Lover Enshrined (43 page)

He walked toward her. “I know.”

As he stopped in front of her, she looked up. “Are you going to kiss me?”

“If you’ll let me.”

“We shouldn’t,” she said, her hands going up to his chest. She didn’t push him away, though. She gripped his shirt as if it were a lifeline. “We should not.”

“True.” He brushed a strand of hair back behind her ear.

His desperation to get in her in some way, any way, shorted out his frontal lobe. What he felt as he stood before her was all about the base core of him, the base needs of a male. “But this can be private, Cormia. This can be just you and me.”

“Private . . . I like private.” She tilted her chin up, offering him what he wanted.

“Me, too,” he growled as he sank down onto his knees.

She seemed confused. “I thought you wanted to kiss me. . . .”

“I do.” He slipped his palms around her ankles and ran them up and down her calves. “I’m dying to.”

“But then why—”

He gently uncrossed her legs, and bless that damn robe’s heart, but didn’t it fall completely to the sides, showing him everything: Her hips and her thighs and the little slit he needed so badly.

Phury licked his lips as he slid his hands up the inside of her legs, spreading them slowly, inexorably. With an erotic sigh, she leaned back to give him room, reassuring him that she was right there with this, ready for it just as he was.

“Lie back,” he said. “Lie back and stretch out.”

Oh, fuck
. . . She was smooth as cream for him, easing back until she was lying down on the table.

“Like this?”

“Yeah . . . exactly like that.”

He ran his palm down the back of one of her legs and extended her foot so it rested on his shoulder. The kissing started at her calf and followed the path that his hands caressed, going higher and higher. He paused at midthigh and double-checked to see if she was truly okay. She was watching him with huge green eyes, her fingers up to her lips, her breath going in and out on a pant.

“You all right with this?” he asked in a low rasp. “Because once I start, it’s going to be hard to stop, and I don’t want to scare you.”

“What are you going to do to me?”

“The same thing you did to me last night with your hand. Except I’m going to use my mouth.”

She moaned, her eyes rolling back. “Oh, dearest Virgin Scribe . . .”

“Is that yes?”

“Yes.”

He reached up for the robe’s tie. “I’m going to take care of you. Trust me.”

And, shit, yeah, he knew he would. Some part of him knew with absolute certainty that he was going to pleasure her, even though he hadn’t done this before.

He released the tie and parted her robe.

Her body was revealed to him, from her high, tight breasts to the flat expanse of her stomach to the lovely pale lips of her sex. As her hand went down and rested on the mound of her sex, she was the drawing he’d done the day before, everything sexual and feminine and powerful . . . only she was flesh-and-blood real.

“Jesus . . . Christ.” His fangs punched out into his mouth, reminding him that he hadn’t fed in a while. As a noise came up his throat that was both a demand and a plea, he wasn’t sure how much of the moan was because of her sex and how much was because of her blood.

Although did the divisions really matter?

“Cormia . . . I need you.”

The way she shifted her legs apart was a gift like nothing that had ever been wrapped and tagged for him: As she opened herself a little further, he could see the pink core that he was after. She was glistening already.

He was going to add to that.

With a growl, he lunged down and put his mouth to her, going right for the heart of her body.

They both cried out. As her hands speared into his hair, he gripped her thighs hard and moved in even further. She was so warm against his lips, warm and wet, and he made her warmer and wetter as he French-kissed her sex. While she moaned, instinct overtook them both, paving the way for him to lap at her and for her to roll her hips.

God, the sounds were incredible.

The tasting was even more so.

As he looked up over her stomach to her breasts, he had to get at her little nipples. Reaching forward, he pinched them gently then soothed them with his thumbs.

The way she arched nearly had him orgasming. It was just too much.

“Move your hips faster,” he said. “Please . . . God, move your hips against me.”

As her pelvis started to rock, he extended his tongue and let her ride it as she wanted, using his flesh to pleasure herself. He didn’t last long like that, though. He needed to get even closer. Trapping her hips in his palms, he pressed his face from chin to nose against her, and she became all that he tasted and smelled and knew.

