Lover Avenged (36 page)

His uncle had bought her to feed him.

Funny, as he considered it now, was it really a surprise where he’d ended up? Sex as a commodity had been drilled into him pretty damn early-even though that first fuck or six had been on the house, so to speak.

So yeah, if this dark scent meant his vampire nature had bonded with Ehlena, it was not good news.

Rehv picked the coffee up and carried it carefully through the butler’s door and out to the dining room. As he placed it in front of her, he wanted to touch her hair, but sat down instead.

She lifted the cup to her lips. “You make good coffee.”

“You haven’t tasted it yet.”

“I can smell it. And I love the way it smells.”

It’s not the coffee, he thought. Not all of it, at any rate.

“Well, I love your perfume,” he said, because he was a dolt.

She frowned. “I’m not wearing any. I mean, other than the soap and shampoo I use.”

“Well, I like them, then. And I’m glad you stayed.”

“Is this what you planned?”

Their eyes met. Shit, she was perfect. Radiant as the candles had been. “You making it all the way to the coffee? Yeah, I guess a date was what I was after.”

“I thought you agreed with me.”

Man, that breathless quality in her voice made him want to have her up against his naked chest.

“Agreed with you?” he said. “Hell, if it would make you happy, I’d say yes to anything. But what are you specifically referring to?”

“You said…I shouldn’t date anyone.”

Ah, right. “You shouldn’t.”

“I don’t understand.”

Fuck him, but he went for it. Rehv put his numb elbow on the table and leaned into her. As he closed the distance, her eyes got wider, but she didn’t pull back.

He paused, to give her a chance to tell him to cut the shit. Why? He had no clue. His symphath side was into pauses only for analysis or to better capitalize on a weakness. But she made him want to be decent.

Ehlena didn’t tell him to step off, however. “I don’t…understand,” she whispered.

“It’s simple. I don’t think you should date anyone.” Rehv moved in even closer, until he could see the flecks of gold in her eyes. “But I’m not just anyone.”

I’m not just anyone.

As Ehlena stared into Rehvenge’s amethyst eyes, she thought that was so right. In this quiet moment, with an explosive sexual vibe linking them and the scent of dark cologne in the air, Rehvenge was everybody and everything.

“You’re going to let me kiss you,” he said.

It wasn’t a question, but she nodded anyway, and he closed the distance between their mouths.

His lips were soft and his kiss softer. And he pulled back too fast, in her opinion. Way too fast.

“If you want more,” he said in a low, husky voice, “I want to give it to you.”

Ehlena stared at his mouth and thought of Stephan-and all the choices he no longer had. Being with Rehvenge was something she wanted. It didn’t make sense, but right now that didn’t matter.

“Yes. I want more.” Except then it dawned on her. He couldn’t feel a thing, could he. So what would happen if they took this even further?

Yeah, how did you bring that up without making him feel handicapped? And what about this other female of his? Clearly, he wasn’t sleeping with her, but there was something serious going on.

His amethyst eyes dropped to her lips. “You want to know what I get out of it?”

Man, that voice of his was pure sex.

“Yes,” she breathed.

“I get to see you like you are now.”

“What…am I like?”

He brushed a finger down her cheek. “You’re flushed.” His touch went over to her lips. “Your mouth is open because you’re thinking about me kissing you again.” He went lower with that soft stroke, going down over her throat. “Your heart is pumping. I can see it in your vein here.” He stopped between her breasts, his own mouth falling open and his fangs elongating. “If I keep on going, I think I’d find your nipples are hard, and I bet there are other signs you’re ready for me.” He leaned into her ear and whispered, “Are you ready for me, Ehlena?”

Holy. Shit.

Her rib cage tightened hard around her lungs, a sweet, dizzying sensation of suffocation making the rush she suddenly felt between her thighs even more stunning.

“Ehlena, answer me.” Rehvenge nuzzled her neck, running one sharp canine up her vein.

