His eyebrows flattened out to a straight line. "I just thought it would be polite to pick you up since you'd been away on my behalf."
"Doing the job you're paying me to do," I pointed out, secretly delighted by the revelation that Paen had missed me while I was gone.
"I was in town anyway," he said, avoiding my eye.
"Uh-huh. And the kilt?"
"I'm a Scot. I'm allowed to wear one."
"I know that, silly. I just meant, what's the occasion?"
He maneuvered the car slowly through a busy, pedestrian-laden street. "I don't need an occasion to wear a kilt."
"Riiiight," I drawled.
He sent me a quick glance. "Most women fair drool at the sight of a man in a kilt."
Oho! So that was the way things were. I fought to keep my smile from showing, and tried to look only mildly interested. "Do they?"
"Yes." He glanced at me again. "They find it sexy."
"I'm sure they do." I pointed out the next turn, and Paen swung around a corner, entering the narrow street in the old part of Edinburgh where Clare and I shared an apartment. "Did you miss me?"
He pulled into the tiny parking area behind our building, giving me a startled look. "Did I what?"
"You heard me. Did you miss me while I was gone?"
"Where should I park?" he asked, ignoring my question.
"There, next to Clare's car. It's the spot assigned to me, but I don't have a car, so you can use it. And stop avoiding answering the question."
He pulled into a spot and turned off the engine. "I regretted that you were away on business when I couldn't help you."
I smiled to myself as I unhooked my seat belt. "Not good enough. Did you miss me?"
He got out of the car, going to open the trunk.
I followed, my arms crossed over my chest as I leaned a hip against the car. "Well?"
"Let me ask you this—did you miss me?" he said, slamming the trunk closed.
"Very much," I said, waiting.
His eyes lightened another few degrees. "I see. In that case—yes, I missed you."
"Good. Are you going to spend the night this time, or are you not yet ready for such a thing?"
"That was our original agreement, but I thought perhaps you might have changed your mind."
"I don't change my mind that easily," I said as we walked to the building, waiting as he opened the door for me. The faint sound of music from Mila's sex shop was the only sound to permeate this part of the building. I started up the stairs to our apartment, but Paen stopped me, pushing me up against the wall of the stairwell, his body blocking out the dim light that hung over the stairs until all I could see was the silver gleaming brightly in his eyes.
"You're tired," he said.
"I haven't yawned once. How can you possibly imagine I'm tired?"
"You said you weren't sleeping well," he reminded me.
"I slept on the train coming home," I answered, thankful that I had dropped off for a few minutes so I could tell him that.
"You look tired," he insisted.
I smiled. I couldn't help it; he was so cute trying to deny the obvious. "I do not look tired. I checked a mirror before the train arrived. The dark circles under my eyes are hereditary, not due to lack of sleep. I am exhibiting no obvious signs of fatigue."
He leaned into me. "I can feel that you're near exhaustion."
"Nuh-uh, that won't work either, because according to you, we don't have a psychic thing. So you can't possibly know what I'm feeling," I argued softly, my body turning into one gigantic tingling erogenous zone as he pinned me against the wall.
"Then you won't mind at all if I ascertain for myself your feelings on the subject of our having sex?" His voice was likewise low, but roughened with arousal.
"Good god, no. Ascertain away," I said, gasping as his hands slid up my waist to cup my breasts, causing me to rub myself against him like a cat begging for stroking. I clutched the back of his jacket to keep myself upright, my senses overwhelmed with the scent and feel of him.
"I'm going to kiss you now," he said, as if he had to warn me. My answer was to move sinuously against him, twine one leg around his, and grab his head with both hands to pull him into a kiss that I figured would make him see stars, if not actual galaxies.
The elf in me wanted to distance myself from the situation and analyze just what it was that made Paen so attractive to me, but bless my dad's mortal genes, there was enough of him in my chromosomal makeup to let me ignore the elf part and go into a full swoon of delight when Paen's lips touched mine. That touch was brief, but I didn't mourn its loss because what followed was enough to have my shoelaces melting.
