She squeezed her eyes tightly shut, trembling so hard she couldn’t understand how she was still breathing. She understood him perfectly, but instead of complying, she pushed up and into his body. The slow movement rubbed her suggestively over the unmistakable bulge still trapped within the confines of his clothing. Instinctively his hand moved around to the lower curve of her spine, using the counterpressure to keep her against the uncontrollable surge of his hips.
He swore through gritted teeth, giving her a much better idea of what the word meant now that she was hearing it in context for the second time. She laughed, a low, breathy chuckle that reflected her recognition of her power over the desires of his flesh.
Gideon released her hands, his bold touch caressing her breasts, rubbing and pulling gently on the thrusting tips until she moaned and shuddered with the spears of arousal that lanced through her entire body. She reached to slide her fingers into his hair, holding his mouth and tongue to her neck, which he was feasting on in slow and purposely erotic ways.
Approaching the vee of her hips once more, Gideon could feel the edges of the pool of liquid heat that lay just beyond his fingertips, and he craved the feel of the exotic fluid as well as the sensitive, soft flesh it bathed. He was locked into the excruciating hold of his urgent body, feeling like he had never known such a wholly riveting need. He felt her in his thoughts, felt her analyzing everything he was feeling to adjust the way she rubbed against him, until it was driving him insane.
Suddenly she caught his ravenous mouth with her own, then she moved from his mouth to his neck and throat, learning with delight that the feel of her wet lips in those areas was an incredible stimulant. She felt the swell and pulsing urgency of his erection, so close to her own heat. It sharpened her own hunger, the need to have him deep within her body gripping roughly through her.
Gideon felt her release him from the touch of one hand and was even aware of the slight jerk of her arm. But he was still unprepared for the strange jolt that accompanied that skillful twist of her wrist. They materialized a half a second later in the center of the bed, her body and his still connected as they had been before the teleport, only this time he was as nude as she was.
That brought him to be unexpectedly sliding through the liquid heat of her aroused sex, making her gasp as he rubbed over sensitive flesh and heightened the cravings of her body for his joining thrust. He uttered a sound of pure primal desire, his hands moving to grip the fabric of the coverlet as he threw back his head and curved back into a full arching of his tormented body.
But he did not give her what she wanted, in spite of it taking every last ounce of control he had left. He moved away from that unbelievable haven she had tempted him with, rising up on his knees in order to do so, pushing her thighs farther apart as a result.
He was wracked with the pulse of his need as he looked down on his irresistible mate. He shook his head in wordless disbelief at her cunning tricks to overpower him. And they had worked, every one of them. Not to her satisfaction, perhaps, but it completely convinced him that he had been wrong when he had assumed sex was too commonplace an act to hold the attention of a creature with a centuries-long life.
And he was feeling the error of his thoughts keenly. Still, he would not deny her equal time. She meant too much to him. It was in her nature to give so wholly to the needs of others before indulging needs of her own. But he was not like others, and he would not be satisfied in that way.
He leaned a little forward, looking straight down into her curious and questioning gaze.
“I want you to say my name,” he commanded her, his voice guttural and powerful. “And if you do, I will give you a gift very similar to…this.”
He was suddenly diving past her eyes and into her body. The feedback of the sudden rush of his power entering her, combining with her very own aura, made her struggle for breath. The sensation fired wild chills down her breasts and belly and thighs. He insinuated himself into the rush of her blood with astounding speed, enhancing and altering the chemistry of her physiology until she was bursting with an intense rush of adrenaline. Then there was the awareness of her most sensitive erogenous zones being filled with the hot pulse of fresh blood and stimulating nerve impulses.
He sent increasing heat through and through her, finishing and beginning again, all the while watching her wide eyes as she rasped for breath. She couldn’t focus on him any longer, her vision blurring as she felt herself falling over backward into a black hole of his artful creation.
Legna exploded, the crystal finally shattering as he hit the perfect pitch within her. She screamed out, her body seizing with her pleasure, her entire being wrenching with indescribable pulsations beneath him.
And he had not even touched her.
She was drawing wildly for breath as she finally dropped from the outrageous crest he had pushed her to. She was finally able to focus on the hotly satisfied look in his eyes.
“Come now, sweet, and say my name,” he continued to urge her in that superior and coaxing tone. “You are strong enough now to keep it as well as I do.” He lowered his mouth to her breasts, laving each nipple with torturous patience and then scoring her across the right one, exactly as she had marked herself on him.
It was like putting a high-voltage current through her, forcing her to arch up off the bed. He took advantage, dragging his mouth over her raised belly, dipping his tongue into her navel as if pushing a magic button inside of her that released a spill of hot liquid over already soaked flesh.
“Say my name, Nelissuna, and I will give you so much more,” he murmured against her skin as his lips moved lower and lower.
Legna wondered how he expected her to say even her name when what he was doing had her throat locked into a perpetual sound of pleasure. The push of his thighs against the backs of hers left her completely exposed as he rose up and replaced his mouth with the touch of his hand.
