Primal Pleasure: Pendragon Gargoyles, Book 3 (7 page)

He ran his gaze over her shoulders, to the black lace molded to her breasts. Sliding a finger beneath the strap, he tugged her down until his mouth met the sexy curve of her neck.

The cat growled at her tantalizing scent, wanting to leave its mark on her. That alone should have sent him scrambling from beneath her. He’d never been in a hurry to find his mate, focused first on helping Arthur build a strong, peaceful vision of Avalon, and then on finding the daggers that would return their king to them.

But if finding his mate felt half as incredible as he did right now—like he might go out of his mind if he didn’t get another taste of her lips or glimpse her stunning smile— he’d been wrong to prefer his life as it was.

Holding her gaze, Cian tugged the material down until he glimpsed the dark pink tip.

Emma went still, her eyes sliding shut. His own drifted closed as his jaw grazed the curve of her breast and he flicked his tongue across her nipple.

Her breath hitched, and he opened his mouth over the tip, pulling her deep between his lips.

Digging her nails into his shoulders, she cried out, and the sound unleashed a rush of molten lust inside him. He groaned, pulling her closer and knowing it wouldn’t be enough.

Not until she was his.

He cupped her nape, dragging her down to meet his mouth. The sheer rightness that uncoiled inside him as her lips parted for his made him burn even hotter. He’d always assumed being burned alive would be a painful way to go, but the feeling of Emma tunneling her fingers into his hair and moaning against his mouth was more than worth the heat sizzling through his veins.

The kiss moved from drugging to wild, and some place in between as he unsnapped her trousers and pushed them down over her hips.

Her thigh brushed his arousal, and his jaw clenched.

“What’s wrong? Did I hurt you?”

Only in the best way possible. He shook his head, the effort it took to speak coherently with the cat riding him so hard was better spent getting her naked.

“Cian?” When she wiggled on top of him again—trying to get up?—he groaned, and she caught on. And did it again. One deliberate, sexy arch of her spine that made all the right places rub against him.

She nipped his jaw, and he growled. He doubted she even knew what she was doing to him every time she dragged her teeth across his skin. The temptress didn’t leave his mouth until he finally stripped her clothing off, along with the scrap of material fitted to her ass, and pulled her up his body.

Her nipple whispered across his cheek, and he paused long enough to draw her into his mouth, sucking soft and slow.

“Please,” she murmured.

He didn’t ask what she wanted, hoping it was the same thing he did. She caught his arm, uncertain, as he tugged her along. Only when her knees straddled his shoulders did he ease his hold on her.

“Wait.”

He didn’t. He curved his hands around her parted thighs and lifted his head for his first full taste of her. Her damp folds parted beneath his tongue, and she cried out. That right there was what he wanted, hungered for. To touch her and feel her tremble all over.

Licking deeper, he inched his mouth higher, laving the slick knot at her center.

“Yes.” She flexed to rub against his lips, her breath hissing out the moment he pulled her into his mouth.

“Cian, don’t…don’t stop.”

Not even if she begged him to. Not until he made it so incredible for her that she’d fall apart. Maybe then he’d be able to slow down for a moment, instead of want to devour every inch of her. No female had ever gotten so deep under his skin, and acknowledging that only made him that much more determined to find out why this one captivated him like no other.

Opening his mouth a little more, he kissed and teased her, slowing only when her thighs squeezed him.

She edged away from him, her moan almost a sob.

Satisfaction curled through him, making him even harder. He wasn’t sure how that was even possible considering the heightened state of arousal he’d been stuck in for the last three days.

With the most decadent revenge in mind, he eased away, kissing her inner thigh and slowly working his way back. So slow every whisper of satiny skin across his lips sent a hot burst of need straight to his cock.

By the gods, he was in trouble. And he wasn’t even inside her yet. Laying a hot, wet path through her folds, he circled the sweet center of her, laving until she cried out.

After rocking gently against his mouth as her climax faded, she slid down, tucking her face against his throat. He used the time to try and get a hold of himself—and gave up before she’d even caught her breath.

