“What’s a Templar?” she asked.
He picked up another tangerine and began to peel.
“Enough about me and my world for now. What of you, Kat? Is there no man to warm your bed?” Now why did the very idea of that bother him, he was forced to ask himself when a visceral clenching of his gut took place.
“No,” she said, looking down at her hands even more intently.
“Let me guess,” he said quietly. “You’re too weird for a man to be liking you.”
The way he said it he sounded angry, as if he took offense from it. She was cautious as she nodded.
“What in bloody hell is so wrong wi’ you?” he demanded, his hand slapping down on the countertop.
“I don’t expect you to understand,” she said defensively. “You just don’t know—”
“Then make me understand. What’s so bloody wrong wi’ you?”
He could tell she was very reluctant to speak about it, but he gave her a fierce look, making it very clear that he would not be swayed from this or mollified by halfanswers.
“I’m allergic to the sun,” she said in a sighing rush. “It’s called xeroderma pigmentosum, or XP. I can’t go out in even the smallest amount of sunlight. It’s why there’re shutters on all the glass and I have automatic shades that draw down at dawn every day.”
For the first time, Ahnvil looked at his surroundings, and saw that, though the windows were vast and large, there were indeed shades dropped down over every last one of them, even the largest picture windows. Even the sliding door had had shades pulled down, but instead of admitting she had a condition that would make it impossible for sunlight to penetrate inside, she had gone out to close the shutters, pretending rather than exposing herself for the freak she imagined herself to be.
“The slightest touch of the sun can cause terrible blisters on my skin, at the very least a rash. People with XP can get skin cancer easily … many often die from it before they get to be my age. I-I’m just lucky I guess.”
“ ’Tis a medical condition. There’s nothing you can do about it so how does that make you weird?” he wanted to know, his tone hard and angry.
“Oh, come on. You know the way the world works. We can be as politically correct as we want, it doesn’t change the fact that people who are different are looked on as weird and as something to be avoided. When it comes to blisters and rashes the likes of which I suffer from, it’s worse because people are afraid you’re contagious or something. They don’t even want to”—she swallowed noisily—“touch you. So”—she lifted her chin in a gesture of bravery—“I live nocturnally, avoiding daylight at all costs. I used to work the night shift, but people still noticed that I never wanted to go out in the sun, never wanted to do things in the daytime even on my days off. They thought I was being unsocial, but I was just trying to protect myself.”
“I see,” he said. “And instead of telling them the truth you let them think you were just weird.”
“They would have thought me weird either way.”
“Your friends are in the medical field are they no’? Surely they would understand—”
“Maybe. But maybe not. It wasn’t anyone’s business anyway.”
She was hiding behind the fall of her hair. Just like she hid from the sun, he thought, just like she hid from the people around her. But he could imagine that growing up that way would make it very difficult for her to trust others. The more he thought about it, the more he thought of how hard it must have been for her to work her way through school, avoiding all classes or training that took place during the daylight. It showed a level of strength and fortitude that was very rare in humans.
“I canna go out into the sun, either,” he pointed out.
Her chopping slowed, paused. “Well …” she said, “you didn’t say why exactly.”
“I wouldna have would I?” he said with amusement. “But there’s little left to hide so … The touch of the sun turns me tae stone involuntarily.”
Her mouth dropped open in a silent O of surprise.
“In fact,” he went on, “there’s no’ a Nightwalker in the bunch who can stand the touch of the sun wi’out it affecting them negatively. So in a way, that makes you an honorary Nightwalker, now doesn’t it?”
She would have never in her life imagined that there could be an entire species of people in the world who were just like her! “Like what?” she wanted to know, unable to hide her eagerness. “What happens to them?”
“The Djynn turn tae smoke. The Bodywalkers are paralyzed. Wraiths, I’m told, are turned solid and vulnerable. Easier tae kill them. And trust me, you want tae be able tae kill a Wraith. Night Angels are rendered powerless and turn from having a beautiful skin of black to the palest ghostliest white you’ve ever seen on a living being. Leaches the color straight out of them, making them look like albinos.”
“Oh. Wow.” She smiled as he picked up his third tangerine. “That’s … I just never thought I’d be hearing about so many people who are like me.”
“So, Kat lass, no’ feeling so weird anymore now are you?” he said a bit smugly. She had to laugh and her smile grew.
“I admit it. I’m not.” Just then she elbowed the tomato on the counter beside her accidentally, sending it rolling toward the edge. He shot forward and grabbed it to keep it from falling, grunting softly in pain from the swift movement. He set the tomato back down beside her and gingerly reseated himself.
“You shouldn’t be up. You ought to be in bed.”
“Men like me doona do well wi’ staying in bed.” Then he sent her a roguish grin and slid rapacious eyes over her. “Actually, that’s no’ exactly true.”
There was no mistaking his meaning, nor was there any mistaking his thoughts. He looked as though he were contemplating undressing her. Very slowly. His hands slowed in their peeling of the tangerine, gentling and turning the lush fruit between his fingers, cradling it in his hand as he might cradle the weight of her breast.
