He pushed up on his palms, taking his weight off her. But the pressure of his hips against her remained, his legs touching hers, and he was moving inside her, and he fit even though she could feel that she was tight around him. She was aware of him in another way, in the tingle that went down her spine and the resonance in her head, and she recognized that because he looked into her eyes and said, “Yes.”
After a while, after their bodies slid and touched, and after she thought she would lose her mind, he pulled out of her and turned her over. He hiked her hips up, and his hands went around her waist. When she’d braced herself, he slid himself inside her again, and the difference in the angle made her groan with pleasure.
“Is this all right for you?” he asked in his rougher voice. “Tell me it is. Because it’s better than all right for me.”
The best she could do was gasp his name.
His nails were sharp; she felt them on her skin every now and then, once when his hand smoothed the length of her spine, another time when his other hand tightened around her hip. Her breath was tight in her chest and she responded to the way he held her. As they moved together, she felt him adjust the grip of his hands around her waist, and that worked for her. Her breath hitched in her chest. His skin was hot where he touched her, his body hard and inside hers. She rocked her hips in time with his, taking the roughness, feeding off it. Every stroke, every caress took her closer to mindless pleasure.
“Please,” she said.
“Please what?”
“What you’re doing. Lord, Iskander. Please.”
He drew himself over her again, thrusting inside harder than before. She raised her knees, trying to take him deeper. He let go of her and withdrew so she could turn around, which she did. He bent his head to her chest, and his tongue flicked over her nipple. She knew from the touch of his mind with hers that he wanted things a little faster. Rougher.
He went still. “Is this all right?”
I
skander let his mind slip around hers, finding the desire and letting her feel his and taking them both higher, and it was fierce and lovely, and he never wanted this to end. During a moment when he thrust hard inside her and then stayed there, buried deep, she arched against him, wrapping her legs tight around his flanks.
Her body shivered with incipient orgasm, and she pushed him onto his back and straddled him, leaning forward to get the best angle for taking him inside her while he lifted his pelvis toward hers as she came down. He knew she saw him, saw precisely what he was.
She leaned down and pressed her mouth to his torso. The touch of her tongue on him was exciting beyond belief. She ran her fingers along the muscles of his torso and belly, and he gripped her hips—he was careful of her because he was bigger and stronger like this and his instinct to procreate was edging out of control. He rocked up and deep into her, and he knew he was hitting exactly the right place for her, because her face got that flush of pleasure that always drove him crazy. He circled his arms around her and rolled them over so that she was on her back.
He could hardly breathe for looking at her. She obviously wasn’t in the habit of sunbathing because her skin was the same pale, pink-flushed white everywhere he looked. No tan lines on her upper torso. He was familiar with the arousal that got fed by his magic; he felt it whenever he had sex with a vanilla human. He’d felt it with Maddy, too, but he’d never come close to asking Maddy to let things go this far.
He took her right hand in his and deliberately set a finger on the scar on her wrist. He scratched with a talon and watched the blood well. She picked up on his hunger and moaned. He might have done the same. This was like getting a direct line to her magic. She shivered. He brought her wrist to his mouth. The taste of her blood sent a shock through him. He got a tingle of magekind from her, and it was like a drug.
With his other hand, he stroked the length of her body. Hell, she felt so soft and smooth, and the whole time he touched the injury Rasmus had caused. It set him on fire, doing this, connecting with the place where so much magic had flowed through her. The fingers of his other hand slid down, touching her pubic hair, sliding past to the slick folds of her body and the spot that would break her apart for him.
Then her hand, her human hand, found his cock and held him just tight enough. Moved just enough. Fucking perfect. She got her other hand on him and let him know she wanted him closer to her, so he did that but without letting go of her wrist and without stopping the suction that kept the taste of her in his mouth.
She slid down his body so that she was the one on her knees, between his spread legs, a hand on his cock, and—
“Yes,” he said. He let go of her arm. “Fuck, yes.”
Her mouth closed over his dick, and her free hand cupped his balls. He put his hand to the back of her head and let her give him the best blow job of his entire life.
His orgasm just about took off the top of his head, because she worked him with exactly the right pressure but mostly because she was Paisley and not some woman whose name he wasn’t going to remember the next day.
