on the third floor and could be heard laughing before the door closed.

  Charming leaned against the back wall with Ana safely in his arms. When she tilted her face up to look at him, his tongue came out and wet his lips. He brushed a soft kiss over her mouth once, twice, before Ana pressed for more. With a groan his tongue plunged into her mouth and she began to squirm in his arms, trying to get closer somehow.

  The door made a dinging sound when they arrived at the top floor. They broke the kiss so they could exit and find the sacred privacy they both craved.

  “You left the apartment door standing open,” she said.

  “I was desperate,” he answered. Then grinning he added, “And focused.”

  “We’re dripping. We should take these wet things off before we leave a trail of water everywhere.”

  “You did look edible in this dress. And I’m a lummox for not getting that you did this for me.”

  “You are a lummox. Now can I see you naked?”

  He laughed. “Only if you promise to lie if you don’t like what you see.”

  She scoffed. “Fat chance of that.”

  He turned her around and unzipped the dress as she slid off her shoes. She let the dress fall onto the tiled entry with a splat and began tugging his shirt up so she could pull it over his head. He helped, laughing, but when she began fumbling with the metal button of his pants, he pulled her in for another kiss.

  She broke away, breathing heavy. “Pants.”

  He tried to toe off his boots, but his socks were wet and they wouldn’t come off. So he had to sit down on the floor and pull.

  “While you’re doing that, I’m going for towels,” she said.

  She hurried to the bathroom and made the mistake of looking in the mirror. After a highly appropriate gasp, she closed the door, and locked it, glad she had insisted on doorknob locks. She looked like a drowned rat with smeared red lipstick. Not a good combination.

  Rummaging through drawers for something that would take lipstick off, she realized that Rosie had bought an obscene amount of girly cosmetics. She finally found makeup remover wipes just as Charming was knocking on the door.

  “Don’t you dare come in here!”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I look like a drowned rat with smeared lipstick. Give me a minute.”

  “One minute. No more.”

  The area around her mouth still looked a little pink, wherever the lipstick had been. “Must have had dye in it,” she mumbled to herself. She decided she looked like Punch Mouth, the master vampire in the first season of Buffy. “Try explaining that to Charming. Ha!” she continued to mumble.

  “Ana,” she could hear his voice clearly beyond the door. “Just a reminder. I can hear you even when you’re on the other side of the door and lower your voice. Just so you know.”

  “Shit.”

  “I heard that.”

  “Okay. I get it. You have really, really, really good ears and it’s really, really, really annoying. If you keep talking to me, this is going to take longer.”

  “Shutting up now.”

  She managed to refrain from saying “Good,” because she knew that would just instigate a whole new exchange. Instead, she towel dried her hair, ran a brush through it a few times, and put it up in a French braid, which she’d been told was a talent because not every woman can French braid her own hair. Satisfied that the hair was presentable, she scrambled out of her wet lingerie, which was the pretty stuff Rosie had picked out, and unceremoniously threw it on the floor. After wrapping one of the fluffy bath sheets around her like a sarong, she opened the door.

  “Tada,” she sang.

  He was leaning against the wall opposite the door, arms folded across his chest, eyes trained on the door. His gaze flicked from the top of her head to her feet and back again quickly, but she knew he’d taken it all in by the way his eyes heated with lust.

  “No,” he said. “I’m Charming.”

  Her smile faded. “No. Tada means… never mind.” She stepped back into the bath and held up a dry towel. “Come to mama.”

  He thought that letting Ana finish undressing him was torture.

  When his engorged cock sprang free of clothing, he said, “I like your hair that way,” to distract himself from the appeal of dragging her to the bed straight away.

  When she paused and stared at his erection like she’d never seen one before, it was all he could do to keep from bending her over the bathroom counter.

  “Thank you,” she said absent-mindedly, still staring at the enormity of his erection.

  “Don’t be thinking it’s too big for you.” Her eyes flew up to meet his. “It will fit. Trust me.”

  On the street Ana had learned that when someone said, “Trust me,” it meant that she should run as far and as fast as she could. She thought she’d be a fool to trust the beautiful and otherworldly creature in front of her. But Charming wasn’t like anyone she’d ever known and, if he wanted her trust, she was inclined to give it.

  Lowering her eyes she went back to the task at hand. He didn’t know what torture was until he’d experienced Ana intent on slowly drying every square inch of his body.

  “I like it even better when it’s down and mussed up. Your hair I mean.” he said, trying desperately to stave off a premature ejaculation.

  “When have you ever seen it mussed up?”

  “When you come in out of the wind. I have an imagination.”

  She stopped. “You imagined me in bed.”

  He barked out a laugh. “Only a million times.”

  “Then why didn’t you…?”

  “Because I didn’t think that’s what Rosie had in mind for me to do with you when she left you here for safekeeping. And, I thought it wouldn’t be good politically for me to…”

  “For you to what?” She stopped drying and stood up straight, looking him in the eyes with such sincerity and open vulnerability, he couldn’t see his way clear to lying.

  “I thought choosing a human might not be well-received by Exiled. Or humans for that matter.”

