by Claudy Conn
Stop! Wy warning signals shot off in my brain. Why stop? This … oh, this felt so good. Yes, but what will you feel when he turns away from you for the woman he really loves? Remember, he loves Tara. Don’t forget that.
Cold splash. I pushed hard at his chest. I was in trouble here. For me, this had become more than a physical connection. I didn’t know how it had happened, but I could feel myself falling into a pit called Kian O’Hara.
Inner woman said, Just hop into bed and enjoy him.
William had been the only one I had ever been with, and that felt like a million years ago. I couldn’t detach enough to be a ‘hopping into bed just for fun’ sort, though I sometimes wished I could and had considered it once or twice in the past. But we are what we are.
This immortal was different—everything about our connection was different.
It was, however, happening too fast. I didn’t want to be hurt, and this one could hurt me. He loved someone else.
I hauled off and with hybrid strength pushed off him. He stood back in the shower stall, his blue eyes molten with desire, his cock hard and dancing with an invitation.
He was breathing hard. Holy hell, so was I.
He put up his hands. “I’m sorry, lass. I should not have pushed ye, but I could not help meself.”
Oh my gosh, he was so good, so perfect, so right for me—if you didn’t count that he loved a woman who loved someone else.
“I better get out and—”
He moved in closer. “I still cannot help m’self, lass,” he said, and I was back in his arms with his mouth closing in again on mine.
I had invited him to do this—I knew that. I could have stepped out of the shower the moment he entered. Had it been anyone else, I would have slapped him hard and done just that. But I didn’t do just that, and I knew why I didn’t; it was the reason I was returning his kiss with everything I had.
Conversation was at an end.
His movements became primal as his hands traveled to cup my breasts. He worked my nipples until I heard myself make a pathetic sound. Was that me mewling?
As he pulled gently on my nipples sensations sped through me, and all I knew was what I needed. Him. I needed him inside me.
His lips traveled down my neck, and as he sought my breast to suckle at my nipples, I groaned with the unbelievable pleasure that rippled through me.
He took his time there, as though he could suckle forever, and while the hot water streamed over us, he turned me into a wanton woman.
My fingers sped along his body until I found his erection and stroked it. Damn, he was big … so frigging big and hard and …
He moaned my name as he turned me around once more to face the wet marble. He put my palms back up on the shower wall, and even as he fondled my breasts he pumped his erection against my butt. Damn, hot damn, I wanted that inside.
“Oh,” escaped my lips. All I could think was that in a moment he was going to ram it inside of me, but he didn’t; instead his finger made its way up that wet tunnel and teased my clit.
Holy shit, I was on fire. My belly, damn, my entire sex, clenched, and I was at the top of a mountain reaching for the … oh, holy good gosh!
I exploded. It was full on. All I could do was shudder and shake and groan as my frame convulsed in on itself with my body-shattering climax. I had never experienced anything like it.
He never stopped during my mind-numbing explosion. He just kept pumping first that one finger and then another. Then he was on his knees behind me even as I still shook with the aftermath of my climax.
His tongue joined his talented fingers, and I groaned loud enough to be heard all the way to Dublin. He said, “Lass … och, lass, but ye taste good, so fucking good.”
Oh my, but his words revved me up again. All of it was new, and all of it was prime, so prime that I was lost to his touch, to his tongue, to this new pleasure.
Pleasure had taken over my mind. It was all I wanted right then. He stood back up and cupped my cleft from behind while his knee spread my legs further apart. His hand shook me with a pulsating vibration, sending exquisite sensations through my body until I was a rocket of nerve endings ready to splinter.
Once again, relief was an explosion of body and sound as I cried out and trembled uncontrollably. His finger was inside and playing once again. I shuddered as I continued to explode with pleasure bubbles bursting in my blood. I was rocked from deep inside. I trembled and convulsed in his hands, and he whispered words of praise as he turned me to face him and closed his mouth over mine again. I was lost. I knew at that moment that I was lost to this man—this immortal. No other thought intruded.
