Cassandra's Dilemma (17 page)

The scent of him was in the air. The cloves, sandalwood, and musk filled her nostrils. The feel of him was in her blood. His heart drummed a cadence. Raw desire invaded her mind. His breath tickled her ear. Senses and sensations she would forever associate with Jacob.

“No luck.” She sighed. “I don’t think this is a short-term spell.”

“Maybe. The water is getting cool, however, and I don’t want you to get too cold.” Jacob tugged her away from the water that still felt quite warm and back out into the steam-filled tile. The water twisted off, and silence, punctuated only by his and her breathing, filled the air.

Cassie expected a towel to be wrapped around her. Her breasts, swollen and aching from his attention in the shower, longed for something else. But she was glad he’d stopped. The day had taken so many up-and-down turns. She was so far out of control that she didn’t know if they would be making love because he was all over her, because she wanted to, or something in between.

Making love. It’s making love when you’re in love. It’s just sex when you’re scratching an itch. What am I doing?

Her stomach dropped at the thought.

Nothing Jacob had done screamed sex. He’d been kind, considerate, caring, passionate, and brutally honest. He wasn’t feathering his touches or caresses with pretty words. He was just touching.

Jacob rubbed her from her feet up, gently drying her body. He towel-dried, kissed, and caressed his way up from her feet. When his breath fanned across the apex of her thighs, her heart pumped double time and wetness flooded her pussy.

Time slowed as his lips touched the soft skin just to the inside of her thigh, and her legs opened for him like the petals of a flower. His hands came up to support her buttocks as she shifted to give him more access, and his chuckle brushed her skin in tiny puffs of explosive breath.

His chuckle deepened when he pressed a long and lingering kiss to the inside of each thigh. Cassie groaned at the tingling sensations shooting through her. But when his lips traveled upward and pressed a kiss to her abdomen, Cassie startled.

“Jacob?”

Amusement colored his husky voice. “You wanted to talk. I said we would talk. So stop being helpful and let me dry you off.”

“Or what?” God save her, she couldn’t help herself. She bumped her hip forward lightly, thrusting her naked pussy at him, and grinned at the growl of noise that earned.

“Or this.” He slid his hands under her, nudging her thighs farther apart and slipping one over his shoulder, hands returning to her buttocks as his mouth found her clit and his tongue swiped hard against the swollen nub.

Her grin dissolved into a groan of pleasure.

Oh, that’s what.

Chapter Eleven

Somewhere between his mouth closing on her clit and her legs collapsing, Cassie sprawled on a bed. At least she hoped it was a bed. Soft cotton sheets caressed her bare skin. The darkness blanketing her vision only enhanced the sensation of Jacob’s body sliding over hers. His mouth teased at her pussy, tongue rasping, delving past the folds of flesh, and tasting. His hands were everywhere, stroking, caressing, teasing, and every touch set off explosions of pleasure.

Cassie moaned, sinking her fingers into his hair and tugging Jacob upward. He followed her urgent hands slowly, kissing a path up her navel and pausing at her breasts. A blow of air whispered across already-aroused nipples. He teased and tormented, finally closing his lips over the turgid point.

Shivers of heat rippled through her, pooling in her belly. She writhed, but his hands tightened against her, holding her still as he flicked his tongue against the nipple, teeth grazing lightly and drawing on it hard to suckle. A sob broke loose when he left the nipple, only to break off into a gasp when he laved at the other.

“Book!” His name tripped off her lips, frantic with need. His thigh slid between her legs. She arched her hips, rubbing against the steely muscle, aching for release.

“Jacob,” he growled, biting down lightly on her nipple. The sharp pain thrilled through the pleasure. Her brain was short-circuiting, and she could barely pull two thoughts together before they skittered apart, bouncing balls of pleasure mounting and shattering. The scent of him was overpowering, and every gasp of air filled her lungs with the scent and taste of him.

“Jacob,” she begged. “Jacob.”

His mouth came down on hers, and there was nothing tentative in the kiss. It was an invasion, a conquering of the senses. His tongue thrust against hers, and she opened to him. Pleasure swamped her, and her nails dug into his shoulders where she held onto him. She knew she had to stop, that she should stop, but the reasons all fled in the tempest of his passion.

Jacob broke from the panting kiss, burying his face into her neck. His weight pressed onto her, his thigh firm between her legs. He stilled, the only noise that of his harsh breathing against her throat.

Her own breaths coming in short, fast bursts, Cassie slid her hands along the lines of his shoulders, exploring the contours of his muscles. They rippled beneath her fingers. They were hard and sinewy, trembling and tense against her hands. Sweat trailed down the length of his spine and she traced the path with her nails. The sudden jerks in his muscles intrigued her. She dug her nails in, stroking the skin down to his ass, hips arching to deepen the cradle of her legs around him.

With a growl, he shifted and pulled her hands up, pinning them to the bed. His hands shackled her wrists. It didn’t hurt, but Cassie writhed against the containment. Springy little hairs on his chest created friction against her tender, sensitive nipples.

“Cassie, please,” he groaned.

