Deadly Is the Kiss (8 page)

He jerked his chin at her, waiting for her to name it, his silver eyes glittering with triumph.

Oh, God, what am I doing?

She hoped she was agreeing simply because she’d missed the intimacy of sex, as well as the pleasure—and not because she had some foolish hope of him falling madly in love with her. She knew better than to wish for that kind of miracle.

As long as she kept her head on straight, and didn’t let her heart get any silly notions, she could enjoy his offer for exactly what it was: a purely physical exchange based on mutual attraction, without any messy emotional attachments. Not exactly cold…just not the kind of thing a girl could pin her hopes on.

The key was to simply stay grounded in reality, and to accept him for what he was: a gorgeous, ruthless womanizer who would walk away from her when he was done, without ever looking back. She couldn’t make anything of the way he touched her, just like she couldn’t make too much of the way he’d fought to protect her from the Lycans. That was just Ashe being Ashe, and she’d be a fool to take any of it personally.

Promising herself that she wouldn’t forget any of that, Juliana finally lowered her hand from his mouth. “My condition is this—no feeding while we’re…together. I won’t take your vein, and you won’t take mine.”

Though his expression remained guarded, the rigid set of his shoulders hinted at a powerful reaction to her words, as did the tightness around his eyes. But he merely said, “Why?”

“It’s too…intimate. I just…we need to keep things purely physical, and feeding for our kind during sex is meant to be very emotional.”

“Meant to be?” he questioned, a sudden sharpness in his gaze that hadn’t been there before. “Are you telling me you’ve never done that before?”

She shook her head, acutely aware that she was blushing again.

He kept his eyes on her face, studying her carefully, looking for God only knew what. Several heartbeats later, he said, “All right. I accept the condition. Anything else?”

Another quick shake of her head, while her pulse roared in her ears. “No, that’s it. Nothing else.”

So much heat flared in his eyes, they glowed with a primal, metallic light. “So we’re agreed?” he asked in a low voice, his arm curving around her lower back, as if he was afraid she would suddenly try to slip away from him.

Juliana nodded, and somehow found the strength to give him the words he was waiting to hear. “We’re agreed.”

* * *

I
T
WAS
HAPPENING
AGAIN
.
That same jittery, twitchy feeling Ashe got whenever she was close, his heart thumping like an engine, his lungs tight, skin tingling. It drove him mad, the way he couldn’t control it. What made it even worse was how controlled she seemed. How collected. If he was going to fall apart, he bloody well wanted her to fall apart with him.

Yeah, she’d agreed to his insane demand, but she wasn’t happy about it. There was a belligerent tilt to her chin that made him feel as if she was slipping farther out of his reach, even as his hands were pressing her closer to his body.

And then he caught the telltale richness of her scent, and with a piercing jolt of relief, he knew she was with him. She might not like being backed into a corner, but she couldn’t disguise her body’s craving any more than he could, the heady scent of her desire making him so hard he literally pulsed with need, hunger burning in every cell of his body.

Wondering for the hundredth time if he was losing his mind, Ashe swept her up in his arms and carried her into the other room, where a massive king-size bed sprawled in the middle of a thick Persian rug in deep, soothing shades of blue, green and cream. But he wasn’t soothed. He was falling off the deep end, playing fast and loose with his sanity.

“What are you doing?” she gasped, clutching his shoulders.

He shook his head. “I don’t want to talk. I just want to strip you out of these clothes, lay you down on the bed, and get you under my mouth.”

“What?”

“You heard me.”

Her blush spread over the surface of her skin like a grass fire, turning her rosy and pink. “This is ridiculous. We don’t have time for this
now.
”

A ragged burst of laughter shook his chest as he lowered her to her feet. “Who knows how much time we have?” he muttered, pushing his jacket off her shoulders. “You’re a wanted woman, Jules. Danger breathing down the back of your neck, hard and focused. If I want to get my fill of you, I had better do it fast, before some new threat sinks its teeth into us and I end up dying trying to save your life.”

She flinched, blinking up at him. “Please…don’t say that.”

The sincerity of those quiet words hit him right in the chest, confusing the hell out of him.

Her hands gripped his arms. “I mean it, Ashe. I don’t want anything to happen to you.”

Before he’d even decided how to respond, he heard himself saying, “Then stop trying to push me away.”

She must have read the determination on his face, because she was the one who took a deep breath and reached for the hem of her torn sweater, pulling it over her head. As she let the sweater fall to the floor, Ashe flexed his hands at his sides, his pulse hammering at the sight of the black satin bra propping up the creamy swells of her breasts. The scratches on her shoulder and upper chest were already fading, thanks to the rapid healing genes of their species. Only a few faint lines remained from her run-in with the Lycan.

Even so, he still wanted to rip the bastard to shreds all over again for causing her pain.

“Get it off,” he grunted, jerking his chin at the bra. He felt like a bloody caveman, ready to drag his knuckles and pound his chest, demanding her submission, but there was no help for it.

