Forsaken: The World of Nightwalkers (31 page)

She laughed, her incredulity soft and amazed. “You are so cocksure you think I’m going to say yes?”

“Well, if your answer is no, please allow me the opportunity to change your mind.”

He reached to fondle the top button of her dress, the same one with the little blue flowers, his thumb rubbing in a slow circle over it. She had practically ripped off the catsuit the minute they’d been safe at Grey’s and put the dress back on. But the suggestive swirl of his thumb on that button made her think of other things well beyond him simply taking her dress off. Faith was pretty positive she wasn’t the only one to see the suggestiveness of it. It made her knees weaken and made other parts of her perk up with interest. Slowly, very deliberately as they both watched with full attention, he slipped the first button free.

Leo looked up at her face and features. Her lips were parted, most likely to accommodate the increasing speed with which she was breathing. Her chartreuse eyes were beautiful with anticipation, and he could sense, since he could not see, a warm flush crawling across her cheeks and over her neck.

The next button came free and the way it made her breath hitch made him all the more determined to do it much slower next time.

“Please,” she begged him breathlessly when he finally got around to slipping the fourth button free. He was exposing the generous curves of her delectable breasts. The fact that he knew she was braless brought back a heated run of memories about how he had come to the knowledge in Grey’s library. But this time would be different. Very different.

“Please what?” he teased her even though they both knew what she was asking for.

“Please, Leo, put your hands on me,” she said, reaching to grab hold of his wrist and turning his hand into the open neck of her dress. Her breast was so warm, the feel of it so incredibly full and sweet, he couldn’t scold her for ruining the delicious tension that he’d been orchestrating between them.

“Do you have any other requests?” he asked her, his free hand moving to unbutton the next three buttons quickly, letting the fabric part like some kind of biblical miracle, allowing him access to both breasts and the warm expanse of the onyx black skin of her chest and belly.

“I have hundreds of them,” she said on a breathy laugh. That made him smile a seductive smile at her, his fingers sweeping and painting across her skin from one warm breast to the next.

“Good. That’s very very good.” He cupped her in both hands pressing the weight of her breast against her chest, a rough thumb scraping each nipple simultaneously to the other. She let out a low groan of pleasure and again he smiled.

“You know, I think I like this dress,” he said, pushing three more buttons out of his way. His hands swept up to her shoulders, catching the fabric of her dress and running them down her arms as he pushed it off her. Gravity played the rest of the act and the dress fell from her body and pooled like a cool blue puddle around her ankles. His fingers continued to scan lightly over her skin, from the yoke of her collarbone to her rapidly rising and falling breast to her belly just above her navel. “I find it so amazing that the only hair you have on your entire body is here.” He reached to touch the cream white of her hair at her temple.

“I could say the reverse to you,” she said, her hands reaching to pull up his shirt, pushing it up his belly and chest until he obliged her by grabbing his collar and yanking the thing off. It met the same fate as her dress.

It allowed her to run her hands freely over him, her nails scraping through the hair on his chest until she laughed a soft laugh. “I don’t think I’ll ever take this sensation for granted. It’s so new to me…so different.”

“We have a lot of differences,” he noted.

“But none insurmountable,” she dared to say as she looked straight into his eyes. “We’ve proven there’s nothing we can’t beat.”

“Yes,” he said, but it was an absent agreement. He still had his demons and it would take time for him to finish wrestling them. But she did not expect any miracles and she did not demand results before he was ready.

Leo was done discussing difficult things and he wanted the same from her. They needed to leave the difficulties of their lives behind for a little while. Or a long while, he amended as he let his eyes roam her bare body. He was definitely going to need some serious time here.

He cupped her shoulders in his hands and slowly turned her around, burning every line and curve of her body into his memory. He was good at that. Topography. He was good at remembering every hill and valley in a determined area. And as he continued to sweep memorizing fingers over every curve of her, his smile drifted away and concentration took root. He touched her. Lightly with a single finger, or heavily with both his palms…constantly he touched her. Her skin was so incredibly soft, even when it was pulled snuggly over athletic muscles. Soft and warm…and growing ever warmer. All he could hear was the rapidly changing breaths they both breathed, and the sound of his skin brushing over hers.

