As Marsten adjusted his hands, his fingers grazed my hardened nipples and I let out an involuntary moan, my breath coming faster.
He chuckled. “Not immune to me after all, I see.”
“Hmmm?”
He cupped his hand under my left breast, and pressed it there as my heart raced beneath his fingers. When those fingers climbed to my nipple again, I moaned again.
“Sorry,” I said. “It’s not you.”
Another chuckle. “If you want to tell yourself that …”
I closed my eyes and saw the lioness crouch, hindquarters twitching, mouth watering in anticipation. I could feel her excitement, pulse racing, and my own raced to match it. Marsten’s hand slid up to my shoulder and I sucked in breath.
He hesitated. “Either half-demons have some strange erogenous zones, or you’re right. It’s not me, is it?”
I opened my eyes. “It’s—” I waved at the display. “I pick things up, from the past … chaos.”
Another brush against my hard nipples. “And this is what happens?”
“Mmm, yes.” My eyes closed again. “Strange, I know …”
“Actually, no. Not to me, at least. Should I stop?”
“Not unless you want to.”
A soft chuckle. He unzipped my dress and tugged it off my shoulder, pulling the bra down with it. A wave of cool air rushed over my bare breast and I shivered, backing against him as his hand went to my breast, lips to my neck, tongue sliding over the sensitive spot behind my ear, raising more shivers. I shifted again and he put his free hand around my waist and repositioned me on his lap. I felt his erection, hard against my rear, and pushed against it, thrusting softly. He let out a low growl and moved his lips to my ear.
“Tell me what you see,” he whispered.
When I hesitated, his free hand moved to my leg, pushing up my skirt, fingers tickling up the inside of my thigh. He traced the edges of my panties and then slid a finger under them. I parted my legs to let him in, but he only teased me with his finger.
“Tell me,” he said.
“It’s … a hunt.”
“Mmmm.” A growling chuckle. “Nothing like a good hunt. What do you see?”
I told him, the words coming hesitant at first, then flowing faster as his finger slid in, moving expertly, egging me on when I slowed, my excitement feeding his. As the lioness sprang for the kill, I felt the first wave of climax—
Then he stopped.
“It’s still not me, is it?”
“Wh—wha—?”
His lips moved down my neck. “Yes, it’s insufferably vain of me, but if I’m going to seduce you, I want to be the cause of your arousal, not the passive recipient.”
“You don’t seem all that passive to me.”
He laughed but shook his head, fingers still on my thigh.
I craned around to look at him. “So that’s it, you’re just going to leave me hanging?”
He hesitated, then shook his head. “That wouldn’t be very gentlemanly of me, would it?”
“Not at all.”
“Hmmm.”
He still hesitated, toying with the edge of my panties.
“Well …?” I said.
“I’m trying to decide …”
“I say yes.”
He laughed. “I doubt it, and I doubt we’re thinking of the same question.”
“Which is …?”
“Control. As in, can I help you without wanting to help myself to you?”
I turned around and repositioned myself on his lap, facing him, squarely straddling him, hands around his neck. “What if I’m offering?”
He growled deep in his throat, and reached for me, pulling me against him, hands tugging up my skirt as I unbuttoned his trousers—
An alarm rang, so fast and sudden I almost toppled backward off him.
I looked around. Smoke wafted from the hall. I pictured the fire demon again, reaching for the vase of scrolls, sparks raining from his fingertips. A few must have fallen into the vase, smoldered there, and caught fire.
From the next room came the shrieks of people hearing alarms, smelling smoke, and reacting as if the building had transformed into the Towering Inferno. I caught the first lick of chaos and shivered.
Marsten’s arms went around me, pulling me back against him with a hard thrust and a soft growl. I rotated to face him, my hands going around his neck, mouth finding his, drinking in the chaos arising around us. It was just a burning building. I had a more urgent fire to put out.
Marsten growled again, this one harsher as he pulled his lips from mine.
“I hate to be the one to bring this up, but …”
“The building’s on fire?” I said.
“Unfortunately.”
I slipped my hands under his shirt. “How fast can it burn?”
A low, growling chuckle as he pressed against me. “You have no idea how badly I’m tempted to test that. But I have to remind myself that you’re acting under the influence of something.”
“Something other than you, you mean.”
“There’s that, too.”
“Vain,” I said, poking him in the chest.
He caught me up in a hard, deep, tongue-diving, groin-grinding kiss, then put me back on my feet.
“Time to go,” he said, and started across the room.
“Tease.”
“Just giving you something to remember, once all this is out of the way.”
We reached the main hall to find it logjammed with people. Marsten led me straight into the heart of the mob. The crowd buoyed us along, and before I knew it, the cool night breeze was rippling through my hair. I looked up, and only then, seeing the stars winking against the city’s glow, could I truly believe it.
We were out. Free.
If Tristan and his guards were here, they’d be watching with dismay as the museum expelled a steady river of white shirts and black jackets and nary a yellow dress to be found.
As fire engines and taxis competed for curb space, sirens and blaring horns rose above the din of partygoers yelling for their lost spouses and friends. A few taxis managed a passenger snatch-and-grab before the police cordoned off the area.
We let the crowd carry us across the road, where the taxis were regrouping. Marsten’s grip suddenly tightened, and he ducked sideways, nearly plowing me into a white-haired woman with a walker. As I glared at him, a voice cut through the din.
“Hope? Hope!”
“Don’t look,” Marsten muttered by my ear as he steered us into another pocket of people. “Just pretend you don’t—”
“Hope?”
Douglas cut between a couple. He smiled at me. There I was, bedraggled and dirty, hair flying everywhere, wearing a tux jacket, running from a burning building, and he only smiled, as if I’d just popped back from the buffet line.
“The Bairds have invited us for drinks,” he said.
I stared, certain somehow the din around us had turned “Oh my God, are you okay?” into an invitation for post-inferno cocktails.
“I—I have to go,” I said finally. “The—the paper. The fire. I need to—”
“Oh, you’ll need to write it up, won’t you?” He smiled and winked. “For a cause, I’d go with spontaneous human combustion.”
“I was thinking more of fire demons,” I muttered.
“Sure. That’s different. I’ll let you go, then. Have fun, and don’t work too hard.”
Marsten yanked me backward again, as Douglas slipped off through the crowd. When we reached the sidewalk, Marsten body-checked a young man and shoved me through an open cab door, crawled in after me, and slammed it.