And then it was time to get really serious.

He moved up and started an insistent flicking at the top of her sex, knowing he had the right place by the gasping sound she made. When she began to pump her hips with increasing thrall, he reached for her hand to reassure her. She grabbed onto the palm he offered so strongly, she was going to leave marks with her nails, and that was just fantastic. He wanted those crescents in his back as well . . . his ass, too, as he drilled into her.

He wanted to be all over her, inside of her.

He wanted to do some marking of his own.

Cormia knew that her body was doing exactly what the Primale’s had the day before. The gathering storm and the urgency she felt and the heat roaring through her told her she was where he had been.

On the brink.

The Primale was huge between her legs, his broad shoulders stretching her wide. His gorgeous multicolored hair was all over her thighs, and his mouth was like on like against her core, lips meeting lips, slippery tongue against slick folds. It all seemed so glorious and scary and inevitable . . . and the only reason she wasn’t completely overwhelmed was his hand on hers.

The touch was better than any words of reassurance on so many levels—but mostly because if he’d tried to speak to her, he would have had to stop what he was doing, and that would have been a crime.

Just when she thought she would fragment apart, a wave of energy crashed down all over her, sweeping her up and away to some other place as her body rhythmically surged. As all that wonderful tension snapped free, the release was so satisfying tears sprang to her eyes, and she cried out something—or maybe it was nothing, just an explosion of breath.

When it was over, the Primale lifted his head, his tongue taking on one last lingering upstroke before flicking free of her core.

“Are you okay?” he asked, his eyes wild and yellow.

She opened her mouth to speak. When nothing coherent came out, she nodded.

The Primale licked his lips nice and slow, flashing the tips of fangs that were visible . . . and became even more pronounced as he looked at her neck.

Shifting her head to the side and offering him her vein was the most natural thing in the world to do.

“Take from me,” she said.

His eyes flared and he prowled up her body, kissing her stomach and pausing at one of her nipples, giving it lapping attention. And then his fangs were over her throat. “Are you sure?”

“Yes—
oh, GOD
!”

His strike was hard and deep, and it happened so fast . . . just as she’d imagined it would. He was a Brother in need of what sustained them all, and she was nothing fragile to be broken. She gave and he took and another surge of that wild tension began to build in her again.

She shifted on the table, spreading her legs. “Take me. Whilst you do this . . . be in me.”

Without breaking the seal on her throat, he growled wildly and worked at his pants, the belt buckle clanging against the table. He shifted her down to the end roughly, clapped his hands behind her knees, and eased her open.

She felt a hot, hard probe—

But then he stopped.

The sucking drifted off to a soft lapping and then to little kisses, and then he grew motionless except for his breathing. She could still sense the sex in his blood, could still smell his dark scent, could still feel the need for her vein, but he didn’t move even though she was spread for his use.

He let go of her legs, gently put them down, and gathered her up, tucking his head into her shoulder.

She held him gently, the tremendous weight of his muscles and bones balanced between the floor and the table so he didn’t crush her.

“Are you all right?” she said into his ear.

His head shook back and forth and inched even closer to her. “I need you to know something.”

“What ails you?” She stroked his shoulder. “Talk to me.”

He said something that she didn’t catch. “What?”

“I’m . . . a virgin.”

Chapter Thirty-two

"TONIGHT?” Xhex asked. “You’re going up north tonight?”

Rehv nodded and went back to reviewing the construction plans for his new club. The sheaves of paper were stretched out across his desk, the blue architectural renderings overtaking all his other paperwork.

Nope. This was not what he wanted. The flow wasn’t right—it was too open. He wanted a layout that was full of small spaces where people could get off in the shadows. He wanted a dance floor, sure, but not a square one. He wanted unusual. Creepy. Vaguely threatening and very elegant. He wanted the club to be Edgar Allan Poe and Bram Stoker and Jack the Ripper, only done in nickel-plated chrome and a lot of glossy black. Victorian meets modern Goth.

The shit he was looking at was like every other club in town.

