by Moira Rogers
So much. Her lips parted on a soundless cry, breathless because his arm had cut off her air. Not the pain she’d asked for, but she was shocked at how it heightened her arousal. Her fingers and toes tingled, and that tingling melted into a hunger for more.
His arm relaxed, just a little, and he groaned. “Fuck, you feel good.”
She gasped in a breath and flung her head back. “You’re big. You fill me.”
Jarrett bit the back of her shoulder and stilled. “Fuck yourself with my dick, honey, I want to feel you move.”
Filthy words, and he didn’t sound awkward saying them at all. They rolled from his tongue and crashed into her, intensifying her pleasure as she fought his grip in an attempt to move. He had her too well pinned to do more than rock fitfully, never making it more than an inch or two away before she jerked back against him.
“More?” he whispered.
She shuddered. “I thought you were going to ride me until you came.”
“I will.” He groaned the words. “I want you to come with me.”
On any other day, she would have scoffed at the idea of another orgasm after three in rapid succession, but nothing seemed impossible now. “Then keep talking. It makes me crazy.”
“Yes?” Heat licked over the skin just under her ear, and it took her a moment to realize it was flame, not his tongue.
She almost came apart right there.
Phoebe lifted her head and stared into the mirror. Behind her, Jarrett watched their reflection in the mirror, his jaw set and clenched. The corner of his mouth quirked up, and he pulled back and drove into her.
Hard.
One of them flamed. She didn’t know which one, and she didn’t care. Her entire body trembled with the strength of her reaction, and she wanted more. Needed more. Phoebe closed her eyes and gave in to the rising pleasure, letting it carry her beyond safe sensations and into the dangerous unknown.
Fire licked over Phoebe’s back to singe Jarrett’s hands. He thrust against her with another groan, and shuddered.
If she didn’t come soon…
His fingers bit into her skin as he clutched her hips. “One more time, honey. Just once.”
She moaned, and her pussy clenched tight around him. She was close, riding that frustrated edge, but her writhing wasn’t pushing her over. She gasped out a curse and clutched the sheets. “Make me. Make me.”
She liked it rough, walking the fine line between sex and violence. Jarrett gripped her harder, almost to the point of bruising, and slapped her hip. “Now, Phoebe.”
She erupted with one sobbing cry, coming hot and tight around his dick as the flames licking over her skin flared toward the ceiling.
Her pleasure ignited his, a sudden flash that slid down his spine and swept him away. He thrust into her again, an agonizing bid to both end and prolong the ecstasy, as if this moment would kill him when it ended.
As if he could live in it forever.
Phoebe shook under him, and Jarrett held her through it, murmuring softly until the flames consuming them began to die down.
The scent of charred fabric reached him as Phoebe whimpered. “I think the blankets are smoldering.”
His hands were shaking. “Even we can’t burn through wards like these, sweetheart.”
“Are you sure?”
One spot on the bedspread was smoking. Jarrett cursed and batted at it. “Jesus.”
Phoebe laughed hoarsely and crawled up the bed before collapsing on her side. “That’s a shame. I was going to catch my breath and then ask you do more bad things to me.”
“Shower.” Impossible for the thought to heat his blood this quickly, and yet it did. “You said that was safe, right?”
“Usually.” Her head tipped off the bed, and she stared at the cabinets lining the opposite wall, the ones filled with high-end toys. “I wonder if any of those are waterproof. I could test it out for us.”
“Already?” Jarrett slid to the bed and rested his head on her stomach. “You saying something about my performance, Phoebe?”
“Yes.” She pushed trembling fingers into his hair. “You’ve stripped away all my restraint, and now I want to do debauched things like make myself come while you watch. You watching is the most important part of that fantasy.”
“Just watching?” He stretched up and caught her nipple between this teeth for a moment. “I could help.”
He fingers tightened in his hair as she hissed in pleasure. “You wouldn’t help. You’d take over.”
