Diana's Hound: Bloodhounds, Book 4 (14 page)

The words stirred Nate from a doze, and he reached instinctively for a body that wasn’t there. Rolling over, he found Diana curled in a chair by the window. The heavy curtains had been pushed wide, letting the delicate starlight silver skin left bare by a half-donned silk robe.

Still groggy, he lifted himself to one elbow. “What was that?”

She turned to meet his gaze. “You asked me a question.”

A moment later, it came to him.
Why do you need me?
Though the answer was as cryptic as her expression. “I let you be both?”

Diana rose and crossed the room with silent steps, but instead of sliding back onto the bed, she dropped to her knees beside it and regarded him solemnly. “Everyone else seems to need me to be simple. I’m either a bloodhound—a sexless fighter who’s good with a blade—or I’m a harmless woman who happens to spend three days a month horny as a bull with two dicks.”

He choked a little at the comparison, but managed to keep his face serene. “You’re a woman, Diana. I’ve always seen that clearly. But no, not a harmless one.”

“You don’t want me to be harmless. Helpless.” The robe slithered off her shoulders as she climbed up beside him. “You’re strong enough not to need me to be
less
.”

A smart man would have accepted the credit without arguing, but he couldn’t seem to help himself. “I don’t need you to be less, but I still need you to be safe, love. I don’t know if I can stop feeling that, even if I don’t try to hold you back.”

“I know.” She smiled and lifted his hand, turned a kiss to his palm. “You’ll have to pardon me for feeling the same way.”

Nate couldn’t stop an answering smile from curving his lips. “I’ve been protected by bloodhounds for most of my life, and none of them were half so pretty to look at. I imagine I’ll find a way to manage.”

“So what do we do?” she asked softly.

He’d lost track of the days and hours, but the new moon must have still held sway over him, because exhausted as he was, his body stirred. He wanted to be inside her, thrusting deep and listening to her scream as her nails raked his back and her orgasm throbbed around him. “I’m having trouble thinking beyond the most carnal possibilities.”

“Mmm.” Diana peeled back the sheet and walked her fingers down his chest to his stomach, then hesitated and lifted her eyebrows. “Can I?”

“Do you imagine there’s a world in which I would say
no
?”

“I don’t like to take things for granted.” Her fingers slid lower, skating over his hipbone. “Especially things as delicious as this.”

Nate tucked his hands behind his head and leaned back. “Wrap those fingers around my cock.”

“No.” She shifted on the bed until she knelt over one of his thighs, but she kept her hands out to her sides, away from him. Instead, she bent to nuzzle her cheek against his erection.

Good
God
.

“Your lips.” He barely had enough breath to form the words. “I want your mouth.”

“My tongue?” Just a whisper, the words as teasing as the slow, wet lick she circled around the head of his cock.

Warmth spiked up his spine as he shifted a hand to tangle in her hair. The visual was better than any fantasy, but the feel… “More tongue.”

Another slick rasp, this time all the way up his shaft. She did it again, moaning quietly as he fought—and lost to—the urge to tighten his fingers against the back of her head. “I like you like this.”

“Like what?” he grated. “On edge?”

“Open.” She just barely closed her lips around him in quick kiss. “Not hiding from me.”

Yes, the moon had a way of stripping away pretext. The full of it revealed the beast inside the bloodhound, but new revealed the beast inside the man.

Or woman.

Nate sprawled back against the headboard and sank his free hand into the mass of curls spilling over her shoulder. “Are you sure you want to see all of my desires?”

“I have to.” She leaned into his touch, finally closing her fist around the base of his cock.

Not hollow words. They rang with truth; she
needed
his desires the way only a bloodhound could. And with her need came an echo in his chest, the bone-deep craving to give her everything.

Bracing his feet, he pushed up into her touch. “I want to be in your mouth. I want to thrust my cock so deep, and I want you to love it.”

Diana jerked against his touch and trembled when he held tight, pulling her hair. She licked her lips, her eyes glazed and hungry. “Take it.”

So much naked, open trust. “Are you sure?”

Her tongue grazed the crown of his cock again. “Yes.”

He took her at her word and took
her
, groaning as he pressed up into her mouth. Not without control, not the first time, but her encouraging whimper drew him back for another.

Welcoming warmth and the rasp of her tongue drove thought and reason from his being, and that was before he forced open his eyes and confronted the vision of Diana with her lips sliding down his shaft as he thrust deep.

Suddenly, it wasn’t enough. Jerking at her hair, he hauled her head up. “Get up here,” he ground out. “Turn around.”

Her nails dug into his thighs. “Make me.”

So he did, lunging forward to catch her around the waist, sparing only a moment to marvel at his own speed. Every muscle in his body worked in concert as he spun her so that her back thudded against his chest.

One jerk of her hips had her on her stomach, straddling his chest, her legs spread wide. He slapped the curve of her ass. “Bend down, or I’ll hold you just like this. No touching.”

She shivered. “For how long?”

“I could admire this view for hours. Your cunt, beautiful and wet and waiting for me.”

Diana braced her hands on his legs and slowly bent forward. “Like this?”

That only improved the view. Curling his fingers around her thighs, he hauled her higher, until she trembled just short of his mouth. “Suck me,” he whispered, letting his breath feather over slick, hungry flesh. “I want to be inside you in every way I can imagine.”

“So tell me about them. Not with words.” She fisted her hand around his shaft and stroked lazily. “Can you?”

Using his thumbs, he parted her before slicking his tongue over her cunt. “You want me inside your mind, as well?”

Her breath caught. When she answered, her voice had gone husky. “I want you in me too. Every way I can imagine.”

