“Perhaps you have forgotten,” he said in a gentle voice. “Let me show you.”
Then it was his turn to frame the pure slender arc of her jaw between his large callused hands, and she let him. Her honey-colored skin was cool to the touch, and her Power thrummed against his palms. Good night, how did she hold all of it in and not fly apart at the seams?
He stroked her lips with the ball of one thumb. Her skin had a silken texture, the soft plump flesh giving way under the small pressure. His hands were too hardened from fighting and other manual labor. The only way he could truly know the depth of that exquisite softness was to cover it with his mouth.
“If I may,” he murmured.
He bent his head toward that incomparable face, giving her plenty of time to react and to tell him no. Then he fought to hide how he shuddered deep inside as he covered her lips with his own, stroking along the unique plush terrain of her mouth, focusing all of his attention on relishing the precious experience.
And she let him.
He took care with her. One should treat the rarest of treasures with respect. He coaxed the tilt of her head into the right angle and adjusted his stance in such a way that he just barely brushed against the front of her body. He laid the length of one of his hands at the juncture where the bottom of her skull curved into the slender flower-stalk of her graceful neck. His fingers were so long they cradled her effortlessly.
He invited her to lean back into his steady supporting hold, leading her into the first steps of an intimate dance. She followed him, shifting just that exquisite amount he coaxed from her and no more, letting her head rest in his hand, which made her spine arch with languorous intent. Holy hell, she would be an intelligent lover, the most ingenious of lovers that understood the intricate nuances of the dance, and when to listen and respond to the tiniest catch of a sigh, and when to let rip-roaring loose with everything one had.
Her flesh warmed beneath his mouth and between his hands, and she took a breath. It was the third breath she had taken since they had met that morning. Each useless, telltale one made him want to growl in triumph.
He dared to take the succulent swell of her lower lip between his teeth and suckle at it, ever so lightly.
Her lips trembled and fell open.
The gryphon inside him roared.
He took his time taking the internal private place of her mouth. He slanted his head sideways and curled his tongue into her. She made a low throaty noise that was so sensual it rocked his soul and shoved him into a paradigm shift. She wound her arms around his neck, leaned full against him and kissed him back.
Rune’s control jettisoned off the planet, leaving him behind to snatch at her in amazement. He crushed her to him, his arms around her waist, lifting her off the ground as he speared into her blindly. His heart pounded in massive sledgehammer strokes, and his skin became a thin veneer that cloaked a pillar of flame. He put a hand to her hip and gripped her hard, then ran his hand compulsively up the length of her torso to the weighted fullness of her breast. The plump round mound filled his greedy palm, and she fit, she just fucking fit, like some keystroke password to an unbreakable code. A sound came out of her. It sounded raw with surprise and he swallowed it down. His shaking fingers sought for and found her nipple jutting underneath the cloth.
She kissed him back with the same ferocity. She did, he would swear she did. Her body trembled too, and arched taut with craving.
Then she wrenched her face away. He reared back his head to look at her in sharp inquiry. Her mouth was swollen, blushed red, and her dark eyes were wide and blank with shock.
In a ragtag shred of sound that was all that remained of his voice, he said, “That was a real kiss.”
Her gaze locked on him. Her lips moved, as if she would try to say something. Then he remembered the stupid bargain his damn fool self had offered.
He eased her back down until her bare feet connected with the flagstone floor, and he went down on one knee again to bow in full reverence to the onetime Queen of the Nightkind. She embodied the pinnacle of what a man desired and what he should fear, and she deserved to have the world laid at her feet.
Carling stared. Rune was down on his knee again where she had ordered him, but this time she could sense from his emotions that he meant it. He gave full sincere, gracious homage to her. She could see it clear all the way through him, only instead of humbling that insouciant alpha male, somehow it ennobled him with the courtly aspect of a medieval knight.
Then she understood what the emotion was that she had sensed from him, because he taught her to experience it again for herself.
Desire. He looked on her and felt desire.
As a succubus, Carling had become an expert on all the flavors and nuances of emotion, but it had been so long since anyone had looked on her with desire, so very long since she had felt any form of desire for herself, she felt as though she was experiencing it for the first time. Then a wild upsurge of reaction like rage shook through her, and it was a dark violent storm. When he lifted his head, she slapped him so hard he rocked back on his heels. She intentionally curved her fingers into claws and dug her nails in cruelly, raking him from cheekbone to jaw. Blood sprang from the wounds.
“We’re done here,” she said through her teeth. “Now leave my home.”
He stared at her, his expression turning hard. Deliberately, calmly, he raised one hand to blot the blood that dripped down the side of his face. She saw that the wounds were already closing over.
She could not stand to look at him any longer. She whirled and stormed away. She barely knew where she was going. Anywhere, away, as the wild upsurge whirled through the cemetery in her head, blowing leaves across gravestones.
He made her feel things she had not felt in a winter’s age. How many centuries had it been since she had known desire? It had been so long she had forgotten. She should not feel such things as desire, or yearning, or to look even for the barest moment at the possibility of a branching off in her life toward something hardly seen and deathly beautiful, for it could never be hers.
Desire was not a gift to someone like her. Instead it was a beautiful agony.
“I am a bad woman,” she whispered to herself. Two tears slid down her cheeks. There was certain symmetry in that as well.
She was a bad woman at the end of a very long, bad life.
Rune stood and wiped the rest of the blood off his face as he watched Carling storm away. Aroused and furious, he breathed hard and fought for control as the predator in him roared to give chase. Tension vibrated through his body and made the world shake.
But we’re done here, she said. And no means no.
I gotta hand it to you, Carling, he thought. It’s never something mundane with you.
He was free to go, his obligation paid. The favor had been wasted with a spendthrift hand, as if she were a spoiled child who had been given too many toys. His lips curled back from clenched teeth.
In the end, it was not the predator, his common sense or his intelligence, but his pride that won out. He snatched up his duffle. He had left the waterproof container Duncan had given him down on the beach. It was time to move on. He could sneak in a few days of R & R before he headed back to New York. Get his head screwed back on straight before he went home to deal with Dragos again. By God, he had earned that much, at least.
He yanked open the arched double front doors and strode down the path toward the rest of his life. The hot blaze from the yellow morning sun was a welcome blast in his face. The chill bite of the ocean when he swam back to sanity would be even more welcome. There were a lot of fun things to do in San Francisco. He would check into the suite at the Fairmont Hotel, get him some of that five-star treatment and go on the hunt for some scotch and a plate of beef bourguignon as he debated how much time he should take for himself before he got in touch with Dragos again. Maybe the Fairmont had beef bourguignon on their room service menu. Hot food, booze, five-star service and a good game on a plasma TV. Or maybe he could find an old Gamera movie on cable. He loved that giant flying Japanese turtle. Yeah baby. He heard it all calling his name.