Lucan moaned with the sweet bliss of the wet heat of her mouth, and Kresley’s head jerked upward, looking at him in surprise. “You know you are driving me insane, right?” he demanded.
A slow smile slid onto her lips. “Am I?” That seemed to please her. She lapped at him again, watching him this time, teasing him with the sight of her little, red tongue touching his cock, swirling around the head.
Slowly, she slid onto her stomach, her mouth closing around him, taking him, inch by inch, until she had him fully impaled. She suckled on him and then started a slow slide, up and down, up and down. Had he ever experienced anything as erotic as this woman’s mouth on his body? No. No, he had not. His hands went to her hair, his hips pumping with the wet heat surrounding him. Pumping. Pumping. He squeezed his eyes shut. Stop, he whispered in his mind. Stop now. He was getting to the point of no return, and he didn’t want that. Not now. Not like this.
With supreme effort, Lucan marshaled the fire in his veins, his hands going to her shoulders, pushing away from her. She leaned up, her breasts displayed in lush perfection, nipples brushing the mattress.
“Why did you make me stop?” she asked, sounding a bit insecure for the first time since they'd started this.
Lucan answered by moving swiftly to the mattress before she could move off of her stomach. He covered her body with his, framing her from behind. He slid between her thighs, his erection pressed to the perfect curve of her heart-shaped backside. There was no need for birth control for an immortal, not need for barriers. Nothing to keep them apart.
His lips went to her ear. “Because I have every intention of being inside you when I come.”
Chapter Sixteen
Kresley moaned at the feel of Lucan’s muscular body framing hers. She loved his body. She wanted to explore every inch of him. She found every little detail fascinating. From the curly hair sprinkled across his nicely defined chest, to his flat, dark nipples and defined, rippling abdominals. Her fingers traced the lines of his broad shoulders, muscles flexing beneath her touch. Her lashes fluttered, her limbs warm with excitement, her chest heavy with emotion.
She belonged in this moment. Belonged here in a way she couldn’t put into words even if she had to. It was one of the few times in her life that she had felt this way – perhaps the only time. And that sense of belonging was exactly why she felt none of the inhibitions, none of the limitations, her life usually made her feel. Never before had she felt so lost in another human being as she was with Lucan this night. Never before had she felt so completely connected. She couldn’t explain it. Didn’t want to analyze it. She didn’t want to find a way to reason away what she felt. She simply wanted Lucan.
His lips traveled her body with seductive caresses that had her head spinning, her hips lifting, seeking completion, seeking him. But he wasn’t done teasing her, not yet. Proven when he rolled her over and spread her legs, his hot gaze raking over her with the heaviness of an arousing caressh a second before his long, hard body slid up hers. She arched into his touch as his hands closed around her breasts. He swallowed her gasp with a sizzling kiss, too soon ended. His mouth began a tortuously delicious path down her neck and further south, until he found her nipples. A combination of nipping, suckling, and licking had her squirming. Her thighs ached. Her body burned.
Her hands went to his hair. “Oh God, Lucan. I need you. I need you now.”
His eyes lifted to hers. “You aren’t ready.”
Was he crazy? “Oh, I assure you,” she insisted. “I am very ready.”
He chuckled, a soft sensual sound that teased her nerve endings and made her want to scream for more. “Not yet,” he said, and that was a promise. A painful promise that she had to wait for satisfaction. A pain he quickly kissed all better as his lips trailed over her stomach, beneath her navel, dipped, lingered. Her stomach quivered beyond her control.
The lower he kissed, the more she burned for him to go even lower. When finally his warm breath trickled over her clit, her hands clutched at the sheets, her body taut with anticipation. She needed his mouth on her. She might die right here and now if he did not do it soon, if he did not take her in his mouth. Yes. That was very, very possible. Die if he did not have her right where she wanted him.
“Lucan!”
