by Angel Payne
Just like that, the knot in my gut fell loose. A sound fell out of me. I recognized it, bizarrely, as a laugh. “That’s a damn good way of looking at it.”
After my laughter, I let a smile linger.
Felt it drop as he dipped his gaze back toward me.
Then pierced it all the way through me.
Blue-bright glass, edged in a silver sheen of something I could no longer ignore or deny…
…as he leaned over, closer and closer…
And cupped my face with his long, firm fingers. Touched me with his sure, steady intent.
“Tell me, Lucina…how you like to be painted.”
Chapter Eight
‡
Star shine. Sun glow. Lightning streaks. Electric jolts. At least a thousand more of the comparisons shot through me, evoking everything and anything I knew that was bright and bold and blinding and amazing, as he threaded fingertips into my hair…and filled everything above my shoulders with perfect heat.
God…no.
God…yes.
“Sh-shiraz—”
“Tell me.” He curled his grip in, yanking me tighter toward him. His voice was guttural and rough. “Tell me how you like it.”
“I—I don’t think…”
His gaze swept down, zeroing in on my mouth. “Or maybe you should just show me.”
I took a breath. I’d pass out if I didn’t. Or was that just the force of his power over me? And did it matter once his sharp, sexy scent filled my nostrils…once his heady, swirling heat wrapped around the rest of my body?
“Oh God,” I whispered. “This…ummm…well, this is a good start…”
His lush mouth swirled up in a pleased smile. The couch crunched as he adjusted his weight, molding himself closer. “But what happens next?”
“Errmm.” If I wasn’t so busy remembering how to breathe, I likely would’ve laughed. I hadn’t stammered my way through a conversation this much since Shari Pearson and I had run into Justin Timberlake at Amoeba Records in Hollywood one Sunday afternoon. Ditching Catechism had never been so much fun. “Well, uhhh…” Fun. Oh, yeah. This was fun, too…right? No. No. This wasn’t like harmless flirting with JT between the 80’s Punk and Classic R&B sections. But my body wasn’t listening. My mouth sure as hell wasn’t, opening and offering, “Wh-what you’d d-do next would be…”
“Soft and slow?” he provided instead. “Like…this?”
He gently dropped his head. Let his sublime lips brush in then down, flowing over mine like a feather on the wind. I tried to breathe but only a squeak came out. The sound was obnoxious but I was past caring. The currents he zapped through my body, from head to toe, were like a lightning storm from a sci-fi movie.
Dear, fucking God…
“Th-that’s good too,” I finally rasped.
A growl rumbled from deep in his chest. Though it was one of the most incredible sounds I’d ever heard, I couldn’t figure out what had generated it. Was he aroused? Unsettled? Maybe both? Was that even possible?
“Good?” he finally echoed.
“Oh, yeah.” I managed a hurried nod. “Very good.”
“But not the best.”
“I don’t think you have to worry about that.” Nervous laugh. “Honestly. You’re—dear God, you’re—”
I whimpered once more as he stole the rest of it, sweeping his mouth down again. No sweet little pressure this time, but no full-blown assault either—though by the time he finished, plying my lips with tantalizing thrusts and teases, I was practically begged for the assault. My blood thrummed with need. My senses boiled with lust. And my sex…
So much pressure. So much desire. My hips bucked from it. My body tightened into a hot, eager wire. Air rushed up my throat and out of my parted, panting lips—every breath consumed by the man strung as tautly next to me.
Ready…for what?
This wasn’t going any further. This couldn’t go any further.
Too bad fate forgot to give him that memo.
“I am what?” Shiraz demanded in a terse husk. “Is this still just…‘good’?” He nipped the curve of my chin, breathing moist fire into my skin, before parting his lips more, using the edges of his teeth along the column of my neck.
“Holy…shit.” My head fell back as my arms curled up, hands twisting into the luxurious mess of his hair. My muscles tightened as I poised for him, ready for him, longing for the descent of that delicious heat into my cleavage then across my breasts. Thank God for V-neck T-shirts—and my proclivity of taking my bra off whenever I possibly could. My nipples were painful points now, stabbing into the cotton, ample evidence of the rest of my reply for him.
“That is not an answer.”
Like that was going to stop him from demanding one.
Dammit to hell.
“Lucina?” He halted, hovering his face less than an inch above my sternum.
“What?” I snapped it without thinking, battling to force him back down. He fought me, aligning our gazes in a fiery, feral clash.
Nothing had ever turned me on more.
He grabbed one of my wrists. Pulled it up and away from his head. Released a quiet wildcat snarl…as he lowered it next to my head. The move shifted our positions. He had me flattened against the couch’s back, with him kneeling over me. It was utterly sexual, altogether inappropriate, fully unreal—
A full, fucking, turn-on.