This time there was no teasing. His fingers slipped into the wet silk at the juncture of her thighs, touching, exploring, and finding in a heartbeat the way to stroke her into new awareness and heightened response. She bucked, crying out as her hips rose and twisted. She felt him slip his touch inside of her, a skilled intrusion that showed her everything a man was capable of learning about a woman when he had a millennium to do it in.
He already knew her from the inside out, and he made good use of it. As he railroaded her with increasing ecstasy, he continued to ask her for his name. He promised her more, but she could not have even tried to imagine more. When he slid down her sweat-drenched body to taunt her with his mouth, he used the link of their minds to continue the request and the promises of reward.
Legna felt herself wrench into an explosion of forcibly parting molecules, a feeling parallel to how she had felt the first time she had ever teleported. The rush was magnificent and heartbreaking all at once. Wonderful to feel, tragic to leave behind. Tears coursed down her face and into her hair, a sob tearing out of her throat as he pushed on relentlessly.
If she thought him merciless, she was wrong. He was wholly selfish, her untamed pleasure arousing him to phenomenal heights. She was the cruel one, refusing his one request even as he pleaded sweetly with her, using her delicious body as his begging bowl. He covered her from head to toe with the attentions of his hands and mouth, feeling her squirm beneath him in such wholly erotic movements that it took all of his willpower not to thrust himself deep inside of her and damn everything else to hell.
Demon couples did not share their power names, as a rule, mostly to protect one another from being used by outside sources to betray that precious secret that protected their beloved mates. But he already knew hers, having learned it five months ago when he had heard her former mentor spouting it left and right for all to hear.
So now, she would have his. It was the most profound gift he would ever be able to give her, symbolizing a trust that had to stretch beyond the reasonable. But he would have nothing that she gave him unless he returned it in equal measure.
He rolled over, dragging her with him until she lay heavily over him, her thighs straddling his hips. He reached out to enclose her hips between his solid hands, and, with purposeful movement, slid her intimately up the length of his lethal arousal.
Legna reared up onto her heels, her head thrown back as she cried hoarsely to the heavens. He gritted his teeth as the burning center of her body called to him, promising a haven like nothing he had ever known.
“Say it, Legna,” he begged her, moving her hips again until he was poised so close to the entrance to her body that it would take only one movement to join them.
Suddenly her head came forward, her eyes flashing with fire and intent and the determination of all the decades of her life. Her hands shot to his shoulders, pinning him back onto the bed as she released a savage sound of intent. She locked herself right where she was, refusing to allow him to move her in any way. He felt her tilting her hips so slowly, using all of her strength to fight his staying grip.
“Legna!” he gasped, feeling himself pushing into her, losing his control and his reason as she forced dominance out of his hands. She leaned over, eye to eye with him as droplets of perspiration fell from her body to his. He felt himself being surrounded further and further, the pace excruciating, the hot silver fire in her eyes taking everything away from him.
And then with one last undulation of her body, she gave it all back. She took him into her silken sheath completely, gasping out a triumphant sound of pleasure as he filled her to her borders. She stretched to accommodate him, and it had to be the most incredible sensation of their mutual lives.
And then she closed her eyes, a tremor shivering up her curving spine as she touched her mouth to his, and finally said his name.
“Pentangelo.”
It was a powerful name, a name of protection and high expectations. Just as hers was. Indirianna meant “Companion of the Heavens,” and Pentangelo meant “Angel of Endless Time.” The power of the names was clear enough, if at the very least in how their meanings so perfectly suited the creatures they had become.
And as they made love for the first time with all the power and intensity of the proud species they came from, they became completely lost in each other. They tumbled across the bed again and again, first Gideon driving deeply into Legna, and then Legna coaxing her hot body against Gideon with breathless, sinuous friction. They became tangled in her hair, the tendrils trapping them together into one endless being just as their thoughts melded in the same way. Gideon was capable of manipulating Legna’s body into an aria of immeasurable pleasure, but Legna was capable of thrusting the sensations right back into him in the form of raw emotions.
“Legna!” he cried hoarsely, everything about him screaming into her that he was too lost to do anything but feel the amazing summit they had formed together.
Legna’s breath came in short, quick moans that began to rapidly turn into higher-pitched exclamations. She was beneath her mate, feeling him as he thrust into her to depths that transcended the physical.
When Gideon climaxed, it was with a primal roar of ultimate masculine ecstasy. The final thrust of his body and the burning rush of his seed pouring into her sent Legna into a volcanic release. It rode out of her on the back of an exultant shout. She tightened around Gideon like a passionate vise, milking him with dynamic thoroughness, leaving the most powerful Demon in all of history without a single ounce of strength.
Gideon dropped onto his mate’s damp body with a final sound of contentment. He listened as they both gasped for breath, loving the sound of it for reasons he couldn’t even think of.
In fact, thought was beyond them both. Gideon gave a moment of concern to the weight of his body on hers, solving it by simply rolling them over so she was sprawled across him. After that, there was nothing but bliss and the mated pair that basked within it.
Love?
Yes.
Gideon chuckled.
Why did you say yes like that?
