Elijah (15 page)

“Oh, yes,” she mused absently, her hands drifting up his sides slowly. “You did do me something of a favor, did you not? You freed me to free my people.”

“I did what I had to do to stop the killing.”

“So noble,” she noted, her hands lifting away so just her fingertips skimmed his skin as she drew graceful traces over the definition of his chest, shaping pectorals, ribs, and the bumping ridges of his abdomen.

“Siena, stop,” he commanded, grabbing her hands into his, forcing them into stillness so she could not keep him off balance with the temptation of her touch. “If you want to hate me, then do so just as things are. Don’t create more reasons to despise me. We have had enough hatred between our people.”

“But I don’t hate you either, Elijah,” she insisted, again battering him with the sound of his own name. He could not understand why that affected him as it did.

Of course, her proximity and her allure did not help much.

“Then why are you acting like this?”

She stilled as she seemed to think on it. Her tongue came out to lick slowly between her lips, that erotic speculation brightening her eyes once again.

“Because I have never in my life felt this…this desire that I feel at this moment. I want to understand why that is, Elijah.” Elijah was not expecting her to lean into him so suddenly, her nose drifting across his skin as she took in a deep breath. “Why is it your scent appeals to me like no other?”

Elijah couldn’t speak to answer. The beast that was his need for her was rearing up violently within him, thrilling over the way she brushed against his body as she took in his scent. Before he could counter the impulse, he lowered his head to her throat where it curved into her shoulder and returned the action without hesitation. The smell of her was divinity. Ambrosia. She was highly aroused, and it was reflected with a heavy dose of feminine musk that bled through him like an erotic poisoning. It burned through every vessel, every nerve, releasing endorphins and blood all along his body so both would settle heavily in anticipation of her next action.

He did not resist when she pushed her hands out of his hold, the movement sending his slack hands sliding down her forearms as she reached for him. At first, all she did was drift haunting touches of fingertips over his hairline, his forehead, his nose and cheeks and chin. Without truly touching him, she cradled his head between her hands, her fingertips fluttering like the wings of a butterfly near his ears as her hands shook violently with her pent-up needs. She reached up with her mouth, her lips and breath brushing over him with sensations both there and nonexistent all at once. Elijah made an anticipatory sound of agony, low in his chest, painful conflict exploding over his pupils as she looked up into them with aching clarity of purpose. He dreaded it, longed for it, both with every fiber of his soul.

“Siena, please,” he begged one last futile time.

Then her mouth was against his and all protest faded to nothingness. She was perfect. So utterly perfect.

No woman can be so unbearably perfect…

Elijah thought this fiercely, even as he convinced himself otherwise just by leaning in to meet the lush caress of her mouth. He drew hard for a breath that might actually provide a measure of oxygen for a change, and it did so on the back of her scent and the cinnamon confection of her taste. Her lips were hot against his, and pliant beyond reason. Elijah encircled her head with his hands, drawing her up tighter into the kiss she had just barely begun, and showed her exactly
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what it was she was toying with. Part of him still hoped the intensity of it would frighten her as it had the day before.

And part of him did not.

His mouth burned fire into hers, his powerful hands pressing fingerprints into her scalp as he clutched her tightly. His hands shook as hard as hers had, and she felt the vibration from head to toe. He tried for violence, tried to frighten her with the rough, slashing intensity of his kiss, crushing her beneath his mouth, even going so far as to release a predatory growl of warning, of danger. He battered and bruised her, bit at both of her lips as he threatened to devour her like prey, tearing at her soft, vulnerable flesh with hunger and intensity.

Siena refused him any avenue of salvation, slamming her hands against his chest, thrusting her weight into a push that pressed him aggressively to the stone wall behind him, unlocking her mouth from his just long enough for her to tilt her head in the opposite direction and capture him once more. She reached boldly for the caress of his tongue, rushing into his mouth with her urgent seeking in a way that made every nerve in his body sing with pleasure. She was no virginal miss who patiently accepted only what he orchestrated. She would conduct as much as he would, and the idea of it floored him. With that change of aggression and the honesty of reaction it forced from him, she released a sound of delight and encouragement.