“Leo, please,” she said after several long minutes of letting him touch her everywhere he could immediately reach.

“Another request?” he asked teasingly as he leaned forward to whisper in her ear. “Anything specific?”

He pulled her up against himself, chest to chest once more, a hand on her backside pulling her in hip to hip as well.

“No, I…yes. Kiss me,” she said. “And then let me undress you.”

Leo took a breath trying to control the raging surge of heat that whipped through him, tried to calm the fire that seemed to scorch it’s way along the length of his erection. He needed to slow down a little…to take it slow…because just the feel of her was already making him struggle with uncontrollable impulses. He wanted this to be good for her. He wanted to make up for his dumb-ass maneuvers earlier in Grey’s library. Had that only been hours ago? It felt like days. It felt as though he had been starving for her for days.

He kissed her, her lush mouth like melting caramel that spread sweet and warm over his tongue. And once he started, he couldn’t seem to stop. Determined to have her way, however, her hands fell to his belt, grabbing hold of the leather and quickly working it free of its buckle. Before he knew it she had popped open the button to his jeans and was slowly sliding her hand down the front of his pants. Her fingers slipped around him, searing like a stripe of heat from a whip as she took his shaft in her hand.

“Christ,” he breathed into her delicious mouth as her kisses grew hot and aggressive to match her hot, aggressive caress. “Faith…oh Faith, you’re killing me,” he accused her, reaching to unzip his jeans with fumbling haste. He barely left her mouth long enough to push them down his legs, toe off his boots and kick the tangled mess of it away. It was almost impossible to coordinate it since she wouldn’t give up the touch of his mouth or the feel of his cock for even a second.

He was hauling her onto the bed in a sudden sweeping flex of strength, causing her to bounce in among the bedding. She crawled back, elbows and heels, until she was in the dead center of the thing, and he crawled with her until he was braced over her, his thighs between hers, her breasts caught between their chests. She felt so hot, from neck to ankles, and he was almost afraid to let them come into intimate contact…afraid that the simple touch of her would set him on fire and have him prematurely ejaculating all over her…just because he loved the very idea of it; the idea of painting her with the heat of his seed.

“Faith, I don’t think this is going to be very pretty,” he said in hard, punctuating words as he slid impatient fingers into the wet, eager folds of her sex. “No, not pretty at all.” He groaned at the slick, hot sensation of her around his fingers. She was so ripe. So ready. And he’d hardly done a damn thing to deserve it. “But it is going to be hot…and hard…and you won’t have an instant to wonder about how much I really, really want you. And how fiercely I’m really going to take you.”

He thrust his fingers into her, catching her gasp in his mouth. He swept his tongue into the depths of her mouth as his fingers slid into the depths of her hot, tight little channel.
Oh god,
he thought, remembering and understanding why she was so tight, why she would always feel like a woman untried.

It pushed his desire for her into an entirely new stratosphere. Waiting was necessary one moment, impossible the next. He slipped his hand free of her in order to make way for the hard length of his sex. He felt painfully ready for her, as if he’d been longing for her for years instead of the mere days…mere hours…brief moments it really had been. He slid against her, reveling in her hot gasp, swallowing it up in a fierce, needful kiss.

And once again he found himself in the same instant and dangerous need to have her at all costs, damn all the consequences. But he struggled to quiet himself a little, to think and have a care for her. Not only because he knew why she was so tight for him, but because he had to pay her the respect she deserved.

He reached for the condoms on the nightstand, fumbling with them and groaning as her legs wove around his. Her knees trapped his hips, her hips lifted and undulated in order to rub her sex along the length of his.

“Jesus, Faith, you don’t play fair, do you?”

“Mmm…no,” she admitted without any contrition. “It turns me on to watch you lose control, Leo Alvarez…because I know you don’t lose control that often or that easily.”

