by Selena Scott
That was certainly true. Arturo had been deeply in love with sweet, kind Amelia. Loving Amelia had been the easiest thing Arturo had ever done. It had been as simple as falling asleep after a long day of work. She’d been small and soft and delightful.
Whereas Martine had always been… separate. She was apart from the group. And ethereal and blindingly beautiful. Like a goddess. In four hundred years, it had never even occurred to Arturo that she had felt anything human for him.
“Right,” was his brilliant response.
There was silence for a moment. And then he couldn’t help himself. Blame it on the human buried somewhere deep in his heart. “I didn’t even realize you had feelings like that for mortals. You’re so celestial and powerful and, yeah. It’s hard to imagine you feeling that way about someone.”
“I’m different than a human, sure. That’s clear enough in my inability to truly connect with any of you. But I was as susceptible to your charm as any of the women in the group.” She paused for a moment and assessed him almost clinically. “You were funny, and kind, and very handsome. I loved the way you were with Amelia. Passionate and attentive. It was easy to picture myself in her place.”
“You pictured yourself in her place,” he repeated, almost faintly.
“Oh!” Martine said, misinterpreting his tone. “Not in any real way. I mean, I was rooting for the two of you. All I wanted was for you to grow old together. If I could rewrite it, I would never have ended things this way.”
She motioned between them. To the truth between them. That Amelia had been dead for 350 years and Arturo had been just alive enough to suffer. It horrified Martine that Arturo might think that her crush on him had impaired her ability to protect Amelia when she should have. In her worst nightmare, Arturo would imagine that Martine had somehow architected this reality in a bid to be close to him.
But the calm sadness he was emanating didn’t seem to imply that that’s where his thoughts had gone.
“It is what it is,” he said quietly. “We can’t change any of it. To be honest, I wouldn’t change any of it. My time with her. Or now, my time with…”
They were quiet for another long minute until Arturo barked a sort of strained, disbelieving laughter that was so unlike the man he’d become that Martine jumped. “I’m just glad you didn’t tell me about your feelings then.”
“They would have been unwelcome,” she agreed, nodding her head.
“Unwelcome?” That wasn’t the word he would have used to describe it. “Maybe. But really I think my head might have just exploded.” He stood up and strode to the window again. “It seriously never occurred to me that I might have a shot with you. As close to a goddess as I’d ever hoped to encounter.”
He turned back to her and she could almost see the thoughts turning over in his head. It was as if there were a library full of books laid out in his brain and he was putting some of them back on the shelf and opening others to brand new pages.
“You’re the reason I’m a shifter.”
She nodded. “I didn’t know I had the power to gift you with shifting until that moment. I watched your soul begin to be torn away from you and I just… turned you. You became a shifter and I gifted you with your blue energy in that moment. It was the only thing I could think of to keep at least some part of you safe from the demon.”
Arturo absorbed that information, his eyes on her still. “The demon made it seem like he was the one who… Never mind. It doesn’t matter now. I don’t want to talk about him.”
He pulled his shirt off over his head and started stalking toward her.
“I’m changing tactics,” he told her, tossing the shirt aside.
He unbuttoned his jeans and let them hang over his hips. When he was close enough, he gripped her behind the knee and toppled her backwards onto the bed. He started with her shoes, tossing one and then the other; her socks went next and then he was inching her leggings down her legs.
She scrambled up onto her elbows. “What are you doing?” Her voice was more air than sound. Her heart squeezed down so tight on itself that she gasped for air.
“Knowing that you’re going to die when the demon dies has been so unthinkable to me. So ungodly horrible, that I thought the answer was to turn away from you. Deprive myself of you so that I could bear the thought of you blinking out of existence.”
“It’s the way it’s supposed to be,” she murmured to him, her palm coming up to his cheek.
“Maybe. But I’m not doing it that way anymore. That was the demon’s influence talking, keeping us lonely and separate. No. Now, I’m doing it my way.” His hands made their way up her legs to the backs of her knees. He spread her open so only her black underwear and the air separated her from his gaze. “I’m not turning away from you and depriving us both. No.”
He shook his head. “I’m going to drown in you until all this is over. I’m going to give you every bit of happiness and pleasure I can possibly give. I’m not going to push you away, Martine. I’m going to worship you for as long as I possibly can.”
“Sex?” she asked excitedly, scrambling up even further. “I’ve always wanted to have sex.”
He chuckled, low and dark in the back of his throat. “I’ll give you anything you want. I’ll give it to you ten times over.”
“I want sex,” she nodded decidedly.
“All I want is to make you feel good.”
With that, he tugged at her clothes and his clothes. Then they were naked and she had a sheen of gold covering her from head to toe.
He looked down the landscape of her body and felt momentarily overwhelmed. He hadn’t had sex in four hundred years, after all.
“Wings, what’s the best you’ve ever felt? Tell me.”
“Physically?” she asked, cutting her eyes to the side as she attempted to remember. She was apparently completely comfortable being naked in front of him. “It feels good when I shift into pure energy.”
“What does it feel like?” he asked her, not touching her yet.
“It feels tingly and explosive. Can I touch your… that?”
