by Elise Jae
Devouring her would be for me. This is for her.
I sigh against her skin, letting my breath warm her already heated core, and she moves beneath me.
Wanting.
But I can’t give it to her just yet. I need to pace myself.
Pressing my lips to her other thigh, I shift, moving so I have better access, so I know I’m not accidentally going to wind up crushing her legs.
Her chest rises and falls as she watches me, as she waits. When she bites her lip, I smile against her skin, knowing how easy it would be to give her an orgasm and be done. But I’m not just trying to get her off.
I’m trying to convince her to give me all of her, to trust me… and this is just a part of that.
I cover her with my mouth.
She tastes perfect.
But that’s all I get right now. Just this taste.
And a touch.
Spread open to me as she is, I could do anything I choose.
Flicking her clit with my tongue, hold tighter to her hips as they buck beneath me.
The movement reminds me of how she might look on top of me, riding my cock.
Dragging a finger along her, I swallow as she shivers. I press into her, trying not to imagine it’s another part of me, but she’s not ready, not even for that yet.
I pull her closer to the edge of the sofa and cover her again, using my tongue to tease where my fingers won’t yet fit.
Using those fingers to rub and swirl at her clit.
I’ve waited for this, for her, for nearly a year. I’ve wanted her for so long… I’m honestly surprised I haven’t devoured her whole.
But Margot was very clear on the rules. And I know no one else has had her since her bondmate’s death.
No matter how much I want her, making sure she’s ready to have me is more important.
So I feast.
My cock is already twitching against my pants again. Struggling with the biological imperative to be inside her in the most binding way.
I fight that compulsion, by paying more attention to the way she moves beneath my tongue.
Pulling away, just to catch my breath, I slip one finger in again, testing her. She’s tight, but not so tight I need to stop there, on my next stroke, she rocks into me. Exactly as I’d hoped.
She’s so responsive.
Whether that’s because it’s been so long, or—and my pulse quickens at the idea—whether it’s me she’s been waiting to do this for, I don’t know.
Honestly, I don’t really care. I’ve dreamed of doing this for so long….
She tastes like woman, her skin is warm on my cheeks, her pussy warmer on my tongue.
Finger buried inside her, I stroke, wanting to pull that sugared bliss from her lips.
Grazing my teeth over her clit, I—
Her gasp is sharp, and her pelvis flinches away from me. I drag in a breath as I look up her naked body.
She got herself so close while her mouth was on my cock.
Still…
“If you want me to stop—”
“I don’t.”
“—at any point. Just say.”
She nods and it shakes her whole body, moving her on the finger still inside of her. The finger that slides freely now.
Dipping down to press a kiss to her, I pull my hand away, just enough to realign myself. And this time, I press in two.
She moves on me, pulling away to press back down on my fingers, pushing me deeper inside of her.
Watching her face up the length of her body, I see the bliss as it begins to haze her eyes.
Her hands grip the cushions, and each breath presses her breasts a little higher.
Releasing her hips, I reach up her, needing to touch them. Needing to feel the softness of her.
Wanting to take them in my mouth as I take her with my cock.
“Fuck, D.” She spreads her legs wider, wiggling as though she might get closer to me than she already is. “I want so many things I can’t have.”
“I’ll give you anything.”
But I’d start with an orgasm.
She bucked as I pressed my thumb to her clit, rubbing her harder, more roughly traced circle.
I slip my hand under her hip and lift her closer to my lips. I want her to come, and I’m not going to stop until...
Arching off the couch, she screams as she comes apart. Not the name my maker had given me, but what she called me from the start.
Her shattering cry echoes off the glass and my cock stiffens back to full attention. She’ll be the death of me, if I let her.
I pull my fingers free slowly. The pulsing vise of her diminishing orgasm makes it difficult.
She’s still shaking as she comes down and I keep fucking her with my tongue, lapping her up. I’m not done yet.
“That was…”
I lick her again in one long stroke and she flinches—still sensitive from before.
“If I get two, you get two.”
There are feelings I can’t put into words. I bite my tongue to keep them in, and it stops me from saying any of a dozen things I might have.
This time, I press three fingers into her, stretching as I work her open. Eyes closed, she’s bites her lip, but her moans escape as I curl my fingers, stroking.
Her sigh is a harsh curse that turns into a sharp mewl.
The sound drives through me like a spike of pure lust.
I can’t take the pressure anymore. Shifting her so that my shoulders support her legs, I spare one hand. Reaching down to free my aching cock, stroking myself as though my hand was her mouth all over again.
I flick her clit with my tongue as she tightens around my fingers. I tighten my hand around my cock.
Her pussy would be a vice on me, and I want to line myself up.
Want her to beg me to take her.
Fuck.
I need to come. Quick.
But Kimba comes first.
I hold onto her hip in one arm, her leg hiked over my shoulder, and with the other, I stroke myself, watching the beautiful bliss washing over her face again.
