hidden talents (20 page)

“I could do -”

“No,” she interrupted, her face twisting as she fingered herself faster. “You need bo ... both hands to hold up your weight. So you won"t hurt yourself.”

Maybe he did, or maybe she was turning him on too much not to be glad she wanted to do this herself. She came in under a minute, groaning and shaking for longer than it had taken her to go over. He kept gliding in and out, giving her something to contract against. As she settled, she blinked up at him and squirmed around his next thrust. When he smiled at her, the orgasmic flush on her cheeks darkened.

“You want another,” he guessed.

“It felt so good with you moving like that inside me. Adam, you"re just so
hard
.”

She sounded like she was apologizing for wanting more pleasure. He dropped his head and kissed her, growling his denial into her mouth. Their tongues battled in the sweetest possible way. The way she sucked his canines stood up his hair with lust. A pulse like an alarm bell tapped the base of his cock, warning him his
bulbus glandis
was activating.

That only happened when he was very close to shooting.

“Give yourself another,” he rasped. “Just make it quick and, whatever you do, don"t get in the way of me pulling out at the end.”

Ari"s eyes widened as his meaning registered. “Oh boy, I completely forgot.”

“Me too. But I think we"ll be all right - or not any worse - as long as I don"t come inside of you.”

If she"d asked him to pull out, he would have. She bit her lip in indecision, her pelvis rocking a restless inch up and down his immensely swollen shaft. As snugly as she fit him, the pressure of her entrance did impossibly pleasurable things to his bulbus gland. That pleasure spread deep into his balls, now tight enough to hurt. The tip of his penis felt like it was stretching.

“I should pull out,” he said uneasily.

“No.” She shook her head, her hand moving decisively on her clit again. “I promise I"ll be quick.”

He wasn"t certain she could be quick enough. He thrust again, because it felt so good, and because he knew she loved it. Those long slow probes pressed him to his climactic edge. He bit his lip to keep from going over. Nerves that normally would have long since exploded held onto ever sharper sensations. Holding back strained him worse than the whipping had.

“You"re close?” she gasped, her hips rocking more wildly against his.

He couldn"t speak. Tears were squeezing from his eyes at the pleasure and the need rocketing through him.

“Fin -”
ish
, he tried to say. Obeying some instinct stronger than he was, he shoved his cock inside her as far as it would go.

She went with it jammed up against her womb, the contractions that marked her climax bliss and torment as they gripped him.

He couldn"t last until they ended. The pressure in his balls went critical a second before his gland contracted. He yanked out without even breath for cursing and fisted himself madly. He had to rub fast, or he"d shove back in her.

As it was, he was pointing his cock at her, his grip clicking in the wetness her pussy had left on him. Ari pulled her rumpled dress further up her belly, baring it to him, and that plain sent him into crazy land.

He was going to mark her. With his seed. With his scent. With his white hot come all over that silky perspiring skin. He kneed up closer to her belly and propped himself on one arm, desperate to get every drop on her. Ari knew what was coming. She cradled his balls and thumbed his
bulbus
at the same time.

He lifted off like the freaking space shuttle. His head flung back as the orgasm roared from him. He needed every scrap of self control he had not to howl like the wolf he was. For about six seconds, his thoughts were completely blanked by ecstasy. Then he wrenched his head back the other way.

He had to watch the rest of his seed spurt on her.

He milked himself until no more came, his ragged breaths practically sobbing out of him. When Ari rubbed his emissions into her skin, the satisfaction that swelled inside him was as strong as an orgasm.

To his wolf side, this meant she accepted him.

“I love you,” he sighed, his weight dropping wearily to his heels.

The whip marks on his chest were bleeding a bit, probably from tensing to hold off his orgasm. Ari sat up, her legs splayed around him, her hands stroking soothingly up his arms. She couldn"t have known it, but her touch felt the same as if she were pack. She was inside the circle of the folks who belonged to him. Her big blue eyes stared gravely into his.

“You"re the best man I"ve ever met,” she said.

This wasn"t
I love you
either, but Adam liked it nearly as much.