When he floated back to his body, he realized he had her wrist clutched in his hand, and when she looked up, he let her feel what he did—the visceral reaction to her scent, her skin, the anticipation of coming inside her, how all of it was tied up with his magic and hers.
“Feel that?”
She nodded, her eyes focused on him. After which he returned the favor and gave her head until she was writhing and calling his name and her breath was coming in short pants, and he made damned sure she came as hard as he had.
She made a tiny sound in the back of her throat when he thrust inside her, human this time. Both of them human so she’d be safe. She was slick and hot around him, and even though he was usually one to talk a lot when he was fucking, he didn’t say anything because he didn’t have the words for what he was feeling. He just did her missionary because he could watch her face and the arch of her neck and the way her mouth parted, and he could feel the way his cock was surrounded by her vagina. Her muscles gripped him, and her hands touched his shoulders and slid down his back, touching now and again the traceries alongside his spine.
Once, when that spot on her wrist brushed against the outermost line down his spine, it was like mainlining a shot of pure magic. Her hands cupped his ass, urging him on, and of course he was going to give her whatever she wanted from him. His own breath came in gasps, because he was heading for another climax.
His skin slid against hers, slippery with her sweat. He knew his eyes were changing, and he let her see that, the transformation threatening to take him again. In the back of his mind, he was hoping she’d tell him yes, that she was ready now for whatever happened. Only she didn’t, so he held back because he didn’t have her permission for that, and he didn’t want her at risk of having a child she wasn’t ready for or didn’t want.
He hit an unbearable peak, when he was convinced he wouldn’t break through to his orgasm, and he moved harder in her, faster, and she held him tight and then she came. She threw back her head and shuddered beneath him, and her throat was exposed to him, and the plain truth was that he lost it. Her body was clenching around him, and he dropped his head to her throat and bit hard enough to draw blood at the underside of her jaw. The moment her blood hit his mouth, he came.
Hard. And he held her there, feeling her coming still, his own orgasm separating his mind from his body, and hell, he just about died from the pleasure.
Two days later
I
n half a daze, Paisley listened to Iskander’s phone call. The room was still dark, but she didn’t know what time it was because Iskander didn’t have a clock. Early, though. It felt early.
“What’s up?” he said in a low voice. Not at all sleepy. Because, as he’d told her, his kind didn’t sleep. They just faked it if they needed to. He kept his body close to hers while he talked to whoever was calling him, though he didn’t say much except at the end. “On my way as soon as you get someone over here to keep an eye on Paisley.” He listened some more. “Yeah. He’s good. Nine. She’ll need a ride to work.” He disconnected the call and kissed her shoulder. “Gotta go in a bit.”
She rolled over. “I’ll make you breakfast.”
“It’s four in the morning. You stay in bed.”
She didn’t, though. He’d eat leftover cake or brownies for breakfast if she didn’t make something decent for him. She grabbed one of his shirts and went downstairs while he got dressed. In the kitchen, she put on coffee and made a batch of buttermilk pancakes. Her mother’s recipe and one she hadn’t altered. She microwaved some bacon, too. He came down just as the first pancake was coming off the griddle.
When he was done eating, he took his empty plate to the sink and then paused, head cocked. A few seconds later, she got the vibration in her chest that meant his backup had arrived.
“Be careful, okay?” she said.
He kissed her. “Always. See you later.”
She got the dishwasher loaded and some laundry started, and when that was done, she made the butter cookies Iskander liked. The rolled-out dough was chilling in the fridge when her sense of the fiend who was watching the house bubbled through her with painful intensity, then… vanished, followed immediately by a bang outside loud enough to rattle the windows. She held her breath, wondering if it was an earthquake and, if it was, whether the shaking would continue.
Her phone was upstairs and there wasn’t any landline. The windows stopped rattling, but now there was a roar outside she couldn’t place. A bonfire? That made no sense. Outside, somebody shouted. Other voices joined in. She walked to the front of the house. She still didn’t feel the fiend who was supposed to be watching for Rasmus. Sirens wailed and instead of fading, got louder and louder. When she reached the front room, the lighting was all wrong for seven-thirty on an overcast morning. The smell of smoke wafted into the house.