As her head fell back, she grabbed onto the sleeve of his fine suit, crushing the material. It had been so long…forever…since she’d been held by anyone. Since she’d been something other than a caregiver. Since she’d felt like her breasts and her hips and her thighs were anything other than parts to be covered up before she went out in public. And here this beautiful, not-just-anyone male wanted to be with her for the sole purpose of pleasing her.

Ehlena had to blink quickly, feeling as if he’d just given her a gift, and she wondered how far what they were about to start could go. Back before her family had fallen out of the glymera’s graces and been torn apart, she’d been promised to a male and he to her. The mating ceremony had been scheduled, but didn’t come to pass after her family’s reversal of fortune.

When they had been together, she had lain with the male even though as a female of worth in the glymera, she shouldn’t have because they had yet to be formally joined. Life had seemed too short to wait.

Now she knew it to be even shorter.

“You have a bed in this place,” she said.

“And I would kill to take you there.”

She was the one who stood up and put out her hand for him to take. “Let’s go.”

What made it okay was that this was all about Ehlena. Rehv’s lack of sensation took him completely out of the equation, freeing them both from the nasty implications of him being involved.

Man, what a joy this was. He had to give the princess his body. But he was choosing to give Ehlena…

Well, shit, he didn’t know exactly, but it was a fuckload more than just his cock. Worth so much more, too.

Palming his cane, because he didn’t want to have to rely on her for balance, he took her to the bedroom, with its swimming pool-size bed and its black satin duvet and its view.

He shut the door with his mind, even though there was no one else in the penthouse, and the first thing he did was turn Ehlena to face him and take her hair out of its twist tie. The deep strawberry blond waves fell to just below her shoulders, and though he couldn’t feel the silken strands, he could smell the light, natural bouquet of her shampoo.

She was clean and fresh, like a stream he could bathe himself in.

He paused, an unfamiliar spike of conscience reining him in. If she knew what he was, if she knew what he did for a living, if she knew what he did with his body, she wouldn’t choose him. He was sure of this.

“Don’t stop,” she said, tilting her face up. “Please…”

With force of will, he compartmentalized himself, putting the bad things and the vicious life he led and the dangerous realities he faced away from the bedroom, locking them out, shutting them down.

So that it was just the two of them.

“I won’t stop unless you want me to,” he said. And if she did he would, no questions asked. The last thing he ever wanted to do was make her feel the way he did about sex.

Rehv bent down, put his lips on hers, and kissed her carefully. As he couldn’t judge sensation, he didn’t want to grind on her, and he had the sense she would press herself closer if she wanted more-

Ehlena did just that, wrapping her arms around him and melding them hip-to-hip.

And…shit, he felt something. From out of nowhere, a flare of sensation broke through his numbness, the radiating wave dim, but very definitely warmth he could sense. For a split second he pulled back, fear spearing into him…but his vision stayed in three dimensions, and the only red he saw was from the glow of the digital clock on the nightstand.

“Is this okay?” she asked.

He waited a couple more heartbeats. “Yeah…yeah, it totally is.” His eyes traced her face. “Will you let me get you naked?”

Oh, God, did he just say that?

“Yes.”

“Oh…thank you…”

Rehv unbuttoned the front of her uniform slowly, each inch of flesh a revelation, the act not so much dishabille, but an unveiling. And he was careful with his hands as he slid the top half of what she wore off her shoulders and down over her hips to the floor. When she stood before him in her white bra and her white stockings, with the hint of her white panties showing beneath the hose, he was strangely honored.

But that wasn’t all. The scent of her sex lit off a buzz between his ears that made him feel like he’d been doing lines of coke for a week and a half straight. She wanted him. Almost as much as he wanted to serve her.

Rehv picked her up by wrapping his arms around her waist and hugging her to him. She weighed nothing at all, and he knew it by the fact that his breathing didn’t change in the slightest as he carried her over and laid her out on the bed.

As he pulled back to look at her, Ehlena wasn’t like the females he’d been with. She didn’t stretch and part her legs, didn’t play with herself, didn’t arch up and do some whorish variant of come-and-get-me-big-boy.