Yes.
A thought only meant for himself, but perhaps she heard it. He put more strength behind the next one, wrapping his thoughts around hers until her mind tangled with his.
“Then take me in your mouth, and I’ll show you the rest.”

Her hand tightened for a fraction of a second before her head descended. She enveloped him in wet heat, not stopping until she’d taken him deep, almost in her throat.

The need to possess soared, and he drove his tongue into her before letting his thoughts drift across the surface of her mind again.
“Nothing has ever felt as good as this.”

Even when she jerked under his hands, even when she moaned around him, she didn’t stop. Slow at first and then faster, sucking him like she couldn’t get enough.

Pleasure tightened around him, and the only thing to do was push harder, to tongue her clit before working two fingers into her, and then three, to drown her in filthy promises as he stroked and cajoled and used every trick he’d learned of her body to push her toward the release that threatened him.

She came suddenly, her body tensing until she shuddered helplessly above him. Her choked cry vibrated around him, muffled but still loud, and she scratched his hips with her nails as she clutched him. Pulled him deep.

Control unraveled. He thrust up, knowing she could handle his pleasure, his need, knowing she could handle
him
as he gave in to release with a hoarse shout.

The world was ecstasy, a fire that subsided into gentle heat, dim and warm. Then Diana spoke, a whisper that drifted over his skin. “I think it’s almost morning.”

He could barely draw in breath to laugh. “
Which
morning?”

“The third.” She shifted, sliding off him and onto the bed. “The end of the new moon.”

Nate twisted to curl around her, drawing her to his chest with one arm around her waist. “Is this how it usually feels?”

Diana shook her head as she settled into the curve of his shoulder. “No. Everything about this has been different.”

His mind should have fixated on the mystery of it, on the scientific anomalies, but he couldn’t think past satisfaction that she hadn’t shared
this
with anyone else. “Good.”

She craned her head back and caught his gaze. “Nate, if this goes wrong…” The words hung in the air as she trailed off and shook her head again.

“It won’t,” he said firmly, pressing a kiss to her temple. “Together, we’re a perfect team.”

Diana sighed. “You make that so easy to believe.”

“Because I’m old and wise.”

“Oh yes? And what does that make me?”

Closing his eyes, he smiled. “I’m too wise to answer that question.”

“Smart man.”

It might have been the first time in his life he’d ever heard those words in a feminine voice, wreathed with exasperated affection, and the crumbling wall around his heart dissolved into smoking rubble. He drifted toward sleep with the words
I love you
in his mind and heart, but not on his tongue.

Not yet. Not until they came out the other side, safe and whole. He’d already decided which of them would assume the risk if things went badly, and he cared for Diana too much to leave her mourning another love.

Chapter Eight

Steaming water poured into the tub, but Diana still shivered. It took marble longer than copper to heat, and belatedly she wondered if that mattered to the usual occupants of the suite. Did vampires get cold? Did they run their bathwater too hot, hot enough to redden skin, just to drive away that chill for a little while?

She’d never pondered those kinds of things before. She’d never cared to.

Nate’s footsteps whispered behind her, near silent. The rattle of dishes on a tray was louder, and she didn’t need his murmured, “They brought coffee.” Not with the scent of high-quality beans, freshly ground. Nate settled himself on the bench next to the tub and smiled. “I don’t know where Jonah gets his supplies, but Ophelia would kill for coffee like this.”

“Maybe he does,” she teased. “We don’t know what kinds of things go on here in Eternity, do we?”

Nate snorted softly as he poured coffee into a mug for her. “It wouldn’t surprise me, at that, for all that he seems an almost decent sort. For a vampire.”

“For a vampire.” One with a human consort—no, that didn’t seem to be quite the right word. “What about Iris? Is she his ward or his lover? I can’t tell.”

“His ward, I think.” Once he’d handed over her coffee, Nate took his time with his own. “He doesn’t speak of her to me, and is quite deft at turning the conversation.”

He didn’t seem the sort to accidentally betray anything he hadn’t meant to share. Diana leaned against the back of the tub and grimaced at the coolness of the surface. “My friend Grace used to be like that. Wild horses couldn’t drag out her secrets.”

“But you were still friends.” Nate’s finger brushed her temple, then traced the shell of her ear. “It takes bravery and strength to care for someone who has closed herself away from others.”

“It takes bullheadedness,” she corrected. “Sheer, dogged—sometimes ill-advised—obstinacy.”

“You have that.” He swept his thumb down her throat with a smile. “I’m a lucky man.”

Diana tilted her head back and closed her eyes. The madness of the new moon had receded, but her instantaneous, electric response to his touch lingered. “Nate.”

“Am I a lucky man, Diana?”

The careful question mirrored her turmoil so closely that her eyes snapped open to meet his. “I don’t want it to end,” she whispered. “But I wonder if it will once we’re back to our everyday lives.”

“Maybe.” His gaze was shadowed. Unfathomable. “Maybe it
should
, for your sake. I can’t offer a woman much of a life while I’m trapped in the basement.”

The words chilled her more than the cold tub. Goose bumps rose on her arms, and she rubbed them away. “Do you want to offer me one?”

Nate withdrew his hand. “If I did, I wouldn’t be a man worthy of you.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“Isn’t it?” He sighed and looked away. “I’m sorry. I’m out of sorts this morning. I spoke to Jonah when he brought the coffee. He’s arranged a meeting, one that may answer many of our questions.”

Diana waited for the sting of rejection, but it didn’t come, just a curious numbness that gave her the detachment to sound almost calm. “The rogue hound?”

“I believe so. The auctioneer said he had someone who wanted to verify the legitimacy of our claims. Another bloodhound would be able to sense what you are.”

“Or a vampire who decided to risk a nibble.”

Nate’s jaw tightened. “I made it clear
that
was not an option.”