“I want to please.” Cassie would normally have abhorred the simpering tone embedded in the words. But her body ached with need, a need that she was hard-pressed to define. She barely knew Jacob, but she wanted him.

God how she wanted him.

Jacob made a snorting sound that crashed between a laugh and a cough. “Cassie, you’re killing me. I want to do the right thing here.”

Cassie bucked, earning another groan as his cock rubbed against her pussy, sliding on the wetness. “Right thing?”

“Yes, the
right
thing.” He caught her lower lip in his teeth, tugging on it gently. “You’re like a drug, compromising my judgment and releasing my inhibitions. So just lay still, dammit, unless you want me inside you, which is where I’ll be.”

“You didn’t strike me as a philosophical man,” Cassie murmured, leaning up against his restraint, finding his jaw with her lips, and kissing along it. She swiped her tongue at the shadow stubble that rasped against her skin.

“Are you baiting me on purpose?” Suspicion crept into his voice.

Am I baiting him?
Cassie pondered the idea. She rolled her hips against the bed, rocking against his groans until her leg was free. Cassie slid her foot down the back of his leg, tracing a path from his thigh to calf and back again.
What am I thinking?

I want him.

Cassie’s breath whooshed out, and she smiled into the darkness.
She struggled against Jacob’s stronger hands, twisting her wrists to get free.

“You have to stop.” His breath was like hot smoke, soft and weightless against her throat. It sounded curiously like begging. She flattened her feet to the bed and lifted. She rubbed herself against him, and his muttered oath cut off into a groan.

He spilled his groan into her mouth. She drank it down, meeting the thrust of his tongue and wishing like hell it was his cock thrusting as deeply into her. He released his hold on her wrists, dropping his hand between them. His fingers slid between the lips of her pussy, massaging the clit. It was her turn to scream into his mouth, crying out for release. She ached for more, and her sex clenched against his fingers.

He thrust one finger and then another inside of her, and she rode those fingers, grinding up against his greater weight. Cassie dug her nails into his back. His mouth abandoned hers as his fingers slid free, and then his cock was pushing against her, thrusting inside, and she threw her head back, screaming.

Jacob’s cock was huge, stretching, filling, and slamming through her. His balls slapped against her ass with every thrust. He lifted her leg, gliding in and out. She gasped at the force of it rending through her, splaying her wide, and ground against him.

Power blossomed, igniting and consuming. The friction of his body driving into hers sent sparks shooting through her vision with every thrust. His mouth came back to hers, devouring.

Cassie held onto him, her rock in the darkness as her world split apart. Cascading stars exploded overhead, and she clenched her legs to his hips. He drove her hard, his flesh slapping against hers. His release came hard and fast, white-hot jets of cum shooting inside of her and his shout of pleasure barking in her ear.

She must have lost consciousness, because when she came back to herself, Jacob still lay in the cradle of her body. His soft cock rested inside of her slippery wetness, and she knew that it wasn’t a dream nor had they used any protection. Cassie tried to dredge up the energy to care, but right now, she just soaked up the feeling of his body pressing into hers.

Cassie explored the contours of his shoulders and arms. She was bathed in his musk now, and a lungful of his scent soothed the rapid beat of her heart. Even the blindness didn’t seem so bad now. “Jacob?”

His breathing remained steady, slow, and even. His weight should have been uncomfortable, but it wasn’t. Cassie closed her eyes, her mind drifting as another surge rippled through her. The explosion rocked the bandstand. The world stood still. The explosion boomed in her ears.

No
.

The explosion rocked the bandstand. The heat burned her face. The force threw her backward. Where was the noise?

Grant Park’s Clarence Buckingham Fountain sprayed in the distance, and Cassie turned her attention to the flowing pattern of the water. The sun’s warmth penetrated the gray clouds. The day was pregnant with possibilities. The splash of water replaced the distant chatter of the press corp.

Her skin flushed. Nerves. It was nerves. Public speaking didn’t make her nervous, but this announcement did. She’d suffered a sour stomach for more than a week. She wasn’t sleeping well. She was worried.

Worried about what?

It was a dream come true as a publicist. It would be her standing up there making an announcement that could change the world. Admittedly, she’d been a little drunk on the idea.

No, Cassie would not lie to herself. Not here in the dark, with the Wizard sprawled against her body, spent from their shared passion. She would not lie and say she didn’t know what impact it would all have. But magic existed.

The Fae existed.

The world should know they were there. It would cause an upheaval, and there would be strife and pain and blood. But the world would be better for it. She was as much to blame for Billy’s death as whoever set the bomb.

Bomb.

Billy was part of the price she expected the world to pay. She just hadn’t factored paying that price herself.

Was it really a bomb?

The image scorched on her mind’s eye replayed in the darkness, over and over again. The detonation picked her up off the ground and flung her like a rag doll. Paper floated down.

The air glittered.

It glittered.

It glittered.

Splashes of light exploded in a glittering cascade. Cassie replayed the scene, pausing it to examine each frame of memory. Inserted in between the bits of paper and the ground-rocking detonation, sound was suppressed. She’d heard no sound because there was no sound to be heard. The land erupted in thirteen flashes, thirteen geysers of magic exploding upward from the portals.