It started out like a regular kiss—our lips were there, smooshing up against each other, tongues present but not yet engaged. There was a sense of aroused excitement with the first couple of passes of lip action, followed by a tentative, questing touch with the tip of my tongue. Paen's tongue answered, and suddenly he wasn't just kissing me, he was feasting, supping on my mouth, drinking me in like I was the source of all being. His body was hard against mine, but it wasn't an unpleasant sensation—far from it. While he was busy making love to my mouth, my body curled around him, trying to get closer still.
Wanting more, I poured into him the feelings he was arousing in me, the sensations he fired up deep inside me, the desires and wants and a whole slew of complex emotions that I couldn't even begin to imagine. I flooded him with what I was feeling—and he froze.
Is something wrong? I asked as his body turned into a statue. He pulled back, looking down at me with his quicksilver eyes, now so bright I swear I could read a book by them.
"This is not really an appropriate place to continue," he said, answering, but not really answering, the question I had mind-zapped him.
"Oh." I looked around at the dimly lit stairwell. "You're right, it isn't. Shall we go up to my apartment?"
He stepped back and indicated I should precede him. Speed on stairs has never been my forte, having inherited my father's tendency to clumsiness, but I made it up this flight in record time. I hurried into the apartment with an excuse on my lips for Clare to explain why I was dragging Paen off to my bedroom, but there was no Clare to be seen. Nor Finn.
"Huh," I said, peeling off my jacket and tossing it on the coat-tree. "I wonder if she and Finn went out?"
Ethereal giggling, followed by deeper, more masculine laughter, drifted out from behind the closed door to Clare's room.
Paen cocked an eyebrow at me. "I would say they stayed in."
"Geez!" I said, looking for a moment at Clare's door. "They just met! And now they're in there going at it like bunnies?"
The other eyebrow rose.
"We're different," I told both eyebrows. "She's not conducting an experiment, she's just giving in to her libidinous faery nature."
"Elves don't have a libido?" he asked, taking off his coat.
"Of course they do. They're just not as flighty as faeries. They don't feel the need to have sex on a daily basis, as most Fae folk do. They are circumspect. They have restraint. They can wait for the proper time and place, and most importantly, the right person to come along before they… rawr!"
Paen reeled back a few steps from the impact of my body being flung onto his.
"I want another one of those kisses," I said, wrapping my legs around his waist.
"Circumspection and restraint having gone out the window?" he asked as he hoisted me a little higher, staggering ever so slightly in the direction I pointed.
"I'm also human," I mentioned, nuzzling his neck as he struggled to open my bedroom door.
"Would you mind… thank you."
"So very polite. I love the Scots," I said as I reached behind me to open the door, closing it as Paen carried me across the threshold.
"Our politeness is just one of our attributes." He stopped a foot into the room, looking around it in surprise.
"My mother's idea," I said, unhooking my legs so I could stan
d. "She and Dad went to Africa last spring, so for Christmas last year she hired a decorator to come in and redo my bedroom. Don't let the malacca and mosquito netting fool you—the bed is quite sturdy."
"And the elephant head?" he asked, looking at the wall above the headboard.
"Fake. Mom wanted to get the real thing, but I had to draw the line somewhere. There's a matching foot basket I use for trash around here somewhere."
"I see. And the machete is for… ?"
I picked it up and gave it a twirl before hacking at an aggressive palm that blocked the path into the bedroom. "The plants are very real, and were tended by my mother before she turned them over to me, so they grow like crazy. I'm dreading what will happen this summer, once some actual sunlight gets to them. There, I think you can get by. Mind the rhino."
"Bench?" he asked, eyeing the large wooden figure that lurked in the shrubberies my mother insisted live in my room.
"Yup." I skirted a faux-leopard rug in order to fling a few dozen accent pillows off my bed. "You can ride him, too, but he's not very comfortable. I use his horn as a backscratcher when I have an itch I can't reach. So… um… here we are. Do you want to get naked?"
