by Selena Scott
Emin laid his forehead on the wood of the door.
“And he doesn’t want those things with me. That’s why he’s so sad.”
“What?” Emin finally pulled open the door and she wobbled a little. He steadied her. “What do you mean? He is sad because of his past, no?”
Glory bit her lip. “I can’t explain without telling a secret. But Anton is sad because of what happened with Navuka. But he is sadder because he can’t have something that he really wants. And it’s not me.”
Emin narrowed his eyes. Could that be true? Could he really be so blind where his brother was concerned?
“Touch me, Emin,” Glory said, blinking up at him, one hand gently tugging at the collar of the t-shirt she wore. “Please touch me.”
A snake curled in Emin’s belly. Ready to strike. He didn’t know how much longer he could hold it off.
Maybe she could see the resolve thinning in his eyes because she stepped closer to him. “Please. When you don’t touch me, it hurts. In here.” She placed her palm on her lower belly first, and then between her breasts, over her heart.
A few things clicked into place for him at once. She didn’t want Anton. She wanted him. And she wasn’t a child. She was a 27-year-old woman, wearing his shirt and begging him to touch her. He rearranged the pieces and they started to look suspiciously like hope. Like a light at the end of his sexual frustration tunnel.
“No,” he said, taking her by the shoulders and leading her toward the bed. “I will not touch you or kiss you tonight.”
She made a little sound of distress that arrowed right through his chest. He sat her on the bed.
“Because for your first kiss, you will not be drunk.” He crouched in front of her, reaching up to play with a strand of her hair. He’d never let himself do that before. It nearly undid everything he was working to hold together. “You will not be drunk when I first touch you. You will remember every second. My touch, my kiss, will burn into your memory. When you are old woman someday, it will be the last thing you think of before you leave this world.”
Glory gasped, her breath coming out in pants. “When will you touch me?”
“Tomorrow,” he said, laying her down on the pillow and covering her over with the blanket.
She didn’t protest, maybe not wanting to push her luck. Emin padded back over to his nest of blankets and slammed his eyes shut. He thought he’d never be able to sleep. But as her breaths became even, so did his.
CHAPTER NINE
Glory sprang from her bed the first second that the light hit her eyelids. It was kissing day! But her heart fell when she saw that Emin’s blankets were empty. He wasn’t there.
Well, that was okay. She wanted a second to herself anyhow. She sprang to the bathroom, felt a dull pounding in her head. And a nasty taste in her mouth. That was what Dora had said she might feel like after the margaritas. That was alright with Glory. The drinks had tasted so good! And the night with her friends had been so fun.
And then with Emin. She’d finally shown him how she felt. And that felt so good, too. So Glory hummed as she brushed her teeth, combed out her hair. By the time she’d stepped out of the bathroom she was feeling good. Like a million bucks, is what Dora would say.
She practically skipped to the kitchen for a cup of coffee, something she’d grown to like very much since meeting Emin and his family.
But she froze, grinning, when she saw Emin in the doorway of the cabin.
“I bring you orange juice. And crackers, because I think you will be sick from drinking.” He set the packages on the table and stood, his arms crossed, his eyes so serious. “But you do not look sick.”
“How could I be sick?” she glowed. “You’re going to kiss me today!”
Emin’s eyes became even more serious. "No. I can take no more!” He raked a hand through his hair. “You are like baby deer."
"I'm not a deer! I'm a tiger.”
"No. listen. You are like tiny baby animal. You run around and knock over things you don't understand."
Her brow furrowed in confusion. "But I-"
"No." Emin had had enough. Crossing the room to her, he took her chin in his hand. "You don't speak anymore. Unless it is to say my name. Or to say if I do something you don't like. Yes?"
She sucked her bottom lip between her teeth. "Stop. Pause. Slow down. Dora taught me that."
He didn't smile. "Good. Now the next part. My name."
"Emin,'" she whispered, not quite sure why it sent shivers down her spine to say it.
"Again."
"Emin."
He let go of her chin and to her intense disappointment stepped back from her.
"Take off shirt," he growled.
Glory's hands trembled as she followed his directions. She loved being naked, and it didn't bother her in the least. So why was her heart jumping?
"Good," he said and took another step back from her, squinting his eyes and tilting his head to one side. "And now I'm going to do a thing I have wanted to do for long time."
"What's that?" Glory asked, standing there, the cool morning air kissing every curve.
He turned his back to her. "I am going to paint you."
"What? I thought we were kissing-"
"Only my name," he commanded, his voice low and taut.
Glory nodded. "Yes, Emin."
He stilled, where his hands were scrabbling around with paints and brushes. But recovering, he pulled a fresh canvas from the pile. "Sit."
She immediately sank in one of the kitchen chairs, wincing when the cool wood touched her bottom. Emin immediately stripped the blanket of a bed and came over, standing her up and covering the chair for her. Then he planted his hands firmly on her shoulders and sat her back down.
The next half hour was the strangest of Glory's life. She had never been more aware of her body. There was no part of her that Emin's gaze did not touch. She sat, leaning forward with her elbows on the kitchen table. She should be chilly; there was frost on the windows and Emin hadn't built a fire in the hearth yet. But she felt so oddly warm. Heated down in the very center of her.