She also didn’t want to cause him pain and didn’t have any interest in degrading him-there was no hot, erotic cruelty in her eyes.

She just stared up at him with wonder and honest anticipation, a female without artifice or calculation-who was one trillion times sexier than anyone he’d ever been with or been around.

“Do you want me clothed?” he said.

“No.”

Rehv ditched his jacket like it was made of nothing more than shopping circulars, tossing the Gucci work of art to the floor without a care. Kicking off his loafers, he undid his belt and dropped his slacks, leaving them where they landed. His shirt came off quickly. So did the socks.

He hesitated at his boxers, his thumbs tucked into the waistband, ready to do the shuck, but failing to move.

His lack of an erection embarrassed him.

Rehv wouldn’t have thought it mattered. Hell, arguably his limp cock was what made this possible. Still, he felt like less of a male.

Didn’t feel very male at all, actually.

He took his hands out and put them over his flaccid sex. “I’m going to leave these on.”

Ehlena reached for him, desire in her eyes. “I want to be with you any way you come.”

Or didn’t come, as the case was. “I’m sorry,” he said quietly.

There was an awkward moment, because what could she possibly reply? And yet, he waited anyway, wanting…something from her.

Reassurance?

Christ, what the fuck was wrong with him. All these bizarre thoughts and reactions were crisscrossing the landscape of his temporal lobe, blazing trails to destinations he’d only heard others speak of, places like shame and sadness and worry. Insecurity, too.

Maybe the sexual hormones she was stirring up in him were like the dopamine, hitting him in the opposite way. Turning him into a chick.

“You are beautiful in this light,” she said in a husky tone. “Your shoulders and chest are so big, I can’t imagine what it would be like to be that strong. And your stomach…I wish mine were that flat and hard. Your legs are so powerful, too, all muscle, not an ounce of fat.”

As he moved his hand upward over his six-pack to one of his pecs, he looked down at her softly rounded belly. “I think you’re perfect just as you are.”

Her voice grew serious. “And I feel the same about you.”

Rehv dragged in a breath. “Yeah?”

“You are very sexy to me. Just looking at you…makes me ache.”

Well…there you go. And yet it still took a strange kind of courage to slip his thumbs back into the waistband of his boxers and slowly draw them down his thighs.

As he stretched out next to her, his body was shaking, and he knew it because he could see his muscles tremble.

He cared what she thought about him. About his body. About what was going to happen on this bed. With the princess? He didn’t give a rat’s ass whether she enjoyed what he did to her. And those few times he’d been with his working girls, he hadn’t wanted to hurt them, of course, but it had been a transaction of sex for money.

Xhex and he had simply been a mistake. Neither good or bad. Just was and never would be again.

Ehlena ran her hands up his arms and over his shoulders. “Kiss me.”

Rehv locked eyes with her and did just that, bringing his lips to hers and stroking, then extending his tongue and licking over her mouth. He kept kissing her until she undulated on the bed and closed her hands on him so tightly that the strange echo of sensation flared in him again. The feeling made him pause and open his eyes to check his vision, but all was normal, untainted by red.

He went back to what he was enjoying, being careful because he couldn’t mediate the pressure of the contact, letting her come to him so he didn’t crush her with his mouth.

He wanted to go so much further…and she read his mind.

Ehlena was the one who undid her bra, releasing the front clasp and baring herself. Oh…fuck, yeah. Her breasts were perfectly proportioned and tipped with tight pink nipples-which he promptly sucked into his mouth one after the other.

The sound of her moans flared up his body, replacing the cold with life and energy, warmth and need.

“I want to go down on you,” he growled.

Her, “Please,” was more groan than voice, and her body gave him an even clearer answer. Now her thighs parted, her legs falling open, all the invitation he could ever have asked for.

Those stocking of hers had to come off before he chewed through them.

Rehv was as slow and deliberate as he could stand to be, stripping her flesh free of its thin binding, nuzzling her all the way down to her ankles, breathing in deep as he went.