Authors: Zoe Archer

Tags: #Romance, #General, #Paranormal, #Fiction

Devils Kiss (32 page)

BOOK: Devils Kiss

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“You were very skinny,” she said. “Someone wasn’t looking after you.”

“It took a steady diet of beef and beer at university before I filled out.” He did not care to look at the portrait, for it reminded him too much of the intervening years spent in riotous pursuits.

She turned to him, her gaze moving over him in a thorough perusal. Everywhere she looked, his body lit with a thousand invisible fires, until he became a pyre of need.

“And filled out well.” She glanced at the portrait, at the gallery, then back to him. “Do you know why the Rom don’t like houses?”

He shook his head.

“Because they are cold. Dead. You can’t know yourself when penned in by walls. Out there”—she nodded toward the window and the land beyond—“with nothing around us but earth and sky, that’s where we find the true measure of ourselves.”

His breath snagged. “I trapped you. In London. I took that from you.”

She smiled, holding up her hand. A delicate lace of fire wove around her fingers. “I got free.”

The elemental power of this woman, he craved it. Craved her. She could burn the house down, and he would not care. All he wanted was to be consumed by her fire.

Zora stood before a window, holding up a nightgown to the sunlight. The silken fabric was so fine, she could see right through it, nearly as clear as the window. Through the pale haze of silk, she made out the garden and lake that lay behind the house. She put her hand up into the gown. The fabric revealed every line on her palm.

If she put the gown on, she might as well be naked.

She
was
naked. Standing in the middle of a small room that adjoined the bedchamber, Zora wore nothing, not even her necklaces and rings. The strands of gold gleamed softly, piled carefully on a little table beside the bathing tub. The water was cloudy, cold, evidence that until a few minutes ago, she’d been as filthy as a beggar.

In a vast room dominated by a huge mahogany table, she and Whit had eaten a meal so rich and sumptuous, she had nearly dropped beneath the table and fallen asleep. Both of them had been dusty from the road, yet the servants had brought them platters of food with the same blank-faced dignity they would show to any respected
gorgio.

Whit had spoken to the servants with an aristocratic reserve. He did not mistreat them, but they were not his equals. Both he and the servants understood this. Only Zora found herself strangely at a loss. This was not her world: the echoing hall, its empty rooms, the thick walls.

Only when she had looked at Whit and he had stared at her with meaningful heat over the rim of his wineglass did she feel comfortable. No, not comfortable, for there was no mistaking the sensual promise of his gaze. Yet looking at Whit made the house disappear, its walls dissolve. With him, she felt both secure and free.

They had finished the meal and gone upstairs, neither of them speaking. The air around them had been too thick with desire to permit anything more than the simplest actions and the fewest words.

More servants had brought bathing tubs—the luxury of having not one but
two
tubs astonished her, and hot water for both, though the scarcity of servants meant that it took longer to bring up and fill both—and Whit had adjourned to his bedchamber to wash himself, whilst she was given this smaller room for her own bathing.

As she washed, a woman servant had brought her the nightgown. Zora had no idea where the gown had come from, who owned it. Not one of Whit’s former mistresses, for it was clear he never came to this house. That gave her some comfort. She would sooner wear nothing than the discards of Whit’s past lover.

In a few minutes, his lover will be me.

Heart beating thickly, mouth dry, Zora slipped the gown over her head. It settled around her like a cool mist, smelling of lavender and the inside of a clothes press.

She went to the door that separated the two rooms, and softly knocked. Whit’s deep voice answered, bidding her enter. She did so, thinking with an inward smile that this was one of the few times she would obey a command.

Earlier, she had briefly been inside the bedchamber: a large room with cream-colored walls and a row of windows that faced the lake. Like all
gorgio
rooms, it left little impression in her mind, but something within it
had
captured her attention: the bed. Tall and canopied, its expanse could easily fit ten adults.

But it didn’t need to fit ten adults. Only two.

Whit stood at the window, his back to her, but he turned when she entered. For a moment, they did nothing more than stare at each other. The curtains were open. Sunlight filled the room. They saw one another plainly.

A robe of dark green silk clung to the width of his shoulders, and the sash tied at his waist attested to the narrowness of his hips. His feet were bare. Beneath the robe, he wore nothing; the fabric draped over the hard, tight shapes of his muscles. Arms, torso, legs. Hinted at, but not fully revealed. Yet, as he looked at her, she could not miss the stir of his cock under the silk.

His jaw tightened, and his burning gaze moved from her face to her chest. Glancing down, she saw that her breasts were almost completely revealed by the sheer nightgown. Her nipples, dark as plums, beaded under his attention, and the slight brush of the fabric against them sent shivers of awareness through her.

His breathing came hard and fast. So did hers. Neither spoke. Neither moved.

“Come here and touch me,” she said.

“Can’t.” His voice was an animal rumble, so deep that it resounded low in her belly, in her most secret places. His hands knotted into fists.

She frowned. “I want you to.”

“I don’t ... trust myself. Want you too much.” He shook with suppressed hunger, on the verge of violence, reminding her of a stallion she had once seen. The horse had been wild and without a mare for a long time. When it caught the scent of a mare, instead of racing toward it, the stallion had been frozen in place, overcome with need. Only a slap to its flank had pushed it to action.