Paen thought for a moment. "Do you?"
"Well…" I looked at him, really looked at him. He wasn't movie star handsome, but I liked his face. It was a typical Scottish face, kind of long, with interesting cheeks, and a jaw that made my knees go a bit melty. His eyes were unparalleled—going from dark, cloudy grey-almost-black, to a silver so bright it came close to scorching me. I was still more than a little bewildered by my instant attraction to him, but there was no denying it was there. So where was the harm in giving in to it? "I think I'd like you to be naked first, and then I'll get naked later."
"That hardly seems fair," he said, frowning just a little. "You'd have me at a disadvantage if I was nude and you weren't."
"You saw my boobs already. That gives you a point up on me—all I did was get to feel you."
"I didn't see your breasts. I saw your bra."
"With my boobs in it. It's the same thing," I argued.
"Is that really an important distinction?"
I wrinkled my nose as I thought about that. "Well… not in the world peace sort of sense, no, but I'm trying to establish my footing with you. I'm a bit nervous."
"And you are taking advantage of that fact by dictating to me a bizarre set of rules you just thought up?" Paen may have been grumbling, but he kept unbuttoning his shirt.
"Maybe. OK, I am. You got away with all that experiment stuff, so I'm going to be the rulemaker. Rule number one is that you get naked before me."
"Do you have body issues?" he asked, shucking his shirt.
It took me a minute to answer. I clutched the malacca, mosquito-netting-wrapped bedpost to keep from running over to touch that magnificent chest again. "Just the usual. Nothing out of the ordinary. Why, do you think I should have body issues?"
"No," he said quickly as I looked down at myself. "I just wondered. So many women seem to be unhappy with themselves, it's refreshing to find one who isn't."
"Oh. Well, as far as that goes, I'd like pretty much everything improved, but since that's not going to happen without a new set of genes or a really expensive plastic surgeon, I'm resigned to living with this body."
"It's a very nice body," he said politely, sitting on the rhino's back to pull off his shoes and socks.
"Thank you. I wouldn't mind being taller than five foot four, having bigger boobs, and less in the hip and thigh area, but eh. I can live with myself."
"That's a good attitude to take. I never understood women who feel driven to surgical enhancement to match a society's ideas of beauty."
"Well, I did have my ears bobbed," I reminded him, watching with interest as he stood back up and put his hands on his belt.
"Yes, but I assume that was to lessen the taunting that you must have undergone as a child."
"Yup. Although my dad says he thinks my mother's pointy ears are sexy. He likes to nibble on them. Mom says that to an elf, ears are an erogenous zone, but I've never found that to be true."
He unbuckled his belt, dropping it and the sporran on the chair. "Would you like me to nibble on your ears?"
"They're not pointy," I answered, a little shiver of mingled anticipation and excitement doing a number on my nervous system. "Are you purposely stalling? Are you not dropping kilt because you suddenly realize that making love is a hundred times better than just plain old fucking?"
"No," he said, his hand on the waistband. "Why, are you having second thoughts?"
"You asked me that before. I said no then, if you recall."
"That's right. Well…" He hesitated for another moment, then with a quick move unbuttoned his kilt and let it drop to the floor. He wasn't wearing underwear, something that mildly shocked me. "There. I'm naked and you're dressed. Now it's your turn."
"Don't rush me," I said, not sure where to look first. Oh, OK, I looked there first, but just because I wondered. But once that curiosity was satisfied, I gave the rest of him the once-over. "I'm guessing you have no body issues whatsoever."
"You guess wrong. Are you going to just stand there and stare at me?" he asked, picking up his kilt and neatly folding it to sit on top of his shirt.
"I'm an elf. I'm a visual person. I like looking at you."
"You're human," he said, marching over to me and pulling me up against his naked body. "You're also one of the sexiest women I've ever met, bobbed ears and all. Now take off your clothes before I rip them off."
