Things That Go Hump In The Night (21 page)

The third time, he put on a fresh condom and took her from behind, bending her over the arm of the couch, her legs spread apart and her forearms braced against the seat cushions.

He kissed his way down the length of her spine, then knelt behind her, licking and teasing every inch of her pussy with his tongue until she was teetering on the brink of another climax.

Nicole whimpered in protest as he stopped his delicious torture, and rose to his feet. Then she felt him slide his thumbs into her entrance and open her wide for his cock.

He felt bigger from this angle, as he pushed into her and began to fuck her with long, slow, powerful strokes.

Her orgasm built gradually this time and broke over her like a cool wave. Her teeth were chattering and she was shivering when he withdrew.

Then Gabriel scooped her up in his arms and carried her effortlessly upstairs to her bedroom. His skin felt warm now as he cradled her against his chest.

He kissed her, slowly and lovingly, and she found she wasn't done yet as she felt his still-hard cock pressing eagerly against her

"One more time?" he asked softly, as he put her down on her bed.

"Please," she said.

He made slow love to her with his hands and mouth, exploring her with tender kisses and touches, finding all of the secret places that made her shiver with pleasure—a spot on her neck, just behind her ear; the tender skin on the inside of her elbow, the dimples at the base of her spine.

After Gabriel's earlier treatment, Nicole's breasts were still exquisitely sensitive. He teased them with the tip of his tongue and the pads of his fingers, until she was panting and ready to come just from his caresses.

"I love how you respond to me," he said, kissing the taut skin of her stomach. "I've dreamed about doing this with you, Nicole, but the reality is so much better." His tongue dipped into her belly button, and she giggled. "You know what I am, and what I really look like, and you still want me."

"You're just...you," she said, and found it was true.

After that first shock of seeing his true form, scales, fangs, blue skin and all, it hadn't been long until she was thinking of him as just
Gabriel
again.

"And you still like me." He moved lower and blew a teasing puff of air against her pussy. She opened her legs eagerly to him. "Still want me to do
this
to you."

"Mmm, yes, you're really good at that," Nicole said. Desire made it difficult to think as she tried to come up with something that wouldn't sound completely lame. "My wolf likes you, too. Mark says that's important."

Gabriel looked up, his amber eyes hot. He touched the mark she had left on his throat.

"
Like
is an understatement," he said with a crooked smile. "Do you know what this is?"

Nicole opened her mouth to make a flippant comment, but her wolf spoke instead, in that husky, growly voice. "It means you belong to us. Forever."

What the fuck?

Nicole clapped her hand over her mouth, but her wolf had settled back down.

"No, that wasn't creepy
at all
," she said after a moment. "Gabriel, I'm sorry. I don't know what's happening. My wolf—she's never done anything like this before. She's never actually
talked
."

He gave her a sweet smile that made her heart feel like it was melting.

"That's okay. I
want
to be yours, Nicole. And I want you to be mine."

Gabriel lowered his head between her legs, and began to do things to her with his hot, wet mouth that left her unable to say anything coherent for a long time.

Afterwards, when two more orgasms had left her completely satisfied but chilled to the bone, Gabriel drew her comforter up over both of them. He spooned her, curling his now-hot body around her shivering form.

"May I stay the night?" he asked, cupping her breast as if he couldn't get enough of touching her.

"I'd really like that," she said.

Feeling happier and more relaxed than she had in years, Nicole fell asleep in Gabriel's arms, surrounded by his scent and comforted by the steady beat of his heart.

Chapter 15 – Closer to Fine

The next few days were glorious, fun, and exhausting.

Gabriel left Nicole's place early on Friday morning, returning to his loft for a change of clothes before heading into the office.

He reactivated his glamour before leaving her house, but she was mortified to see that even in his human disguise, he still sported a huge hickey on his neck.

Seeing it pleased her wolf, though.

You are one weird critter, you know that, right?
Nicole said silently.

She tried apologizing to Gabriel again. He had just smiled at her and touched the mark, looking extremely pleased.

"I promise I won't tell anyone where I got it," he teased, as she prepared a travel mug of coffee for him.

"Not even Rafe," she warned him. "Or he's going to make my life a living hell."

"He's going to do that, anyway," Gabriel assured her cheerfully, before heading out the door in his wrinkled shirt and rumpled suit. "But scout's honor, I won't say a word."

Nicole was sporting a few incriminating marks of her own, but luckily, finger-shaped bruises on her hips were much easier to conceal, as were the bite-marks that covered her breasts.

Her nipples were sore as she got dressed and prepared to head into the office herself, but it was a pleasant soreness and made her want Gabriel all over again.

The work day passed in a rush of trying to finish coding the features assigned to her for the next build before Greg the IT guy came to disconnect her systems and move them into her new office.