“Guilty.” He soothed the quick bite with his tongue “But you wouldn’t mind.”
“Maybe not.” She stroked a finger across the back of his neck. “What about you? Is there anything you want? Any fantasy I could try to fulfill?”
Jarrett rolled beside her and propped his head on his hand. “I think you already have, sweetheart.” To be able to let go, to not hold back… “We got a little fiery.”
“We did.” Her smile was slow and shy. “And a little rough. My fire-resistant lovers are usually afraid to go that far, even if I ask. You’re the first man I’ve been with who’s actually fireproof.”
“Too bad the room didn’t turn out to be, too. Though I think you’re on to something with the shower thing.”
“Lots of steam. Everything gets wet and slippery.” She touched his cheek. “You have wonderful bones. Your whole face is just beautiful. Strong angles, hard lines...” Her fingers ghosted to his eyebrow. “I would love to paint you.”
“You still do that?” A stupid question, and he wanted to call it back as soon as he spoke. Artists were always artists, even if no one ever knew.
But she didn’t seem to find it stupid. “I work as an art dealer, but I still paint. Sometimes I sell my own work—not that of my current identity, of course. Though I only have another ten years or so in this body, so it might be time to discover myself.”
He slid his fingers into her hair without thinking. “I like you like this.”
Sadness filled her eyes before she closed them. “A thousand weeks,” she whispered. “That’s all I ever get. A little more than nineteen years and I have to start again.”
Dammit. Jarrett gripped her chin until she met his gaze again. “How do you come back?”
“I don’t really go. I just...burn.” She wet her lips. “It’s the one time the fire doesn’t touch anything else, only me. It doesn’t hurt, but it doesn’t feel good, either. It’s just intense, like it’s swallowing me whole. And I don’t know what happens after that. I lose consciousness and wake up later, naked and...different.”
“But you’re still you.”
“On the inside.”
The implication being, of course, that no one noticed that part. “I get it.”
She shrugged, but a tiny smile curved her lips. “I suppose this body was a virgin, which makes what you did to me much more illicit.”
Not nearly as illicit as what he could do. “That’s your goal, huh? Dirty it up while she still has time?”
She scrunched up her nose at his teasing tone. “Perhaps. Isn’t that why people pay so much for one of these rooms? Deviance and debauchery? And whatever they keep in those cabinets. I’m both curious and terrified to find out.”
Truthfully, he rarely explored the accessories provided with the rooms. “I come here because it’s easier. Everyone understands what’s going on.”
Her expression sobered. “Understands what you are? Or what this means?”
“Both, but mostly the first one.” Something similar must have happened to her at least once through the ages—meeting someone who couldn’t possibly grasp what her existence meant, even if she could explain it. “How do you tell someone you’ve been to Hell? That it’s where you were born?”
She stroked his brow instead of answering, her touch feather light. “Is it as terrible as the stories make it? Hell, I mean.”
“It’s worse,” he murmured. “I think it took me a few centuries in this realm to really understand how bad.”
<
br /> “Do you have to go back there?”
“I haven’t, not in years. But I might, I guess. Someday.”
Phoebe leaned in and kissed him softly. “We were both born of flame. It’s nice to feel less alone, even if only for a few hours.”
He caught a lock of her hair and twirled the curl around his finger. “Nicer if it doesn’t have to end quite so soon.”
“We have all night, don’t we?”
For now. “Yes, we do.”
“Are you tired?”
Jarrett gave her a smile. “No. Just thinking.”
She pillowed her cheek on one bent arm and resumed her slow touches, as if she was mapping the contours of his face with her fingertips. “What do you do when you’re not here?”
He hesitated. Would she understand, or be put off by the hazards of his job? “I’m a stuntman. Driving, mostly. The crashes?”
“Truly?” She paused with her hand on his neck. “Is it scary?”
“Sometimes,” he admitted. “I’m not immortal, you know. Not entirely.”