Again he chuckled, but he complied. He suckled her nub with gentle insistence, his fingers aiding his efforts. Her mind floated into blackness, a rainbow of sensations fluttering in the midst of what was once coherent thought. One finger slid inside her and she found herself arching into it. Another finger, and she stiffened slightly, feeling him stretch her, knowing he was trying to ensure she had no pain, but she was aware of the discmfort – she didn’t want to be aware – she wanted more pleasure.
He seemed to know this, seemed to know what to do. His tongue did something very special at the exact right moment. She didn’t know what, but it was amazing. It was magic. She forgot the fingers. Well. Not exactly forgot. She simply decided she liked them. Her hips were rocking with the movement, his fingers stroking her inner wall, his tongue sliding in all the right places. She ached in a way that promised satisfaction, in a way that made her pant. Made her breasts heavy, achy. Lucan was too busy to attend them so she did herself. Her hands covered her breasts, touched her nipples.
Her hips lifted as a tingling started in her core. Oh. “I… " She shattered without any further warning, pleasure rushing through her body with such intensity, she shuddered uncontrollably, her breath lodged in her throat. Slowly, slowly, it eased, and Lucan’s touch eased with it.
She gasped as the last spasm ripped through her, as the breath lodged in her throat released. Good grief, what had just happened? She’d had orgasms, of course. She was human. She’d learned about her own body. But nothing like this. Nothing so completely overwhelming.
While she reeled over what he’d done to her, Lucan slid up her body, settling between her legs. She blushed at the extremeness of her reaction but didn’t let that stop her from speaking. Two weeks, she thought. She wasn’t wasting one minute. “That was really, really good,” she gushed. “I feel like I should say thank you or something.”
He shook his head and laughed, his eyes alight with a mixture of amusement and satisfaction. “You are saying thank you,” he said, sliding his erection along her slick core. His eyes heated, laughter faded. “Because now you are ready.”
She swallowed hard as he reached between them and gently nudged her open, the tip of his erection easing inside her. “Okay?” he asked, gentleness and concern in his eyes. She blinked into his eyes. She loved his eyes. Loved the tiny lines that added character, that told of a history she had yet to discover, but wanted to.
“Kresley, sweetheart,” he urged. “Are you okay?”
She nodded. “Okay,” she murmured. “Yes.” He slid a little deeper and she bit her bottom lip, panted a little, started to panic. “Maybe not.” He eased back and looked at her. “Maybe—" she started to say. She never finished. He sunk deep to her core, his width stretching her as he buried himself to the hilt. She cried out with the sudden width of him inside her. So much for gentle and concerned.
“Damn it!” She screamed and pounded his shoulder. “How about some warning?” But even as she yelled, her anger was beginning to fade, warmth sweeping through her limbs, the intimacy of having him inside her washing over her with breathtaking results.
Gently Lucan returned to her, gazing down at her with a combination of apology and pure red-hot lust in his stare. “We had to get past that,” he explained, maneuvering his hips and doing an erotic slide inside her as he added, “So we could get to this.” He stroked her with a gentle rotation of his hips.
“I . ..” He moved a bit more, the long, hard length of him rubbing a sensitive spot she wanted him to keep touching. Little darts of pleasure were forming in her core. She nodded. “This is good.”
He smiled, but the tenderness there began to shift, change, become laden with desire. But still he held her gaze
, as if he could not look away. As if in that moment, he felt what she did, as if his chest filled with the same emotion that hers did. Intimately connected. They were mates that faced impossible odds – but in that moment, none of that mattered. There was only the two of them, only shared passion and perhaps more, something neither seemed to dare speak of.
His lips were close to hers, their breath mingling. He whispered her name. She whispered his. His cheek brushed hers, lingered. She hardly knew when he began to move, when the sensual rhythm of back and forth began. It was all one big haze of pleasure. All one warm blanket she nuzzled into and never wanted to leave. It was perfect, right. And so was the rapid shift from sensual to hot, from tender to wild.
Lucan lunged hard, deep. She wrapped her legs around him, tried to grab his arms, arched into the action. He pressed his palms into the mattress, leveraging himself, the sleek, sexy muscles of his body taunt with exertion. His hair was loose, wild. His eyes wilder. His face etched with the effort, with restraint. He wanted to come. She wanted to make him come.