He grinned, picked up my legs, and held them up on either side of him, resting them on his hips. “Hold on, beauty … hold on and nae let go …”
Even in the heat of my passion I noticed his accent was slightly different … not quite Irish, but something else, something ‘Old World’.
What had I gotten myself into? What was he? But that stray concern was washed away as he told me in a voice edged with primal need, “Och, lass … but I’m going to take ye in ways ye never dreamed of, and I’m going take ye till the morn rises, and then I’m going to take ye some more.”
He lowered me, purposely positioned me as he took a step back and sat on the teak bench, and I wanted, oh, I wanted whatever he was going to do next.
“Och, Harley …” he groaned.
I thought my entire body would implode with too many sensations as he rubbed his erection against my opening and his lips closed on mine.
I threw my arms around his neck and held on for dear life when he found a spot with his hard and oh so wondrous dick and rubbed there. I called on him, “Take me, Kian … now … now.”
Instead, he bent back his head to look at my face.
I don’t know what he saw, but I saw a feral, beautiful man with hungry, ancient eyes.
The next thing I knew he stood with me still wrapped around him, and he walked us out of the shower. I imagined he used magic to turn off the water, as I heard it shut down.
A moment later he had me wet and hungry and lying across his huge bed. His voice was a husky whisper. “Och, lass … don’t say a word. Just let me take care of ye the way ye were meant to be cared for.” He took some jasmine-scented lotion—Does he always have this on hand, or did he conjure it up just for me? Do I care?—and began rubbing it into my wet breasts and chest, and, oh my, it was the most erotic sensation I had ever experienced, and all else was forgotten.
He poured more on my belly and worked his fingers into my flesh and down lower, between my thighs. He massaged lotion onto my inner thighs and down my calves, and then the way he worked my feet nearly made me climax again. I was afraid to move. I didn’t want it to stop.
He stretched out beside me and took me into his arms as his tongue slipped into my mouth, and then he withdrew. His eyes were burning as he looked into mine and asked, “Do ye taste yerself on m’tongue? Do ye, lass?”
He didn’t wait for an answer, which was a good thing since I wasn’t able to speak. Instead, his tongue dove back into my mouth, and his mouth pressed mine with a passion that completely swept me away.
I was flooded with erotic sensations and wanted to give him as much as he was giving me. I pulled partially away from him and used my hybrid strength to push him onto his back. He grinned up at me. “Och, lass … but ye are a force.”
I started to kiss a path down his chest, down to his belly, down to that hard, throbbing erection I was yearning to touch.
He was huge, and I wasn’t sure my fingers would close around him, but I managed and slipped my hand up and down its length. I watched his face, I listened to his moans of pleasure, and then I began trailing kisses up and down the length of his hard, large shaft. I sucked at the tip, took some of his cock in my mouth and sucked hard, and then released it before going down on it to take more, so much more, in my mouth and towards my throat.
I wanted to please him—no, I ne
eded to please him. I began to move hard and fast, and suddenly he swore and stopped me. “Lass, lass … ye have to stop, because the first time I go off, I want to be inside ye.”
The next thing I knew I was on my back once more, my knees in his hands as he positioned himself. He had my legs parted and wide and then he was lifting me up by my rump with one hand while his other guided his hot dick to my sex. There, oh there, he teased my clit with a skill I wasn’t aware any man owned. He made me squeal with pleasure and buck against him. I so wanted him to shove it all in at once.
“Fuck me, Kian … now … fuck me, please,” I moaned out.
He made a primal and guttural sound that seemed to come from somewhere deep in his throat, and finally he did just that. He rammed inside me with a force that made me explode once more. Even as I shuddered, my body burning from the inside out, the walls of my sex clenching his cock, I wanted more, more of this, more of him. The muscles of my sex squeezed and released and squeezed again around his cock so deep inside me. I squirmed with pleasure at the sounds this drew from him. My brain was dark, my eyes were full with the lights of exploding rockets, and his name was being written in my sky.