Trembling from exertion, he lay down beside her with his palm spread

possessively over her navel. She pulled up the blankets to cover them. Her head turned toward him. “You okay?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Really? "cause you look kind of wrecked.”

He laughed through his nose. “The last bit of „wrecking" isn"t something I"d take back. I"ll be fine once I sleep an hour or two.”

“Okay.” Her smaller hand covered his on her belly, which was a bit sticky.

“Don"t be upset if I get up later to shower.”

She understood him better than she realized. He dropped into slumber with a smile on his face.

He was flying. Wings stuck out from the fire tattoos on his wrists. As he flapped his arms, he wheeled in lazy circles around the Eunuch"s boring white block house. His mind was very strong for his age, maybe because he asked it to act in ways his people didn"t usually attempt. He thought if he concentrated, and if he got close enough, he could reach the person he was concerned about. There ought to be some link between them. He
had
participated in the spell that gave the other were the gift of creating fire. Plus, his new friend did have a touch of Sight.

Grant?
Adam thought confusedly through his dream.

Yes!
he cried exultantly in his own head. Weirdly, it felt like both sides of this conversation were originating from him.

Grant
, he said, in case he wasn"t imagining the communication.
You
shouldn’t have come back. The Eunuch’s men have orders to shoot you down.

I’m fast
, he seemed to think to himself.
I wanted you to know I told your team
where you are. If you have what you need, they can pick you up by morning
.

Adam"s gratitude was extraordinary.
Yes
, he thought to his internal image of the gargoyle.
Tell them I have the evidence we need. And that they should come
with back up.

Ari is okay?
Grant asked.

She’s fine
, Adam assured him, amused by the fondness he sensed through the connection. The gargoyle seemed to have a small interspecies crush, one that thankfully wasn"t big enough to raise his hackles.
Now get out of here before
you’re spotted.

A sound like a muffled gas explosion yanked him out of his dream - if that"s what it had been. He reached for Ari, but she wasn"t on the futon. The shower was running, which explained where she was. Adam stretched out his Sight to see if he could perceive Grant"s presence. Instead, he found the watch spells running. With an unpleasant lurch, he realized he couldn"t remember when they"d gone on.

Had they been active when he fell asleep? And before that? While he and Ari were making love? He"d told Ari he loved her. He wouldn"t relish Blackwater having heard that, but at least Ari hadn"t said it back. Blackwater was hoping to manipulate her behavior, not Adam"s.

Then again, if Adam could read the signs that she might love him, would a sharp tack like Blackwater be blind to them?

The muffled
whump
of a second explosion reverberated through the walls of the house. Adam was alarmed enough to jump to his feet. Grant must be under attack.

Ari burst out of the bathroom a second later in hastily drawn on jeans and a damp T-shirt. Her wet blonde hair was plastered to her head. “What was that?”

“I"m afraid Grant"s in trouble,” he said.

∞

Ari didn"t have sufficient curse words for this. She"d been hoping Darius wouldn"t follow Blackwater"s orders too closely. He didn"t seem like he wanted to hurt people.

Of course, if someone else was handling shoot-down-the-gargoyle duty,

Darius"s semi-reluctance would be moot.

“We have to help him,” she said, dashing to the cell room door. She pressed her hands to the surface where the handle was on the other side. “I can"t let Grant die for me.”

Trying to get her telekinesis to work was like trying to force super-glued gears to turn. Pain throbbed in her temples as she struggled to pull power past the wards. She"d moved that damned tree all those years ago. She ought to be able to break through a damping spell. There was magic to draw on here. She just had to get to it. She ignored the warning tremor in her right arm, but an odd crackling sensation in the cartilage of her nose broke her concentration. When she brought her hand up, she was bleeding.

She pushed her dismay at that aside. A nosebleed was an improvement over an all-out fit.

“Ari,” Adam said, his grip warm on her shoulder. “You can"t get through these shields. Blackwater"s sorcerers are experts.”

She wasn"t going to cry. She was too damned angry. “I"m going to kill that fuckhead.”

