“I thought you didn’t want to be reminded of your old life.” When she huffed as if annoyed, he hugged her tight. “It’s an excuse to bathe again later. After.”
“Ooh, after what?” She squeaked as he tossed her onto the bed.
She hadn’t gotten a good look at the room as he carried her in. And she didn’t get much more of a look before he loomed over her and distracted her with his undeniable desire.
But she had the impression of dark woods and pale fabrics. She at least got a close-up of the creamy chenille spread on the neatly made poster bed when he flipped her onto her stomach and straddled her.
She strained to turn back, but he traced his fingertip down her spine and she caught her breath.
“Let me start small,” he murmured.
“Too late, I think.”
He chuckled, a deep, seductive sound. “I meant the small of your back. I wanted to touch you here, when you danced for me.” He leaned down and his breath, then his lips, followed the path his finger had outlined. “I thought these dimples would drive me mad.” His tongue dipped into one while he tickled the other. Her nerves jumped and she squirmed under him. He palmed her flat. “You said you weren’t going anywhere.”
“You said you don’t torture.”
“You said there were different kinds of pain, and you implied some of it was good.”
She moaned as his hand finally slipped down the cleft between her legs, just grazing the heated core of her. “I’m a liar and a tease. Put me out of my misery.”
He rolled her onto her back, and she angled one leg around him so he was captured between her thighs.
When he blinked at her, she smiled. “Just making sure you understand this is sexual banter, and that any laying on of hands better go a lot further.”
He nodded, all seriousness, and she locked her ankles behind his back. He lowered himself slowly. Without his hand to brace him, he had to rest on his elbow, which left him hovering scant inches above her.
She took a deep breath, teasing her nipples against his chest. “I ache. Since the first night I saw you.”
“I thought I was doing the right thing, holding back.” He dipped his head and pressed a kiss between her breasts.
She held him there a moment. “Maybe you were, but the right thing isn’t always possible.”
When he turned his head and took her nipple into his mouth, she gasped and ran her hands over his shoulders, dug her fingers into the pad of muscle.
He reached between them and smoothed his thumb through the dampness gathering there. Up and over and down, the teasing, tightening circle of pleasure made her writhe. His mouth on her breast and his hand at her core stroked her toward a climax. Not alone this time. There’d been other men who brought her this far, but in the end, she’d always been alone.
“Now,” she said. “Come inside me now.”
Finally, Jonah thought hazily. It had been only a few heartbeats, and yet he worried she would never ask. With a rasping breath, he shifted his weight and guided the hot, heavy head of his erection into her. He clenched his teeth, easing in. So long it had been . . .
Her heels, clamped over his backside, drove him deeper. “Now,” she demanded.
He plunged into her. His elbow slipped on the bedspread and he caught himself with his good hand. Never—even when he’d faced a charging feralis, minus his hand—had he regretted his maiming as much as now, when he wanted only to reach down, touch her cheek, tip her head back, and kiss her.
But if his loss had brought him to this moment, maybe those dark times since the teshuva had come for him and he whispered “God, why me?” had been answered: for this reason. For this . . .
Not that he had time to contemplate, not with Nim’s body closing around him, legs and arms and the soft, molten core of her embracing him with a ferocity that made his heart pound. He levered himself up onto his knees and angled her hips high, stroking deeper. She clutched his hip bones and mewled, such a desperate sound he almost climaxed right then. But he clenched his teeth, tightened every muscle in his body so that he wouldn’t let go, not before her.
She bucked against him, and he almost lost his precarious grip. She panted his name, and her internal muscles clenched him with an intensity that rolled his eyes back.
This was a demonic strength the other pair-bonded talya males hadn’t mentioned.
For a moment, they lost the rhythm, his awkwardness and her impatience jolting them. He swore, shocking himself with his vehemence, and she laughed.
His cheeks heated. “I’m sorry.”
She hushed him. “I’m flattered.” She stroked her fingers down his belly to the junction of their bodies. His flesh leapt inside her, and she sighed.
Slowly, he rocked, his hips bumping the sleek muscles of her inner thighs. She watched him through half-lidded eyes and caught the tempo he set. Her dusky skin flushed with pleasure. A little faster he moved, and she matched him, beat for beat. With every stroke, her blush deepened, no demonic violet, just human delight.
Her fingers danced across his chest and fastened on his biceps, holding tight. He would not falter again. Just as well he had the stamina, the determination, the stubbornness, because he knew he did not have the art.
She did not seem to care, and if she was flattering him, he could not bring himself to care either. She murmured words without sense and touched him everywhere—the quiet marks of his reven, even the ugly stump—as if she would learn his body as well as she knew her own.
In sync, their pace quickened, and his breath came in bursts, when he could hold it no longer. This was what it was like to drown, in the spiraling well of his own desire.
“Come now,” she whispered. “Oh, come now.”
With jackknife violence, he did, and she seized around him, a possessive hold that wrenched a gasp from him along with the last of his semen and his strength.
His elbow unlocked without his command, and if he hadn’t had the demon’s latent strength at his disposal, he would have flattened her. Instead, he was able, barely, to angle to one side and merely drag the gnarled scar of his arm across her middle.
“Oh,” he said.
Under him, her belly trembled with her heaving breath and a laugh. “Yeah.”
Tacky, sweaty, slick. He wanted to lie there forever. As his body finally softened, he rolled to his back to cradle her in his arm. His good arm. He’d give that up for her.
“You don’t have to worry,” he said. “About pregnancy or disease, I mean.”
“You said we’re immortal,” she reminded him. “Besides, I know you’re too responsible to knock me up. You’d use the rhythm method, at least.”
“Your faith terrifies me.”
He didn’t look down but he felt her angle her head to look up at him, as if she could see up his nose, into his brain. “I’m sure you’re used to having people believe in you.”
Her dreads wrapped around his only wrist, not unlike snakes. He wasn’t going anywhere, even if his legs—demon powered though they might be—could hold him upright. “Yes, people believed in me.”
She made a comical “oh” of dawning enlightenment. “That’s why it terrifies you.”
He gave her a squeeze.
“Still,” she continued. “I think you did all right. You walked into the jungle, just as you intended, and you converted a bunch of heathens, which was the plan anyway, and you would have died there if you’d had your way. You stayed until the end. Not your end, since that wasn’t an option. But your wife’s end. That has to count.”
“Perhaps. If you have enough fingers to do the counting.”
She was silent a moment. “What was her name?”
He didn’t pretend not to understand her. “Carine. Her father built the church that sponsored our mission. He didn’t want her to go. I wish I’d listened.”