That ‘indefinable something’ rocked between us and was a palpable entity. I was wrong; it wasn’t just his name that lit up the sky. It was mine, entwined with his.
Holy shit! When had that happened to me?
I had always believed that one day an undeniable love, a love I had been missing in my life, would enter and change me forever. Here it was.
“Exquisite beauty …” he said as he poured the last drop of himself into me and collapsed, holding me tightly against him.
We lay there together quietly for a few moments while he whispered pretty things into my ear. All at once, even as I felt his heat gaining ground, he held my waist in his two large hands. He sat up on the bed and pulled me onto him. Molten blood traveled through my brain.
I was in trouble, big trouble. Love had no place intruding on me now. I hadn’t wanted love, just a little lust experience with him. But love, ready or not, was flashing me.
His cock was once again at full mast. His eyes were bright and told a story.
He added to that story, saying, “I have wanted ye from the moment I laid eyes on ye … Harlow McDagus, and I mean to claim ye for meself.”
He positioned me on his erection and pumped himself inside even as I slammed down on it. He held my breasts as he rocked deep inside me, and I kept hearing his words—I mean to claim ye for meself—in my head.
As he rammed and pounded into me with an expertise that sent rivulets of erotic sensations coursing through my blood, I rode him like a cowgirl on a bronco and he called out my name over and over again.
“Harley love,” he murmured. Once more his hot seed poured into me, and once more a feeling of completeness swept through me.
He held onto me then, and all I knew was that I wanted to hold onto him and never let go.
No time for questions as he covered my face with his kisses.
~ Nine ~
I DIDN’T KNOW what time it was when he wrapped us in the king-sized quilt and shifted us to his balcony, but I thought it was around midnight.
“Look at the stars, Harley love,” he said.
I noticed once again that his accent was not quite Irish anymore and asked, “Kian, you’re an immortal, not really Irish, right? So why the Irish accent?”
“My first years …” He looked at me doubtfully for a moment as though I might be shocked. “… thousands of years ago, were happily spent in Ireland—beautiful Eire. We lived amongst the people there, and their Gaelic, which we adopted, bled into my own native tongue.” He sighed and studied the stars. “Do my years … disturb ye?”
“No. There is a touch of Old World behind everything you do, and that explains it. I like explanations,” I said and snuggled against him.
“Aye, as do I. So, soon, very soon, I’ll be asking for one … about ye and the past ye have come from,” he whispered into my ear and then kissed and nibbled at my lobe.
Oh hot damn, but everything he did drew on me in ways I never thought possible.
“I will tell you more when you tell me,” I said.
“I just did.” He cast a quizzical look at me.
I punched him the gut, and he grunted and laughed. “No, you didn’t … not really.”
“Lass, I’m not sure it is a matter of trust ye are looking for,” he answered.
“What do you think I am looking for?” I answered and heard the husky note in my voice with some surprise. Who the hell was I? Was I still my own person? Was I becoming his?
“Never mind,” he said. “Focus on the here and now and what we have to do.”
“But—”
“I trust ye, Harley, so I’ll tell ye something that might help. M’real name is Kianet of the House of Hara. Not so very different from the Irish name of Kian O’Hara.” He shrugged. “An easy fit for what I had to do here.”
“The House of Hara?” Why did that sound so familiar? “Easy fit? What you had to do here?”
“Another time. Right now the time is for this,” he said and kissed my mouth, effectively silencing me.
When his mouth released mine I could see a feral, almost savage possessiveness in his demeanor, and I wondered at it.
He whispered, “Harley, I’m worried about ye. Ye killed someone today when they were in human form. Granted, ye had no choice, but how do ye feel?”