"Oooh. Aggression. Dominance," I said, my breath catching as my hands slid up his ribs. He was warm, hard, and male. My senses went into overload as I rubbed myself against him, stroking all that lovely flesh.
"Does it arouse you?" he asked, nibbling a path up my neck toward my ears, his hands moving down my sides, around to my butt.
"Not really—oh dear god!"
I've had boyfriends who've done a little earlobe nibbling before my mind took its usual coital walk, but never has anyone ventured beyond earlobe territory to the rest of my ears. When Paen bit gently down on the top of my ear, I just about passed out from the bolt of arousal that zapped through me. My legs literally shook from the tremors of pleasure that were coursing down from the touch of his mouth. "Rip them off!"
"Hmm?" Paen asked as he nibbled the top arch of my ear. My knees buckled.
"Rip my clothes off! Right now!"
He pulled back a little to look at me. "You want me to rip your clothes off?"
"Yes! Right now! Rip them off, then ear me again!"
"I thought you didn't find aggression and dominance—"
I slapped a hand over his mouth. "Too much talking, not enough action."
"Very well," he mumbled under my hand. "But I want you to remember that the destruction of your clothes was your idea."
In the end, he didn't rip my clothes off, although he did help me out of them in a time that would do a quick-change artist proud.
"There, I'm naked. Now do my ears again!" I demanded, lunging at him as I kicked off my underwear.
He chuckled as I turned my head for maximum ear position. "Changed your mind about ears being sexy, have you?"
"You have no idea," I said, quivering as his hot breath touched my ears. Something occurred to me then. As his tongue swept a long stroke up the side of my ear to the top, I sent him the sensations of sheer, utter arousal that he was generating, alongside a hunger that I hadn't known existed in me. For a moment I could feel an answering hunger in him, and then gently I was closed out, as if a door had shut between us.
Stop doing that!
"I thought you liked this?" he asked, nipping my ear. Every bone in my body turned to pudding.
I do. I mean stop shutting me out of your mind. It's not fair. I'm willing to let you into mine. I just want you to feel what I'm feeling. I want to know what it is that I do to you, too. Why won't you let me in?
He stopped nibbling long en
ough to take one of my hands, place it on his belly, and slide it down the intriguing trail of hair that led to points south. "Does that answer the question of what you do to me?" he asked as my fingers closed around his erection.
Only partially, I answered, wanting more from him, but unable to express what I wanted without sounding like an idiot. I wanted to tell him that I needed some sort of emotional attachment, but I knew what his answer to that would be. And since I had agreed to his ground rules, I couldn't change them now.
I'd just have to make him realize how shallow sex was without anything behind it, my inner elf decided. The human in me wanted to point out that most men were completely and utterly happy with nothing but a physical relationship, but I squelched that thought. Paen wasn't most men. He was different, in more ways than the obvious. He was so… needy. He needed someone to show him how much more there could be to life.
"I'm going to lick you from head to toe," he mumbled against my neck, his voice thick with desire as he backed me the couple of steps to the bed. "Then reverse the route until I end back at those tasty little ears of yours."
"Sounds like a plan to me," I agreed, grabbing a foil packet from my nightstand drawer before beating back the mosquito netting and getting into the bed—without allowing his mouth to break contact with my skin—as gracefully as possible.
One eyebrow twitched at the sight of the foil packet.
"For later," I said, pulling him down onto me.
"We don't need that," he said, his tongue making a swipe across the top of my ear. I shivered with ecstasy and rubbed my hips against his erection. "You're immortal."
"No, I'm half elf. That means I have approximately double a human life span, but I can still get diseases. Not to mention pregnant. And since I'd like to avoid both at this time, we'll just have to do this my way."
"If you insist," he said, pausing to suck his breath in when I trailed both hands down his sides to find the proof of his interest again.
"No more ears. I'm on the verge of an orgasm now, and I don't think I could stand much more," I told him as his head dipped toward mine.
"As you like. No. No more of that right now, either," he answered, plucking my hands from his crotch.
Even Vampires Get The Blues do-4 Page 10