  She searched his eyes. “Is that a worry?”

  “Ana, do we really need to have this conversation now?”

  “Now is the only time to have this conversation. Before it’s too late to take things back. I don’t want to cause problems for you. But while we’re on the subject, how is your family going to feel about us? Me being human and all.”

  “My brother was going to marry Rosie and…” He paused, searching for the right thing to say. “She’s not like us.”

  Ana laughed. “She’s even more not like you than I’m not like you.”

  “If you said what I think you said, then that is true.”

  “So you think they’ll be okay with it.”

  “Ana, don’t worry about my family. Or anybody else. My choice of mate is exactly that. My choice.”

  She smiled. “So…. you want to eat?”

  “That’s the last thing I want right now.” He pulled her into a kiss that was so hot it took kissing to a level she hadn’t known existed before. He dragged it out, making it slow, sweet, and addicting.

  When he pulled back, she said, “I like you a lot. Have I mentioned that?”

  “You’d better.”

  Not being able to wait any longer, he turned her around so that she was looking at herself in the mirror with her back to him. Since he was easily a full head taller, both their faces were in full view.

  “Look at us together, Ana,” he said.

  Her breath had started to slow a little, but quickened again at his words. She felt his erection prodding her back and moaned in response. He reached for the tuck that held her towel in place, slowly removed it and let it fall to the floor.

  She’d never felt so exposed as she did standing in front of the mirror watching Charming’s eyes devour her. Forcing herself to keep her hands at her sides, trying not to reach up to cover herself reflexively, s
he closed her eyes instead.

  “Open your eyes, Ana. Look at us together,” he said again. “We were made for each other.”

  She opened her eyes. “An hour hasn’t passed since you asked me to disappear so you could fuck another woman.”

  “I’ve already admitted to being an idiot. It should mean something that I didn’t fuck another woman. I haven’t touched a female since you were dropped in the middle of my living room like a bomb. That should count for something. Now shut up and pay attention. I’m busy trying to make love to you.”

  He reached around from behind and cupped her breasts with both hands, raising and lowering their weight in the most arousing way before lazily running his thumbs over hard and sensitive nipples. It was tantalizingly erotic, both the feel of it and the look of it. Her breasts weren’t abnormally big, but they’d been big enough to draw male attention since she’d turned fourteen. Still, they looked small in his big hands.

  Her lips parted and her head fell back against his chest. He continued to play with one breast while his other hand skimmed her abdomen, going lower until his fingers danced over her clit and the surrounding nerve endings. She had no choice but to move her hips back and forth, silently begging for more.

  He released her breasts and urged her to bend and place her hands on the counter, but when she tried to hang her head and look down, he grabbed her braid and gently pulled her head back up, “Don’t look away. Watch,” he commanded. “You need to know you’ve been claimed. I want you to have a picture of it in your head so you never forget. Ever.”

  He let one hand rest at the side of her waist while the other hand casually explored her derriere. When he slipped a long finger between her folds and into her channel she gasped and then whimpered.

  “You’re going too slow,” she protested.

  He chuckled then withdrew his finger and put it in his mouth, sucking back the juices with a wicked gleam in his eye she’d never seen before. When she felt the tip of his cock aligning with her entrance, she pushed back involuntarily. He chuckled again. “My mate is greedy. I like that.”

  Charming’s voice was so deep and gruff that it sounded like it was part growl and it excited her even more. She looked up into the mirror. Her face was flushed with arousal and exertion. Charming’s appearance was also altered slightly. His skin tone appeared to be a shade or two darker and light seemed to reflect from his eyes in an extra-human way.

  The sound of skin slapping together coupled with the sight of Charming rocking into her with steady rhythm was mesmerizing. Just when she thought he’d created a visual event that couldn’t be beat, he reset the bar by letting his fangs descend. It elicited a rush like no other from her. It was beautiful. It was hypnotic. It was dangerous. And she knew she’d never forget their first time, just as he’d said.

  When Charming couldn’t wait any longer, he braced one hand on the bath counter, bent over Ana’s back, and slid his free hand around to tap lightly on her clit. She immediately exploded into a screaming orgasm that clenched down on him so hard it was almost painful. He joined her screams of pleasure with a decidedly non-human roar, so loud it temporarily stunned the eardrum closest to the sound.

  When their breathing and heart rates leveled out, he looked up into the mirror, smiled, and said, “Now we can take a break for dinner.”

  She grinned in return, pushing a tendril of hair that had broken loose from the braid behind her ear. When she reached for her silk bathrobe, he stopped her.

  “No clothes.”

  “You sure have gotten pushy all of a sudden.”

  He shrugged. “I guess I’m sexually dominant.”

  “I guess you are. And that’s okay with me, up to a point.”

  “I’m be more open to discussion after you feed me.”

  Nude dinner with a man was a new experience for Ana. In a way it was strange, but it was also erotic and exquisitely intimate.

  Ana had wanted to reheat dinner, but Charming insisted he was too hungry to wait.

  “Your Shepherd’s Pie is as good as Abel’s. Maybe better.”

