Kavya was not a woman to disappoint.
She broke their kiss to look down and unzip his jacket in one clean sweep of metal. She pushed his hands away from the wall even as she continued to undress him. The jacket hit the floor. After quickly unbuttoning the neck of his henley, she pulled it over his head. His plain cotton undershirt followed.
He stood before her, naked from the waist up. Her breathing matched his—as if she was ready for another fuck against the wall, her cravings that intense.
She only looked at him, overwhelming him with a keen amber gleam. Nothing in Tallis’s life had felt so charged with potential. The next hour could take one of a thousand directions. For now, that direction was hers to dictate, although his mindless brutality was slowly amassing. His best intentions wouldn’t last.
She smoothed a fingertip along his left collarbone, then down between his pecs. “This is your fault.”
“What is?”
“It was a dare when you stripped for me, but it’s part of us now. You on display. Don’t move. I just want to touch and look.”
Tallis tipped his head to the ceiling and swallowed. He nodded.
“You see,” she continued, “my senses have never been as important as knowing people’s thoughts. That was my best defense. That was the best way I could assess if a person was a threat. This . . . this is my senses trying to keep up. A steep learning curve compared to you.”
Her gaze scorched him everywhere. Her hands followed. She teased down the trail of his chest hair to where it edged around his navel and arrowed toward the waistband of his cargos. The next slide of her hands was both palms up his ribs. She took her time, then grabbed both pecs and squeezed. Just once. She moved on to his shoulders and down the length of his arms. That was delicate, almost tickling. She clasped his hands briefly.
Her mouth took the place of her hungry gaze and questing fingertips. She placed openmouthed kisses on his biceps and tugged the far side of his neck so she could burn another against the cap of his shoulder. “So tall,” she said against damp skin. “I like that.”
Tallis shuddered. He was being seduced. He knew it and liked it and feared it at the same time. This was eerily reminiscent of some of his dreams, when the Sun would dominate him.
“What is it?” Kavya had stopped kissing him. She was looking at him with obvious concern.
“In my dreams of . . . of who I thought was you . . .” He shook his head, surprised by the suffocating embarrassment that crept up from his chest. Kavya’s hand kept him in the here and now. Perhaps she felt the flushing heat of his idiocy. “I was seduced, like you’re doing now. Only, she was more practiced. She was never unsure of herself, or unsure of what I wanted. She would edge me to such a frenzy. I . . . Dragon damn it, Kavya, I gave in to her demands but she never followed through. I spent two decades perched a half step away from satisfaction. It wasn’t a life, just a string of betrayals and waning faith. I should’ve realized . . .”
“You were manipulated by a force beyond your control. After so many years, how could you have known your own thoughts from the ones she gave you?” The press of the sari against his skin was cool, slightly rough. Grounding. “I’ve known those doubts. After each Mask. After living among too many people, too many minds for so long—there were times when I couldn’t sort through the basics of my own wants and needs.”
“How do you manage?”
“Indranan are taught from a young age how to keep thoughts in boxes. Mine go in one box, separated and memorized—the better to make sure they’re mine. Impressions from other people and old Masks have boxes of their own, like quarantined contagions. Sometimes they seep through. I get confused. I have to sort through the glimpses, remember who I am. Tallis, look at me.” They locked eyes, locked souls. “Whatever evil invaded your mind used sex as a weapon. That’s not me. No matter what happens between us, that will never be me.”
“Another promise so soon?” He masked his dizziness with a quip, then a quick kiss to the bridge of her nose. “Dangerous.”
“We’ve already been playing dangerously.” She nestled her mouth against his upper arm, talking directly against his skin. “I’ve made myself vulnerable. The Indranan are reserved for a reason: self-preservation. Before arriving here, I doubt you’ve met many on your travels.”
“I haven’t, actually. Those I’ve met have been crossbred, or in service of the cartels. The latter weren’t the kind I’d want to sit down with for a long chat. Twice-cursed, all of them.”
“See? You might not understand the full extent, but I’ve done what few of my people ever dare.”
He took her hand and led her to the bed. They sat side by side, fingers linked. “Tell me?”
“It’s all about senses, as I’ve said. When I’m with you, like this, or when we’re fighting and plotting—focused on each other, from those first moments in the camp . . . I’m me.”
With his free hand he unwrapped the blue linen that concealed her hair. “What does that feel like?”
“Terrifying.”
“Should we stop?”
“No.” Her eyes were slick with a sheen of moisture. Tallis wanted to shut his own eyes, to shut off the source of the ache that made his pulse pick up an odd rhythm. “I want this, because it’s the freest I’ve been in my life.”
“Terrifying,” he repeated. “That feels just about right. I’ve been half convinced everything I do is still based on another person’s dictates. That hasn’t been the case for these last few days, even when you’re bossing me around.”
“I don’t boss. I delegate.” Kavya took a deep breath. “But if what I’m doing is too much like your dreams, what now? I can’t avoid being what she imitated.”
His mind made up, Tallis turned their bodies so that they faced each other on the bed. He unbound her hair. No matter how difficult it was to wrap a sari around a woman’s body, unwrapping one was like opening a gift. He released the linen pleats and tucks until the fabric pooled at her waist. A matching blue bodice, which resembled an elaborately decorated yet concealing bra with wide straps, covered her breasts.
“It’s like you said.” His voice was rough, but he was surprisingly in control. Again . . . he had that sense of having been able to do with Kavya what he’d never done before: join his two natures in common purpose. “Our senses. Talk to me. Touch me. Let me hear you with my ears and feel you with my skin. I want to keep tasting you until I’ve memorized it beyond anyone’s ability to fake. Ground me in what she couldn’t know. Be the free woman you described. Be Kavya. Be my real woman.”
—
His words were too much like an endearment for Kavya to bear. There was nothing to be gained from this man other than the physicaclass="underline" safety and gratification. Yet she couldn’t help a new, unfamiliar affinity adding weight to her soul while lifting her shoulders—as if he’d used that same physical prowess to alleviate unseen burdens.
“You know I’m real,” she said matter-of-factly. “You know the difference now.”
A glimmer of his usual humor returned. “Then by all means.” He stretched back on the bed, hands pillowed behind his head. “Continue.”
Kavya didn’t know where to start. At the start of each new encounter, she repeated the same phrase. I don’t know where to start. That was the glory of leading with instinct rather than thought. She simply reached out for the buttons of his fly.
He was already firming beneath her hands as she loosened the fabric. The bulge of his erection shaped his briefs, tempting her to reveal him to her greedy eyes and curious touch. But it was too soon. She had bared so much of his beautiful body. Time to return the favor. She stood and unwrapped the rest of her sari’s overlapping layers, not to tease him but to keep it from tangling as she crawled atop him. Wearing only her undergarments, she forged a path of discovery from the waistband of his briefs to his throat, using only her mouth. Then her fingernails. She licked and kissed and scratched, absorbing as many details as she could. Salt. Silk. Musk. Sleek hair and firm—Dragon damn, such firm muscles.