“Iskander,” she whispered. “Lord, that feels good.”
He drew her forward and breathed in. “I can’t stop thinking about touching you. Not since the first time.”
“You were pretty unforgettable yourself.”
He repeated the slide of his thumbs along her back. She arched, and he prayed she wasn’t going to be offended by the way he watched her breasts or the curve to her waist. “There’s something else about this connection I should mention before we try it.”
“Is it pervy?”
He laughed. “You seem like such a nice girl, but I think you’re bad.”
“Better than chocolate,” she said. “So. Is it pervy?”
“It could be.” He kept moving his hands over her and thinking about the way she kissed him, and how he wanted her to kiss him again. Jesus, he was hot for her. “If you think you’d like that.”
Her eyes popped open when he slid his hands around her rib cage not quite touching her breasts. Then he did, curving his hands around her. Her nipples tightened, and he brushed the tips of his fingers over her. “It would do that other stuff, too. Like I was saying”—he drew in a breath—“it could be a gateway between us, and we could use it for this bullshit with Rasmus, too. But right now, I want it for us. Like this.”
For a while, they didn’t say anything while he touched her. Caressed her, got himself hot and aroused. Her, too, from the looks of things. The rhythm of her breathing changed.
Eventually, though, she leaned away, and because he didn’t want to pressure her or come on too strong, he stopped touching her. He was dying to see her naked, to touch her skin. Dying to suck and nip and have his hands full of her. But without a link to her head, he had no way of knowing what she was thinking or feeling. “Tell me what you want,” he said.
She cupped the side of his face with her palm, the side with his traceries. The contact sent a whole new surge of arousal through him. “Sometimes,” she said in a low voice, “I want you so bad it hurts.”
“Me too.” He slipped his hands down the back of her jeans, reaching down, down, as far as he could, touching her soft skin, and at the same time he brought her toward him. She propped her hands on the back of the chair. Her eyes were wide open, her pupils pools of black surrounded by hazel.
She leaned in and pressed her mouth to his throat, the side of his jaw. “Make it stop hurting,” she whispered.
He brought his hands up and underneath the bottom of her tank top, sliding along her spine until the tips of his fingers brushed the bottom of her bra. He leaned in and pressed his mouth to the spot where her neck joined her shoulder and was rewarded with a soft moan from her. She smelled like vanilla and butter, the way she always did when she came home from work.
His mouth stayed close to her skin. He brought up one hand and pulled down her tank top strap, taking her bra strap with it. Such pale skin compared to his. He already knew that if he took his true form, she’d look even paler by comparison, and he was thinking he wanted that again. He was dying to do more, but at the same time, this encroachment from almost-innocent touching to touching that wasn’t innocent at all was worth the slow crank to out of control.
She didn’t back away. Instead, she leaned closer. Close enough to put certain parts of her anatomy against his torso. Underneath her shirt, he palmed one breast, and when he processed the fact that all that full curve was in his hand, his mind kind of shut down for a minute.
“I don’t have good sense where you’re concerned,” she said on a breathless gasp. “None at all.”
“I’ll take care of you,” he said. He was aware his vow to protect her was behind some of his intense satisfaction in saying that. Fine by him. Even better, he had his hand on her naked skin, and she wasn’t making him move it. In fact, she was breathing harder. Her nipple was hard beneath his palm, and he wanted her to feel the arousal more and more. “I won’t let anything bad happen to you. That’s a promise.”
“Right now, all I want is for you to make love to me.” Her words were warm breath against his ear.
“I would love to do that, cupcake.” He struggled to get his thoughts straight, and even then, half his brain was detouring south while the rest dealt with the logistics of getting her naked. He pulled her hair free of its elastic band. Thick, soft hair, dark red and streaked with highlights of gold, spilled over his hands and down one of his arms. He pulled back enough for her to see his eyes, because he knew they weren’t normal right now and she needed to know where he was at.
Paisley gazed into his face, into his eyes and into his heart. He watched her pupils get bigger and bigger when he flicked his fingertip over her nipple. He wanted in her head. He wanted to feel her reaction and know for a fact what she was thinking. He wanted her to know he was thinking about the taste of her skin, the shape of her mouth, and what might happen to them both if he touched her again.
His phone buzzed in his pocket again, and he ignored it again. A few seconds later, it vibrated, cut off, then started vibrating again. He dug it out and turned it off. He threw the phone onto the desk and tightened his hands around her. He wanted to do this. Hell, yes, he wanted to. “Even for just right now, you have to say yes, you’ll let me in your head.” He slid off the chair and knelt on the floor in front of her. She shifted to face him. He put his hands on her thighs, rubbing his hands along her legs. “You need to understand the risks before you agree to anything.”
“I’m listening.”
“One risk for you is that I do more than I say I will.”
“Like what?”
He drew a breath and let it slowly out. “Assuming I can get past your resistance, things like take over your mind. Bind you over to me so your will belongs to me. I won’t do that to you. I promise. But don’t say yes unless you trust me not to, because it’s something I could do.” He studied her face while he slid his hands upward and around to her inner thighs.