Her head fell forward as she reached behind her back, undoing the clasp, her long hair streaming over her shoulders. A second later, the black satin fell to the floor, and hunger tore through him. He stared, hard, his ragged breathing sounding loud in the heavy quiet of the room. Her breasts weren’t the largest he’d ever seen, but he didn’t give a damn. What they were was impossibly beautiful…graceful, like the rest of her body. Perfectly curved and full and pale, her nipples small and pink, already pulled tight with need. A blatant temptation he couldn’t resist.

Putting his hands on her rib cage, Ashe lifted her off the floor, bringing those succulent breasts to his mouth. His heart pounded as he pressed a soft kiss to the healing scratches, then lowered his head and hungrily tongued one small, velvety nipple, rubbing and licking at it. His breathing quickened as she arched her back and made a needy sound deep in her throat, her nails digging into his shoulders. He couldn’t get enough of the way she tasted, moving to her other breast with a soft growl, licking and sucking until her nipple was like a plump, ripe berry on his tongue, driving him wild. He wanted to devour her. Lick every sumptuous inch of her firm little body from head to toe, as if he could somehow imprint himself on her with the ravenous demands of his mouth.

Needing more of her—needing
all
of her—Ashe gave a final lick to both nipples, taking a moment to enjoy how they looked all shiny and wet from his mouth, their color darker…deeper than before. Then he tossed her back into the middle of the bed, a gasp of shock spilling from her lips as she bounced there once…twice.

Leaning over the side of the mattress, he quickly tugged off her boots and jeans, then fisted his hand in the front of her black panties and gave a hard yank, wrenching them off in shreds. She cried out, her eyes huge in the blushing warmth of her face, lips parted with her increasingly fast breaths as she tried to cover herself.

He could scent the embarrassment simmering beneath her desire, her shyness yet another surprise that he hadn’t expected. One that made the corner of his mouth twitch with a smile.

“Uh-uh. Spread your legs and pull your knees out at your sides,” he told her, his low voice filled with need and lust and things he didn’t want to think about. To even acknowledge. “I need to see you, Jules. All of you.”

“I…uh…” The fiery blush on her cheeks spread, sweeping over her pale skin, her body vibrating at a high frequency, making him wonder how much time had passed since she’d last been with a man. He knew better than to hope for more than a few months, at the most. She was too beautiful, too sensual. Hell, the guards who worked for her family probably did their best to get her into bed as often as they could.

Shoving the infuriating thought aside, Ashe ripped off his sweater and followed her down onto the dark blue bedding. He’d wanted this woman for so long, and now he had her naked and laid out before him, her pale skin gleaming like a pearl against the stretch of midnight-blue beneath her. He couldn’t believe it was even better than he’d imagined.

“Don’t be shy,” he coaxed in a low murmur, crawling over her and placing a kiss against her trembling fingers. The searing heat in his veins burned hotter, her warm, sensual scent making his mouth water. “Come on, Jules. I want to see what you’ve been hiding from me for so long.”

With a deep breath, she pulled her hands away. Then she slowly exhaled, and relaxed the muscles in her thighs, inching them apart. “That’s it,” he groaned, running his tongue over the sensitive tip of a fang as he caught his first glimpse of her thick, slippery folds, his heart pounding to a brutal, painful rhythm. Struggling for control, Ashe rubbed a thumb over the pale, soft skin of her inner thigh, thinking it was a good thing she’d made that stipulation about no feeding. He wanted her blood—wanted the feel and the warmth of it sitting in his mouth—his fangs already aching with the need to feel that pale skin giving way beneath them. But he had no doubt the taste of it would push him too far.

But there were other things he could get his mouth on, and he was done waiting.

Wedging his body between her slender thighs, he pushed them wide, his eyes burning as he ran his gaze over that most lush, intimate part of her. It made his chest hurt just to look at her, she was so pretty and pink and delicate.

He exhaled in an audible rush. “Been waiting for this,” he rasped, his voice sounding drugged to his own ears as he ran two fingers through her juicy folds, getting them nice and wet. Then he lifted the fingers to his lips and sucked them into his mouth, desperate for the taste of her.

Bright splotches of color burned across the tops of her cheekbones as she stared at him down the quivering length of her body. “What…?” she whispered, studying his expression. “What are you thinking?”

Pulling his fingers from his mouth, he shot her a slow smile, loving the way he could now scent her on his lips. “I’m thinking you taste as sinful as you look.”
That you taste like mine.

Her blush somehow got even brighter. “Um…thanks.”

“My pleasure.” He swiped his tongue over his lower lip. “Literally. I could lick your sweet little pu—”

“Okay,” Juliana gasped, waving her hands in his face. “I get it! No reason to go into detail.”

The smile on his lips made her breath catch, his deep voice almost tender as he said, “I didn’t think it was possible, but your blush just keeps getting brighter.”

“I’m embarrassed!”

“Don’t be.” He braced himself on his elbows, his rugged face so close to her sex she could feel the humid warmth of his breath. She felt too exposed, her head spinning, her mind unable to come to grips with how she’d ended up in this situation. An hour ago, she’d have bet her life on the fact that she’d never so much as allow Ashe Granger to kiss her—and now she was naked on a bed in his hotel room, with his mouth only inches from her sex, as vulnerable and exposed as a woman could be.