I saw the genuine concern on his face and allowed him an answer. “I feel like … well, have you ever been bitten by a mosquito and slammed him dead on your flesh? That is how I feel. He was worse than a mosquito because his bite … well, never mind.” I had almost spilled it all out, but I wasn’t ready. Telling him would make me relive the day. I didn’t want to—not then.
He looked at me then and asked quietly, “Are ye ready then to tell me about your clan … about Banks?”
“No, not tonight. Tonight is for this,” I said and kissed his chest and then traveled the length of his belly, further down to his already hardened staff.
He pulled me up and said, “I want to make sure that even though ye feel no remorse, ye still feel whole. I want to know that—”
I cut him off. “I feel whole and ready to kill the next and the next one after that. Remorse? If you ever see that in me, it won’t be for killing them but for not knowing in advance and stopping them.” Now I was angry. Remembering what they—the Banks pack—had done made me angry. I sneered with frustration. I didn’t want to discuss this. I had done what needed to be done, and I meant to keep on doing what needed to be done.
“Where did it all go wrong? How did it? Ye are young and should be living a bright and shiny life. What interrupted ye, what?”
“It doesn’t matter. What matters is Banks needs stopping—not me. You need to rethink how you can help stop him, because if you leave him and his pack to pick themselves up and dust themselves off … they will just come back at you and everyone you care about. That is who he is and who he has made his wolves.”
He didn’t say anything then. Instead he shifted us back to his bed, and once again Banks was relegated to another place, another time as I got lost in Kianet of the House of Hara.
* * *
I felt dizzy, as much from the rush of erotic sensations pouring through me as from the need for blood.
Lovemaking with Kian was beyond anything I had ever imagined, and even though I didn’t have much to compare it with, a person knows when they have had the ultimate experience. Your body tells you in no uncertain terms. Besides that, I also knew, I was hopelessly, desperately in love with this immortal.
Our all-day, all-night romp, however, had left me depleted and thirsty. I needed blood. A note on his nightstand told me to check out his fridge, and hurriedly I did just that.
I don’t know how he did it, but it was jam-packed with containers of pig’s blood.
I took a moment to drink and magically dispose
of the empty container before I slipped into my jeans and pulled on a pretty and sleeveless black silky top that hugged my body and rode short of my waist. My red hair cascaded over my shoulders, and I was pleased with the ‘look’.
When I grabbed my denim jacket, I felt a bulge in the pocket and gasped. I had forgotten all about it. Rysdale had given me an important package, and I hadn’t even opened it.
Kian stood in the threshold and whistled softly as he scanned my figure top to bottom and said low and hungrily, “Stunning beauty, and ye have no idea … do ye?”
“Kian, with everything that happened yesterday … I forgot all about this,” I told him and held out the small brown package. “And … thank you for … taking care of things … in the fridge.” It was difficult, I was not sure why, to actually thank him for blood. I am what I am.
He frowned and reached for the package, but I held onto it. He sighed and asked, “Aye, then, what is it?”
“I don’t know. Let’s open it now.”
“I’ve got coffee downstairs waiting on ye. We’ll take it there and have a look.”
He was no longer smiling as he stepped aside and let me pass. I knew I had annoyed him when I didn’t hand over the package, but old habits, as they say, die hard. I was used to holding onto what was mine. Rysdale had put it in my trust, and that was where, for the moment, I believed it needed to stay.
He poured us each a mug of coffee and sat as I unwrapped the brown paper. I felt my eyebrows rise with my surprise. Inside was an ordinary-looking compass, but Kian was more than a little excited and this time when he reached for it, I allowed him to take it up and have a closer look
“Who gave this to ye, lass? Was he a wizard?”
“Yes, Rysdale by name. My mom … we used to visit him when I was younger …” I started.
“Well, well, so ye have Rysdale on yer side. Well, well,” he said, sitting back and holding the average-looking compass in his hands. He handed it back to me, and when I took it in both my hands, this time the damned thing began to glow!