She pointed down at his cock and Arturo took a long breath.
In all of his fantasies about Martine, they just sort of ripped each other’s clothes off and went at it. Full steam ahead.
He’d never dreamed about them lying lengthwise on the bed, close enough to feel one another’s heat but not touching.
“Let’s not touch quite yet,” he finally replied.
“Why?” She paused for a second. “I don’t know how to do this at all, so you’ll have to explain everything.”
Christ.
He took another deep breath and decided there wasn’t enough fresh air on planet Earth to calm him down.
“Have you talked to anyone about sex? Like the other girls?”
She shook her head. “I’ve picked up some things here and there. From movies and from conversations I’ve overheard.” She cocked her head to one side. “I know that we touch and kiss and I get soft and you get hard and then you put that in here.” She pointed to his crotch and then her own.
“Right.” Arturo wished for a cosmic pause button. He desperately wanted to bury his face in the pillow and scream for a minute but he didn’t want to freak her out. “I think first I’ll just kiss you for a little while.”
“On my mouth.”
“And all over your body. Especially between your legs.”
“Oh,” she said, a little note of surprise and delight in her tone. “I didn’t know about that.”
“Yeah. That’s a really fun part.”
“Do I get to kiss you there?”
“You can do anything you want to me.” He answered it fast enough that his words ran together and he fought the urge to roll his eyes at himself. He was acting like a teenager. “But for this time, why don’t we let me kiss you first, okay?”
“Great! I’m ready.” She rolled to her back and closed her eyes.
Arturo wanted to laugh and also to bas
h his head against a wall. He couldn’t just fall all over her. There was such a thing as a mood and he desperately wanted her to be in one. He wanted to seduce her with more than just touches. He wanted the moment to tornado her away and right into him. He wanted her to want.
It was with that thought in his head that he spoke instead of touched. “Wings, I’m curious, what is it about a man that attracts you?” He leaned forward just enough to let some of her hair sift through his fingers. He still wasn’t used to touching her strawberry locks. Her hair was much more slippery than he’d expected it to be. Like spun glass.
“Well, I’m not really attracted to men.” She popped her eyes open.
“Wait.” Welp, it had only taken about twenty seconds to completely derail his verbal seduction plan. He cleared his throat and resisted the temptation to cover his erection with a pillow. “You’re attracted to women, then?”
“Oh. No. I mean, yes. Wait.” She rolled up onto her side again. “I think women and men are equally gorgeous. But the real answer is that there is only one being I’ve ever been attracted to in this way.”
Arturo rolled onto his side to face her. They weren’t more than three inches apart. His dick was up against his stomach and had its own pulse. “You’re talking about me.”
“Of course.” She smiled at him, a sweet smile.
“Wake up, Arturo,” he told himself, slamming his eyes closed and then forcing them open, like that would help him awaken from this insanely good dream he was having where Martine was naked and hot for him.
She laughed. “You’re not dreaming. I’m being serious.” She inched forward a few centimeters but seemed to pick up on how fun it was to not touch quite yet. She was helping spin the anticipation out and he half cursed himself for teaching her this game. “What was it you asked? What do I find attractive about you? I like your shoulders. They’re very… bossy. And your dark eyebrows. They’re always so irritated. I like the way you eat food. Like you couldn’t care less about it. Each bite is like you’ve just remembered you have food on your plate. I like the way you shift into your bear form. Somehow you’re kind of snake-like. It’s a sneaky, natural shift, not like the other men who have to work at it.”
She dropped her eyes to the bedspread and then back up to him. “I like the way you kiss me. Like I’m a flower and you’re trying to coax my petals open with your tongue. I like the way your voice gets very rough and low when I’m naked.” She leaned up now, all the way on one hand, and peered down at him. “I like that.” She pointed at his cock, now going an angry red and straining for her. He was glossy at the tip with desire. “I look at it and a strange rhythm starts up deep inside me. It’s like when I was sitting on you and my hips were going back and forth. You make my whole body want to do that.”
Unable to help himself, as if her words were a spell she’d cast over him, Arturo leaned forward and took one raspberry nipple into his mouth. She jumped in surprise and then pushed forward. He put one hand on her hip, pinning her to the bed so that she wouldn’t climb on top of him and end this before he even got started.
First he gave her just the heat of his mouth and then a slight scrape of his teeth. After a minute he suckled at her, teasing her with his tongue. When he came off of her, it was to see her as liquid as heated metal. Her eyes were dozy and half-mast.
To test, he put one finger on her shoulder and nudged her onto her back. She sort of melted backward, her arms akimbo over her head and one knee falling open.
Jesus, that was all it took and her lock was fully picked? He looked down between her legs and got one glossy peek of her arousal for him. He was certain that if he touched her right that very second, he’d find her soft and wet.
But soft and wet wasn’t enough. Not tonight. No, he wanted her wrecked and trembling and spreading. He wanted her—
His brain cut out when she reached out for him. He felt like a sailor being beckoned home to the rocks by a siren. He didn’t give a fuck if she was drawing him into oblivion. He was going where she was. No matter what, he just needed to be where she was.