  “Well, it should be. He taught me. I just added a little more garlic than usual because I know you like it.”

  “Yeah. That’s what’s different. I do like it,” he smiled and licked his lips.

  “Now about the discussion you mentioned.”

  “Yeah?” he said, taking another large bite.

  “Couple of things. First, you didn’t use protection.”

  “Protection?”

  “Don’t act like you don’t understand protection. What had you planned to do with Snow tonight?”

  “I planned to wrap it up, but Snow’s not my mate. You are.”

  “So you’re saying that being your mate means baby factory? Don’t you think we ought to talk about some things first? Like whether or not we both want children? And when?”

  He stopped and stared. “You want children. Right?”

  “Maybe, but not right this minute. I don’t even know you yet.” He cocked his head, took another bite, and seemed to be thinking that over. Meanwhile, she continued. “I also want to be clear about what this mating thing means to you. Does it mean we’re exclusive?”

  “Exclusive? No. We include everybody in group events.”

  “No. No. I mean I’m not doing this,” she moved her hand back and forth between them, “with any other guy and you’re not doing this with any other woman or Amazon princess.”

  “You’re going to have to tell me what an Amazon princess is.”

  “Does that mean there are conditions?”

  “No! Of course not. You’re it for me. I’m it for you. If I catch you eating naked with another male, I will tear his head from his body and throw it off the balcony.”

  “Charming! Ew! Having dinner here.”

  “But I’m curious about what an Amazon princess is.”

  After spending the next quarter hour trying to describe what she meant, she finally gave up with a loud and decidedly unfeminine squawk of frustration. “Forget it.”

  “Okay, but there’s something I need to know.”

  “What?”

  “Everything I don’t know about you. Your childhood, your life in the other world, and what happened that made Rosie decide the best thing was to bring you here. To hide from somebody or something.”

  “Yeah,” she said quietly. “That’s a tall order.”

  “I’ve got all night. If you need longer, I’ve got a lifetime.”

  “You always know the right thing to say, Charming.”

  “Believe me I don’t. I’m just a better version of me when you’re around I guess.”

  That made her heart flutter. “So what else does mating mean?”

  Instead of answering, he scooped her up in his arms. She squealed in surprise, but nestled into the warmth of his body as he carried her back to bed. She curled into his side as he lay on his back, head resting in the crook of his shoulder.

  “It’s a lot like human marriage, but there’s no divorce. If we have trouble, we’ll work it through and we’ll always be together.” Ana snuggled in closer to his side and sighed. “There’s a ceremony. Food. Dancing. Silly clothes.”

  She angled her head so that she could see his face. “What do you mean silly clothes?”

  “I have a feeling I’m going to live to be sorry I said that. Don’t listen to me. Talk to Dandelion. Rosie sent her a special outfit for the ceremony when she mated my brother then all the females wanted something like it. Now there’s a shop where humans design and make clothes for the special day.”

  “Oh.”

  “Tomorrow I’d like to take you to meet my family. They all live in Newland. You’ve met Dandy, but not Crave or my parents.”

  “Okay.”

  “So you were going to finally tell me how you came to be living with me?”

  Ana took in a big breath and let it out. He thought she was going to say something significant, but what came out of her mouth was. “You want an
other cookie?”

  “Are you stalling? I should have pressed a long time ago. Females don’t usually have to be prodded to talk about themselves. The fact that you evaded all my questions should have been a signal.”

  “I don’t really…”

  “Ana, being mated to each other means that you can trust me. There’s nothing you can say that will make me feel differently about you, but I do want to know who you are. Everything about you. Starting with when you were born. Don’t leave anything out.”

  She laughed quietly. “I think I’m going to have to leave something out, unless you want to be here for twenty years.”

  “So. That’s how old you are. Twenty.”

  “How old are you?”

  “A little older. Not much.”

  “That was a dodge.”

  “Twenty five.” He ran his hand down her bare arm. “You can skip things like breathing in and out. And breakfast. But don’t leave out anything important.”

  A big part of her didn’t want to trust the situation, but she felt safe. Safer than she’d ever felt in her whole life, even when both her parents were alive.

  “Why do you care so much? What counts is what’s happened since I got here. If I could, I’d wish everything else away and just have my life start when I ran into that woman. Um. Rosie.”

  “If it was really that bad, that’s all the more reason why I want to know.”

  “Bad is relative, right? There’s always somebody who’s got it worse.”

  “Stalling.”

  “I had a normal childhood, I guess. Just my parents and me. No siblings. It was okay until I was fifteen. My dad died and things kind of fell apart. My mother had a clerical job, but it didn’t pay much so we were close to running out of money by the end of the first year.

  “She was starting to drop hints that we weren’t going to be able to stay in the same house or neighborhood. I acted like a brat about leaving friends and familiarity, but I was afraid of change because I’d never lived anywhere else. That was my whole reality.

  “That all became a moot argument. A social worker came to the door one afternoon after I got home from school. My mom had been in a car accident. She took me to the hospital, but Mom never regained consciousness. She died without a goodbye or a relative who would take me. So into the ‘system’ I went.”