His eyes traveled along her body with a hungry, arousing inspection. She liked the way he looked at her. She liked knowing she turned him on. His thrusts became short, fast. He kissed her, took her mouth with primitive force. She wanted to be taken. She was hot. Her core, so very hot. She clenched around him. Tightened. Felt the rise of orgasm. Felt her body clamp down around him.
A low growl escaped Lucan’s lips – a reaction to her spasm? He tore his mouth from hers, and she got the barely there glimpse of red. His beast. His beast was here. For a moment, she felt fear, felt terror. She shoved it aside, reminding herself this was Lucan. She shoved her hair aside, knowing he had to mark her shoulder. “Do it,” she told him hoarsely. “Please. Let me save you. That’s what I am meant to do.”
***
Meant to do.
Those words jolted Lucan right back into control and cold, hard reality. Lucan buried his face in her neck, inhaled, fought the raging demand of the beast that had risen unexpectedly. He reached deep and fought the beast inside him. He could not claim Kresley like this. He did not know why. Could not find reason in the midst of the battle he fought with his beast, though part of him could justify taking her. He was going to save her, after all. He was going to save himself. It was okay to take her, it was right, it was just; it was the way it was meant to be.
But there was a voice in his mind, his own voice, and it rumbled with warning – telling him to be strong, to wait. He shook with the effort of fighting his beast, but the strength inside him was far greater than he had known. Strength that had carried him three hundred years when others had made it far less. The beast was buried deep in the recesses of his soul. He had won. And he wanted her to know.
“No.” The word rolled off his tongue–softly at first. Then more trongly, as he gained confidence that he had fully won the battle with his dark side. “No.” He lifted up on his elbows. “Not like this.” One look at her lovely, passion-etched features, and the man returned. He trailed his knuckles down her cheek; his fingers, over her lips. “Not when everything is so uncertain.”
Tears welled in her eyes, as if she had failed in some way. “But I want to save you.”
“You already have,” he promised her, slanting his mouth over hers and kissing her with the passion of a man saved. Showing her what he had declared in words, with his kiss, with the way she made him feel, how alive, how ready to take on the rest of the world. And from that kiss, tender passion unfolded, drew them in, took them to a place he did not think he could go, or had ever been. Every touch, every kiss, was a divine experience that left them breathless, melting into one another.
She called his name right before she shattered, and he did not think he would ever hear her say it enough times. Her body spasmed around him, and he buried himself deeper inside her body – buried himself in the warm, wet heat of her core, just as she had nudged herself in his heart – and then shuddered with release, exploded in a way that reached beyond pleasure. Because wrapped in the warm, wet heat of Kresley, he felt himself healing. And when he finally stilled, he didn’t move away, resting above her, their bodies intimately joined. He didn’t want this to end.
It was long minutes later when Lucan finally found the will to move. He flipped off the light and pulled Kresley into his arms, smiling into the darkness as she snuggled closer to him. His hand slid down Kresley’s hair, her soft, steady breathing telling him of her slumber. He thought of all he had learned, all the things she had said and done. And he knew she was ready to quit. Ready to give up. Lord only knew, he understood that feeling. Isn’t that what he had done? Quit? He’d looked for the easy answer and taken it.
The truth about his decision to trade himself clawed at him far worse than his beast. Because the pathetic thing was that his decision had not been about his beast at all. He’d been afraid of failing Kresley as he had others in his life–watching them die because he couldn’t protect them. So he’d made an ultimate sacrifice to ensure her safety, or so he’d wrongly convinced himself.
Instead, he’d left her to guilt and worry. Left her alone. He knew some of the pieces of her life, and he could fill in the blanks on the rest. Her parents had left her the first chance they had, treating her as if she herself was a disease because of her fire. Until recently, she couldn’t control her fire. There had been no friends, no intimacy. Her fire had made that impossible; it had scared people. It had scared her. She blamed her fire for everything. And since her fire was an intricate part of who she was, that had translated into blaming herself for everything that went wrong.
