Rock Hard And Wet (BBW Paranormal Romance) (Nymphs Of New York) (6 page)

When Callie eased into deep sleep, he slipped away from the soft
curve of her body and tucked the destroyed bedding in tight to her. No reason
for her to get cold while he dealt with Booker. The air conditioning might give
her a chill without him there to warm her.

He gave himself a mental shake. Worry
for a female of another species who shouldn’t even be here? Stupid.

Some members of the aerie would tell him
he’d always been ruled by his cock when it came to females. But none of them
mattered anymore. They’d shunned him. Only his brother dared speak to him in public.
The ones who didn’t believe he deserved the punishment he’d received were too
afraid of being outcast themselves to approach.

Once upon a time, he’d thought them
cowards—before the long years of being trapped and frozen in his hunting form,
transported from one building to the next, unable to do nothing but watch and
listen.

Now he understood their fear. How much
loneliness and living outside the lines cost.

A satisfied Callie slept soundly, he
checked the deadbolt on the door and the window locks in the other rooms. No
human could enter the apartment from a window unless they rappelled down from
the roof. The reinforced door and frame were strong enough to protect her from
all but a small battering ram.

A supernatural being could gain entry,
but with Booker on the roof, only the boldest would dare try to enter his
apartment.

Nothing left to do but change and start
the long climb up. Once he would have flown, but that option had been torn from
him centuries ago. Still, he felt his missing wings when he transformed. He
still flexed and folded the phantom limbs, could still beat them in the breeze.

The roots in his back muscles twitched
and spasmed under the specialized cement bandaging. It blended in with his
skin, part of the natural camouflage of a grotesque in their human form. The
rents in his flesh only showed when he changed.

However, the sensation that part of his
body was missing never left him. It had taken weeks after he awoke from being
frozen to adjust his balance and learn to walk without the weight of his wings
on his back.

He strode to the sliding glass doors,
slid them open, and stepped outside. Once assured no one would spot him, he
changed into his hunting form. Tingles continued to spark over his skin as the
magic faded and he shook his head, the living stone of his mane swishing. He
flicked his tail to the side a few times and stretched, digging his claws into
the metal grating beneath his feet.

His back legs accepted his body weight,
and he hooked his claws into the stone wall of the building well above the top
of the doors, climbed a few feet to get his back legs into the stone, and then
shuffled to the side to clear the bottom of the balcony above. In this form,
Theo was much larger than a typical male lion—fifteen feet long from his fore
legs to his rump, with a five foot tail whose tuft hid a sharp spine he’d used
in more than one battle as a deadly weapon.

When he’d still had his wings, he’d been
a truly fearsome creature.

It took a few minutes to crest the top
of the building and hop to the roof in silence. He weighed in at several tons,
but his magic allowed for absolute silence, even while engaged in battle.

Booker crouched on the far wall,
crushing stone between his palms. The sound of the rocks grinding into dust
reached Theo’s ears. He laid them back against his head and growled.

The other male rose to his full nine
foot height and snapped his wings out, then furled them tight to his back. He
turned, his irises hazed over with red, a sure sign of fury.

“You dare endanger us
again over a female, Theo?”

His hunting form made human speech
impossible, so he responded on the common telepathic link Booker used. He knew
the male meant for all the aerie to hear their conversation.

“I endanger no one.
My life means nothing to the aerie. I am shunned.”

Booker snarled, splayed his hands so
that his claw tipped hands glinted in the moonlight.

“Trouble follows when
you mate with those outside our species. You know that. A nymph? One of
Poseidon’s whores? Even I did not believe you had fallen so far.”

“She is no whore.”
The deep well of
anger in his gut churned and boiled. All the feelings he kept stuffed down and
contained threatened to explode.
“And I am nothing to you and yours. You
have all made that clear. I have no wings. No people. You have no right to
address me as though I am still under the aerie’s rule.”

