Tyr

by JC Andrijeski

He let out another of those heavy groans, pinning her wrists to the leather.

  She felt him lose control.

  His eyes closed. His whole body seemed to grow liquid.

  He slid into her sensually, slower, deeper, and she could no longer talk to him.

  She panted, back arched, hips straining up against him as he held her there. He ground into that sweet spot again and she lost it, winding her legs around him tighter.

  He slowed down, going slower, slower… excruciatingly slow, fucking her harder, deeper, his eyes turning glassy.

  He groaned her name.

  She wanted to scream at him.

  He held her there, in that in-between space. He held her back, fighting to get inside her even now, and not only physically. Something about what he was doing made her frantic. In the end, she could only lie there, her legs coiled around him, her whole body seeming to pull on him.

  She grew aware she was speaking again, murmuring, barely conscious she’d been saying anything until she made herself listen.

  “Please,” she murmured, kissing his face when he lowered it. “Please. Please.”

  He gasped. For a few seconds, he just fucked her.

  She thought he would say no.

  She felt that longing on him worsen, right before he arched into her harder.

  Then he let go, and when he did, she was coming, spasming around his cock, unable to do anything else. Her eyes closed as she ground up against him, fighting to breathe, and she’d never felt so insanely open in her life.

  She felt him drink that up somehow.

  She felt the longing in him purr like a cat, even as it pulled on her.

  He was still pressing into her when she could finally see again, when she could finally pull her mind back together enough to have any clue where she was.

  She was gripping his arms.

  His hands were on her hips, and she realized he was orgasming. His face was soft, his shoulders tense as he pressed his weight into her, fucking her and groaning in that heavy, purring way.

  Wings or no, he really was like a giant cat.

  She’d never felt so much contentment or release on a man before.

  She watched him reach the height of it, and everything about it turned her on. She felt him notice, right before his eyes found hers.

  Desire filled his expression, so intensely, she struggled to hold his gaze.

  She found herself speaking, before she knew she had anything to say, anything to ask.

  “Is that what you wanted?” she murmured, still grinding and pressing her body up against his. “Did you get what you wanted, baby?”

  Her eyes closed, longer than a blink, even as she continued to murmur words.

  That intense longing surged back in him.

  It grew so overwhelming, she fell silent.

  Her eyes closed, her heart pounding in her chest.

  When she opened them, he was looking at her, his long black hair sweated partway to his neck, his black eyes fierce, glowing with that internal light. They were already tipping deeper into that denser, more predatory look, even as his hands gripped her around the waist.

  “If you’re asking me if that was enough… no,” he growled.

  His voice lowered, rolling into that deeper purr.

  “If you’re asking me if this is what I want… then, yes,” he said.

  He ground into her again, and she moaned, tightening her legs around him.

  “…If you’re asking me if I want to do it again. Then yes,” he said, clenching a hand in her hair. He lowered his face to hers, kissing her cheek, murmuring in her ear. “You’re probably going to have to tell me when to stop, Marion. You might have to yell it.”

  She laughed, and he raised his head to smile at her.

  Studying her eyes, he shrugged as his fingers continued to grip her hair, tugging on her.

  Leaning down, he kissed her face, murmuring against her skin.

  “I don’t understand this,” he confessed. “This isn’t… usual for me.”

  She slid a hand between them, massaging his cock and he lowered his head, gasping a short breath against her neck.

  He continued to press into her as he shook his head.

  “I do not know how to explain this. I can feel it. Between us. Even before you put your hands on me in the car… even before I nearly tried to fuck you right there. Even before that, I felt it. I felt it when I saw you in the bar. When you danced for me.”

  Still thinking, he added,

  “We know one another, Marion.”

  He said it with absolutely certainty.

  No doubt colored his deep voice.

  “Do you feel this?” He raised his head, studying her gaze. “It is so close. It is so, so close, Marion. It is making me want to fuck, making me think about fucking constantly. It is driving me crazy, as you said. It feels like a compulsion, but more than that. It isn’t only sex. It’s more that I don’t know how else to express it. Do you understand?”

  Her skin grew warmer and warmer as he spoke.

  She found herself nodding when he grew silent.

  “Yes,” she said simply.

  Raising her face to his, she kissed him, caressing his cheek with hers.

  “Yes,” she repeated, murmuring in his ear.

  She felt him shiver and gripped his arm, the fingers of her other hand curling into his hair. Everything about this terrified her.

  It also felt utterly, terrifyingly normal.

  Natural, even.

  She wondered if that’s exactly why it scared the hell out of her.

  She thought about losing the people she loved, about this person disappearing too, as he inevitably would, and she gripped him tighter, unable to help herself.

  “I feel you again,” he gasped, lowering his weight onto her. “I feel you.” He wrapped his arms around her, gripping her with iron-like arms. Pulling her roughly up against him, he seemed to exude heat, a kind of pulsing, fireplace warmth.

  He was talking to her then, in her ear.

  He didn’t speak English that time, but something in his words calmed her.

  She found herself leaning her face on his shoulder, letting him hold her, and something about it washed all of that base, animal terror away.

