She instinctively flexed as she searched for some stable point of reference. Her feet were on the floor, but he had her bent backward so far, he supported her full weight on one arm that he propped on the seat of the armchair behind her. He nuzzled at her neck then took a small piece of the tender skin between his teeth and sucked at it. The resulting pleasure was so piercing it pulsed down the length of her torso and centered in the soft vulnerable flesh between her legs. He was a master of the lightning that whipped down her body, that jumped along her nerves like a live wire, that awakened sensual urges she had not felt in far too long and stirred emotions she had never felt before.
She clutched at his wide shoulders and stared sightlessly at the ceiling as he suckled with such tender care at that one spot. This couldn’t be happening. They didn’t have time, and that was her fault. She had set the agenda for what happened next when she called for a meeting with Carling and the Dark Fae delegation in two hours’ time.
Which had happened a while ago. Which meant the meeting was two hours from now minus something. And she should never try to do calculations or time estimates when the sexiest man she had ever known was licking up the line of her jaw to nibble at her ear, because she had never been that strong in calculus and he destroyed her utterly. Utterly.
Somehow her hands found their way to the back of his head, her fingers stroking through his hair, following blindly the whorls that were shaven in the short, silken black length. She gasped and arched against him as his teeth nipped with such care at her sensitive earlobe.
He had come for her. He had promised everything was going to be okay, and he had come for her, and he had looked so crazy-sexy. No, monstrous. No, sexy. Oh damn.
“Big trouble,” she whimpered. I’m in big, big trouble now.
“Shh,” he whispered. “Everything is all right. You’re safe, we’re not doing anything. You’re not in any trouble.”
“Tiago,” she whispered. Her lips and her thighs shook. She tried to gasp for air.
He rose over her, an immense dark man that eclipsed the daylight. “God, you’re so gorgeous,” he breathed against her trembling mouth. “I could eat you up. I want to eat you all over. I want to eat you all day. But I know we’ve got to make that meeting.”
What meeting?
Her mouth clung to him and her legs wanted to. They wanted to wrap around his waist and bring him into alignment with the aching empty cradle between her hips. She dug her fingernails into the back of his strong corded neck, and he arched against her with a shaken laugh that sent his moist, hot breath blasting along her lips.
He jerked his mouth away and gasped, “Reschedule it.”
She blinked and looked at him with a dazed, unfocused gaze. “What?”
“Reschedule the damn meeting for tomorrow,” he growled. He glanced down her little curvaceous body. He was rock hard and agonized with wanting her. “For next week,” he amended.
Memory struck. The meeting! It was supposed to be in two hours minus a significant something now, and she still hadn’t showered or put on street clothes, and she sure as hell hadn’t calmed down. A sound broke out of her, a cross between a groan and a sob.
He put his hand between her legs and pressed the heel of his palm against the part of her that throbbed with an empty aching pain. “I can make it better,” he whispered.
Her body pulsed at the dark promise in his voice. He could make it so much better. He could make it delicious, but in the process he would demolish what was left of her mind, and she needed her thinking clear and sharp if she had any hope of holding her own against Carling and the Dark Fae.
She clutched at his thick wrist and gasped, “No, Tiago. Not like this.”
He groaned and went rigid as he bowed over her body, his eyes shut tight. She looked up at the harsh dark lines of his face and wanted to bite her tongue, wanted to take it back, wanted to claw at him and demand he give her everything he had. She teetered at the brink of losing control.
He opened his eyes and looked at her. Violence and sensuality teemed in that obsidian gaze, so that for a moment she thought he was the one who had lost control, and the part of her that had already plunged over the brink was fiercely glad.
Then he pressed his lips to her forehead with extreme gentleness. “No,” he said, his voice hoarse. “Not like this.”
Before she could protest her own edict, he rocked back on his heels and stood, and he drew her up along with him. At first her legs were too shaky to support her. She put her arms around his long, lean waist and leaned against him. They stood quietly together as he stroked the hair off her damp forehead, and for a moment she felt a crazed kind of desperate need to hang on to any part of him that she could before he slipped away and was lost to her for good.
Okay, now she was starting to scare herself. It was past time she got her careening harebrained self back on track.
She bit her lips and forced some iron into her spine. Then she stepped back, looked in the general direction of his face and gave him a sort of idiotic nod as if that meant anything. She turned away and—
His hand clamped down on her wrist. He yanked her back to him. The breath woofed out of her as she came up hard against his muscled torso. He grabbed her by the hair at the back of her head. Her mouth fell open. Before she could utter some version of the what the hell? that was ricocheting through her stuttering mind, he turned her face up and drove his mouth down onto hers.
There was nothing civilized about his kiss. He was rough, rampantly dominant, as he dug his hardened tongue into the soft crevices of her mouth, in and in and in, and it was such an invasive raw imitation of the sex act that desire roared through her like a runaway eight-thousand-pound freight train engine. Her inner muscles clamped down in involuntary need, and a high, thin whine broke out of her. She heard the desperate animal sound as if someone else had made it; it was that much beyond her control.
Tiago lifted his head. He was breathing hard as if he had just been sprinting, or as if he had just hurtled through the air in manic flight.
“Like that,” he said. The burning words came from the back of his throat and singed her nerve endings. “It’s going to be like that.”
So how did one recover from Tiago’s particular style of demolition and scrape together enough poise to meet with the senior officials of one of the oldest governments on Earth?
Along with Carling. Oh no, we mustn’t forget Carling.
Niniane sat on the bed and stared at the bedroom clock for several heartbeats. And in a half an hour, no less. Yes, apparently she and Tiago had squandered away that much time.
Well. Whatever else happened, she would meet her fate clean.
She dug through the shopping bags and grabbed items of underwear and outer clothing. There was certainly no point in agonizing over what to wear. It wasn’t like she had much from which to choose. She had two pairs of jeans, a polo shirt, a scooped neck tee, and a cashmere sweater. It was all Burberry Brit casual wear from Nordstrom and very nice, for what it was, but of course it wasn’t suitable. All of her suitable clothes were being held hostage by the people she was going to meet. That might not rank high on anybody’s list of affairs of state, but it ranked pretty high on the list of things she resented.
She went into the bathroom, closed the door and started the shower. When the water had warmed, she stripped off the peach lounge suit and stepped into the tub. She stretched and turned under the steaming cascade. It felt incredible to move freely and without pain. She could almost be grateful, except for that whole scaring-her-to-death thing when Carling—along with all of her people—had confronted Tiago.