He’d told Callie and Petra he was the
guardian of this neighborhood…and he was. But only because the members of the aerie—some
of them old friends and relatives—tolerated his presence. The Elders regarded
him with a sort of disgusted amusement.

Even after his long centuries of
confinement, Theo still wanted to be near the others of his kind. Close to his
twin. To leave would break something inside him even the loss of his wings and
shunning hadn’t been able to touch.

The other male moved faster than he
could track, and Theo cursed himself for failing to train harder since he’d
awoken. The speed of the attack surprised him. Booker’s long, hooked nose
collided with his, the enormity of his wing span blotting out the few stars
bright enough to break through the light pollution above the city. Four inch talons
swiped down Theo’s abdomen, gouged their way into his flesh.

Few things could harm a grotesque—the
magic that brought stone to life protected them from fire, projectiles, even
bullets rarely did more than cause shallow wounds that healed in minutes. They
experienced pain, but it faded quickly. However, when attacked by a member of
their own race, their magic did little to protect them.

Theo lashed out with his hind legs, fire
jetting from his mouth into Booker’s face. The flame didn’t harm him, but it
provided a distraction and allowed Theo to grasp the male’s arms with the claws
in his fore paws and throw him aside.

The wound on Theo’s gut seeped blood,
but was shallow and ended in his muscle tissue. He ignored the pain, rolled to
his feet, and charged, knocking Booker off balance and to his knees. The tried
to stab him in the eye with the spine in his tail, but the smaller male wrapped
Theo’s tail in one fist. Instead of protecting his throat and face from Theo’s
jaws, he angled his free hand into position and speared his claws into Theo’s
back.

A blaze of pain erupted and burned
through him when Booker’s razor sharp talons broke through the cement covering
the wound where his wing had been. He screamed and dropped to the side.

The smaller male pressed his advantage,
released Theo’s tail, and straddled his back, plunging his claws into both
rents in his back.

“This is what you
are. Weak. Pathetic. Ruled by emotion.”

Theo convulsed, overcome by pain. He
tried to crawl forward, but Booker twisted his hands around the nubs still
encased in his back muscles. Theo flopped to the rooftop.

“Get rid of the girl,
or even the tenuous hold we allow you on the aerie—this apartment, your
brother, all of it—will be gone. You’ll be at the bottom of the Hudson until
you finally turn to solid stone.”

The weight on his back disappeared.
Moments later, the grit of new crushed stone being mixed with his blood began
to tattoo through him—Booker, closing his wounds. The threat of being dumped at
the bottom of the river was a real one. Booker made it on the common path used
by all members of the aerie. He could feel them, out there, the other grotesques
in the city as they listened in.

They kept their emotions clamped down
tight, betraying nothing of what they thought of Booker’s statements.

“It surprises me
still that you learned nothing from your Censure. That human girl you were so
enamored of died not long after you were punished. Do you know why?”

Old memories flooded him. He’d never
asked what happened to her, the sweet peasant girl whose love he’d valued above
everything else. One night he’d heard her screams and struggled against the
magic that contained and trapped him on the church roof. For all his frantic
despair, he’d been unable to go to her.

“It was your fault,
Theo. You made the choices that led to her death. Your lack of vigilance on
patrol led to your punishment. You followed your cock and neglected your
duties. She was left unprotected.”

Booker hauled him up by the scruff of
the neck and shook him. His hind legs dangled on the ground.

“Someone else should
have been patrolling that part of the city, regardless of my punishment.”

“Someone? Your
brother.”

Theo shook his head in denial. No, Logan
would not allow an innocent to die. Not on purpose.

“He let her die
because I ordered it so. He bore witness to the elimination of your
transgression. All you had to do was stay away from her. But you were selfish.
Enamored. She could have had babies and gotten fat. Grown old with a husband.
Instead, she was raped and dumped in a sewer.”

He swiped his paw at Booker’s face and knew
the movement was impotent and useless before he was halfway through the arc of
the swing.

“You cannot protect
anyone. You’re a failure, Theo. Get rid of the female. If you keep her for even
one more day, she will die.”