Zora was no passive creature waiting to be claimed.

She strode across the chamber until she stood before him. At this close distance, she could see the cost of his effort in the tightness of his mouth, the cords of his neck. His pupils were large, like those of a predator. He smelled clean and musky and delicious.

“I’m not porcelain,” she said. “Not even steel. I won’t break.” She slid her hands up the front of his robe, feeling the solidity of his chest and the pound of his heart.

“Don’t want to hurt you.” His voice was a growl.

“You can’t.” She threaded her fingers together behind his neck and stepped closer until their bellies touched. His cock was thick and upright, hot as iron even through the layers of silk, and he rumbled when she tilted her hips against him. “Take this gamble with me.”

His eyes darkened. Then his lips came down onto hers. It felt as though it had been years since they last kissed, and their ravenous mouths demanded more, demanded everything. It could have been a battle. Or the best kind of seduction. All she knew was the taste of him, the wet heat of his mouth, the rasp of his tongue against hers. They drank each other up and clamored for more.

He moved from her mouth, and his teeth scraped along her neck. His breath came hot against her throat as he groaned her name. She pulled the tie from his hair. It sifted over her fingers, redolent of male arousal. She dug her fingers into his hard shoulders, but stopped when he hissed softly. Her fingertips traced the shape of the bandage around the shoulder where she had burned him.

She moved to pull her hand away, but his own came up and pressed her against him.

“I don’t want to hurt you.” She echoed his earlier words.

“Everything you do, every way you touch me is exquisite.” He lowered his head and took her lips in a deep, dizzying kiss. One of his broad hands cupped her behind, urging her against him. His other hand stroked the aching swell of her breast. She moaned into his mouth.

The sound spurred him. He pulled the nightgown from her body in one swift, deft movement. Cool air danced over her heated flesh, yet she did not feel cold at all, not with his heat surrounding her.

He stared at her, the savagery in his gaze almost frightening. “
This
. How I’ve always wanted you. In my bedchamber. Naked.”

“I want the same.” She tugged open the robe’s sash, and pushed the garment over his shoulders and off his body. It fell in a gleaming green wave to pool on the floor.

Until that moment, they had never been fully nude together, and she was glad that they had waited until full daylight could show them everything and nothing could be hidden. Lean and hard, he radiated male strength. The perfection in his form was marred only slightly by the fresh bandages wrapped just beneath his ribs, around his shoulder, and on his hand.

Two of his injuries had come from her.

He followed her gaze to the dressings, particularly those that covered the wounds she had inflicted. His cock thickened even further, twitching high just beneath his navel, and a small bead of moisture appeared at the tip.

Slick heat flooded her. Her quim felt made of liquid fire, achy with need.

They surged together, bodies hot and tight and straining. Frustrated with the bandage on his hand, he tugged it off with his teeth, and it joined the robe and nightgown upon the floor. Then his mouth was on hers and his hands roamed everywhere, stroking her, learning her curves and hollows, all the sensitive places on her body that made her gasp when he touched them.

She found herself walking backwards until the mattress met the backs of her legs. Whit and Zora tumbled down together, his mouth never leaving hers, his long body atop hers a wonderful weight. The soft mattress cradled them as they stroked and caressed one another, fevered, lost to everything but the demands of passion.

“Zora.” Her name was a growled prayer.

She gasped when he captured her wrists and pinned them over her head. He leaned over her. Sunlight gilded him, tracing each rounded muscle, the hard line of his jaw, his parted lips. The mark of flames now completely covered his shoulder and his arm, and tendrils of flame had begun to spread across his torso. The Devil’s mark, yet it emphasized the hewn contours of his arm and the planes of his chest. With his eyes as bright and hot as burning sapphires, raw desire sharpening his face and tightening his body, he was a myth, a creature from a girl’s darkest dreams.

Light gleamed on the ring he wore at his throat, where his pulse beat fast and hard. The sight transfixed her.

He held her tightly, restraining her, and she twisted, determined to break his hold yet reveling in the strength of him. Strength that matched her own.

She could summon the fire within her and force him to release her. She did not want to. He kissed her again, possessive, and then his mouth moved hotly down her neck, over her collarbones, lower. When his lips fastened around one of her nipples, sensation arrowed through her. She arched up, wild, but he kept her pinned in place, even as he licked and sucked her into a frenzy of excruciating pleasure. And when he took her nipple between his teeth, biting down very slightly, she veered dangerously near to climax.

“Let me go,” she gasped. “I want to take you. I want you inside me.”

She felt the silken brush of his hair over her breasts as he shook his head. “Not yet.”

“
Now
. Or I’ll burn you.”

He raised up so that he stared deeply into her eyes. His skin was lighter than hers, so she saw the stain of arousal across his high cheekbones, and even on his throat and chest.

“You have burned me,” he said roughly. “Burned me to my soul.”

Her pulse throbbed in her neck and between her legs. “Whit—” She pushed against his hands holding her wrists.

“No. I have to give you pleasure.”

“You do, you will—”

“More,” he rasped. “Even more pleasure. Because when I am inside you, I won’t be able to hold back.” Dark need shadowed his face. “Do you understand? I’ll take you, Zora. Not tender and gentle, but rough. Hard.”

BOOK: Devils Kiss

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