Adam pulled her against him. His chest was hard and broad, and she was

instantly, irrationally comforted. His skin was warm velvet beneath her cheek.

“You"re naked,” she pointed out.

He smiled into her hair before pushing back from her. “Right. No more

nakedness when we might have to fight something.”

He pulled on the clothes Darius had brought, his beautiful body disappearing into baggy gray sweats and a white T-shirt. Evidently, everything Blackwater"s employees wore had to match his house"s color palette. If Ari got out of here alive, she was going to wear lime green and purple for a whole year.

“Want to see if you can peek out the window?” Adam offered.

The square of glass was barred and set high up in the wall. By kneeling on Adam"s shoulders, Ari could steady herself with the silvery-gold bars. It was dark outside, but the security lights were on. Through the branches of a tree, she spied the gated end of the drive. Since the turnabout was empty, this was not helpful.

On the other hand, if she got the bars off and broke the glass, she thought the window might be big enough for her to squirm through. Now if only she could find some way to get at the power out there ...

“Don"t,” Adam said before she could do more than inhale. “The spells are twice as strong on the window. You can" t help Grant if you give yourself an aneurysm.”

Ari frowned, not sure she liked such sensible advice. “Maybe I could try to -”

The room"s door banged open, startling both of them. What looked like a horde of guards burst in. These goons were in black camo rather than the usual gangster suits. They carried the same crazy rifles the cops had used, which they pointed at Ari and Adam.

“Away from the window,” one of them ordered. “Hands where we can see

them. Don"t try anything funny.”

“Whoa,” Adam said. “Just let me help her get down.”

After barking out a few more mistrustful orders, they let him help her to the floor. Ari had a perverse sense of satisfaction at being considered dangerous.

“Walk ahead of us,” said the lead soldier.

He and his companions prodded her and Adam with the tips of their rifles, forcing them through the house and up a set of utility stairs.

“What"s wrong?” Ari asked their captors, unable to keep silent. “Where are you taking us?”

The muzzle in her back jabbed harder.

Despite the weaponry, she didn"t get the impression they were going to be shot. The soldiers could have done that back in the cell. Adam shrugged at her when she sought his eyes. He seemed relatively calm - not happy, but not like he thought the end was nigh.

Naturally, they both could have been wrong about that.

They were pushed out onto the compound"s flat walled roof, where more

soldier-guards were gathered. Apparently, Blackwater had quite the tin pot dictator"s army - maybe five dozen in addition to his regular personnel. She wondered if this meant something big was happening. From the rueful twist of Adam"s mouth, he hadn"t expected these numbers.

The armed crowd parted as she and Adam emerged from the stairwell.

Their movement revealed a shape on the roof, bound down against it by steel cables, like an unstable load on a big rig truck. One of the soldiers poked a spear at the small mountain. Electricity crackled from the metal tip. The big shape
whuffed
like it was too weary to make any other sound. The back of one batlike wing lifted.

“Oh my God,” Ari breathed.

They"d caught Grant. He was still alive, which was good, but the heavy

bondage: not so much. She bit her lip as the soldier tasered him again. She suspected it wouldn"t help if she protested.

When she tore her attention away from Grant"s suffering, Henry

Blackwater"s gaze was waiting. He stood behind Grant, partially hidden by the gargoyle"s bulk. Blood had splashed the front of his trademark cream linen suit.

Ari couldn"t remember ever seeing him dirty. For no reason she could explain, she was suddenly aware of the stars twinkling in the deep black sky that stretched above him.

“Ari,” he said pleasantly.

Her jaw worked for a second before she could speak. “I"m fucking going to kill you, Eunuch.”

His smile jerked and faded. She didn"t think she"d called him that to his face before. Maybe no one had in that tone. He recovered too soon for her taste.

“Everyone needs a dream. Why don"t you come see what we caught in our

net?”

He beckoned her toward him. Since he could force her, she didn"t see the point in dragging her feet. She ordered herself to keep her temper under control.

She knew Blackwater and his games. She would need a clear head for this.