Mark conducted the promised security inspection of her house on Friday night. He paid close attention to the sensors and tiny surveillance cameras that had been installed earlier that day, while Nicole was at work. Then he phoned Gabriel with a number of additional items he wanted installed—mostly new locks, but also reinforced doors and doorframes.

She ended up spending the weekend mostly at Gabriel's place, in between her training sessions with Mark.

It was wonderful but strange how well she and Gabriel fit together and how comfortable she felt with him, as if she had known him all her life.

The sex was fabulous, and they spent a lot of hours in Gabriel's larger-than-king-sized bed.

To Nicole's relief, the constant, invasive flashbacks of Erik and what he had done to her no longer haunted her as strongly as they once had. Removing her bracelet had taken the edge off the bad memories.

That made her wonder if her previous freak-outs had
really
been all her, or if Erik had somehow been yanking her chain through the bond forced on her by the bracelet.

Nicole and Gabriel also spent time cuddling and talking or just sitting together on his huge sofa, surrounded by stacks of books and reading quietly.

On Sunday afternoon, at Gabriel's urging, she moved a few things into his master bathroom, mostly toiletries. She also now had her own closet space and dresser drawer at his loft with a spare set of PJs and some clean t-shirts and underwear.

In turn, he set himself up at her place with a toothbrush, shaving kit, and bottles of his shampoo and aftershave. He also had clean shirts and a couple of ties hanging in her sparsely furnished closet, as well as jeans and t-shirts, and a small plastic storage bin for his underwear, socks, and whatever else he might need.

Holy crap, I have an honest-to-goodness boyfriend,
she thought as she helped him carry his stuff from his car into her house.

It felt
really
good. Like her life had finally acquired some stability after six years of always looking over her shoulder and knowing she had to move on soon.

* * *

On Monday morning, Nicole officially started her new position as System Architect for version 3.0 and beyond, though she had promised Rafe that she would continue coding and fixing bugs on the version 2.0 code line until Prakash returned from his honeymoon.

Rafe invited her to have breakfast in his office.

When she arrived, he closed the door behind her and said, "I know you're a shape-shifter, Nicole."

She stared at him incredulously.

"I just wanted to clear the air," he continued, "because I'm sick of living a fucking soap opera around here. You're a shape-shifter. I'm a Child of Lilith. We're cool, right?"

Nicole smiled. "Yeah, we're cool."

She wondered if he looked like Gabriel, blue-skinned and scaled, under his glamour, but she felt too shy to ask.

"Good." Rafe stood up and paced around the room. "So let's get started. I wanted to go over the current set of design docs with you and get your input..."

The next few hours felt like she was drinking from a fire-hose.

Nicole had brought a laptop with her to Rafe's office, and her fingers flew over the keyboard as she took copious notes and struggled to absorb a torrent of new information and to just keep up with the galloping genius of Rafe's mind.

She had decided a while back that the man had no hobbies outside of work and maybe no friends other than his brothers. He always seemed to be in his office...days, nights, weekends.

The women in the office speculated that he might be gay, but he just plain didn't seem to date
anyone
, male or female.

Which was deeply weird for a guy who was also a sex vampire...uh, Child of Lilith.

Near the end of the meeting, Rafe asked her if she had any questions.

Nicole had a million of them, but she needed time to review her notes and the existing documents in their content repository.

So she said mildly, "Do you think that maybe I should buy an air mattress and store it under my desk in my new office? It sounds like I'm probably going to be living here from now on."

Rafe looked at her for a long moment, clearly trying to decide whether she was actually serious, then grinned. "I know a great sporting goods store. You'd pay a little more, but they guarantee that their air mattresses won't leak and deflate overnight."

"If she starts living here, like you do," drawled Gabriel, sticking his head into Rafe's office, "then I'll have to join her, and I
know
you don't want me breathing down your neck while you're trying to work, baby brother."

Nicole licked her finger, marked an invisible point on an invisible scorecard, and all three of them laughed.

Then Gabriel sobered. "Mark's here, so I thought I'd order in lunch. Now that the
geas
has been broken, he wants to interview you again for additional details of your captivity. He's also called in another person from the Physical Site Security division, a sketch artist named Abby Kemmler."

* * *

Now it was Thursday afternoon, and Nicole's brain hurt after four days of cramming it with new concepts and technology.

In between it all, she had been repeatedly interviewed by Mark, drilling down for details about her year in hell. Ugh.

She hadn't seen much of Gabriel since Monday, since he was spending his days in a series of intensive presales meetings with potential clients. Her evenings were taken up by Mark, who had stepped up her shape-shifter training.

After interviewing Nicole several times, Abby the sketch artist had managed to create two drawings of Erik. One drawing was Erik's human guise, which Mark thought had probably changed by now.