Discouragement fell to the wayside as he burned with the press of her body and the appetite of her mouth. She wriggled her body into his, her soft curves spreading over the hard planes of his muscles. She fit him perfectly, so tall and so elegantly shaped. He did not dwarf her, and he found that enticing beyond reason. His hands drifted to her neck and throat, slipping under her heavy hair to encircle the warmth of it. Even the collar she wore was warmed by her body heat.

Before he realized he was even attempting to do so, he had unlatched the intricate collar and it slid down the front of her body.

Siena jerked back suddenly in shock as she felt the collar abandon her throat in order to be replaced by his hands. She grabbed up the collar before it could slide down her chest and then looked from him to it in disbelief.

“That’s not possible,” she whispered, shivering as he once more closed the distance between them to nuzzle her bare neck with his mouth, his cradling hands holding her to him though she was trying to keep a specific balance to her body. She moaned at the astounding sensitivity of the area. It had not been exposed to the touch of anything but gold and moonstones for her entire lifetime.

“Put it aside,” he urged her, his tongue tracing her carotid artery up the entire length of her neck in a way that turned her legs to jelly. She gasped with pleasure, her eyes closing as he repeated the circuit in the opposite direction, adding the teasing scrape of his teeth until she was trembling with chills. Siena felt as though her entire body was moving out of her control, just as her world careened off its axis.

“Elijah, the collar…” she tried to explain, her words little more than soft pants of sound.

“Put it aside,” he commanded again, enunciating each word firmly.

Siena let it fall from suddenly nerveless fingers and tilted her head so he had increased access to her neck and throat. He made a sound of male approval that sang through her with an operatic note of delight. He was encircling her with the steel bands of his arms a moment later, lifting her up to the tips of her toes. He seized her mouth and kissed her into a state of total breathlessness and numbness of thought. She felt light and utterly feminine. He could make her forget her own strength so easily with his large, powerful hands and demanding masculine body.

Elijah lifted her off the floor, swinging her easily around until her feet touched the bed. She laughed when she found herself standing on it, looking down into his eyes. Her laughter faded the moment she realized the access their new positions allowed him to her breasts. His lips twisted into a devilish smile as he lifted his knuckles and skimmed over first one nipple, then the other, teasing until she could no longer bear the sensitivity. She was fascinated by the instant response of her body, the reactive thrust seeming erotic even to her as she watched him taunt her
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with his touch. She could barely catch a full breath as he leaned into her, nuzzling her through the fabric of her dress. The silky material seemed like nothing to him as he drew one of the points into his mouth, sucking until she thought she was going to collapse from the intense pleasure. He lifted his head away only long enough to hook the strap of the dress with his pinkie, peeling down the dampened silk until it was no longer a barrier to his mouth.

Siena cried out soulfully as his mouth, so full of wet fire, surrounded her once more, drawing her deep onto his tongue and then releasing her to pull his teeth across her teasingly. This time her knees did buckle, but he held her in place as if she weighed no more than her dress.

Elijah reveled in the taste of her, the feminine fullness of her breasts, the sensitivity of the gold-and-rose point of her nipple as he flicked his tongue over it until she made another of those sexy little whimpers of unmistakable pleasure. He sucked her deeply into his mouth when she did, and she jerked bodily against him. He felt her hands clutching at his head and shoulders, the mindless grasp of a woman lost in her bliss, and it rushed through him in ripples of tightening need.

As he tormented her with sensation, she slid against his body, feeling every contour of the sinew that was roped like bundles of steel cords over his frame. His feet were braced apart, his entire form as rock hard and rigidly set as a great stone statue. When she grasped his arms with clutching fingers, they hardly made an impression in his skin. He reeked of passion like he reeked of power, unapologetically and dominantly. This was not a man who liked to second-guess himself. He preferred to drill himself with skill and knowledge so that when the moment came, he would react with instantaneous decisiveness. That was what he had done at the mineral pool.

He had seen, wanted, and acted. Ever since then he had forced himself to rethink what had come so naturally to him in that chain of minutes.