He watched her.
And she watched him right back. His handsome face was so serious, dark and concentrated as he worked. She tried as hard as she could to keep still, but she had so much buzzing energy racing through her. And she was getting very... wet. She could feel it between her thighs and it confused her. It felt like the heat that had been building inside her was spilling out of her. She pressed her thighs together against the ache that was there.
His eyes flickered. "You are, what is word? Antsy."
She said nothing, not wanting to break the delicious spell he had cast over them. Leaning back in the chair he surveyed her for another moment.
He ran a hand over his face, from brow to chin, before he stood up suddenly, almost knocking the chair right back.
He strode over to her and stood above her. He ran one hand over the crimson cloud of her hair. She looked up at him through her thick fringe of lashes. And then he crouched in front of her. Balancing on his toes.
His hands came to her chin and he drew her forward. Glory’s eyes fluttered closed. She wanted the feeling and nothing else to intrude. But he paused, held her face only an inch from his, until her eyes opened again. He was there, his eyes a lighter brown than she had realized. And looking into them, he leaned forward and took her lower lip between his teeth. Gave her a gentle, zipping tug that brought a sound out of Glory.
He let her lip go.
“Emin,” she whispered, desperate for more. And then she was lifted up, one of his hands at her bare thigh and the other around her waist. He laid her down on the bed, and levered himself over top of her.
“I cannot look at you anymore,” he growled. “You are so beautiful that it hurts me.”
His mouth took hers, softly but inexorably. One hand cupped her neck and the other trailed down her arm to her fingers.
He broke away from her lips. “The light in your hair. God
.”
And then he was kissing her again, deeper this time. His flavor was warm and everywhere and somehow so familiar that it brought tears to Glory’s eyes. His mouth was a home that she hadn’t even known she’d been lonesome for.
He spoke, mirroring her thoughts. “I knew you would taste of this. Of mountain water and sunlight.” He took her mouth again, his tongue tracing the seam of her lips. “How did I know? How did I already know it?”
She moaned, her legs falling open in the same second that her lips did. He stroked his tongue into her mouth and Glory knew she’d never be the same. The strokes of his hands were strong, even-pressured and only over her face and arms. He was changing her with his tender strength and he’d barely even touched her yet.
“You are wild and gorgeous and untamed, Glory.”
“Glory Malashovik,” she corrected him automatically, clinging to her claimed last name like a leash in the wind. She felt as if she were crawling out of a cave into the bright, bright sun. She didn’t want to be blinded by the beauty of it. She wanted to see it all, remember it all. She needed that so badly.
“Glory Malashovik,” he repeated, pushing himself into her body. Hard against soft. Brute strength against graceful strength. She stretched her long soft self out and took every pressing touch he gave her.
The kiss spanned out, they rolled over the bed, over the sheets as the sun came up fully. Dust motes floated in a blade of sunlight across the bed. The cabin heated with the light and with the wet, rolling friction of their bodies. Glory, still completely naked, pressed herself against Emin who had taken off his shirt. She wrecked herself across him, chest to chest.
“Emin,” she moaned, tearing her face away from the sweet torture of his mouth. “Touch me. Please.”
“I am,” he growled, tracing a thumb in a circle around her wrist and nipping a line from her neck to her ear.
“Touch me here,” Glory said, taking his hand and putting it between her legs, where her body was aching and aching.
Emin froze, cupping her wetness. He laced one finger through her silkiness almost reflexively. Glory moaned and arched up toward him. But Emin pulled his hand away.
Looking at her straight in the eye, he brought his hand, wet with her arousal, to his mouth and sucked her flavor right off of it. Glory moaned again. Why was that so hot?
“I will touch you there, kvietka.” He lowered and kissed her again and Glory could taste herself on him. “But today, we kiss.”
And they did. For hours they rolled and kissed and petted. Until Emin made them shift into their animal forms and they ran together through the woods. Up to the cliff, the way they had before. They stayed in their animal forms as they looked out at the valley, but she curled into him, unable to stay away from his brutish heat. When they returned home, and they’d shifted back, Glory standing naked in Emin’s twilit kitchen, they spoke again.
“Why won’t you touch me everywhere?”
Emin stalked up to her, shirtless and gripped her by the elbows, dragging her to him and taking her mouth in a kiss that branded her.
“Because you are innocent.”
Glory pulled herself away from him. “So you’ll never touch me?” Fear lined her face, clouded her eyes.
Emin barked a mirthless laugh. “No. I am not strong enough for that.” He paced away from her and studied the canvas that he had painted earlier that day. The portrait of her that she had yet to see. He set it down and turned back to her.
“I am going to touch you, Glory. I am going to fuck you.” He stalked toward her. “I am going to make you mine in a way that cannot ever be undone.” He stood directly in front of her again and he knelt, quick as a cat, and laved his teeth over one of her nipples and then the other. “But you deserve to know what it feels like to lose your innocence piece by piece. The delicious step after step.”
He took her mouth again.