The other sketch was of Erik's true shape, which Nicole had seen numerous times because it had terrified her, and Erik had
enjoyed
that, the fucking bastard.

Nicole groaned when Mark had invited her into yet another meeting on Thursday afternoon.

But when she entered Gabriel's office, she saw that Rafe and Gabriel were already there.

Not another interrogation, then
. Her heart began to pound. Was it good news or bad?

"So, here's what we've found out about your stalker," Mark said when she had closed the door behind her and seated herself. "His name is Erik Asura and, as we guessed, he's one of the really old Children of Lilith. His relatives confirm that he was once known as Enlil of the Asura Clan."

"Which means he's probably got a huge chip on his shoulder, and he's probably one of those guys at the Gatherings who's always ranting about
we were once humanity's gods and they offered themselves to us as tributes,
blah, blah, blah," Rafe commented in disgust.

"You guys were gods?" Nicole couldn't help asking. "Really?"

"It was really a long time ago," Gabriel said. "My parents both remember the rebellion that overthrew the Children of Lilith. Things had gotten really out of hand, and finally, even some of the Children of Lilith recognized that the system was corrupt and evil, so they joined the human rebels, which turned the tide in the mortals' favor."

"The rebellion eventually succeeded because my father-in-law, Amor Aphrodisios
Vélos, developed a drug that could stop Children of Lilith from using magic," added Mark.

"A lot of the older Children of Lilith really hate him for that," Rafe interjected.

"In any case," continued Mark, "I took a look through the files on the Council of Oligarchs' server and found that Erik Asura was previously
investigated for a number of questionable activities, specifically the suspicion that he was taking slaves, though nothing was ever proved."

"So I wasn't the first one?" The thought made Nicole feel sick to her stomach.

"Apparently not," Gabriel said quietly. "A lot of the old ones are like that. They grew up in a time when all regular humans were slaves to the Children of Lilith, and they've never managed to get used to the idea that mutual consent is required to bind someone as a
philtata
or
philtatos
."

"So I was right not to tell the police what really happened?" Nicole asked. "My parents were so angry when I refused to talk about what happened to me during that year, or to file charges against the owner of the house where he kept me...but I knew Erik was something...not human, and really dangerous, and I didn't want anyone to get hurt trying to arrest him."

"You made the right call," Gabriel said, and she felt a knot of old guilt loosen inside her. "He's a very powerful sorcerer, and if he didn't want to be arrested, then it would have been...bad."

"There's more, and here's where it gets interesting," said Mark. "I found a police report from the area where Nicole reported she was held captive. Apparently, Erik vanished so abruptly after Nicole escaped that his mail carrier asked the local police for a welfare check when Erik's mail began piling up and his lawn grew wild. The mail carrier spotted a broken window and thought there might have been foul play. The police investigated and found that the house had apparently been abandoned in a hurry. No computer, money, or ID were found, but Erik left all of his other stuff behind...including a large steel cage in the basement. There's still a Missing Person file open on him in Essex County."

"So he's still out there, somewhere, and you don't know how to find him," Nicole said, her previous sick feeling coalescing into a lump of dread.

"It's only a matter of time before we discover which alias he's using now," Mark stated confidently. "I've put tracers on all of the bank accounts linked to any of the Asura clan. Erik's probably gonna slip up sooner or later and use a credit card or ATM card, and then Korinna and I are gonna be paying him an
official
visit, if you know what I mean. With your testimony, Nicole, plus the fact that you were wearing a
philtata
-charm when you came to us, we have enough evidence to put Erik away once we catch him."

"In the meanwhile, with the alarms and security cameras we installed at your place, and your panic button, we'll know if Erik shows up here," said Gabriel.

Nicole reached up to touch the beautiful cameo pendant that Rafe had given her. If she was in trouble, she only had to press it to summon help.

It was one of Rafe's side-projects, a highly miniaturized version of the geo-trackers used on vehicles and cargo containers.

It was a brand new product, still technically in development, but Rafe had assured her that he was sure it worked, since it was based on mature technology.

"And I'll be starting Nicole's hand-to-hand combat training tonight," Mark said to Gabriel and Rafe. "If Erik Asura does actually show up here one day, I want her to be able to take that bastard by surprise and disable him long enough get the hell away from him."

"Works for me, even though running away isn't very heroic," Nicole said. Which was fine by her, since she didn't feel heroic, just nervous.

"We don’t need you to be a hero, Nicole," Gabriel said quietly. "We just need you to be safe."

* * *

Over and over for the next two weeks, Mark drilled Nicole in her opening moves: press the panic button that Gabriel had given her, strike a vulnerable spot while her opponent was still off guard (and men were usually overconfident when assaulting a woman, Mark observed), and then
run like hell
.