Oh, I thought you were asking me a question.
I see.
Then he truly did see what she meant, and his heart flipped over in his chest.
Darling?
Gideon smiled at the warmth the endearment flooded him with.
Yes, Neliss?
Oh, nothing. Just fulfilling my end of the deal.
The deal?
Yes. You made me a deal.
You lost me, he sighed.
Legna lifted her head, propped an elbow up against the pillow of his chest, and settled her chin in her palm so she could look down at him.
“You said that I would get something very special if I called you that.”
“Did I?” he asked, his eyes brightening with speculation as he thought back on it. “Actually, I think you have that confused with the deal about saying my name.”
“I like your name,” she said with a smile. “I always thought mine was awful snobbish. But yours has me beat hands down.”
“My name is one of the finest and oldest names in all of our history.”
“That’s only because you have lived to be such an old tosser.”
“Tosser?”
“British vernacular, luv.”
“What are you, my dialect coach all of a sudden? Is this your idea of postcoital pillow talk?”
Legna giggled, apologizing with a clinging kiss on his lips. It clearly calmed him, making him smile in a very cat-versus-canary way.
“Is there something you would prefer I say?” she asked compliantly.
“That yes a few sentences back was great. Short, sweet, to the point.”
“Yes,” she agreed.
“Yes?” he asked, arching a brow.
“Oh, yes,” she assured him, her own brows doing a little lecherous dance.
“Mmm, yes,” he murmured as her mouth lowered to his.
Yes. Yes. Yes.
Legna?
Yes?
Do not talk with your mouth full.
No?
No.
Chapter 11
Isabella stirred in her sleep, her cheek and nose rubbing against the smooth, warm skin of her soon-to-be-husband’s neck where she had slept with her face pressed against it the entire day.
The rub of her lips sent stimulation winging down her mate’s spine, stirring him out of his rest as well. She lay at his back, the entire length of her petite body plastered to the back of his, including the leg insinuated between his thighs and the swell of her belly that was nestled into the lower curve of his spine.
Jacob reached for the hand that dangled against his chest, attached to the end of the arm that draped over his. He drew her fingertips to his lips, letting her feel his kiss and his smile.
She smiled against the warmth of his neck in response.
Feeling better? he asked, using their mental connection first because he had missed the feel of her in his mind. All he had been able to do was content himself with her dreams as she had slept and healed.
Much better. I missed you.
I missed you, too.
She pulled her hand free so she could touch him, her fingers drifting softly across his skin, drinking in the missed feel of him.
“Next week is Beltane,” she reminded him. “Do you suppose we will make it through the wedding this time?”
“Not if Gideon says you cannot get out of this bed,” he countered sternly.
“Absolutely not!” she burst out, making him wince and cover the ear she’d been too close to. She immediately regretted her thoughtlessness, making a sad sound before reaching to kiss the ear she had offended with quiet gentleness.
Jacob extricated himself from her hold enough to allow himself to turn and face her.
“Okay, explain what you meant,” he said gently.
“I refuse to wait another six months. We are getting married on Beltane, come hell or…necromancers…or…the creature from the Black Lagoon. There is no way Corrine is going to be allowed to get married without me getting married, too
. I refuse to listen to her calling me the family hussy for the rest of the year.”
“What does it matter what she says?” Jacob sighed as he reached to touch the soft contours of her face. “You and I are bonded in a way that transcends marriage already. Is that not what is important?”
“No. What’s important is the fact that I am going to murder the sister I love if she doesn’t quit. And she will not quit until I shut her up either with a marriage or a murder weapon. Understand?”
Clearly, by his expression, Jacob did not understand.
“Thank Destiny all I have is a brother,” he said dryly. “I have been inundated with people tied into knots over one sister or another for the past weeks.”
“You mean Legna. Listen, it’s not her fault if everyone has their shorts in a twist because of who her Imprinted mate is! Frankly, I think she and Gideon make a fabulous couple. Granted, a little too gorgeously ‘King and Queen of the Prom’ perfect for human eyes to bear looking at for long, but fabulous just the same.”
Jacob blinked in confusion as he tried to decipher his fiancée’s statements. Even after all these months, she still came out with unique phraseologies that totally escaped his more classic comprehension of the English language. But he had gotten used to just shrugging his confusion off, blaming it on the fact that English wasn’t his first, second, or third language, so it was to be expected.
“Anyway,” she went on, “Noah and Hannah need to chill. You saw Legna when she came to visit yesterday. If a woman could glow, she was as good as radioactive.” She smiled sweetly at him. “That means,” she explained, “that she looks as brilliantly happy as you make me feel.”
“I see,” he chuckled. “Thank you for the translation.”
He reached his arms around her, drawing her body up to his as close as he could considering the small matter of a fetal obstacle. He kissed her inviting mouth until she was breathless and glowing herself.
“I thought I would be kind to you,” she explained with a laugh against his mouth.
“You, my love, are all heart.”
“And you are all pervert. Jacob!” She laughed as she swatted one of his hands away from intimate places, only to be shanghaied by another. “What would Gideon say?”