He laughed at that and pulled away from her just long enough to dress himself in the condom. “I might have believed that a couple of weeks ago, but I haven’t been in control for a while now.” He sent her a searing look, “especially as far as you are concerned.”

“Let’s make love,” she encouraged him on a hot breath. “I don’t want anything else to matter outside of this bed.”

“As always, I’m happy to accommodate your wishes.” They both heard him say the word “wish” and both winced at the same time.

“Don’t,” she laughed.

“Sorry. I’ll be careful.”

He found his way back to her, his mouth drifting up over her skin, pausing to toy with her berry-colored nipples, devouring her like an impatient child. Her legs wrapped around him again and he felt himself cradled up against her core. He looked down into her eyes, the beauty of passion across her features.

“God, you’re beautiful,” he ejected on a breath. “And I need to take you right now, okay?”

“I thought you’d never ask,” she said with a breathy laugh.

And with a mutual shift of their hips he began to work himself into her. She gasped when the head of his cock popped past the lip of her vagina, and then again when he thrust more deeply into her. Leo thought he would go insane if he didn’t get to the root of her. He’d never known such a need like this one. Before he could control himself he found himself lurching into her in ragged, demanding thrusts. She cried out, her back arching, lifting them both off the bed. Jesus God, she was amazing. She felt unbelievable. Tight. Hot. Wet. Everything he could possibly need. And in so many ways.

He began to thrust into her in a hard, punctuating rhythm, their bodies undulating together as if they were one being. She moaned every time he buried himself to the hilt within her, a cadence of sound that grew louder and more present, more real, with every passing instant. She was a passionate creature. He had known this all along, but to see it applied this way…

He was lost. She surrounded him in every way possible, both physically and mentally and he had no hope of extricating himself. What was more, he had no desire to extricate himself.

“Faith, you feel…” He interrupted himself to groan with a savage wave of pleasure. Then he stopped talking altogether, thrusting into her harder and faster. He wanted to demand she come for him, but he needed all of his breath and all of his focus to keep from losing himself before he was ready. He found her sweet spot. He knew it because of the way she gasped when he moved a certain way across it. It was the beginning of the end for her. He exploited that spot to its fullest, working her into a frenzy. He gloried in the feel of her hands grabbing at his shoulders, grasping at his sides. Eventually her hands rested on his ass, fingers dug in, spurring him on harder and faster.

She locked up suddenly in pleasure, clamping down on him like a vise. He felt the muscles of her vagina contracting in a rolling massage that was determined to milk him. It succeeded famously. He growled as pleasure bucked through him, release jettisoned with unbelievable force. It was as though she was ripping his soul free of its foundations and for that brief moment he thought he could imagine how it must have felt for Jackson to lose hold of his soul.

Only, Jackson never had it so good.

Faith woke up unable to tell if it were day or night at first. Probably because she didn’t really care. Leo had used her very well. Very very well. They had made love endlessly, it seemed, until neither could think about moving and they had fallen asleep together.

She lay quietly, taking account of herself and of the room around her. She was sore from head to toe, she realized. It had been quite some time since she’d had a man in her bed and she supposed she was really out of shape. Not used to it for certain. She hadn’t found it easy to take lovers in the Night Angel world. There were so many of them grasping for power and position and thinking she would be an excellent method of climbing to the top, and having been down that road before…and badly…she was cautious about letting it happen again. But Leo didn’t care about the things she might inherit one day…if she inherited them at all. Her mother or father would have to die before she’d have access to a throne. She was the eldest child for them both, her mother having birthed a son after her and her father having sired another daughter. Since she had lived with her father all of her life, she didn’t consider her mother’s throne her own. She would leave that to her brother. And anyway, she didn’t like to think about these things. She found it maudlin to consider her parent’s deaths. Inevitable as it may be, she didn’t want it to happen anytime soon at all.

She finally decided to move, lifting her head from the pillow. She rolled toward Leo, snuggling up to him and laying her ear over his heart. She listened to the low, steady beat of it and smiled.