Resolve formed in Lucan. She believed her fire was evil, because it attracted evil. She didn’t understand that the evil lusted after what it could not have – it sought to destroy all that was good. Evil would always come for her. But she had him and he would fight for her, he would protect her. He would not let her down. Because in Kresley, he’d found the little piece of heaven he needed to crawl out of hell – and he was taking her with him.
Tara walked into her apartment and tossed the keys on the table, still reeling from her encounter with Cullen Moore. Why, oh why, did she have to find the Wolf attractive? She kicked off her shoes. Okay, more than attractive. She could inhale that man and not get enough of him. That iron will and effortless power he conveyed were downright sexy. Not to mention his body. That was a body to make a girl beg to lick him all over.
But as much as she liked those broad shoulders, and nice, tight backside – the one that, yes, she had snuck several peeks at – what really got to her, was the way she felt when she looked into his deep, smoky eyes. The way he moved her on some invisible, personal level. A knot formed in her throat. Moved by the man she was destined to betray. How messed up was that? Besides, fantasizing over Cullen was a distraction, a way to hide from what was really on her mind.
She walked to the living room area and stood in the center of her tiny little apartment, her emotions twisted in knots. Bookshelves – the kind you bought at Wal-Mart, not Lord and Taylor, where she suspected Cullen Moore bought his – lined the walls, filled with knickknacks and her favorite paranormal romances. The scent of lavender and vanilla incense laced the air from a spell she’d practiced the night before. Big, fluffy red chairs sat in the center of a room too small for a couch as well. She liked color, and for this reason the abstract picture on the wall blazed with orange, yellow, and blue. She’d painted it herself. This was her sanctuary, her peace. Tonight it gave her none.
A sound pulled her attention to the sliding glass door a moment before it opened. It was locked, and she lived on the fifteenth floor. She didn’t move. Running would do no good. She knew who her visitor was.
As expected, Adrian appeared in the opening and shut the door, his Adonis-like body hugged by tight, red leather, his long, blond hair hanging around stellar broad shoulders. He was too perfect, too handsome. Too able to make red leather sexy when it should be cheesy. I mean, who wore red leather? But yet, Adrian did
so in a devastatingly hot way. She couldn’t help but wonder if it was all a façade, if he really had worms crawling out of a skeleton face and simply cast some spell to look gorgeous.
She sat in one of her red chairs, nonchalant. He wouldn’t sense her fear if she didn’t show it. That was another of her nifty little gifts. She could hide her emotions. No one could read her. Not Cullen Moore. Not even Adrian, which was quite an amazing feat, considering how powerful a Demon he was. But it did nothing to protect her – not from him.
“I’m surprised you bothered with the door,” she commented dryly, despising the way he slipped into a room with the snap of his fingers.
A shadow passed behind the curtains, a low snarl. A Hell Hound. “I didn’t want my pet to eat you.”
She managed to keep a straight face, because, yeah, getting eaten would really suck. She'd seen one of the snaggledtoothed monsters once and that was enough. She barely suppressed a shiver as she posed as witty a question as possible, keeping up the guise of cool and collected. “That would interfere in your plans, now, wouldn’t it?”
He walked over to the chair opposite her and sat down, making himself right at home. That intimidated her more than if he had stood there, billowing over her. It said he owned her home, he owned her.
“How are my plans coming?” he queried.
“I’m earning Cullen Moore’s trust, if that is what you mean.”
His lips twisted upward. Evil. “Excellent. And what of the council? How is the Fae’s grand effort at bringing a bunch of worthless Demons together against me?”
She swallowed hard, really, really hating this next part. “Cullen was a bit more receptive to the idea of the Knights of White’s involvement in the council than expected. Prince Risen is arranging an immediate meeting between Cullen and the Knight. I believe the name was Jag…?”
Adrian didn’t move, didn’t flinch. She might have thought him unaffected if not for the sudden shattering of a vase to her left. She didn’t have to look. She knew which vase it was. “That was my mother's,” she murmured.