“What about you?”
“I don’t know what kind of power you have. Maybe enough to be dangerous to me.”
Paisley gazed down at him. She touched the innermost stripe down his cheek and the contact flashed hot. Just as if she were a witch. He wondered if she felt the heat or if it was just him getting worked up and thinking ahead to more touching, more than what they were doing now. “You want me to say yes.”
“Hell, yes.” He curled his fingers around her wrist and drew her arm toward him, palm up. He traced the course of one blue vein from her elbow to her wrist. He bent his head over her arm and breathed in the scent of her, and all the while, the tip of his tongue followed the vein he’d traced before.
Her hand fisted but she didn’t pull away. His teeth ached with the desire to bite, to make a breach in her skin through which blood would flow and he could taste her again. That rich, human coppery tang of Paisley. He pressed a finger against the pulse in her wrist and looked into her face again.
“Yes,” she said.
He was a little lost without any mental connection to tell him what she was feeling and thinking. Then he lowered his head to her arm and bit her.
CHAPTER 25
Paisley felt the scrape of Iskander’s teeth against the inside of her forearm and flinched. He had too firm a grip on her wrist for the reflex to break her free. He looked up, and she saw his eyes were cycling between blue and gold-flecked green. No one’s eyes did that. No one normal.
Iskander wasn’t human. She had to keep reminding herself of that.
He brought her arm up between them. The break in her skin hardly hurt at all, though a trickle of red zigzagged over the side of her arm. She knew she ought to be worried, but she wasn’t. She trusted him completely. Without reservation.
“I’m going to try now.”
She nodded. She longed to touch the stripes down the side of his cheek, or run her fingers through his hair, touching the blue that gleamed faintly there, too. But he was still on his knees on the floor, between her spread legs, and he still had his fingers wrapped arou
nd her wrist, and she didn’t want to do anything to break the intensity of his gaze on her. He drew a finger through the blood on her arm, brought his finger to his mouth, and licked his skin clean.
The air around them rippled with a desert breeze and the scent of sunbaked sand. He went up on his knees and touched his fingertip to her forehead. Pressure built up at the spot where his finger pressed against her, and she could have sworn she saw his eyes change color again. Fully green, but not a green any human eyes ever were.
“Relax,” he whispered. “Let me in.”
Iskander would never hurt her. Not ever. Nevertheless, she was aware that he was holding her hand, and that she was squeezing his fingers, and that Harsh really was right about him. He was dangerous. She saw him in front of her, the stripes down his face, as perfect as ever. She let go of her instinct to keep herself separate.
She concentrated on not fighting the pressure, and then he was there, a presence in her head that hadn’t been there before. Here. With her. His hand fell away from her forehead and landed on her thigh again. The pain in her arm vanished.
He scored his own wrist, swiped two fingers through the welling blood, and held them to her mouth. “Yes,” he said, low and soft and honey sweet. Fever heated her skin when she took his fingers in her mouth. The connection between them strengthened. “Yes,” he whispered. “Just like that.”
Arid warmth spread through her, dizzying her, settling into her chest and inhabiting her very bones. Her sense of Iskander deepened, and with that came thoughts, reactions, and even memories that didn’t belong to her.
He stood and scooped her into his arms when it turned out she was too dizzy to stand on her own. He took two steps across the room and put her down on the desk. Quickly, he cleared most of the surface of the table. The coffeemaker went onto the floor, and he disconnected her laptop from the power supply and slid that under the desk. Her papers he stacked into a pile, and then he stepped between her legs and leaned into her, and just kept going until she was on her back and his hands were on her sternum. Beautiful. Human.
Anticipation.
The magic is there and can be touched.
Need. Desire.
His eyes were a different color again. Not blue but a dark green-blue that moved and swirled and made her think there was something alive there that was more than Iskander. She blinked hard but that didn’t change. “I feel your magic,” he said in a low voice. His hands remained on her sternum, one over the other. She felt… something flow from him and into her. The sensation set off a vibration deep in her chest.
And then.
Everything changed.
It was like a switch flipped inside her. The vibration turned into an electric hum that roared through her, and when it ended, her skin rippled with gooseflesh as ice-cold fingers danced up and down her spine and along the back of her neck, her arms, and even her legs. His magic echoed in her and entwined with her. She reached for him, clumsy because this was too new for her. They shared the same mental space—what he’d said would happen. He was telling her so without words.
“Paisley.” He put his hands on either side of her face. His eyes fixed on hers, and she fell into the wide pool of this new part of him. She disassociated with herself and briefly thought she must be looking in a mirror. She saw herself, her eyes open, a slash of red hair across her white tank top. She saw a stranger who was familiar to her. Herself, but she was not in her body. Her body was bigger. She had to be careful of her strength, of desires that spoke to her of dominance and bonds that would tie them together forever. One of her hands—no, that was Iskander’s hand—rested on her upper chest, but the other slid down to the fastening of her jeans.
At one and the same time, she wanted him—Iskander, his naked skin against hers and their bodies intertwined—and wanted to unfasten Paisley’s jeans and touch, touch that human body, stroke, kiss, taste the salt of her, hear the intake of her breath, show her what he felt and bring her to orgasm and tell her he didn’t want anyone but her.
