She went to her knees gracefully and nuzzled her cheek against his length. The spider was there as well, blending seamlessly into her skin.
A moan escaped when she turned her head and brushed her lips to his trembling, eager flesh. “Araña,” he said. Her name curse and pledge. Demand and plea. And she smiled against him and let him feel the hint of her tongue—the torment of pleasure denied.
“Take me in your mouth.”
Her soft laugh made lust boil lava-hot in his veins. On a snarl, his hand fisted in her hair. “Do it.”
She touched her tongue to his length again, stroked, called what blood remained in his body to his cock. His gut tightened in a wave of panic, that he’d come like some untried youth. He growled her name again, his buttocks clenching, fever sweeping through him as he fought to keep from begging, to keep from throwing himself on her mercy.
Araña had never felt so powerful as she did in that moment, kneeling in front of Tir, positioned like a supplicant for him to command.
She reveled in his harsh voice. In his ragged panting as he struggled for breath. She could barely remember what had led to this.
It didn’t matter. All that mattered was touch—what she gave to him and what he returned. She’d been starved for it, had rarely allowed herself even to dream of it.
Now all that mattered was feeling Tir’s skin against hers. A lifetime with him would never be enough.
She cupped his testicles in one hand and weighed them in her palm. Remembered the stallion she’d once seen mount a mare—and fantasized about Tir taking her that way. Sinking his teeth into her flesh as his flanks pistoned and his cock thrust hard and deep.
Her other hand tightened on his throbbing shaft. She licked along his length, savored him.
He smelled like the forbidden. Tasted like sin wrapped in undeniable temptation. And the sound of her name coupled with the harsh rasp of his breathing as he ordered her to take him into her mouth, to suck him, was more beautiful than any choir of angels. It spoke to her soul, filled it, as if she’d somehow bound them together the night she’d touched her thread to his in the heart of the flame.
Araña relented. Not because he commanded it, but because she desired it. Because she wanted to hear his cry as he came and to taste the hot wash of his seed as it pulsed down her throat in molten jets.
She took him in her mouth, looked up at him and memorized the harsh lines of his face as he thrust between her lips.
Their eyes met and held, dark and light blending in a carnal taking, bleeding into each other with primitive intensity.
Shallow thrusts became deeper ones. Pants became moans then grunts as she lashed him with her tongue, threatened him with the feel of her teeth against his cock, dedicated herself to swallowing him whole.
He came like a bolt of lightning. Savage. Uncontrollable. Wild. A force no human would conquer. A force only a few survived.
And she took what he gave, her hands leaving his cock and testicles in favor of holding him to her. Her nails digging into his buttocks in a sharp reminder that she might be on her knees before him, but she wasn’t conquered.
He hardened again almost as soon as he’d spent himself in her mouth. On a growl he pulled from between her lips and lifted her, held her against the door and thrust his cock into her channel with such ferocity she cried out.
“Mine,” he said, covering her mouth with his, pushing his tongue through the seam of her lips and growing more feral when he encountered the taste of himself there.
Araña clung to him as he pounded in and out of her sheath. There was no thought of fight or resistance. There was only the merciless climb. The scream of release. The sweet lassitude that came afterward. And the tenderness she’d come to need as much as she did his dominance.
He nuzzled her, kissing her gently, the door the only thing enabling them to remain upright at the conclusion of their sensual battle.
“I need to leave if I’m going to arrange a safe berth for your boat and then retrieve it.”
“I want to go with you.”
“No.” The denial was delivered with a kiss. “I don’t want to worry. Stay here. Stay safe. The night holds nothing I’m afraid of.”
But I’m afraid of losing you. Of what you’ve come to mean to me.
She volunteered neither. “The smaller key is for the boat engine. The other is for the cabin.” He kissed her again before stepping away from her. They straightened their clothing, not taking their eyes off each other. When he opened the door, she said, “Stay safe.” The words she’d always exchanged with.
Matthew and Erik whenever they parted company. “Stay here until I return.” The steel edge of command was back in Tir’s voice. Then he was gone. The door locked behind him. And the waiting began.
Fourteen
TIR slowed as he neared the Victorian. It was the only house on the street where people weren’t gathering at windows, watching the daylight fade from the false safety of clubs with names like Sinners, Greed, and Envy.
The collective emotions of the elegantly clad humans in those clubs reached out, clawing at Tir’s mental shields, the patrons like a single vicious creature hungry for pain and suffering instead of food.
The knowledge that they hid their true natures within beautiful bodies and cunning minds reinforced centuries of his hatred and disdain for them. They were less than the most simple of beasts. They were unworthy of his attention—except what might be required to rid the earth of them.
He turned his thoughts to the club in front of him. Temptation.
The sign identifying it was elegant, an engraved invitation to sin that contained both warning and promise. Curtains instead of people fluttered at the still-open windows, the sound beckoning like an insidious whisper, one whose breath held sighs of pleasure and the sweet scent of opium.
Like the other clubs, bouncers stood on either side of the door. But unlike the others, these were dressed in expensive suits, as was fitting for ushers to a party, or a funeral.
Tir climbed the steps and stopped in front of them. “I’m here to see Rimmon.”
“You’ve got Lord Rimmon’s marker?” the bouncer to the left said. “Or someone else’s?”
“No.”
Interest flared in cold eyes. “Then the only way you’ll get in is if you’re willing to risk a cage fight and pay your way by entertaining Lord Rimmon’s guests.”
Tir shrugged. “As long as the fight doesn’t delay me unnecessarily. I have other business to attend to tonight.”
The second bouncer’s smile was as cold as his companion’s eyes. He opened the door to reveal a woman standing there. “Take him to Lord Rimmon. No detours.”
The woman nodded and turned, exposing a dress cut away to reveal her back, its skirt slit so each step afforded a shadowy glimpse of her woman’s folds. Temptation, Tir thought, but his cock didn’t stir at the sight of her cunt.
Other women waited along a curved staircase, their dresses equally revealing, their bodies adorned with jewelry. One of them stepped forward to take the hostess’s place as he was led away from the foyer.
Period pieces graced the rooms they passed. Men and women sprawled on couches and chairs, some of them engaging in sexual acts while others watched or conversed with fluted glasses in their hands.
The woman turned toward Tir, her white gloves extending to her elbows, her dress plunging to reveal deep cleavage and the coy hint of pale pink nipples.
She reached for him, as though she intended to loop her arm through his and press her breasts against him, but faltered at his expression. “I’m happy to attend you,” she murmured. “But if another escort would better please you, it can be arranged, assuming of course that Lord Rimmon allows you to remain as his guest.”
Tir didn’t respond, other than to force his mind to remain on the task at hand rather than straying to thoughts of Araña and what they’d done together before he left. Her body was the only one his craved, her human life the only one he cared about.