So now he was back in his element, one hundred percent, and thrusting himself fully into what had originally felt so right. He devoured her with a voracious and passionate mouth, and all the while he was touching her long body with bold, searching strokes of his hands. He was careening down the slope of her back and backside one minute, and then dipping under the hem of the dress to splay searching fingers over the back of her thigh. He stroked upward over her satiny skin, her bottom as bare as ever beneath the dress, her flesh fitting his palm as it moved over her to the arch of her lower back, around to her belly and along her breastbone.

There was so much sensation inundating her from so many places at once that she was light-headed with her pleasure and arousal. She was searching his body with her hands, the tendrils of her hair eagerly joining the exploration. She surrounded her senses with the feel of him, burying her face in his blond curls. Muscles rippled beneath her hands, twitched as she glided over them with her sensual, searching touch.

His burning mouth came back to hers as her stimulating touch sent his body temperature skyrocketing. He released her in increments so that she slid down his body and onto the bed. He followed every inch of the way, his mouth clinging to hers as he drank deeply of that hot cinnamon flavor so unique to her. His hands braced his weight above her as he moved over her body. When she felt him settling against her, she purred with encouragement and delight. The sound struck him exactly as it had before, only this time he was going to act freely on those feelings.

Elijah instantly swept his hands under her dress, stripping it from her in a single motion that included the careless toss into the room beyond. The torrid speed of the exposure caused Siena to arch against him, bringing her hot skin in contact with his with unbelievable sensuality.

Oh, how he remembered the burning feel of her skin, how he had craved little else but a repeat of the sensation since it had originally occurred. Even then, she had been chilled by the lake water, so it paled in comparison to now. She was a sheet of seductive satin beneath him, enveloping him in the rare purity of suppleness and richness that only came from so perfect a source. Her legs slid out from beneath him until her thighs framed his hips wantonly, settling him deeper into the feel of her, fitting them together like lock and key. Elijah gripped at the
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bedding as he felt himself settle into that heated cradle of her hips, only his clothing providing an obstacle between them, an obstacle that felt like nothing, like so much wind. His fingers gripped with such pleasurable agony that they punctured the ticking of the mattress, even without a reflexive growth of sharp claws. Those lengthened into existence a heartbeat later, when she ran eager hands down the slope of his spine and over the hard muscles of his backside, clutching him to her so she could shift her hips and rub her heat against the hard length of his sex.

“Siena!” Her name was a vicious growl in his throat, but she felt the shaking of his body as he looked for restraint and control, as he fought his vulnerability to her methods of encouraging his excitement.

In return, she moved her mouth to his ear, her lips rubbing breathily over it until he shuddered, and then slowly, softly, she drew out his name. A guttural gasp hitched into the single word as she felt him moving intimately against her.

“Kitten,” he groaned from the bottom of his tormented soul, “Sweet Destiny, kitten, you feel like paradise. My paradise.”

Siena responded with a smile against his neck as her hands began searching him with flawless intimacy. She stroked strong, graceful fingers back up to his shoulders in a caress sealed tightly to his damp skin. She moved around to his chest, down his sides once more, where she paused to drink in the feel of his rapid breathing. Her fingers slid down his flank and then beneath the waistband of his pants. She felt the defined muscles of his backside tighten under her enticing touch, but she was not satisfied with only that reaction. She drew her legs up just a little farther, allowing her hands the freedom to slip around his hips and into the heat and hardness resting so close to her.

Elijah had been stroking his tongue against the vital beating of her pulse in her neck when her fingertips brushed over that sensitive part of his body. He lifted away from his tasting of her, his back arching reflexively as he swore vehemently under his breath. Siena was not disturbed in any way by this. She had never touched a man in this fashion before and she was not about to relinquish the experience too soon. She wrapped silky fingers around him, feeling with fascination as he pulsed against her palm. He shuddered from head to toe as she stroked the length of him slowly, learning his shape, his weight, and especially his sensitivity. She had never imagined that flesh could become so incredibly hard. There was heat so intense that it nearly burned the pads of her gliding fingers. Most importantly, every touch, light or firm, had him practically contorting with a pleasure that seemed to border very close to pain. Again she came to understand a single truth. Power. The power to drive him mad with just the skill and intentions of her hands.