“Are you on something, sugar?”
She stared up at him, their gazes colliding with hot intensity. Confusion flickered for a moment.
“I don’t have a condom with me, and the last thing we need is to make a baby. I’m hoping you’re on birth control.”
She relaxed and wrapped her arms around his shoulders, pulling him further against her.
“I’ve been on birth control since Jonah dragged me to a clinic in Prague all those years ago.”
“Are you okay with me not using a condom?”
She stared back at him, and he could see the same desire in her eyes. This was something they both wanted, but he wouldn’t do anything that would put her at risk, that would destroy the fledgling trust between them.
“I don’t…” She briefly looked away and when she looked back, the faint light of shame reflected in her eyes. “I don’t have sex often. I’ve done things I’m not proud of. They were jobs…means of gaining information—” She broke off, her expression stricken.
“Like I was at first?”
She nodded and started to speak again, but he held a finger to her lips. “You don’t have to explain yourself to me, sugar.”
“What I’m trying to say is that I haven’t had sex, before you, in a long time. Never unprotected, and routine physicals are mandatory for all Falcon members.”
Relief tightened his chest. They were okay.
“What about you?” she asked quietly.
He kissed her, plucking at her bottom lip with his teeth. “Not in a while, sugar. A long while. And never without a condom. When you walked into that bar in Singapore, all thoughts of celibacy fled.”
She smiled. “Then make love to me, Eli.”
“You trust me?” he asked again. He wanted to make sure she believed him. A man would say damn near anything when it came to sex. He hadn’t been above it in the past. But not when it mattered.
She hesitated only a fraction of a second before nodding.
“Do you trust me?” she asked. “I could be lying. You know of the things I’ve done…”
Again he silenced her with a finger. “I guess we’ll have to trust each other, sugar. As we’ve stated many times before, we’ve had ample opportunity to kill each other. Now if this part of the conversation is over, I’d like to move on to other things.”
His mouth closed around one pink-tipped breast. She arched into him, bowing her back off the bed with a moan. He loved how easily she fit against him. Neither of them were soft people and yet they cradled one another perfectly.
He traced the outline of a scar over her left breast, one he’d missed before, but then he’d been hurried, rushing to completion, lost in the pleasure she gave him.
He went exploring, looking for other battle scars. He found a crescent-shaped ridge on her right hip and a three-inch-long puckered line on the inside of her thigh. Even her feet weren’t unscathed. He feathered over an old wound on the top of her right foot.
She jerked and laughed softly.
“Ticklish?” he asked.
“Very, and don’t you dare use it against me.”
He chuckled. “I bet you have a story for each of your scars. They’d probably stand my hair up on end, but I bet they’re not dull.”
“Maybe I’ll tell you about them sometime,” she said. “But right now I don’t really feel like talking.”
He slid back up her body, his sac rubbing against the inside of her leg. His cock was stiff and distended, and he ached to bury himself deep in her heat.
With one knee, he opened her wider. The soft hair of her pussy brushed his skin. He wanted his fingers there. He wanted his cock there. He wanted all of her all at once.
With tentative fingers, he touched the tuft of hair over her mound, delving between the warm folds of her femininity. He reached her damp core. Hot, so hot.
“Take me,” she whispered.
His body shuddered at the erotic command. The words appealed to the primal male buried inside. It was a call to claim his woman, to mark her, to make her his. It was a call he couldn’t ignore.
He reached down and grasped his cock. It was hard and pulsing in his hand. He stroked up and down, enjoying the sensation as he guided himself toward her opening.
He rubbed the head over her wetness before lodging himself just inside her velvet rim. He leaned forward, lowering himself over her body.
“Kiss me,” he murmured.
She framed his face in her small hands and kissed him. Light at first, teasing, like she was exploring new territory. Then she grew bolder, licking over his lips with her tongue, coaxing him to open to her.
He inhaled her scent, her taste, as their tongues danced. He rolled his hips forward, sliding into her welcoming body. Pleasure. So much pleasure. He closed his eyes and rested his forehead against hers as he simply enjoyed the feeling of her flesh surrounding him.
“You scare me so much,” she whispered. “But I can’t stay away from you. I have this crazy, itchy, insane need when I’m around you, and I don’t understand it.”
He kissed the corner of her mouth then worked to her ear. He licked the shell then nibbled at the dainty lobe. “I don’t want to scare you, sugar,” he murmured against her ear as he rolled his hips again, sending him deeper inside her.
Her moan echoed close to his own ear.
“I want to make you feel good.”
She twisted restlessly beneath him. She wrapped her slim legs around his hips and rose to meet his thrust.
“Take me,” she murmured against his lips again. “Take me, Eli. Make me yours. I need you. God help me, I need you.”
Her words were like a sweet balm. A cool, healing wind in a sun-scorched desert. He gathered her in his arms, as if he could protect her from the world, her past, anything that had the power to hurt her.
Again and again he buried himself deep, stroking through her wet flesh. Silken heat surrounded him. He was drowning in it.
Her hands tangled in his hair. Her fingers dug into his scalp as she gathered handfuls of the long strands. She held him to her, his mouth against her neck.
She convulsed around his cock, the delicate tissues swelling as her orgasm loomed. His balls tightened. Excruciating. The pressure started low in his cock and pushed outward, straining to be set free.
Faster, harder, he rocked against her. She dug her heels into his ass and cried out. Liquid heat exploded around his cock, and he lost what remaining hold he had on his control.
Flash fire. Electric sensation seared through his balls, up his cock then exploded outward as he jetted into her in jerky spurts.
She called his name. He kissed her. Devoured her mouth like a man starved. His frantic pace slowed, and his thrusts became slow and measured as he pulled them both back down to earth.
Finally he slipped free of her in a rush of warm fluid. He rested on top of her for a moment even though he knew he was too heavy. It just felt right. He didn’t want to move.
She felt warm and soft beneath him where earlier he’d considered that neither of them were soft people. Yet now she was limber and pliant. Sated.
He rolled over and pulled her into his arms, resting his cheek on top of her head. Her chest rose and fell with his and deep contentment worked through him.
Her fingers slid up his side and to his shoulder as she snuggled closer to him.
“Tell me about you,” she said in a lazy voice.
An uneasy sensation crawled across his skin. “What do you want to know?”
“What was it like to grow up so…different?”
Different. He almost laughed. Different implied something mild. Like maybe he liked knitting while other boys liked football. Being able to make yourself disappear in a cloud of mist? That was a little more extreme than just different.
“What about your parents?” she continued on, oblivious to the tension billowing through his chest. “Were they like you? Were there others in your family?”