  She didn’t know how long they stayed like that.

  She just knew by the end of it, there was no way she would get out of this unmarked.

  Something in that realization made her fear of him, of this, exponentially worse… even as it forced her to let it go.

  It was too late.

  It didn’t matter anymore, because it was already, entirely, utterly too late.

  19

  Time To Go

  Marion woke up slowly, aware at first only that she was lying on something both velvety soft and densely hard, with something excruciatingly soft wrapped around the bare skin of her back, sides, shoulders.

  She opened her eyes, staring up at a white-painted ceiling.

  She glanced to her left, where some of the warmth was coming from. The hotel room’s fireplace burned from a few feet away, just beyond a white, fluffy rug which sat in a pile on the beige carpet.

  She vaguely remembered the fire… she remembered someone lighting that.

  She glanced at the long windows, and realized it was dark out still.

  She looked down.

  The hard thing beneath her cheek was Tyr’s chest, along with the velvety soft of his skin. His eyes were closed, and for the first time, she found herself noticing his long, dark eyelashes where his head pressed into a velvet pillow he must have dragged down off the couch.

  Then she blinked, and realized the rest of what she’d been lying on.

  His wings were out. Those enormous, black and scarlet wings lay under her, one of them curled comfortably around her back, hip, and most of her legs, acting as an enormous blanket, maybe the warmest, most comfortable blanket she’d ever felt. She’d been burrowed into his side, her arm around his waist, his wing wrapped around he
r while he slept.

  Swallowing, she found herself watching him sleep, taking in as much of him as she could see through the feathers of that protectively coiled wing.

  He couldn’t be real.

  He couldn’t possibly be real.

  She couldn’t maintain that illusion for long, though.

  Even now, with him unable to hypnotize her with those dark eyes, or confuse her by her own insane emotional reactions, not to mention the fact that she’d wanted him, pretty much from the moment she first laid eyes on him… he looked damned real to her.

  She found herself stroking his skin, tracing the outline of his chest with her fingers, his ribs, his collar bones, his biceps, his forearms… his hip bone on the side not covered by the blanket of those unbelievably soft feathers.

  She felt him stir under her hand.

  She glanced at the night sky through the window, and wondered if he still wanted to go see her father that morning, in the hours before dawn.

  Personally? Marion was okay with putting that off for another day.

  Maybe even a few weeks’ worth of days.

  When he spoke, his murmur made her jump, despite how soft it was.

  “No,” he said, sighing.

  She looked over.

  His eyes were open. He reached up, caressing her face, fingering the curtain of dark hair back from where it fell down one cheek and jawline, pushing some of it behind her ear. Leaning up, he kissed her mouth lingeringly.

  Then he stretched, arching his back.

  It was the strangest sensation, feeling his wings stretch under her too, wrapping around her tighter as they did.

  “No,” he repeated, sounding regretful, even frustrated. “We must go now. Soon. I can feel we have only two hours of darkness left.”

  Marion nodded.

  She knew he was right.

  She started to get up, but his wing curled around her tighter, almost in a hug, and she found herself kissing him again.

  That time, they kissed longer, and it was harder to pull away.

  She made herself do it anyway.

  As much as she might want to, she couldn’t risk letting her dad get dragged into a war just so she could spend more alone, naked-time, with her new, not-human boyfriend.

  Below her, Tyr chuckled, one arm cushioning his head.

  He released her with the wing that had trapped her against him, and again, she felt that longing on him, a denser reluctance to separate.

  “I would be very derelict in my job,” Tyr admitted, pushing himself up on one arm. Yawning, he pushed himself the rest of the way to a seated position, blinking his eyes to wake himself up.

  Glancing at her, he announced,

  “I’m making coffee. Do you want some?”

  Marion smiled, then nodded.

  “Desperately,” she confessed.

  Pulling herself up carefully off his wings, not wanting to hurt him or pull out feathers, and not sure how easy it would be to hurt that part of him––or any part of him, for that matter––she climbed to her feet. As she did, she grew conscious suddenly that she was naked, that she was sore, that a part of her was still obsessed with sex.

  But he’d said two hours.

  They only had two hours.

  “I’m going to use the bathroom,” she announced. “While you make coffee.”

  Tyr reached over, his fingers circling her ankle so that she looked down.

  His dark eyes stared up at her, burning with that fire.

  “You are so beautiful, Marion,” he murmured.

  He kissed the top of her foot, then released her, and she felt herself flush all over. Something in even the smallest things he said felt so sincere, so completely guileless, they hit her at a ridiculously deep level.

  She knew she had to reign that shit in.

  At least until she had some idea of how deeply he meant them.

  Feeling him want to wrap his wings and arms around her again, even as he climbed to his feet, she looked him over, unable to help herself. Seeing his erection as he stretched his arms over that cut and lined abdomen, she forced her eyes away, walking away from him with an effort and toward the sliding wooden doors that led into the suite’s bedroom.

  It only really hit her then, that they’d been sleeping on the floor.

