But whatever. They were going to get Lash and then go their separate ways. And between now and then? Well...
John let his thoughts drift away as he reconnected with the surging sex and the roaring taste in his mouth as he fed. Dimly, he once again caught the bonding scent rising from his own skin, but he shut that reality out. He wasn’t going to allow his head to get scrambled just because of that dark spice. Not for a minute longer.
Bonded males were crippled without their females, true enough—and a huge part of him would always be hers. But he was going to keep living, goddamn it. He was a survivor.
As he moved inside Xhex’s tight hold, his cock was a solid shaft of power and another release soon slammed through him and into her. Breaking the seal on her vein, he lapped the punctures with his tongue and then latched onto one of her breasts. With a shift of his leg, he split her thighs farther apart and rolled onto his back so she was on top.
Xhex took it from there, bracing her hands on his shoulders, swinging her hips on the base of her spine, her tight stomach curling and releasing as she rode him. With a silent curse, he grabbed onto her thighs and squeezed, her muscles shifting under his hold, and he didn’t stop there. He drew his hands farther up, to the juncture where her legs met her torso, that electric crease drawing him to where they were joined.
His thumb slipped into the carnal heart of her and found the top of her sex, rubbing it in circles—
In the dim light from the bathroom, he watched her arch back, her fangs cranking down on her lower lip in an effort to keep herself from crying out. He wanted to tell her to let her roar free, but he didn’t have time to pity her discretion—he came hard, his lids squeezing shut as he shuddered beneath her.
Catching his breath, he felt her pause to breathe deep... and then she was changing position.
When he opened his eyes, he nearly orgasmed again. She’d shifted back so that she was leaning on his legs, balancing her weight on his shins. With her feet up by his sides, he got one hell of a show... and that was before she started moving. The sight of him emerging shiny and thick from her folds, his shaft revealed right to the ridge of his cock head, pitched him off into another release.
She didn’t stop.
He didn’t want her to.
John needed more of watching their sexes up close, more of seeing the tips of her breasts and the thrust of her chin and the smooth strength of her body as she had him deep and hard. He wanted to stay captured in her... forever.
But that was his problem with her, and one that was ending here and now.
They climaxed together, with his hands locking onto her slender ankles and her mouth opening to let his name out of her throat.
Afterward, there was nothing but a lot of heavy breathing and air that seemed cold.
With a lithe shift, she disengaged them by swinging a leg over his head and landing on the floor beside the bed without a sound.
As she looked over her shoulder, her spine twisted in an elegant curve. “Can I use your shower?”
When he nodded, she walked with confident, long strides into his bathroom—and in spite of all the sex they’d just had, he felt a driving need to take her from behind.
A moment later, the rushing water sounded... and then her voice echoed. “The human police have found the scene.”
That got John out of bed and hungry for more intel. As he came into the bath, she turned around under the showerhead and arched back to rinse the shampoo he used out of her hair.
“The place was crawling with cops, but the new initiates were hidden in the same way I had been—all those humans saw was enough blood to paint a house red. No sign of Lash, but there was a drive-by of a street racer with something that smelled like fake strawberries behind the wheel. I called Rehv with the license plate number to pass on to Vishous and I’ll make the report to Wrath right now.”
When she looked over at him, he signed, We go back the second night falls.
“Yup. We do.”
Qhuinn woke up alone, having sent Layla back to the Far Side after they had done a little more business. He’d meant to tell her to go right away, but a goodbye embrace had led to other things...
She was still a virgin, though.
Not untouched, any longer, but defo still a virgin... Seemed like there were two people in the world he couldn’t have sex with. The trend continued and he was going to end up celibate.
As he sat up, his head pounded, proof positive that Herradura was an opponent of worth.
Rubbing his face, he thought back to kissing the Chosen. He’d taught her how to do it properly, how to suck and stroke, how to open the way for someone’s tongue, how to penetrate a mouth when she wanted to. Female learned fast.
And yet it hadn’t been hard to keep things from getting out of hand.
What had killed the urge to seal the deal was the way she stared at him. When he’d started down the Lewis- and-Clark highway with this sex-ploration shit, he’d assumed she was just looking for the practical course after all her textbook training. But on her side, there had quickly been more to it than that. Her eyes had started to get stars in them, like he was the key to the door that kept her locked in herself, like he alone held the power to spring her dead bolt and set her free.
Like he was her future.
Rather ironic because, on paper, she was his ideal female. Might well have solved his mating problem permanently.
Except his heart wasn’t in it.
So yeah, no way he was taking on the responsibility for her hopes and dreams. And not a chance he was going all the way with her. She was already being seduced by a fantasy of him—if he actually made love to her, it was only going to get worse: When you didn’t know any better, that kind of physical rush could easily be mistaken for something deeper and more meaningful.
Hell, that sort of delusion could happen between two people who had experience.
Like that chick at the tat place, for instance, slipping him her number. He’d had no interest in calling her before, during, or after. He couldn’t even remember her name—and the intel vacuum didn’t bother him in the slightest. Any woman willing to fuck a guy she didn’t know in a public place with three other males around was not someone he needed to have a relationship with.
Harsh? Yes. Double standard? Not a chance. He had no respect for himself either, so it wasn’t like he judged his own low, filthy standards with any less distaste.
And besides, Layla had no clue what he’d been doing with humans since his transition... all the sex in bathrooms and alleys and dark corners of clubs, that dirty math adding up to his being able to know exactly what to do with her body.
With any body. Male or female.
Shit. Didn’t that make him think about how Blay had spent the day.
Qhuinn fumbled with his phone and flicked the thing open. Calling up the text that Blay had sent from that unknown number, he read and reread and reread it again.
Had to have come from Saxton’s phone.
Probably typed out on the guy’s bed.
Qhuinn tossed his BlackBerry onto his table and stood up. In the bathroom, he kept the lights out because he was sooo not interested in what he looked like in the jeans and shirt he’d slept in.
Hot mess. No doubt.
As he was washing his face, a subtle whirring sound emanated from all around, the shutters rising from the windows. With water dripping off his chin and a can of Barbasol in his mitt, he glanced out into the new night. In the moonlight, the buds on the silver-trunked birches by the window had come out even farther, indicating the day had been a warm one.
He totally ignored any parallel to Blay’s being awakened to his own sexuality.
By Qhuinn’s own cousin.
Disgusted with himself, he skipped the razor action and stalked out of his room. Gunning for the kitchen, he went as fast as he dared, given that the barometric pressure in his skull was making him worried about the health and longevity of his optic nerves.