“Are you going to
kill her?”
Fear for Callie burbled to the surface, overshadowed his grief
for the lost girl he’d loved so many years before.

“No.”
Booker dropped him.
“You
are.”

Weak, morning sunlight created a rectangle of warmth on the lower
half of the bed. Callie rolled over and sat up when she realized the empty half
of the bed was cold. Nothing new there. A man hadn’t shared a bed all night
with her in—didn’t matter. A long ass time.

A small spark of hurt lit and died
before she let it catch fire. Theo hadn’t made her any promises. Hell, she
hadn’t promised him anything either.

Strips of bedding twined around her legs
and abdomen. She kicked her legs and used her feet to push it down and off. “Theo?
Hello?”

The silence of the apartment surprised
her. Only the hum of the refrigerator and various electronics met her ears.

A quick walk through the rooms revealed
she was indeed alone. The remains of her skirt lay discarded on the bathroom
floor. If she turned it to the side, put the worst rent in the fabric so that
it came up to her hip instead of to the tops of her thighs it might cover
enough for human decency.  Eh, why bother? She tossed it into the trash can in
the kitchen. The pretty scarf had survived, but not her tank top. Theo was hard
on clothes.

After a quick shower to bolster her
spirits, she retrieved the notebook sized sketch book from her bag and a
cellophane wrapped package of charcoals. The soft black sticks made for messy
drawing, but right now she wanted messy. Blurry lines and shadow. The angle of
the rising sun put the hour well before seven o’clock. Seating herself before
the sliding glass door in the bedroom with her supplies, she forgot about
Poseidon, Theo, mates, and deadlines. Only lines, windows, flowers, cars, and the
people beginning to move through their apartments across the alley mattered.

Art let her simplify life, keep it contained
and as clear or obscure as she liked.

Petra had rolled her eyes and snorted
when she insisted on stopping at the art supply store. What had started as a
hobby long ago for Callie had grown into something close to addiction and
obsession. The other nymphs had long grown tired of posing for portraits.
Admittedly, she could draw them all from memory.

A young human woman crossed behind the
set of windows directly across the way, her attention focused on the infant
resting its head on her shoulder. She appeared to sing a song, holding a mug in
her free hand and walking with a rocking sway to her gait.

Callie shook her head and returned to
using her thumb to smooth the shadow at the left side of the landscape she’d
quickly sketched. Babies weren’t on her agenda.

More lines and shadow took shape on the
page, and she paused to study the sketch she’d produced. A well of emptiness
opened in her chest and threatened to overtake her. The charcoal snapped into
two tiny, unusable pieces.

She ripped the paper from the sketch
book and crumpled it into a ball, dissatisfied with the line angles of the
buildings. It bounced off the glass and rolled under the bed. Cellophane
crinkled as she retrieved a new piece of charcoal and sketched a few sweeping
lines across the blank page.

The soft concussion of air and vibration
of footsteps moving toward her alerted Callie to Theo’s return. She used a hard
white pencil to add highlights to the portrait that had consumed her attention
for the last two hours.

He halted at the end of the bed, his
boots visible in her peripheral vision. Neither of them spoke.

She set the sketchbook on the floor to
her left and put her palms into the small of her back, pushed her chest out in
a stretch. A half dozen landscapes scattered across the floor in a rough
semi-circle around her. Theo retrieved one and sat on the floor next to her.

He held it by the edges and studied it,
careful not to marr the easily blurred and smudged medium she’d used to create
the art. After a few minutes, he set it aside and chose another.

This one focused on the skyline as far
right and left as she could see from the bedroom. Only the rooftops. Another
traced the line of the alley below, held quick-drawn people striding down the
sidewalk.

When he’d looked over each discarded
piece, he held his hand out, palm up, and waited. Her heart beat accelerated
and she licked dry lips. Picking up the book was easy; she’d had her fingers
curled around the edge for the last few minutes, waiting for him to ask to see
the final piece she’d worked.