“Neither am I.” If she was bothered by the danger of his job, it didn’t show on her face. Instead she seemed intrigued. “Do you do it because you enjoy it, or does it pay well?”
“Both. You’d be surprised how many non-humans do things like that.” Then he had to laugh at himself. “Or maybe you wouldn’t be.”
“Dangerous.” She smiled and traced her fingertip over his lips. “You like the risk. No wonder you’re willing to push me over the edge.”
“You’re harmless, sweetheart.” He drew her finger between his lips and sucked.
She moaned softly. “I almost broke through the wards the first time you put your hands on me. We could burn this place down if you put your mind to it.”
Then he’d have to be very, very careful. He released her finger and bent his head to her rib cage, just under her breasts. “Keep your eyes shut.”
“All right.” She relaxed on against the sheets, one knee cocked and angled in to cover her, as if she felt modest even now.
Delicate. The word had occurred to him downstairs, and it fit. Every soft curve, every elegant arch of bone beneath her pale, creamy skin. Jarrett traced his fingertips down her thigh to her upraised knee, scratching lightly with his nails.
She shivered. “There’s nothing harmless about the two of us together.”
He acknowledged the truth of the words with a chuckle. “Maybe not, but it’s still good.”
“Only good?” Her fingers tangled in his hair, and she pulled softly. “It’s as amazing as it is hazardous. I can’t remember if anyone has ever stripped me of all control before. It’s something I should make a point of repeating.”
Jarrett had to bite back the offer to help her, and for as long as she wanted. “You’re too passionate to stay locked up, Phoebe.”
“Oh, I don’t know.” Her tone turned teasing. “Locking me up might be the quickest way to unleash a little passion.”
He licked the ridge at the bottom of her rib cage. “That’s right. You’ve never seen the showers in a room like this.”
She propped her herself up on her elbow and eyed him. “What’s in the showers?”
Instead of answering, he tilted his head toward the head of the bed, where burnished metal rings hung from the ornately carved headboard. How long would it take her to understand?
A few seconds, at least. Her gaze followed his, and she frowned. “Not a bed...” She tilted her head. “Are those for chains?”
“For chains,” he confirmed.
“In the shower?”
His lips twitched, but he refused to give in to the smile. “Affixed to the tile. You feeling adventurous?”
She laughed. “You want to chain me up in the shower? How barbaric of you.”
“Recall, if you will, that you were the one to suggest both activities.”
Phoebe rolled to her knees and crawled over him. “I don’t think it would be as much fun if you weren’t a little barbaric. Are you?”
He teased her nipple with a quick pinch. “When properly motivated? Hell, yeah.”
“Good.” She brushed a kiss over his lips. “Get the chains, and any other barbaric thing you want. I’ll meet you in the shower.”
Short chains, the kind that would hold her close to the wall. And he’d leave her feet unbound so he could lift one leg over his shoulder and lick her to orgasm while water sluiced over her skin and then turned to steam. “Anything?”
“Anything,” she echoed, her teasing smile as she slipped from the bed turning the words into a promise.
Knowing your way around a room came in handy when you wanted to grab a handful of enchanted silver chain and haul ass to the bathroom as fast as possible. Jarrett hovered in the doorway, watching as Phoebe fiddled with the knobs just inside the vast tiled shower. Water spilled from the neatly concealed fixture in the ceiling, spritzing the tiled wall where the iron rings glistened.
Phoebe glanced over her shoulder at him as water plastered her long hair to her shoulders. “This is decadent.”
He swallowed hard as a rivulet of water cascaded off the stiff peak of one of her breasts. “Decadent.”
She chased that drop with her finger, as if the sensation had awoken a deeper need. Her fingertip hovered over her nipple as her eyelids drooped. “You like watching me.”
The chains in his hand jingled as he took a step closer to the open shower. “You look like you’re discovering what feels good. That’s damn sexy.”
