“Are you asking me to fuck you?” I finally manage.
Leigh’s beautiful face scrunches up slightly, and then she winces and her expression goes blank again.
“Have I misunderstood? What is a DJ Tom Diddleston?”
“I am…” She pauses, taking an enormous breath. “I am asking you to get me off. Yes. If you can use your powers, cool. If you want to use your hands, that’s cool too. But I am… wound up. I need release, and badly.”
My cock strains against my pants, and I continue to stare at her, desire erupting through me, a raging inferno that threatens all my good sense.
As though I’ve had any sense around this female to begin with.
“You would let me… help you with that?”
“If you don’t want to—”
I reach her in record time, putting my hands around her waist, soaking in the feeling of the muscles under her skin, the fluttering of her heart.
Her eyes dilate, and her perfume sweetens the air once more.
“I want to,” I growl. I slant my head, prepared to taste the sweetness of her mouth, the sweetness that has too long been denied to me.
“Wait,” she holds up a finger.
I suck in a breath, baring my teeth with impatience.
“We need ground rules.”
I twitch with the need to taste her, but I hold still, refusing to give in to my basest needs. Refusing to ruin this small, hard-won trust.
What for her will only be release will be the greatest pleasure of my miserable life. Finally, finally, claiming my mate.
“What kind of rules?” I make myself ask when it’s clear she won’t continue until I’ve acknowledged her.
“I don’t want you bragging about it, or talking about it, or anything like that.”
I stare at her. “You think I would need to share the most intimate details of our pleasure with others?”
“I—”
“Done,” I interrupt, tracing the palm of my hand up from her waist to the curve of her breast.
She audibly swallows.
“And,” she whispers, as I bring my mouth close to her warm skin again.
“And what?”
“No kissing,” she murmurs, her brow furrowed, like she expects me to blow up.
“What if I want to taste you?”
Leigh makes a small coughing sound, her green eyes wide. From the way her body’s gone soft and pliable next to me, I know she likes that idea.
It makes me feel invincible.
“No kissing on the lips,” she amends. “Call me Julia Roberts, but I’m not going to do that either.”
“I have to call you by a different name?” Puzzled, I pause my gentle caress on her side.
“No, no, that’s not what I meant.” She pulls back and I growl again, confused by her actions. “And one last rule. This isn’t about feelings.”
My teeth grind together.
“This is just about sex. There won’t be any emotions involved. Just sex. Right? Because we’re pretending… to be mates.”
The hurt that blossoms in my chest is so acute that I drop my gaze from her pretty face to my own body, because I’m half convinced I’ll find a blade there.
There’s nothing, though, just a dull ache where her words burrowed under my skin, needling me to the point of pain.
So she doesn’t want to be emotionally involved with me?
“Just sex then?” I say roughly, dragging my hand up the unblemished side of her neck, until my fingers twine in the glorious fall of her ruddy hair. “No emotions. No kissing, except on your sweet little cunt?”
She exhales, her eyes already half-lidded.
They hurt me, her words.
But if it’s sex she wants, release she craves, then I will make it so good for her that she will have no other choice but to finally give all of herself to me.
I’m not pretending at being mates.
It’s only ever been real to me.
“Then we have a deal,” she finally says, her voice husky with need.
“We have an agreement,” I rasp. And finally, finally—I bring my mouth to her jawline, kissing lightly up the side of her neck, behind her ear.
One hand cradles the back of her head, the other falling to her lower back, then her ass, as I tug her pants off.
She will be screaming my name before I’m done with her.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
LEIGH
I can’t quite bring myself to regret my rash decision to ask Nydo for sex. Especially not when his lips brand my neck, my throat, as he presses hot kiss after hot kiss against my sensitive skin.
I moan at the flood of sensations.
“I am going to use my power on you. I will use everything I have to wring pleasure from you,” he promises. “I will ruin you for other males. Forever. You’ll never want anyone but me again.”
“That wasn’t part of the deal,” I gasp out.
“No, it wasn’t,” he says smugly, his gaze orange, devouring, an inescapable fire as he stares into my eyes. “And it’s too late to forbid it now.”
With that, his power slides over my body and I cry out, my fingers clenching the bed sheet, as wave after wave of heat licks over my skin.
His mouth chases each glide of power, and his deft fingers pull up the flimsy material of the shirt I wore to sleep in. Kissing my collarbone, the hollow at the base of my throat, he works his way lower, and lower, only to stop, even as it gets harder and harder for me to catch my breath under the onslaught of his mouth.
“You are… unbelievable,” he mutters, his orange gaze fixed on my face. “Every inch of your body is a work of art. Every soft sigh your pretty mouth makes is music to my ears.”
My stomach does a little traitorous flip.
I mean, anyone would like to hear that. It doesn’t mean anything, other than he’s good at talk. His mouth closes over one of my nipples, his fingertips gently tweaking the other. I lose track of time, lose track of my thoughts, lost to the feel of his body on mine. Heat sinks deep between my legs, and wetness pools against my underwear.
My core begins pulsing, and Nydo’s powers are there, stroking around my clit, teasing me with heat and pressure all at once.
“Oh my god,” I breathe, digging my nails into his shoulders.
“You like it?” he asks, a lazy, satisfied smile on his face.
“You know I do, you asshole,” I tell him, but there’s no heat in my words, nothing behind them.
The sensations die, and I scramble up to sitting, panting.
“You won’t call me names, not anymore.”
“That wasn’t part of the agreement.” I grit my teeth together, stubborn until the end, despite the insistent, maddening ache in my pussy.
“You will call me mate, my king, or Nydo… or I won’t give you what your body craves.”
His tongue darts out, licking across my tight nipple. When he blows cold air across it, I jolt, the base of my spine tingling in response.
“I will call you what I want,” I gasp.
Nydo stands up, and the warmth all over my body dies, leaving me cold.
“Then you will have to help yourself.”
Fuck. I squeeze my eyes shut. “Fine.”
“Fine, what?” he asks, that meltingly hot liquid feeling pouring over me yet again.
“I will be nice, my… Nydo.” I falter over the word king, and there’s no way I’m going to call him mate in private, not while his powers—
“Ahhh,” I cry out, heat penetrating my core, causing me to clench around nothing.