A moan slipped from her, and she did not know whose arousal she was feeling. Her own or Iskander’s?
Then boundaries reappeared. She saw Iskander normally, but with the link between their minds in place. She reached for him, connected with his warm, smooth skin. She wanted him to touch her the way he had before, with all the tender attention that didn’t hide his lust. Her body was primed for him. Ready for him. A fluttery sensation settled between her legs, a fullness, an aching longing for him, for the fullness of his penis inside her.
His breath came hard. He had his hands planted on the desk on either side of her head, and he lowered his torso to hers. “This is how I feel about you,” he said with his mouth close to her ear. “Paisley, I don’t know what the hell is going on with us. I really don’t. But this is how I feel, and I say let’s find out what that means.”
She pushed up, mostly sitting. Iskander stood between her legs, his hands clasped on the top of his head, his body bowed back, his lower lip caught between his teeth. She put her hand over his erection. “Does this hurt?”
“Worse than you can imagine. Can you help me out?”
“I can surely try.” She reached out and fingered the top button of his jeans, then pushed the metal button through the buttonhole. Her little finger slid along the side of his erection. “Is that better?” she asked.
He straightened his body but kept his hands on his head and his eyes on her face. His mouth curved up on one side. “Not yet, cupcake. Not yet.”
Carefully, she undid the rest of the buttons on his jeans while he stood there, and then she scooted forward and got one hand down the front of his boxers to cup him and the other down the back. His skin was fever hot. The muscles of his backside flexed as he pushed his pelvis toward her. “Now?”
“I’m hurting bad.”
“Maybe it’s because your clothes are in the way.”
With a growl that came from somewhere deep in his throat, he kicked off his shoes and stepped out of his jeans and his underwear. He stripped off his shirt, too, and Paisley could hardly believe he was here, ready, willing, and so wonderfully nude. Her awareness of his mental state hovered in her mind. She felt his arousal, too.
The blue stripes continued down his torso, and he stood unmoving while she touched all that lovely male body, that warm skin and taut muscle. He moved forward, then leaned in and kissed her. She put her arms around his shoulders, and twined her fingers upward to the back of his head. Her mouth opened under his, and their tongues met.
He moved his hand between them again and undid the top button of her jeans. He gripped the tab of her zipper. All the while, they were kissing like there wasn’t going to be a tomorrow for them. He let go of her zipper and pulled up her shirt, higher and higher. They separated long enough for him to get it over her head, and he went for her bra. “I think I should help you, too,” he said.
“Oh, please do,” she said.
He put his fingers on her chest and slid them down, over the curve of her breasts, trailing across her nipples, pausing, teasing, oh, teasing until she was ready to let him do anything he wanted, then angling down to cup her. “Beautiful.”
She lay back and he followed. His mouth on her breast was hot and wet, and if he hadn’t slid her zipper down the rest of the way, she would have done it for him. The edges of her reality narrowed to Iskander and her. The electric hum continued to zing through her with every breath she took. He yanked on her jeans and she helped him get them off her. He was as desperate as she was.
“Let me see you,” he said, peeling her arms from around his neck. His voice came at her, low and urgent and impatient. “All of you.”
He looked at her, his hands stroking her, fingers dipping into and out of her navel and heading down, and each and every touch was like lightning through her. The entire time, he was there in her head, and that electricity in her wanted him, sought him out. She wanted him. She wanted his magic around her. Her mouth around him.
She pushed him back and slid off the desk to her knees and cupped his balls with one hand and found a sensitive spot on the underside of his penis. He wasn’t circumcised.
“Oh, hell, yes,” he said when she took him into her mouth. She loved the salty tang of him, the heat, the soft skin and hardness, and she loved his reaction. He wrapped his hands around her head. His fingers tangled in her hair and helped her find the best motion.
He pulled away before he came, then picked her up to set her back onto the desk. He lay her down again and brought her hips toward the edge of the desk, and Paisley arched her body while he thrust inside her, because it was wonderful, this sensation of his filling her, the slide of him in her, and she nearly lost her mind.
“You’re who I want,” he said. His words tripped over themselves. “You. This. Paisley, I want this with you.” She clenched around him, and he threw back his head. “Fuck. Do that again.”
She brought up her legs while he held her hips steady, and, Lord, but the way he moved inside her was heaven—a roll of his hips, a push forward. Inside her, there was a pool of electricity, the source of the hum that vibrated through her, and Iskander reached for it, skimmed along the surface and drew back. He did the same physically, too. She shared in his arousal, the pressure of her body around his, the desire for the magic that could be brought up and intertwined.
Her hands slid up and down his back, tracing the shape of his muscles and reveling in the warmth of his body, his skin against hers, the slide and thrust of him. Whenever she brushed the tattoos on his body, her skin tingled. He thrust inside her again, and his mind wrapped around hers, took her pleasure and opened himself to her, and his urgency sluiced through her. She came. Just like that. Harder than she believed possible.
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