I want to see it every day.
Every morning when we wake, and before we go to sleep.
I want this—her—always.
When her face softens, the last of those waves crash over her. The tide of her passion ebbing, I kiss her one last time, and set back on my heels… trying to decide if I should finish here, or leave her.
I don’t have a chance before she presses up onto her elbows.
She sees me and shoots me a halfhearted glare. “Naughty.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll take care of it.”
No,” the words are a breath, and she shoves me back, sliding to the floor to once again take me in her mouth.
She pulls back, her soft laughter caressing me. “I could get drunk off your come.”
Working my cock with her mouth, watching me from where she sucks, her mouth is pure molten pleasure.
A sigh, painted in disappointment, brushes against my wet skin. “I want to fuck you so badly.”
I doubt I was meant to hear it, but it’s the tipping point.
She takes me into her mouth and I come—harder than I ever remember doing before—and she drinks me in. Pulling back, only when I’m finally done. She licks the tip of me, and hums… like a content, purring cat.
I reach for her and drag her up my body.
We’ve lain like this so many times before, but not here… not with her naked and me all but. It’s wholly familiar and foreign. And I want to stay like this until all the light fades from the sky. Feeling her beside me as our bodies cool.
“Someday, I’ll have you. Someday, you’ll come apart on my cock. Someday, your pussy will be full of me. But not until you're ready to give every part of yourself to me.”
FIVE
KIMBA
Six hours later, and I’m staring at the information scrolling across the enormous screen in D’s war room.
After we cleaned up, I put o
n real clothes, and he fed me.
He shifts on the other side of the room, shirtless, and I have to force myself to focus. The paths my mind travels down….
One of the men who tried to contract me in the early days flashes across the screen. And a doubt percolates in my mind.
There’s always a possibility this is about me.
Not him.
Luther comes to mind.
I don’t even know how many times I’ve turned him down. How long has it been since I was the one who spoke to him when he leveled a request?
Luther is definitely the sort of guy who would find a way to dig into my past and find out what I’ve done.
But does he have the connections to get those men, or men like them, to come after me?
The fact that I’m considering him is the exact reason I never let him alone in a room with me.
It’s ridiculous. Luther is an accountant, not a killer. But he’s never tried to hide the fact that he has money… more of it than any one man would need.
Margot suggested he’d gotten that money in… worrying ways.
I shook the thought away. It was ridiculous.
Even if Luther wanted D dead because of me, he wouldn’t want it done in a way that would incriminate me.
Still, the thought is too strong in my mind when D stops his present search, and I mention it, almost without thinking.
D’s brow crumples for half a heartbeat before it smooths again, and he nods.
“I thought you were going to tell me it was ridiculous.”
Shrugging, he scowls at the keys in front of him. “If he was stupid enough to think killing me was a good option, I can think of a few reasons he’d want you to be the one who did it. Or at least the one they could blame.”
I couldn’t. “Like what?”
“If you were on the run, I would do everything to keep you safe. Like I am now…. He could have planned to sweep in, whisk you away somewhere where you wouldn’t be caught and use your fugitive state as a way to keep you in line.”
“That’s a little farfetched.”
“He might want to punish you for being taken, just as much as he wanted to punish me for taking you.”
“I was never his.”
“I know. But human men aren’t the only ones who can become…. incorrectly possessive of women.” He stretches his neck and the tense muscles of his shoulders shift. “I think… we should take a drive. Ask some questions.”
The sooner we can get answers, the better.
He sets an auto search function, gets dressed, and then bundles me up in a jacket that fits me with suspicious perfection and into his car. Part of me wants to argue, my car is nicer, but I don’t know these roads and there was a heavy snowfall last night.
It makes for a beautiful drive into the city. D doesn’t say a word from the time we get in the car until we’ve reached the city limits, but it’s an easy silence, and I don’t have anything to say either.
The drive is calming.
The oddity that awaits us isn’t.
The parking lot at Margot’s is empty. Not a single light flashes on the sign, or on the building’s walls.
The roof is dark.
“What the hell?”
Drift holds my hand, locking me in place. “Margot’s inside.”
He doesn’t let me go.
Not yet.
He scans the parking lot again, and his brows dip in confusion. “There’s no one else here….”
And there should be.
Three o’clock in the afternoon, any day of the week, Margot’s should be packed.
“We need to go in and see what happened.”
D looks like he’s going to ask me to stay in the car, so I open my door before he has the chance.
An empty parking lot isn’t the eerie part by itself, it’s the lack of lights.
Those are on all day, every day.
Without them….
The front door isn’t locked, and D gets ahold of me before I can drag it all the way open.
“I go first.”
Some things aren’t worth arguing, so I step aside and follow quick on his heels, my hand tightly clasped in his. But there’s no danger here, just more eerie silence.
Margot knew we’re here. If she didn’t see us pull into the parking lot, the front door triggered a sensor.