Callie moved to stand, but he stilled
her with one hand on her thigh. “You work quickly.”

The rough rumble in his voice surprised
her. She peeked at him from beneath her lashes. Dark stubbled coated his cheeks
and chin. Darker circles marred the skin under his eyes.

“Yes.” The cool temperature of his
fingers on her skin began to seep into the muscle. “Where—” she began, and then
decided to rephrase her question. She didn’t think she had any right to ask
about his absence. “You look tired.”

“A little.” The large blunt tip of his
pinky came within a millimeter of the portrait. “You put the scars in.
Otherwise, I’d think this was Logan.”

“The scars are a part of you. I didn’t
know a grotesque could scar.” The weight of his hand surprised her when she lifted
it from her leg to chafe the skin in her palms.

“We can scar. If the circumstances are
right.” He took a deep breath and passed the book back to her, forcing her to
drop his hand.

She wanted to ask what “circumstances”
meant, but didn’t. “Why would you think it’s Logan?”

 “Because I look happy.”

She frowned and closed the front cover
of her sketch book, bit her lower lip, and frowned. “This is how I see you.”

Tugs on her hair caught her attention,
and she swiveled her head to take in his profile. Deep furrows crossed his
forehead, the corners of his lips drawn down. He’d buried the fingers of his
left hand in her hair and combed his way to the bottom. Even though she’d
showered hours before, the underside was still damp. Letting it air dry let the
natural waves come to life in the strands. If she used her control over water
to force the molecules from her hair, she could tame the locks it into a stick
straight mass. This morning, she’d been so focused on her art she’d forgotten
about drying her hair.

“I got those scars because a bomb
exploded near the building I was perched on, and shrapnel hit me in the face.”
He grasped her shoulder and caressed it with his thumb. “I was helpless to do
anything to help the humans… It was part of my punishment.”

A shudder racked his frame and traveled
through his hand into her shoulder. The London Blitz. So many had died, and for
him, a naturally protective male, to be forced to do nothing...

Callie set her book aside and clambered
over his legs until she sat on his lap facing him. Grey sparks lit and died in
his eyes, moving through his irises in lazy spirals. He barely breathed. She
coiled her arms around his back, legs around his waist, and laid her head on
his shoulder. There was nothing she could think to say to ease his pain. Even
the curiosity to know what he’d been punished for was squashed in the face of
his torment. Every muscle in his body rigid, his hands fisted on his knees,
Theo trembled every now and then but didn’t make a sound.

She made circles on his back with her
palms, eventually moving them under the lower hem of his shirt so that they had
skin on skin contact. The bristly stubble on his jaw poked her lips, but she
kissed him anyway, pressed her mouth to his neck and face, offering comfort
with her acceptance. If her body could help heal the open wound of his heart,
she’d gladly give it.

When she reached his mouth, he released
a strangled cry and wrenched his face to the side. Instead of following, she
changed direction and gave her attention to the column of his neck and ears.
The huge muscles in his back provided a landscape she didn’t think she’d ever
tire of exploring.

A thought exploded out of the place
she’d tried to ignore all morning. When she’d first begun the sketch of his
face, she hadn’t realized the feelings growing in her heart, despite the long
moments the day before in bed. It’d been easy to dismiss this morning when she
woke up alone.

Two days left.

None of this had been in her plans.
Seducing Theo presented a challenge, and she’d taken it. Now, she knew she had
a new hurdle to overcome—convincing him that the fun-loving nymph he’d brought
home for no-strings-attached sex would be the perfect lover and mate for him.
For forever.

She returned to his jaw and worked her
way over to his mouth. The tight line of his lips would discourage a less
determined conqueror. Nibbles, licks, probes of her tongue failed to make
progress. Her palms strafed over his back, higher than before, until she
encountered something rough and sticky high on his shoulders.

He cried out in pain and crushed her to
his chest. Hot liquid surged out of his back and across her flesh.

