“What is it, Vulgrim?”
“Can I bring you anything?”
“No,” he said softly. “But I want you to make it very clear that I’m not to be disturbed. For anything. Not even the end of the world.”
The demon bowed. “Yes, sir.”
“And Vulgrim? Never bow to me again. You’re family, not staff.”
The demon shot Ares and Cara a look of surprise, and then one corner of his mouth tipped up. “Yes, sir.” He strode away, and Cara swore there was a little extra spring in his hooved step.
“Torrent looked so much like him,” she murmured. Just days ago she had thought the Ramreels all looked alike, but now she recognized their individuality, from the slightly different shapes of their broad noses, to the kinks and striations in their horns and the varying shades of their fur.
“I know.” He carried her to the bed, where slowly, reverently, he stripped her of the scrubs the demons had given her to wear home, and then she watched as he peeled out of his own clothes. He started to lower himself onto the bed, but she stopped him with a hand on his chest. “Just let me look at you for a second.”
His mouth opened and closed, a pink blush rising up on his cheeks. With a nod, he stood up, his full, impressive height towering over her. Her mouth watered… literally watered, as she took him in. His muscles, so magnificently sculpted, were too perfect to be believed, and as she reached out to slide her palms over his pecs, she knew that even if they’d had centuries together, she’d never have tired of touching them.
With a soft moan of appreciation, she dragged her hand down to his abs, smiling at the roll of his eight-pack as they flexed under her caress. His cock, which had been flaccid only a moment ago, begin to swell, but she didn’t go any lower. Not yet.
“Turn around,” she whispered, surprising herself with the husky inflection in her voice.
“Cara, you should be lying down—”
“Don’t,” she said. “Don’t treat me like I’m an invalid.” She wanted him to remember her with strength, not as some helpless, frail sickling who was just waiting to die after he serviced her one last time. She would give as good as she got. “Don’t hold anything back from me. Promise.”
His throat convulsed, the tendons in his neck straining. “Yeah. Yeah, I promise.” In a graceful flow of motion, he turned around, and her brain short-circuited.
Nice. Ass. Amused at how her fingers flexed involuntarily, she went up on her knees and eased the length of her body against him, planting her hands on his broad shoulders so she could caress at her leisure. The sound of his breath heaving out of his lungs blended with the distant crash of the waves, and she wished they could be out in those tidal surges, letting the water cool them as their bodies made heat.
So much time wasted, she thought, as she opened her mouth against the back of his neck. His skin tasted like salt and man, smelled like leather and spice. He groaned when she nipped him near a puckered scar and then soothed the spot with a lap of her tongue.
“Why the scars?” she asked, as she trailed her finger over a thin line. “Don’t you heal completely?”
“They’re from injuries before my curse.”
She kissed one. Then another. “Touch yourself,” she murmured against his skin, and he groaned again, his head falling back as the flex of muscles in his right biceps told her he’d obeyed. She pictured his big hand around his shaft, wondered if he liked to take long, slow strokes, or shorter ones that concentrated near the head. Well, she’d find out in a minute. First, she had some touching of her own to do.
Her heart raced, thudding so hard in her chest that she suspected Ares could feel it on his spine. Heat radiated from him, scorching her skin and making her burn all the way to her core. She smoothed her hands down his arms, loving the contraction of his muscles as he stroked his erection. The bed creaked as she scooted back a couple of inches so she could slide her hands down his back, and again, the roll of his firm flesh as he worked himself was a thing of beauty.
When her palms cupped his buttocks, he let out an erotic growl that sent a rush of liquid heat between her legs.
“You’re ready for me.” His voice was guttural, sexy, and she grew even wetter.
She licked between his shoulder blades. “How do you know?”
“My mother was a sex demon. I’m attuned to desire.”
Why had he not mentioned the desire thing before? How many sensual tricks did he have up his sleeve from that kind of inheritance? Oh, her imagination could go wild.
She shifted, letting her tongue trail down Ares’s spine, all the while enjoying the way his breathing grew more shallow the lower she went and the more deeply she kneaded the incredibly firm muscles of his butt and thighs. When her mouth reached the small of his back, he tensed. And when she planted an open-mouthed kiss on his right ass-cheek, he froze up completely.
“Woman, what are you doing?”
“Biting you.” She sank her teeth into the place she’d kissed, and the sound that came out of him, a cross between a purr and a growl, punctuated by a gasp, made her shiver in delight. “What? No one has bitten your ass before?”
“I’ll admit it’s a first.”
“Turn around.”
He did, and because she was still on her hands and knees, she came eye level with his enormous erection. The tip glistened with a crystal bead, and without thinking, she licked it away.
Ares’s entire body undulated, a spectacular arch of sinewy lines. She met his heavy-lidded gaze as she opened her mouth over the head of him, and then she closed her eyes and her lips, and savored his bold, smoky essence. His hands came up to tangle in her hair, his fingers sliding over her scalp as she sucked him deep and found a rhythm that soon had him pumping his hips. More… she needed more. Sliding her mouth up, she applied powerful suction at the cap, then swirled her tongue in smaller circles, moving from the rim to the weeping slit at the tip.
“Jesus, Cara,” he gasped, his abs and thighs visibly tightening.
Smiling, she cupped his sac and lightly bounced his balls with her fingers, separating them, caressing them, and when she licked her way down his shaft and took his sac in her mouth, he shouted, grabbed his cock, and squeezed.
“Not. Yet.” He panted hard. “So humiliating.”
“Flattering.”
She looked up, and no longer was his gaze heavy, lazy, dark. Now it burned with raw hunger, and it was her turn to gasp as he swept her up and threw her onto her back. “You make me insane, Cara.” He mounted her, put himself between her legs so his shaft rubbed in her slick heat. His lips met hers in a kiss that was exquisitely gentle, despite the fierceness in his eyes. “I wish we had more time—”
“Shh.” She framed his face in her hands, stilling him and putting every drop of intensity she had behind her stare. “There will be nothing but passion in this bed.”
“And I swear on my father’s name and his holy spirit that there will never be another in this bed,” he ground out, and as tears sprang to her eyes, he dipped his head and took her breast in his mouth.
Instantly, the fire kindled again, roaring to the surface. She cried out and sank her nails into his back. God, that felt good. She tilted her hips, eager to have him inside her to ease the ache he’d sparked in her, but he backed up, denying her satisfaction.
She wanted to scream, but then he cupped her intimately, sliding one finger through her folds with maddeningly light strokes as he kissed his way down her belly. When he reared back to look at her… look at her there… she nearly closed up and covered herself. But now wasn’t the time to be shy. Now was her last chance to be powerful. Beautiful. Seductive.
So she spread her thighs as wide as they would go, and her reward was his utter reverence. “So beautiful,” he murmured.
And then he dove between her legs. His hands lifted her butt, his thumbs spread her folds, and his mouth captured her. Erotic pleasure swelled inside her until her skin grew tight with the pressure. Ares’s tongue was magic, a hot, slippery wand that he swept up one side of her sex and down the other, sometimes using the entire flat surface to create broad strokes, sometimes focusing sensation with the firm tip.