Not even the sound of her chain dragging across the floor as he hauled her to her feet could stop him from finishing what they’d starting in the kitchen. She fit too perfectly against his body, his mouth, his heart—

Everything inside him skidded to a stop. Right up until Emma looped her arms around his neck and sucked his bottom lip between hers. The teasing nip and slide of her mouth across his threw a switch in his head, wiping out the insane thought he hadn’t been able to finish.

Later maybe, when the stunning female with haunting gray eyes wasn’t pressed against him and kissing her way down his chest.

Sweet Avalon.

Unable to make it the rest of the way across the room, to the bed, he took the few steps needed and backed her against the wall. The predator in him growled in triumph at cornering her, trapping her.

Emma’s chest rose and fell in quick bursts. “This isn’t… I didn’t expect it to be like this.”

Neither did he.

Slanting his mouth across hers, he tugged his trousers down, and the second his shaft brushed smooth, hot skin, he groaned. She didn’t wait for him to nudge her legs apart, reaching out instead and closing her hand around his cock.

Fuck.

For a second he felt like he had on the roof. Disoriented and overwhelmed, and much too close to losing his mind. And then she pumped her hand up the length of him, and pleasure rushed in.

“Closer,” she whispered against his mouth.

With her hand guiding him to her sex, they were about to get as close as two people could. He cupped her ass, massaging his way to her hip and then down to lift her leg. She hooked it around him, sighing a little as he fit against her.

In one smooth thrust he was inside her, sinking all the way to heaven. Her nails dug into his biceps, and when she released the breath she’d been holding—and she wasn’t the only one—her body relaxed, letting him get a little deeper.

He dropped his forehead to hers, trying to remember how to make his lungs work, then he withdrew and pumped his hips to fill her again and again.

Instinct rushed in with his animal half’s need to dominate, and for a long minute he fought it. Fought it until his muscles ached from holding back. One last slow push inside her to savor the clench of her slick sex around him, the incredible sounds she made against his mouth, and then he thrust harder.

Her mouth found the curve of his neck, where she pressed hot, wild kisses in between each soft cry of pleasure. Both of which were testing his ability not to explode inside her any second. And he wasn’t ready for it to end. Not yet. Maybe not ever.

“It feels like I’ve been waiting forever to find you.” It had to be one of the most insane thoughts he’d ever shared with a female. Even more insane was feeling it right down to his bones.

He searched her eyes, unsure what response he was looking for—hoping for?—until a slow smile lit up her face. Crushing his mouth over hers, he lifted her a little higher, getting as deep inside her as he could.

At some point both of Emma’s legs were wrapped around him, their hands linked before she needed to hold onto him as he pounded into her. Next to them the painting rattled, falling on the floor a few seconds later.

“There,” she hissed. “Right…” She moaned into his mouth, the hot walls of her sex rippling around him as she came a moment later.

“Emma,” he growled, pumping his hips faster…faster.

He dropped his head to the crook of her shoulder, burying himself inside her and holding on as his release slammed into him.

“Cian?” Her voice soothed him, and he slowly raised his head, wondering how long he’d been lost in thought as his body came back down.

“I wasn’t expecting that,” she admitted quietly, lifting her gaze to meet his. “Wasn’t expecting you.”

Serious gray eyes tunneled straight into his soul, flipping a panic button in his head.

Even as he eased away from her, need clawed through him. The cat wanted to curl around her, stay with its mate—

He stumbled back.

No. It wasn’t possible. She couldn’t be his mate. She may have been all he’d thought about for the last three days, but if she were truly his mate he would have felt that instant awareness of her the night she’d cursed him.

“What did you do to me?”

“What are you talking about?”

He caught her arms.

“You’re hurting me.”

“Tell me what you did to me. What kind of spell did you cast?”

Confused, she shook her head. “I didn’t cast any spell.”

“Undo it. Now.”

“Evidently you and your brother have been drinking the same Kool-Aid.” She flattened her palm over his chest. “Do you really think that what you felt, what we both felt, was because of some spell?” Her tone dared him to disagree.

So he did. “You turned me to stone. If I felt a fraction of the hunger for another female that I feel for you, do you think I would be here?”