  They’d also more or less trashed that part of the room, leaving dirty food dishes all over the glass table, breaking one of the lamps and an end table from their, well… enthusiastically athletic sex.

  They might have broken part of the sectional sofa too, if memory served.

  Pushing all of that from her mind, she disappeared into the bedroom.

  She’d think about Tyr tomorrow.

  Or maybe, assuming either or both of them lived through this, she’d think about him later today, after they’d helped her dad.

  When she emerged from those same sliding wooden doors minutes later, dressed in more of the clothes he’d bought her, hair and teeth more or less brushed, face washed, more antiseptic applied to a few cuts and new bandages applied…

  …Tyr himself looked shockingly normal.

  He sat at the bar, drinking coffee, watching twenty-four-hour cable news on the laptop she’d seen perched on the desk earlier.

  His wings were retracted.

  He wore a suit, including the black jacket and pants that must have been in the garment bag she’d noticed the night before, along with the white dress shirt, a silver watch, black socks, the black shoes. He didn’t wear a tie.

  His shirt was open at the collar, but he still managed to look exceedingly well put together, even with the five o’clock shadow that now darkened his jaw and cheeks. At his feet sat a leather bag, just under the stool where he perched.

  He glanced at her, and she felt her heart stop briefly in her chest. He paused, mid-motion, where he’d been raising a cup of coffee to his lips.

  He smiled at her then, his eyes flickering down her.

  Heat rose in those dark eyes, right before his smile widened.

  “You are beautiful, Marion,” he said.

  She felt her face warm.

  Noting his suit a second time, she glanced down at herself, taking in the dark jeans and long-sleeved shirt she’d thrown on from the pile of clothes he’d given her the night before.

  Next to Tyr, she felt like she was wearing little-kid clothes.

  He seemed to hear that, too.

  He nodded towards the closet by the front door.

  “If you’d prefer to dress more formally, there are other clothes for you in there, Marion,” he said, taking another sip of coffee. “I should have told you. I admit, the last few hours have been… distracting.”

  He smiled at her again, and she felt it in her chest.

  “I wasn’t sure what kind of clothing we might need for this,” he added more seriously. “I could not decide if it would be better to dress in a way more appropriate for the stature of the White House, or if we should wear more practical clothes. I opted for slightly more formal wear…” he added, again lifting his cup of coffee.

  “…I am operating under the assumption that we will be able to get inside to speak to your father. I would prefer for him to meet me in more respectful clothing.”

  A subtle smile returned to his perfect mouth.

  “As you are his daughter… and not some stranger who somehow materialized with his daughter after she’d been reported kidnapped… this is perhaps less of a concern.”

  Marion grinned at that, in spite of herself. “Oh really? Some stranger?”

  “Yes,” he said, his mouth quirking. “Or do you imagine I am wrong that your father is likely to be suspicious of me?”

  “No,” she said, chuckling. “Sadly, you’re not wrong at all.”

  He lowered the cup of coffee, still studying her face.

  “Even apart from your father, I thought I might have more… credibility. If I dressed the part.”

  Marion nodded, thinking.

  He was probably right.
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  Of course, that was assuming they got past security in the first place. She had her doubts the Secret Service would be less likely to shoot one or both of them, just because they caught them on the grounds in formal wear, versus cat burglar suits or sweatpants.

  She remembered something else then, and looked at him.

  “Your wings––” she began.

  He was already nodding, even before she spoke.

  “I will have to take off some of my clothes before we leave,” he said, kicking the bag at his feet. “I thought you could hold them for me. While we flew. Then I could put them back on, once we arrived at our destination. Assuming we are able to breach the perimeter unseen.”

  Marion nodded again.

  It was as good of a plan as any.

  She walked to the closet, and found the garment bags she’d seen hanging on the door when she first got out of the shower.

  One of those bags was now empty.

  She turned to the other one, unzipping the front.

  She was a little afraid she’d find a ball gown inside, or something she might freeze her ass off in, if she wore it in the ice and snow. Instead, she found an expensive-looking wool coat, a pale green, form-fitting sweater, a floor-length black skirt that looked warm, and a scarf.

  The sweater would work with either the black jeans or the skirt, as would the knee-high, heeled leather boots she saw on the floor of the closet.

  “How did you have time to get all of this?” she wondered aloud.

  It was a rhetorical question, but Tyr looked at her from his perch by the bar.

  “It didn’t take long,” he said, swallowing more of the black coffee. “I’m thinking maybe the jeans, sweater, and boots? I don’t know if we might need to run in there at some point, but perhaps the skirt wasn’t a good idea for this.”

  He glanced at her, his expression mildly embarrassed.

  “I looked at online catalogues for the clothes. I didn’t know how to buy, so I had a person at the front desk put together outfits. She purchased them from local stores that were still open and picked them up for me.”

  Marion smiled. “Well… both of you did well.”

  Turning back towards the closet, she tugged the long-sleeved T-shirt over her head, then pulled the green sweater off the fuzzy hanger, sliding it over her head and arranging it once she had her arms through the sleeves. The sweater clung to her waist and hips, and even though it was thin, it was super warm.