He pushed the plans away and checked his watch. “I gotta go.”

Xhex crossed her arms and stood in front of the office’s door.

“And no, you’re not,” he said.

“I want to come.”

“Am I having a nasty flashback? Because didn’t we just do this the night before last? As well as a hundred other times? The answer is and always will be no.”

“Why?” she snapped. “I’ve never understood why. You let Trez go.”

“Trez is different.” Rehv pulled on his sable coat and opened the drawer of the desk. The new pair of Glock forties he’d just bought fit perfectly into the holster he’d put on with his Bottega Veneta suit.

“I know what you do. With her.”

Rehv froze. Then continued slipping the guns into their sleeves. “Of course you do. I meet with her. Give her the money. Leave.”

“That’s not all you do.”

He flashed his fangs at her. “Yes. It is.”

“No, it isn’t. Is that what you don’t want me to see?”

Rehv bit down on his molars and glared at her from across the office. “There is nothing to see. Period.”

Xhex didn’t back down often, but she had the good sense not to push him any further. Even though her anger simmered in her eyes, she said, “Changes in schedule are not good. She tell you why?”

“No.” He headed for the door. “But this is just going to be business as usual.”

“It’s never business as usual. You’ve just forgotten that.”

He thought of the years of this dirty shit and the fact that the future held only more of the same. “You’re so wrong about the forgetting part. Trust me.”

“Tell me something. If she tried to hurt you, would you shoot to kill?”

“You did not just ask me that.”

The topic of conversation alone was enough to make him want to peel his skin off and send the shit to a dry cleaner. The idea that Xhex was calling him out on something he didn’t want to look too closely at was beyond the pale.

The truth was, a part of him loved what he did once a month, too. And that reality was totally unbearable when he was in the world he mostly inhabited, the world the dopamine allowed him to live in, the world that was relatively normal and healthy.

That little slice of ugliness in his heart was something he sure as fuck wasn’t sharing with anybody.

Xhex put her hands on her hips and kicked up her chin, her classic pose whenever they argued. “Call me when it’s done.”

“I always do.”

He gathered together the plans for the club, picked up his overday bag, and stepped out of his office and into the alley. Trez was waiting in the Bentley, and when he saw Rehv, he vacated the driver’s seat.

The Moor’s voice appeared in Rehv’s head, deep, melodic.
I’LL BE THERE IN ABOUT A HALF HOUR TO SCOPE THE ENVIRONS AND CHECK THE CABIN.

“Good deal.”

TELL ME YOU’RE UNMEDICATED.

Rehv clapped the guy on the shoulder. “As of an hour ago. And yes, I have the antivenom.”

GOOD. DRIVE SAFELY, ASSHOLE.

“No. I’m going to aim for logging trucks and stray deer.”

Trez shut the door and took a step back. As he crossed his arms over his massive chest, he cracked a rare smile, his white fangs glowing against his dark, beautiful face. For a split second, his eyes flashed brilliant peridot green—the Moorish equivalent of a wink.

As Rehvenge took off, he was glad Trez backed him up. The Moor and his brother, iAm, had a bag of fancy tricks that would challenge even a
symphath
. They were, after all, royal members of the s’Hisbe of Shadows.

Rehv glanced at the Bentley’s clock. He was due to meet the Princess at one a.m. Considering it was a two-hour trip north and it was now eleven fifteen, he was going to have to drive like a bat out of hell.

As he took off, he thought about Xhex. He didn’t want to know how she knew about the sex . . . hoped like hell she continued to respect his wishes and not show up and hang in the shadows.

He hated that she knew he was nothing but a whore.

On one hand, Phury couldn’t believe that the words “I am a virgin” had come out of his mouth. On another, he was glad he’d said them.

He had no idea what Cormia thought, though. She was dead quiet.

He pulled back just enough so he could stuff his sex back in his pants and zip up, then he righted her robe, bringing the two halves together and covering her beautiful body up.

In the silence between them, he paced around the room, going from the door to the far wall and back.

Her eyes watched his every move. God, what the hell was she thinking?