“Theo, what’s wrong with your back?” She
extracted one of her hands and stared at it in horror. Blood coated her fingers
and palm, racing down in a thin rivulet to her wrist.

He clutched her tighter and shook his
head, the iron hard brace of his arms caging her in. Yet, for all his power, he
did not harm her. Somehow, he controlled his body and the obvious urge to bury
his pain in the press of their flesh.

“Please tell me what happened.”

“It’s an old injury that reopened last
night.” His gruff whisper caressed her ear.

A shiver chased over her skin when he
took her lobe between his lips and sucked on it.

“We need to bandage it.” Oh gods, it had
to have something to do with that other grotesque he’d mentioned. The one on
the roof.

“No.” He licked his way to the top of
her ear and pulled back far enough to gain the space necessary to claim her
lips in a deep kiss.

All thought fled her mind, drowned in the
texture of his tongue on hers, and the span of his hands as he cupped her
breasts.

Theo shifted and stood, cradled her body
to his, and placed her on the bed without breaking contact. He broke away,
stripped his shirt off, and shoved his jeans down and stepped out of them.
Callie drank in the sight of his chiseled form, took her time memorizing every
thin white line of scar tissue, and devoured the hollows and dips of his
muscles. The longer she looked, the harder his cock became until it stood
nearly straight up.

“Damn. All this for me?” She pushed up
until her weight rested on her elbows and smiled at him. “I’m not sure I’m
worthy.”

The silver-grey swirls appeared in his
eyes. He put one knee on the bed and crawled up with feline grace. “Guess
you’ll have to prove yourself, Nymph.” The heat of his mouth trailed from the
arc of her foot, over her calf, up to the back of her knee.

Callie giggled, his beard stubble
tickled where it rubbed over her skin. He licked his way up her inner thigh and
held her firm. She laughed harder and squirmed. One arm pinned her down by the
abdomen, the other her thigh, and he descended on the crease where her torso
and leg met. Blunt teeth nibbled over the valley of flesh until she was ready
to beg him to move to the right and use his teeth on the throbbing ache in her
pussy.

“Theo, please. No more. I can’t take
it,” she panted.

He flicked her one last time with his
tongue, released her belly, and used both hands to push her thighs up and back.
The rough, callused skin of his palms strafed down, and his thumbs parted her
lips. He leaned down and licked her from bottom to top in one long swipe.

“Maybe I should go shave. I don’t want
my beard to rub you raw.”

She met his gaze down the length of her
body and thought about kicking him. Then a trickle of blood ran over his left
ribcage and a tiny drop of blood hit her leg. No, he needed joy, happiness, and
fun. Things she considered her specialty.

“Well, if you do, I’ll be forced to take
care of things here myself.” She reached one hand down and sank two fingers
into her wet channel, and then spread her cream over her clit. “It’s not nearly
as fun alone, but I think I can manage.”

His attention zeroed in on the tease, so
she did it again. This time when her fingertips collided with her swollen nub,
the pleasure brought her hips off the mattress.

“Again.” The sensual rub of his thumbs
on her parted lips increased as he moved them up and down in time with her
strokes.

“Like this?” She parted her fingers and
purposely avoided her clit. He growled, and when she moved her hand down again,
he caught it and sucked her fingers into his mouth. When he released them, he
sucked her nub into his mouth, and the rumbling purr she’d heard before
vibrated through her whole body.

The flat of his tongue laved over her,
the sound’s intensity increased, and she bucked against his mouth, screaming
her orgasm.

“Theo—oh gods.”

He swept her ass up off the bed with
both hands and held her tight to his mouth, continuing the merciless assault
until she came again.

“Open your eyes, Callie.”

When she cracked her eyelids, Theo
covered her body with his, and wiped his face in the bed covers next to her
head. He caressed her temple, and she used his hair to tug him down for a kiss.
The hard heat of his cock prodded at her entrance. She shifted, grasping him by
the base to guide him inside.