He greeted the palm of her reaching hand with his lips and groaned at the silky warmth he found there. Arturo kissed his way up her arm to bite at the inside of her elbow. His fingers cramped into fists but he didn’t trust himself to touch her yet. He knew that once he touched her, this thing ran the risk of fast-tracking all the way to the end and he wasn’t ready for the end.
He nuzzled into the skin at the fragrant keyboard of her ribs and kissed a path over the map of her soft belly. He made out with one of her hipbones and ran the risk of falling headlong into love with that part of her body. So soft and sharp and angular and round all at once. It was so Martine. His world-weary, clueless, virgin, badass warrior. She was a mass of contradictions.
She was everything he wanted.
Arturo nudged her over with his nose at her hip and she rolled onto her belly. He groaned at the graceful lines of her, the audacious dip of shadows into the ravine of her spine, the crack of her ass. It was another thing he was dangerously close to being in love with, the shadows of her. He licked the line where her thigh met her ass and just like that, the shadows were gone. She had full-body glow to accompany the quick little panting that was making her chest jump.
In her twist over to her belly, her hair had gotten flung up over her head, leaving her neck and one ear gorgeously exposed. He licked up the golden highway of her back and couldn’t help but suck at the corner of her shoulder. He let his teeth needle her ear. He parted her hair to kiss her scalp.
He was braced over top of her, still not letting himself touch. “I could take you like this. Did you know that, Wings? That two people can couple in this position?”
She looked over her shoulder, her eyes arrowing in on his cock. Without warning, she pushed up onto her hands and knees and demolished the blank space between their bodies.
His cock nestled between her legs and his chest was pressed completely to her back.
“Gah—Motherfucker.” Arturo couldn’t help but use one hand to clasp her across her chest. Gravity had her already heavy breasts sitting even heavier in the palm of his hand. He tipped back so that she sat up in his lap, her pussy flat against his cock.
He breathed hard against the back of her neck. He swore and stiffened when her hand traveled down between her legs and found the head of his cock. She tilted her head down and he tucked his chin over her shoulder. He had a perfect view to watch her discover him. He glanced down and then looked immediately away. Her golden fingers across his pissed-off and pulsing cock was too erotic a sight for him. He was trying to keep the insane inside the membrane right now.
He switched his eyes to her face and gritted his teeth while her fingers circled the head of his cock, played in the wetness there. When he could take no more, he experimentally thrust his hips forward. Her eyes widened.
“Oh,” she whispered and pushed her hips back toward him.
He cursed, filled his hands with her breasts and thrusted forward again.
“Can we do it this way?” Martine asked and to his momentary elation, she started lifting her hips, one hand on his cock, guiding him backward toward her soft, wet pussy.
“Yes. But not—right now.” He gritted the words out, gripped her by the hips and flipped her back around. She landed in a crouch on the bed, a warrior’s pose, her eyes flashing with surprise and lust.
“You threw me.”
“You can handle it.”
“Is that a normal part of sex?”
“No.”
“Oh.” She shrugged her shoulders. “Fun.” And then she lunged at him. She caught him off balance and had him tipping backwards, halfway off the bed. He barely had time to catch one arm down on the floor to keep them from the hard two-foot drop.
He laughed, which wasn’t something he’d known he could do with a dick this hard. He lifted one leg, pinned the lower half of her body to his and rolled them.
She wiggled out from under him and pi
nned his hands in a retaliatory fashion. He growled and laughed and met her mouth halfway to his.
Their teeth clacked and tongues slid and he wanted to drink her down like an elixir of life. The irony was not lost on him that the one thing that made him want to live forever had such a pending expiration date on it.
He broke the hold her hands had on his wrists and dragged the flats of his hands over her back. Her wetness pressed against his lower belly as she bent over him, slamming her lips to his.
And just like that. Zap! Her fingertips on his chest zapped the shit out of him with her energy. It was an instant sharp bite of discomfort that melted into a zinging heat that spread instantly out from the point of contact.
He liked it.
Her energy came out in her lips and then her tongue. He swallowed that gold energy down and it was like taking sips from a lightning bolt. She was white-hot and floral and fruity and burning so bright he could almost feel her changing shapes in his arms, like she was made of molten bronze.
She zapped him again and their moans twisted together. He tossed her again, this time with less force, and had her splayed out on her back.
“I’m going to kiss you here,” he told her, spreading her legs and leaning over her, remembering at the last second that she was a virgin and he should probably spell this out for her at least a little bit.
“What? Yes? I—Oh! Oh, that’s so nice. That’s so—oh, God.”
Her hand twisted through his hair and he welcomed the bite of pain. It kept him from diving face first into the unbelievable flavor of her body. He licked at her gently, getting accustomed to what it felt like to go down on a being made of light. She was electric and pulsing and tasted like she was literally made of flowers. How could that even be? But it was.
His tongue gently circled her clit as her thighs trembled on either side of his ears. When she was breathily begging him for something, he finally let his tongue tour downward. He was correct about the soft and wet but she seemed to almost liquefy under the touch of his tongue. He licked inside her, letting his tongue work a circle around her channel. It was when he lost his tongue inside her that he lost himself completely.