“I’ve been touching myself for a century,” she replied in a dreamy voice. “The discovery is that I enjoy being watched.”
“Then show me.”
“Will those chains hold you?”
That stopped him short. “Me?”
She stepped through the spray to stand in front of him and traced the silver the same way she’d touched her own skin, with pleasure and reverence. “I don’t think they’d hold you for long, but it’s the fair thing to do, don’t you think? Give me a chance to make you crazy?”
Fair, maybe. But advisable? Not even close. “With the water still on, right?”
“Of course.” Her fingertips stroked his cheek. “What are you worried about? The fire? Or what you’ll do to me if you get free?”
Neither. Both. But he handed her the chains. “I trust you, Phoebe.”
Her sudden smile was brilliant. “I trust you, too. Whatever happens.”
He knew, and that was what frightened him.
She had a hellhound chained to the shower wall.
Silver clinked against tile as Phoebe stepped back and admired the view. Jarrett was taller, so the chains that would have stretched her arms over her head were slack for him, with enough give that he could arch away from the wall and move forward a pace.
A little freedom. Not enough to reach where she stood now, her shoulders under the lukewarm water that rained from the ceiling like a summer shower. She’d adjusted the temperature to something comfortable but cool, knowing things would heat up soon enough.
From the fire in his eyes as he tested the chains, she thought soon might become now before she knew it.
A sudden command escaped him on a rasp. “Touch your tits.”
Her hands were halfway to her breasts before she realized she’d obeyed, and then she couldn’t stop, not when she cupped their heavy weight and Jarrett jerked against the chains, licking the corner of his mouth.
No wonder people relished control, a thing as forbidden to her as its lack, since no lover in her long life could have uttered the words I trust you, Phoebe and meant them. Not truly, not when their power was the only thing that held hers at bay.
Jarrett trusted her. Wanted her. She ached as his eyes tracked her movement, and when she pinched her nipples, her breath caught along with his. “What else do you want to see?”
He rumbled. “I want to see you come.”
She tilted her head under the water. Drops splashed in all directions, landed on his skin and sizz
led before evaporating. He was lush and beautiful, every line of his body whispering of power and danger, and he was steaming.
Judging the give on the chains, Phoebe moved just close enough to trace one of the tattoos winding its way around his arm with her tongue. That sizzled, too, his skin so hot it would have burned a mortal woman. Maybe even some immortal ones.
But not her. She rocked closer, picking the next swath of ink and following it with the tip of her tongue as his cock jutted against her belly. “You want to see me come? How?”
The chains rattled. “Show me your pussy.”
Thrilled by her own power, she ignored the command and licked his nipple as her fingers mapped every flexed muscle. “I should paint you like this. Do you know what I’d call it?”
He trembled under her hands. “Tell me.”
His eyes were wild, inhuman. She was playing a perilous game, stripping control from a hellhound to reveal the beast within, but some games were only worth playing because the stakes were as high as the reward.
Stepping back, she took a moment to admire how he looked, straining against the chains, his erection standing strong and proud.
“The Promise,” she whispered, distantly aware that the water pounding on her shoulders had begun to steam. Holding his gaze, she slipped her fingers between her legs and stroked her clit with a shiver. “No woman would wonder why.”
Jarrett’s eyes glowed red, and the water pooling at their feet roiled up in a boil. “When I’m out of these chains, I’m going to fuck you so hard you can’t sit down. There’s your promise, sweetheart.”
She couldn’t think of a more alluring one. It was hard not to speed her caress, but she was too close to the edge already, and Jarrett didn’t look patient enough to coax her to that plateau again. When the chains snapped, he’d be on her, in her, possessing her body as they both burned.
Slow. Teasing. She edged her legs wider so he’d have a better view and smiled. “Is that all? I need to try harder.”
“Do you?” He growled and tugged against the chains again. This time, the metal cuffs stretched like they were made of putty.