It was hard to imagine that a hand so large and so rough would be capable of such grace and sensuous gentility. Kat felt herself go instantly and thoroughly wet, the moisture rushing from her body feeling so abrupt that she forgot how to breathe, never mind wielding a knife with any dexterity. And then, as if he could tell, his head lifted abruptly and his eyes zeroed in on her in a searingly fierce gaze. He took in a slow breath through his nose, and then on his exhale he released a low, rumbling cross between a growl and a purr.
“Ah, Kat lass,” he said, swallowing audibly as his hand began to squeeze the fragile fruit he held. “ ’Tis no’ fair for you tae no’ let me look at you as a sexual being when you are clearly verra much one. You canna deny tae me you are thinking of what it would be like tae bed me.”
“I—”
“And before you lie tae me, Kat lass, remember I’ve the senses of a beast, a bear tae be exacting, and I can smell you.” The way he said smell with that kind of intensity made her heartbeat jump frantically ahead of itself. Her mouth went dry and she tried to swallow, tried to get any part of herself to function properly. Because she was thinking about going to bed with him. If she were going to be honest, she had been thinking about it ever since he’d made his first rough pass at her. Even while in a feverish and brutish state there had been, and still was, something viscerally arousing about the man. He just oozed male sexuality. From the rough shadow of his whiskers to the bulging curve of his biceps to the heavy prominence of his cock, whether in clothing or not, he was as virile as they came. And that was if he had just stood there and done nothing. But he never did nothing. Not with those laughing eyes and those cocksure grins of his. Any normal red-blooded woman would have noticed.
For the first time she had to be abnormal. There were so many oddball things about her, why couldn’t it be that he didn’t excite her? Didn’t make her chest go so tight that she could barely breathe, her whole body suddenly feeling light enough to fly and hot enough to burst into flame. All with a look and a smile.
And why wasn’t she immune to him anyway? She’d been largely immune to all other males in the world. Not that she’d never taken lovers, because she had. And she’d even enjoyed herself once or twice. Maybe. But there was a difference between the enjoyment she had felt and … and this. This feeling, this awareness … this response that at times rivaled what she had felt when in full orgasm at the hands of other men. Had she ever truly known the proper point of pleasure? If so, she ought not feel like she’d somehow been missing out all this time.
“S-so what?” she answered shakily. “Just because … I mean, I can’t always help … I already told you you’re not exactly hard to look at, you know! And you’re always talking about it as if you live, eat, and breathe sex or something.”
“Aye.” Again, that unrepentant grin. “And I think about it more and more the longer I’m in your company.” There was a drop in his tone. Not just to make him sound more lusty, although that was there, but to make him sound more sober. As though he found the games he played with her to be very serious.
She shook that thought off. He was clearly the sort of man who knew his way around women. He probably knew how to make each one think she meant something, that she was somehow special in some way.
She glanced back at his hand, realizing that juice from the tangerine was wending down his fingers and along the back of his hand. He had unthinkingly squeezed the fragile fruit just a little too hard. For some reason the knowledge made her swallow a little bit harder.
For a brief, searing moment she wondered what it would be like if she could sip the sweet nectar straight off his fingers.
“I don’t want to talk about this anymore,” she said in a rasp between a too-tight pair of vocal cords.
Ahnvil’s eyes narrowed on her and she could see him thinking. God only knew what he was thinking. She never knew what she was going to get next with him. His golden eyes shifted from her to the fruit and back again. Then, abruptly, he put it to his mouth and took a huge, rending bite of it. Juice exploded everywhere, more of it rushing down his long fingers, runnels of it washing down from the corners of his mouth, droplets waiting to drip quivering at the end of his chin.
Then in the next instant he was on his feet and rushing around the counter. She was panting for breath even before he grabbed hold of her. He jerked her up against the length of his body and, running fast, fierce fingers through her hair, he held her for the crushing press of his mouth. An instant later his tongue was sweeping boldly into her mouth. The taste of tangerine exploded onto her taste buds. Tangerine and hot, sexy male. Suddenly she really wanted to lick every speck of citrus flavor from wherever it had ended up on him. Lips. Face. Fingers. There had even been some dripping down onto his chest.
Before she could control the impulse, she did exactly that. She started by catching his head between her hands and drawing back a little, holding his head still to keep him from chasing her down. Then she touched her tongue to his lips, this time licking him instead of kissing him. Her tongue ran over his bottom lip slowly and with purpose, until she heard a frustrated growl ejecting from him. It made her smile, made her revel, for that brief moment, in her power as a woman. Her power over him.
Her hand slid away from his face, over his shoulder, down his arm until she was picking up the hand that had held the sweet fruit. Then she drew back from his mouth and lifted his fingers to her lips. He was staring hard at her, breathing like he’d run a marathon, and when she touched her tongue to his index finger and subsequently drew it into her mouth, he ejected one of those savage sounding growls. And the more he made sounds like that, the more his flavor burst across her tongue, the more she wanted him.