“Perhaps I need to repeat the question.”
The phrase came with mixed messages. His tone was a sultry flirt but his gaze was a definite challenge. Every molecule of my being wanted to take him up on both, but how? Reality was just a sliver of light in my consciousness, despite how desperately I reached for it.
“Maybe you need to change the question.”
“And if I do?”
“Shiraz.” I swallowed hard. Jabbed my gaze up at him. “Change. The. Question.”
He said nothing.
But his frame tensed.
The light in his gaze changed.
Just half a shade, from steel blue to deep cobalt—but it was enough.
Enough to prove he understood me. That he recognized the thin edge upon which we now balanced. That the line, already just a thread between us since the start, could never be redrawn if wiped out.
But maybe it already was.
Our pull was a tangible pain inside me…and I saw that torment in his eyes too. We were careening toward darkness. The shadowed side of our orbiting moons. The nasty beneath our propriety. The connection of souls beneath all the corporate bullshit.
The joining that, to the rest of the world, would be so wrong.
The collision that seemed so damn right.
In every sleek line of his face, I watched the same thoughts—and their ramifications—take hold.
Ramifications. It wasn’t a fun word to think, let alone brace for. But the knot of nails in my stomach grew, knowing exactly what waited ahead. Ramifications. Reality. A fiancée for him to claim. New questions for him to phrase.
Not to me.
“Lucina.”
His whisper was heavy on the air. And technically not a question, though everything about it beckoned like one. Pulled like one.
Frayed my self-control like one.
“What?”
I spat it like before, shutting my eyes before they could issue a silent apology. I didn’t want to be sorry. Not for this.
When I reopened my gaze, I fought to look up at him—but only managed it halfway. My gaze made it as far as his neck. Wasn’t exactly doing myself a huge favor. Was there such a thing as neck porn? If so, I had a serious addiction already.
“What happens next?”
Well.
That was one way of lifting my gaze all the way up.
And what I found waiting in his stare…
Holy shit.
His sensual surety swelled in me, heated and simmering and straining. Pushed at my mind, which I’d closed so damn tightly since learning he and Ambyr were going to b
e Arcadia’s next golden couple.
I wasn’t golden. I was nowhere near it. I’d tried to become that once, yearning to be perfect enough for Ryan and his polo-wearing, football-loving, missionary position world, but in the end, it had all fit as shitty as a wrong-sized bra. Hadn’t been pretty. Or happy.
But the man leaning over me now…
Staring with such intensity now…
He fit.
Dammit, I have no idea how I knew it. But how did flowers know to open every morning? How did seagulls know how to drift on the wind? It just was. He just was. It was fruitless to fight it. To even try, in my mortal and meaningless way, to resist.
Sometimes, heat was meant to burn.
Locks were meant to be released.
Battles were meant to be lost.
And right here, right now, was that such an awful thing? Did it make me a hideous person? He hadn’t given Ambyr a ring yet. He hadn’t given Ambyr a kiss yet.
He just wanted to know…
What came next.
And God freaking help me, I wanted to show him.
Chapter Nine
‡
“Come here.”
Wasn’t the first thing I’d wanted to say, but my well of pithy and witty was drained. My senses spun, processing so much inside and out. Could I be blamed when a dark demigod hovered over me, driving his blue fire stare into me? How else was my body supposed to react, except to go up in flames?
I backed the entreaty by sprawling my fingers against the back of his head. Dug my nails into his scalp. Reveled in how he hissed then dipped toward me. Groaned deep as I pulled him lower, toward the parted hunger of my lips.
On his way down, he grated just one thing.
“Yes, tupulai.”
He could have just called me a one-eyed goose and I didn’t care. I adored the sensual sibilance of the Arcadian language—who didn’t?—but on his lips, the native words became verbal diamonds, spraying my senses with their sparkling facets. I smiled. When he returned the look, I felt nothing near a goose. Once more, I simply rejoiced in his wind on my wings. His sun on my petals. His purpose in being here, if only for the one moment we’d have to recognize this thing between us…whatever this “thing” was.
Did I even want to define it? Analyze it? Why? Wouldn’t change the fact that it just was. This pull to him—this need to pull at him—was like nothing I’d ever let inside the tower of my heart…and for just one moment, I was going to let him climb inside.
I know, I know; it sounded completely crazy. Where had these grand, romantic fireworks come from? I was the girl who only wanted the danger, the burn, the hard-‘n’-hot fuck. But maybe that was fate’s psyche-out this time. Guys like him—princes like him—weren’t after women like me. They could ask for, and get, females named Barbie, Jessie…Ambyr. They wanted girls who wore sweater sets at dinner and lacy lingerie sets afterward, who liked screwing with the lights off as they moaned in all the right places. A delicate blow job from time to time was okay too, but that was where the lines got drawn.