She flinched and shoved him back a step, seeming surprised when he retreated. “I did not enchant you.”

“You’re lying.” There was no other explanation.

She jerked on the chain cuffed to one wrist. “Maybe you didn’t get the memo, but this makes it impossible to cast.”

“So you found a way around it.”

“Clearly spending a century as a rock left you a few pebbles short.”

It took him a minute to get her meaning. The sorceress talked circles around him. To purposely confuse him more than he already was?

She shoved past him.

He growled and reached for her, stopping when he realized how badly he wanted to be closer to her. “Where are you going?”

“To the bathroom,” she snapped. She slammed the door behind her.

Cursing, he rubbed his hands over his face. Whatever Emma had done left him turned inside out, and she had done something, hadn’t she? She was powerful enough to channel the dagger’s magic, had used it to curse him. Any sorceress capable of that might have been able to find a way around the magic-nulling cuff she wore.

The cat raked the edges of his mind, feeling betrayed by Cian’s thoughts. Torn in two, he prowled the length of the room. Maybe she hadn’t found a way around the cuff. Maybe this was all part of the original spell, a safeguard to prevent him from hurting her in case the curse was broken.

He swung around to face the bathroom. “Emma?”

She didn’t answer him.

He deliberately softened his tone. “Emma?” He knew yelling at her was not the best way to get answers. At least that’s what he told himself when he knocked on the door.

No response.

“Damn it, Emma. Talk to me.”

When she continued to ignore him, he walked in. A blur of white sliced across his peripheral vision, and then pain exploded across his skull and everything went dark.

Chapter Five

“Are you out of your mind?”

“A few pebbles short apparently.” Cian tried once more to pass his sister, and each time Briana blocked his path.

“It’s only been two weeks, Cian. It’s not long enough. You’re not ready to go gallivanting after a sorceress.”

“If I don’t find her, I’m going to go out of my mind.” And that was putting it mildly.

He didn’t say anything anymore than that. Didn’t want Briana worrying about him any more than she already was. If she knew he was hardly sleeping, afraid to dream about Emma, or knew how much time he spent on the roof, lost in his few memories of her, she’d be afraid of more than whether or not he could handle a world still so foreign to him.

Briana threw a helpless glance over Cian’s shoulder. “Do something.”

Behind him, his brother Cale arched a brow. “Like what exactly? Ground him?”

“He’s not ready.”

“According to you,” Cian pointed out, though he wasn’t certain she was entirely wrong. But facing the fast-moving world outside his family’s home had to be better than hungering for a female that wasn’t truly his.

They’d all hoped the spell would fade after Emma had pulled her vanishing act. Though he still hadn’t been able to live down the concussion she’d given him using the ceramic toilet tank cover.

Weeks later and he longed for her just as much as he had those first few moments when he’d awoken and realized her fading scent was too buried beneath a hundred neighborhood smells to track her.

Sorcha hadn’t had a whole lot of success either, and the oracle, a rare clairvoyant immortal, who’d told Cale how to find Emma in the first place, didn’t have much to offer. But Cian couldn’t sit and wait for someone else to find her. She was his problem, and if it took staking out every place she’d regularly frequented in the last fifty years to find her, he would do it as long as it took.

The alternative, pining away for a mate he couldn’t call his own, wasn’t an option. Not when gargoyles embraced their animal halves entirely, becoming the Forgotten for a lot less than a spell.

After Camelot had fallen to Morgana’s army, Cian had watched the grief that consumed a few of his fellow soldiers lead them to surrender their humanity to their beast halves. Once those ties were severed, they struggled to recognize friend from foe, and if they didn’t strike out on their own soon after it happened, someone often ended up dead.

“You can’t go alone,” Briana argued.

“Tristan has Pendragon’s to run and Cale and Sorcha have other daggers to find.”

“Then I’ll go.”

“No, you won’t.” He’d deliberately waited until close to sunrise to leave, anticipating her stubbornness. “The sun will be up in less than an hour. And you were the one who warned me about stone gargoyles stuck in the middle of an intersection.”