When the darkness receded, she found herself lying on the bed, still half-dressed… and being watched by human eyes that held a very feline satisfaction. “I said slow.”
He smiled. “Oops.”
Charm.
This leopard lying next to her had a whole arsenal of it. According to what she’d been taught during her passage through the Silence Protocol, charm had both negative and positive aspects. Some used it as a weapon, others as a tool. But, she realized as she lay there limp from pleasure, all that changed if trust was involved. Then, it became a caress, a stroke, a kiss. “When we first met, I would’ve never predicted you could be this way.”
He circled her belly button with a finger. “When we first met, I was a mean bastard.”
“I don’t think that’s changed.”
He paused his playful touching. “Oh?”
“I’ve just earned a free pass through the meanness.”
That made him relax, a husky chuckle her answer as he shifted position to brace himself over her. His kiss was deceptively lazy this time, a slow tasting that made her sigh. When he kissed his way down her neck and to the valley between her breasts, she thrust her hands into his hair and held on.
The scrape of his shadowed jaw was rough against the tender skin of her breast. She sucked in a breath. He murmured an apology, licking his tongue over the sensual hurt until she could barely bear it. There was so much more to this sexual dance than she’d ever imagined. So much more to the man she’d called the sniper.
“Thinking again?” he murmured, pressing his lips to her navel.
She looked down to meet his heavy-lidded gaze. “About you.” In her hands, his hair was soft, sleek. “I know my Silence was broken, but I was brought up in an environment where control was everything. I thought it would be harder to give in this much.” To trust this much-until both body and mind were so in sync, she couldn’t imagine being any other way.
“Come on then, sugar. Give in to me some more.” His lashes swept over her skin as he laid his forehead against her and pressed another kiss to her navel. When he rose, it was to his knees. Unsnapping the tab, he gripped the zipper of her cargos. “Down.” He suited word to action.
It felt as if he was touching each newly exposed inch of flesh, his eyes were so intent. She discovered that she was holding her breath, released it in a slow exhalation as he got the pants off and threw them over the side of the bed, leaving her dressed in one last piece of clothing. Her panties were plain black, certainly nothing like the delicate, lacy garments she’d seen displayed in the windows of human and changeling boutiques.
But Dorian didn’t seem to mind. “You’re damp.” He ran a finger over that dampness, making her bite back a cry. Then he did it again. And again. It sent twisting tendrils of sensation straight through her. But… it wasn’t enough.
“I feel… alone.” She needed something, something important. It felt as if she should be able to see it on the psychic plane, but the ephemeral something kept slipping out of her grasp. “Dorian?” It was almost a sob.
“I’ve got you.” One smooth movement and the panties were gone. “Christ, you’re beautiful.” A harsh male exclamation and then he was spreading her thighs, whispering for her to wrap them around him. She did, able to feel him nudging at her, hot, hard, rawly male.
She cried out into his kiss as he began to enter her, stretching muscles that had never known such use. There was no pain, only the most exquisite kind of ache, as if her body had been made for this man, for this moment. The emptiness faded from inside her, overwhelmed by the amount of sheer sensation her mind was attempting to process. A part of her, a tiny hidden part, knew that something remained missing, but then Dorian bit her lightly on the shoulder and the thought fragmented.
“Biting is okay?” she gasped, adjusting to the blazing heat of him inside her.
He kissed his way up her neck, over her cheek, back to her lips. “Hell, yeah.” One male hand slid under her to cup her bottom, angling her for a deeper penetration.
Arching upward, she dared to use her teeth on the powerful cords of his neck. He hissed out a breath, squeezing her bottom. “More.”
No longer capable of rational thought, she dug her nails into his back and scratched hard. It made him growl and tug her head back for a firestorm of a kiss.
“Open.”
She bit his lower lip instead.
Snarling, he held her in place as he tangled his tongue with hers. She wrapped her body around him, giving back as good as she got.
Then Dorian began to move.
Slow.
“Faster,” she said, tearing her lips away from the seduction of his mouth.
Male heat in those bright blue eyes. “No.” He drew out inch by torturous inch… then pushed back in the same way. It was like the first time all over again, her muscles stretching, her body quivering with a thousand tiny quakes.
“Dorian.”
Teeth nipping over her lips, releasing. “You wanted slow.”
Her hands slipped over his sweat-slick body as she tried to urge him to increase the pace. It was impossible. He was pure lithe muscle to her soft female form. “Now I want fast.”
“No.” Another smile, another slow withdrawal and reentry. “I want to play.”
CHAPTER 37
Play.
Yes, she thought through the erotic haze of sexual need, a cat would want to play. “What game?”
“I’ll go faster if you can talk me into it.”
She wasn’t even sure she could put together a coherent sentence at this stage. In desperation, she squeezed her internal muscles. It made him shudder and drop his head. “Do that again.” A demand that held hints of the predator he was, the dominant sentinel used to command.
“Go faster first.” Ashaya scratched him again, having realized his skin could take it, and not only that, that he liked it.
A low growl that shouldn’t have been able to come from a human throat. He tore her hands off his body, pinning them on either side of her head. “Messing with a leopard, sugar? Not smart.”
She tightened her muscles again, and saw his face suffuse with pleasure. It made her stomach clench, along with other, lower things. Her curiosity, always her biggest asset in the lab, was now fixed on Dorian. She wanted to explore his body in every way she could. Then she wanted to do it again in a thousand different positions. She wanted to make this cat purr.
“I can read your thoughts,” he said, eyes gleaming.
“Can you?” She moaned as he continued those oh-so-slow movements of his.
He bit her shoulder again, harder this time. She felt her body coat his with another layer of hot dampness even as lights started sparking behind her eyes. “Let go,” he said in a voice touched with a rough tenderness that undid her. “I’ll hold you safe.”
Yes, he would, she thought. So she rode the wave of pleasure, let him ride her through it, and when the next wave crested, she buried her face in his neck, licking at the salt of his skin.
Something very close to a purr rumbled through his chest. And at last, he began to move faster, the hard heat of him a pounding beat inside of her. She held on, was held safe… even as she held him safe.
Dorian was feeling very much the cat when he blinked open his eyes-after his heartbeat finally calmed. His first instinct was to check the security panel. Still okay. Good. ’Cause he had no intention of moving-his body was loose, his limbs relaxed, and his leopard curled up in a sexually satisfied ball, complete with smug feline smile. Not to mention, he had a damn sexy woman half-comatose next to him. He grinned at her complaining moan when he ran his fingers over her abdomen.
Ticklish, he thought, delighted. She was ticklish.
Flattening his palm on her, he rolled the good feeling through his mind, wrapping it around himself like a cloak. The guilt he’d deal with later, he thought, caging it when it began to rise. But it wasn’t so easy. The thoughts ate away at him. His sister’s death. His parents’ pain. His own violent rage. And now his pleasure.