“Ah, Kat lass,” he ground out heatedly. “Doona look at me like that if you doona want me tae fuck you where you stand.”
And what would be so wrong about that? she asked herself inanely as he withdrew his fingers from her mouth and swept her back up into a hot kiss. What would be so bad about taking large handfuls of virile Gargoyle and just having her wicked way with him? Maybe she wanted that. Maybe she wanted to be down and dirty like that.
Oh yes. Yes, she very much wanted to be dirty with him.
A sound of rough frustration burst into her mouth from his and she suddenly felt his hands on her hips hauling her feet up off the floor and with a slightly awkward plop she found herself sitting on top of her own kitchen countertop. He parted her knees roughly and injected his big body between her thighs, his hands on her ass dragging her forward over cold granite until the very center of her core was pressed up against the lower ridges of his abdomen. An abdomen left bare thanks to that low-riding towel around his hips. All she would have to do was grab for that knot and she would get to see beyond that sensuous path of dark hair leading down from his navel. Oh, so what if she’d seen him naked … seen him naked and aroused already. This time it was different. How it was different she couldn’t exactly say, but it was. This time she felt as if he were truly seeing in the clear … no fever or strange circumstance or misconception. He’d come for her, come across that room in order to take her taste over the taste of that perfect, ripe tangerine. He’d somehow seen into the heart of her desires and had acted on them. And God help her she was acting on them, too. The feel of him, so big and vital between her legs made her moan low in her throat. Apparently he liked the sound a great deal because his hands clenched tighter at her hips.
“Ah hell, Kat, I can feel the heat of you through these damned jeans.” His hand curved forward, running over the slope of her thigh until his fingers were burrowing along the center seam of the jeans that were confounding his efforts to touch her intimately. She gasped at the feel of his touch, the boldness of his fingers pressing against her as if all they wanted most in the world was to be running through the wet folds of her eager sex.
“Jesus, you’re hot,” he breathed into her mouth as he began to kiss her again in earnest. Had he been heated before? No. She realized she hadn’t known the meaning of the word. He was voracious against and within her mouth and she felt as though she were drinking pure acid, her mouth was so alive with sensation. It dripped down into her body burning and melting her from the inside out. It was hard for her to comprehend that less than twenty-four hours ago he had been unknown to her and even now, was still a total stranger but yet he knew something about her that she had not known for herself. She had not known she could be so passionate, so hungry for another being. A being she had barely come to know. In the past she had been so cautious, waiting until she was on the verge of true friendship before being brave enough to tell them about herself and her condition. Never mind becoming intimate with them on the level that she was being intimate with this man. But maybe it was because he was just as strange, just as afflicted as she was that allowed all of her defenses to drop.
And now she had his hands pressing intimately against her and it somehow felt more right than any other sexual interaction she’d had to date. Maybe because for the first time she wasn’t hung up so much on the details of what was wrong with her and was more focused on what was feeling so right.
Frustrated by her denim he went for a different level of assault. He grabbed for the bottom of her sweater and whipped it up over her head before she even could think about protesting. She gasped as her heated skin met the colder kitchen air. It was only truly warm in the living room and the bedroom, which shared the cozy heat of the fireplace. Left without heat, the kitchen had grown much colder over the past hours.
He stood away from her for a long moment, his eyes roaming over the freckles on her skin. “Ah, Kat lass, you’re a fair sight for some verra sore eyes.”
And for some reason she took utter delight in his words. Took pride in them. She was proud of herself for pleasing him. How insane was that? Pride for pleasing a complete stranger? It was a study in madness.
He reached out then with his right hand, his fingers splayed as he brushed the pads of them down over her breastbone and the beginning swell of her br
easts. He narrowed to a single finger, tracing the crease of her cleavage right to the rim of her confining bra. And it was confining. It felt as though it were reining her in, holding her back from feeling all that she could feel. He stood away from her, making her feel all the more exposed for it. It would somehow be easier, she knew, if she could just be swept up in the heated moments of his demanding kisses. Then it was almost as though she were watching it all happen to someone else. This way she was left with nothing but awareness of herself, who she was, and how out of the norm for her all of this was. Then again, wouldn’t it be out of the norm for anyone? After all, how many hot, sexy Gargoyles were there in the world?
The thought was sobering and she found herself creeping toward her discarded sweater, which rested in a puddle off to the left of her.
“Ah, I doona think so, Kat lass,” he growled, reaching to push the sweater out of her reach while he stepped back up against the countertop. “It will no’ come back tae you until I’ve had a wee taste of this fine fair skin of yours. Look at how pretty and pale you are. No’ a touch of sun tae be had. I like that. You’re as fair as an Irish lass and a damn sight more pretty, too.”
He lowered his face to her neck, nuzzling her there with a purring earthquake of sound rumbling up out of him. His hands had gone to the countertop on either side of her thighs, gripping it hard enough to snap the granite, she was sure. “Just one li’le taste.” She loved the way he said “little,” his accent dropping both ts. It was another reminder of how different they were, but it didn’t make her come to her senses in the least.