Black Christmas (Plus Bonus Story "Black Supper") (9 page)

I said it more or less in a rush of words.

I might have barked it at him honestly. Either way, Cal came to a abrupt halt when he was still at least five yards from our table. I saw his eyes go round as he looked between me and Black, alarm coming off him like a scent.

Black had regained his feet by then. I caught hold of his hand once he was close enough and I didn’t wait. I marched him to the door of the restaurant and to the curb outside.

Luckily, the driver hadn’t gone far.

He saw us as soon as we walked out the front door.

What felt like too many minutes later, the car stopped smoothly in front of the red carpet that led to the edge of the curb under the green awning. The driver was out and opening the door for us before I tugged Black the rest of the way there.

A minute after that, we were heading back to his building on California Street.

I BARELY GAVE the white van with the blacked out windows a glance that time as we left the car. Black didn’t speak to the driver, who seemed to know enough to leave us both alone. He did walk with us to the front door of the building though, and use his key to let me and Black inside. He also handed me his personal keycard, which worked on the private elevator.

I thanked him profusely. I didn’t have to ask Black whether he’d thought to bring his.

It wasn’t until I got him up the forty-odd flights to his penthouse floor and managed the keys and the locks and got him inside, that I bothered trying to talk to him again.

Even then, I didn’t try to address his question directly.

“Take off your clothes,” I told him.

We weren’t even in his living room yet.

Pain expanded off him in a cloud. I still felt that heavier sadness on him too, but he didn’t argue with me. He shouldered off his jacket without leaving the foyer and let it drop of the floor. He took his shirt off next, kicking off his shoes as he unfastened the buttons. He took off his pants and underwear after that, and I dragged him onto the living room rug, between his giant bay windows on one side and his leather couch on the other.

Lie down,
I told him.

He did that too.

I straddled his waist, maneuvering him inside me before he could get turned on enough to extend, which would have made things more difficult for both of us. Being seer, he had an extra part on his cock, what they called a
hirik,
or “thorn” in his language. When he got turned on enough, it came out, and while that worked for me, being a seer myself––and in more ways than I can possibly explain to anyone who’s never felt anything so mind-blowingly, unbelievably good––it only worked if it happened after he was already inside me.

Otherwise, it could really hurt.

So when I angled my body, moving over him and in so that he was pressed up into that deepest part inside me, I groaned. When he felt me there, he groaned too.

Then he extended all the way, pretty much in that same set of seconds.

“Miri...” he gasped.

He arched up into me, aiming with a precision that made me cry out.

For someone who’d never had sex with a female seer before we met, he was getting scarily good at it already. He groaned when he did it again, and I felt myself going away in seconds, going back into that dreamlike, fugue space, where nothing else existed but him.

I felt that other pain on him still.

I fought to open it, to try and understand what it meant now that I had him alone. I knew he’d had a rough childhood. More rough than I could imagine really. Some flavor of that flickered around whatever bothered him now, but I couldn’t get any specifics. The confusion of things that reached me in those few seconds didn’t really help. I felt that fear in him worsen, even as he gripped my hips in his hands, arching up into me again, violently that time.

“Gaos,”
he groaned. “You’re not going to tell me, are you...? You’re not going to fucking tell me anything...”

Pulling his hands off my hips, I leaned over him, pinning his wrists. He arched up into me again, harder that time, closing his gold eyes as he broke out in a sweat. The lean muscles of his body grew taut as he arched into me again, bringing a hard pain to my chest.

I let out a low cry when he did it again, and he gasped.

“I’m not going anywhere, Black...” I managed, still watching his face. “I promise you, I’m not. I don’t know what else to say... I don’t know what’s wrong, why you’re asking me this...”

I gripped his wrists tighter when he wouldn’t meet my gaze, writhing over and onto him in a way I’d already figured out he liked. He closed his eyes, his face tightening just before he let out a heavier groan, briefly struggling against where I had him pinned.

I gripped him tighter though, trying to get him to look at me.

“Why are you asking me this?” I said. “What’s wrong, baby? Tell me...”

The pain coming off him worsened. I felt him wanting to tell me something. I felt it pulling at him, even as he turned it over in his mind.

Something to do with what he’d said to Cal.

When I understood, the answer stunned me.

“You want to get married?” My words reflected that shock. “Why?”

He groaned again, arching up into me. “Why the fuck do people normally want to get married, Miriam?”

I bit the inside of my check, fighting pain as I watched his face.

Truthfully... his words turned me on.

I also couldn’t make myself believe them.

It had to be something to do with this seer thing... with whatever the hell was going on with us right now. He wasn’t thinking clearly. He couldn’t be. What he’d said made absolutely no sense otherwise, given how new this thing was between us. Even though in some ways I felt he knew me better than anyone, in reality, we’d only known one another a short time.

We’d been sleeping together for a week.

Somehow, thinking about that,
remembering
that, my mind cleared.

We
didn’t
know one another that well... not really.

Meaning in the normal, couple-sense of things.

No rational thought lived there for me yet, either, but I found myself doing everything in my power to hide my reactions from him, to keep him from feeling any part of them. I must have succeeded, because seconds later, he’d shut down on the subject, too.

I felt sex on him alone after that, along with zero willingness to talk, or to think... or to feel any of what had bothered him earlier.

A part of me wanted to do as he asked in that, too.

Another part of me hurt, feeling him close.

The fact that he was lying under me, sweating as he slammed up into me, definitely didn’t help with either thing. I stared down at his face, trying to make sense of his expression, but all I saw was sex-pain there now. I tried one last time.

“Black... maybe we should talk about this...?”

He arched up into me again, harder, gasping.

Pleasure exploded through him, and then through me––so much of it that my mind blanked. Then he was pulling on me in that way he had, enveloping me in that more heated wanting. He dragged me out of myself, into some part of him, out of any last semblance of rationality.

I lost myself there, and after awhile, I forgot what I’d been holding onto so tightly.

I forgot what I’d so badly wanted to ask him.

At least a few hours passed before my mind would return to the question again.

* * *

Read how these characters met with:

BLACK IN WHITE (A Quentin Black Paranormal Mystery)

Picked up as a suspect in the Wedding Murders, Black faces off with profiler Miri, who works for the cops, and who finds herself strangely drawn to him. Losing herself in Black's bizarre world, she enters a game of cat and mouse with a deadly killer, who might be Black himself.

BLACK IN WHITE (Quentin Black Mystery #1)

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QUENTIN BLACK MYSTERY
is a dark, gritty paranormal romance and mystery series starring brilliant and mysterious antihero Quentin R. Black, along with his partner, psychic forensic psychologist Miram Fox. For fans of Sherlock Holmes and paranormal romance, the series spans continents and dimensions as Black tries to redeem himself by making the world safe for his kind.

THE ALLIE’S WAR SERIES
is a dark, unique and gritty psychic romance involving a young woman grappling with her role in bringing about the end of one world and the start of a new one. Follow Allie Taylor and her antihero partner in crime, Dehgoies Revik, as they fight terrifying enemies and one another in a passionate story spanning centuries, and filled unpredictable twists.

THE GATE SHIFTER SERIES
is an unusual shifter romance centering on shifters from another world altogether, called morph. Earth humans remained blissfully ignorant of the existence of alternate dimensions until Nihkil Jamri tries to save private detective, Dakota Reyes, while he is surveying Earth. Part urban fantasy, part detective series, part paranormal romance, part science fiction adventure, the Gate Shifter series explores crime solving, interstellar warfare and alien romance with the least likely candidates imaginable.