“So, for now, we kiss. Until you are crazy for me.”
As much as she wanted everything with him, Glory had a really hard time arguing with that.
CHAPTER TEN
And did they. Over the next few weeks they kissed every opportunity they got. Emin kissed her brains out on the kitchen floor. In the woods behind his cabin. He hauled her across his lap and kissed her at red lights, at stop signs, at the side of the road when he couldn’t bear to drive any longer without touching her.
He walked into his mother’s house, found Glory chopping carrots, tossed her up onto the counter and kissed the breath out of her. Until his mother smacked him on the back of the head with a spatula. They kissed in the grocery store, in Danil and Dora’s living room.
And every night, for hours, in bed. They rolled and kissed and petted. He was very firm about keeping his own pants on, no matter how curious Glory was about his man parts. She couldn’t even begin to explain the excitement she got when she would press against him and feel his manhood. Always so awake for her. Stretching toward her like it needed to be closer to her. She understood the feeling. Her lady parts were practically screaming for Emin.
And still, he insisted that she deserved to learn the deliciousness of going slow. She wanted to listen, really, she did. Because she knew he was right. But also, her body was aching all the time, racing toward something she didn’t know existed.
It was a month after their first kiss that Glory made a very important discovery in the shower. She’d been thinking about Emin and the day that they’d spent together. He’d kissed her for an hour in the car before he’d let her get out and go see AJ. Then he’d picked her up and took her for a walk through the woods, in their human forms. They’d been doing that a lot lately. It was slower, clunkier than their animal forms, but they could hold hands and talk this way. Little by little, Emin had been gathering information about her life.
Glory had given the Malashoviks everything she could tell them about where she came from, where her mother might still be. And they’d narrowed it down to somewhere in the Canadian Rockies. Emin still hoped for any small clue that she’d forgotten to give, anything that would help them narrow the territory.
After their walk, Maxim had been at Emin’s cabin. He’d brought some dinner over for them, which Glory realized was something he did often. As brilliant as Emin was at painting, he could barely open a can of spaghettiOs. His brothers often brought food for him.
Emin had insisted that Glory eat while on his lap. Something that she loved. He was so affectionate with her in front of his family. Maxim had acted as if it were no big deal, to eat dinner across from the two of them, Emin’s hand tracing a circle on Glory’s thigh while she sat across his lap and worked through her sandwich.
And after Maxim had left, Emin and Glory had fallen on one another, kissing like they needed one another to be able to breathe.
He’d shoved her away from him, as he often did these days, breathing hard and pacing. He’d ripped his hands through his hair.
“I will shift,” he’d growled. “Be asleep when I am back.”
Glory knew how he felt. The constant, aching nearness of their kisses was slowly driving her insane. How was she supposed to go on, go about her life when she constantly felt as if she had a fire in her belly?
So he’d gone out to run as a bear and she’d jumped in the shower. She needed to cool off. Restart her system so that she wasn’t going insane. But it was there, in the shower, the soapy bubbles slipping all over her, that Glory thought of Emin.
She thought of his hands, so golden and strong, always so sure. She thought of his dark, serious eyebrows, like slashes above his deep set eyes. They made his eyes look darker than they were. She loved that. His secretly light eyes were something that only she knew. And then his curved nose, like a crescent moon. Made her think of the night sky. And then his mouth.
Glory stilled as her hand found its way between her legs, the soap making everything so slippery. Something electric had zinged through her. She’d never really touched herself there before. And besides the one time that
she’d put Emin’s hand there, neither had he. But she was so slippery and warm, thinking about Emin, that one of her fingers had accidentally slipped inside herself for just a second.
She did it again, her head falling back in pleasure. This time, her finger slipped and she discovered a tight little knot that had a moan escaping her lips. Her body wound up tight and pulled. What was this?
It could only be good. Something that felt this yummy could only be a good thing. She wanted to keep touching it, teasing herself, but she also didn’t want to be alone. She needed to share this feeling.
She flipped off the shower and squeezed her hair out. In her haste, she didn’t even grab a towel. She realized that she didn’t need one when she stepped out of the bathroom. Emin had lit a fire in the hearth on the chilly night and the cabin was balmy warm.
He was back from his run and back in his human form. He lay in his nest of blankets, one arm in an arrow behind his head as he watched the flames. Glory watched the flames too, but not in the hearth, rather as their shadows danced across the golden skin of his chest, of his face.
“Emin,” she said and he turned to her, his eyes instantly darkening as he saw her there, sparkling wet from the shower, her hair in a deep red slick down her back. “Something happened to me just now.”
“What?” he asked, raising up on one elbow, his face drawn in concern. “You are okay, kvietka?”
His concern for her had something blooming in her chest. She took a step toward him. She had never been more sure of her answer in her life. “Yes. I’m okay. I’m so good.”
She knelt next to him on the floor.
“I found something. Inside myself,” she said and she came up on her knees, spreading them slightly. Emin’s breath came out choppy as his eyes fell to her pussy. “It made me feel so good. And just got better and better. But I wanted to be with you, next to you. Kissing you, when I felt it end.”