She pops out of the employee-side door shaking her head. “You could have picked a better night to visit. “
“What happened.” D asks the question a moment before I can.
“Guy came in yesterday. Wanted to see you dance—your disappearance has been the talk of the club—when he found out you weren’t on stage, he nursed his heartache at the bar, then threw a stool at one of the other patrons.” She nodded toward a hole in the wall. “Couldn’t have picked a better spot. Killed our power for six hours. I closed down for tonight to get everything sorted out.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. His fault anyway you cut it. Besides, it’s nice to have a night off.”
She looked sharply at D. “Since I have you here. You can help me with a little heavy lifting”
Leading the way into the back, Margot points at a new PA. “Take that to the front of the stage, please.”
D shoots her a long suffering glance, but does as he’s asked.
Margot holds me back.
“I figured you’d show up at some point.” She brushes back my hair and runs her thumb over my lower lip. “Just thought it’d be to pick up your things when you knew a baby was on the way.”
I slant her a warning look.
“Please tell me you’re not still making that poor man wait.”
She curses under her breath.
“I watch men profess their love for the women who work here on a daily basis. I know when they’re lying. I know when they think they’re telling the truth, but aren’t. And I know when a man has fallen for a woman and will do anything it takes to stay by her side… even if he doesn’t think he’s ever going to get between her legs.”
Margot rolls her eyes. “You two are fated, girl. Do you think I would have let just anyone alone in a room with you?”
No, I didn’t. Which was part of the reason I’d let myself be alone in that room with him.
“That man is in love with you. And you better figure out real fast whether or not you love him too. Because he’ll take you either way. But I don’t want to see you again until you know.”
I could argue with her all day, but it would get us nowhere. “We didn’t come here so you could lecture me.”
“And you didn’t come to use one of my rooms, so…”
“I need Luther’s info.”
She stares at me, her face void of all emotion. “That is possibly the last thing I expected you to say.”
D rejoins us and he’s dusting off his hands as he says, “I know she told you what’s going on. He’s not an overly likely suspect, but it’s better to knock him off the list than ignore him.”
“You have more access to things like that than I do.”
“True, but we don’t know if Luther is his real name.”
She laughs. A small, flinch of a movement and a puff of breath. “No, no you wouldn’t.”
It takes her a moment to scribble his name and address on a bar napkin—why she had that memorized, I didn’t know. When she hands it over to D, it’s with a grimace and she doesn’t look at me when she finally says something.
“He wanted Kimba in an unhealthy way. So, I have no doubt he would do something stupid if he thought it would get her. But from what she told me about the men who want you dead…. Luther doesn’t have the intelligence, or the resources to make that happen.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.” Glancing at me, D turns for the door.
I let him go, let him ensure that it’s safe, because I know arguing isn’t going to get me anywhere. But when I turn to follow after him, Margot catches me with a glare.
“Promise me one thing.�
��
I raise a brow, not willing to commit to anything until I know what I’d be signing up for.
“Promise me you’ll seriously consider giving that man what he wants. Because I think it’s what you want too. You’re just too afraid to take the risk again.”
I didn’t know what to say to that.
And I didn’t have a chance to give her an answer.
She shoved me out the door.
Literally.
*
It’s not a long drive to the—very fancy—address Margot gave us.
The neighborhood isn’t too far from where Edan and I lived.
Luther wasn’t joking when he said he had money. His house is exactly what you’d expect from someone who wants you to know it.
But we’re not here so I can judge him for the tasteless fountain his front walk weaves around. I have to push those thoughts aside as D rings the bell.
It doesn’t take long for the massive wooden door to open, and a small man with pinched features glares at us. But he’s quickly pushed aside as Luther rushes to the threshold.
Luther looks like he hasn’t slept in days. His usually impeccable shirt is rumpled, his hair is a mess, and his eyes are bleary. Like we’ve woken him up just as he’d fallen asleep for the first time in seventy-two hours.
He blinks when he sees me, but he doesn’t have a chance to say whatever flashed across his mind before he looks up.
D is behind me. A menacing sian shadow, and Luther actually takes a step back.
He’s big.
Drift is bigger.
And I know that it shouldn’t be funny
But it is.
I’m amused as hell, but I force myself to stop smiling. He needs to be intimidated. And if I’m laughing at him. He’s not going to know what I’m here to do. He won’t get the point.
Not that he ever had before.
But a girl can hope.
And hope is all I’m going on right now.
Because he might be the first option, but it’s a long shot. One I don’t know how to account for.
If he was any weaker of a suspect, he’d be a plastic bag.
“Luther,” I say as a hasty greeting. “This is Drift, head of the Shadow Zone Brotherhood. We have some questions.”
Behind me, I feel D shift. Just enough to touch me. “I know who you are.”
Luther swallows, looking from him, back to me. “I’m glad you’re alright, Kimba. After what happened at Margot’s… she wouldn’t tell me anything about how you were, or where you were.”