Women like me weren’t delicate.
Our lines were messy.
Our needs were dirty.
We were…weird.
But maybe, just maybe, Shiraz Cimarron wanted to know what weird felt like for a moment. Maybe even two.
He sure as hell liked it so far—if I interpreted his groan clearly enough. And the growl it turned into as my grip on his hair became demanding, all but forcing him across the last few inches over my open mouth.
Dear…God.
Weird had never felt so good to me, and I’d practically invented the word.
No kiss had ever been this messy either. Or this wet and hot and needing and deep—and even a little painful, as our teeth collided—during our mutual quest to practically devour each other.
Yet again, could I be blamed? The man was a fucking natural at this shit. No. More than that. Shiraz Cimarron was a man destined to do this to a woman. His kiss was an extension of his being, his passion like a beast eating him from the inside out. He rolled his head in, groaning and growling, making me feel like the Andromeda beneath his Cetus…the virgin given to a god for his pleasure alone. Would’ve been a damn fine analogy, if it wasn’t completely twisted around. Virginal and I had said a very pleasant buh-bye at least seven years ago, when a spin-the-bottle game at an after-game party landed me in the closet with Brodie McMullen. I might be one of the weird girls, but I was also smart enough to see a once-in-a-lifetime chance to jump the baseball team captain when it hit me between the eyes.
Though technically, I wasn’t doing much of the “jumping” tonight.
And it was…amazing.
Even when he reached up, seized my hand, then slammed it against the couch, angling my arm just like the other.
Even when he charged in on my lips again, harsher and harder, holding my tongue hostage to the violent sweeps of his.
Even when he shifted so one of his legs was extended, bracing his foot on the floor, leveraging his body over mine.
Sliding against mine…
Fitting very certain parts of him to very certain parts of me.
I gasped.
He groaned. “Creator have mercy.”
I gulped, fighting shivers, as the contact of his chest sizzled fire into my breasts. “This…isn’t merciful.” My tips hardened, jutting into sharp relief beneath my shirt. Alexander Hamilton’s proud pose achieved bold new meaning.
Shiraz stiffened. Jerked away a little. “It is not—you do not like it?”
Weak laugh. But not unwelcomed. A hint of levity was probably what we needed. “Oh, I like it plenty.” I raised my head but my gaze stayed hooded, especially when studying the curves of his mouth, now swollen like pillows. Pillows. Really? You’re thinking of this man and anything related to a bed right now? “It’s just…intense.”
“Intense is not comfortable for you?”
“Intense is not comfortable for me.” I was completely honest.
His chin jutted. His eyes darkened. “Oh.”
“That’s why I really, really like it.”
“Oh.” Comprehension was a new thread in his tone. He got it. Just like that, he simply knew. If I had any doubt about it, the fresh force in his grip took care of it. What the man lacked in experience—and at this point, I began wondering about that—he more than reclaimed in enthusiasm. Clamping down on me harder, he monitored every nuance of my reaction—as if masking them was possible. My chest pumped double-time, betraying my hammering heartbeat. My nipples formed stiff moguls in my T-shirt. I was flushed and hot, practically writhing with arousal.
“Fuck.” Before I could think of stopping it, the desire rushed out. “Oh…damn!”
A low hum unfurled from him. “I know,” he rasped, dipping a heated kiss to my forehead. “Yes, Lucina. I know.”
I tilted my head to meet his stare. “You do, don’t you?” I didn’t disguise my wonderment. “You…just know. You’re not saying it just to assuage me, or to be polite and princely.”
His blue steel gaze pierced through the hair cascading over his forehead, seeming a combination of chastisement and cherishment at once. “Tupulai,”—he inserted another defined slide of his hips—“does this feel polite or princely?”
I gasped as his heavy bulge violated more of the space between my thighs. Moaned as I opened wider, helping the friction by another degree. Shiraz slipped back then rubbed forward again. We stared at each other over the little billow of my T-shirt, the soft cotton yielding to the force of his denim. Even our clothes had the right idea.
“No,” I finally got out, in answer to his sarcasm. “It feels…” But then hesitated. Should I disclose what I was really thinking?
“Like what?” He emphasized the command with another push of his hips. Well, that did it. Time to suck it up and fully confess shit.
“It feels like a man who knows what he’s doing.”
His brow furrowed. “And that concerns you?”
&nb
sp; “I’m not concerned.” It was the truth. “I’m confused.”
But so was that—and his bizarre silence of a reaction didn’t ease anything. Okay, as silent as a man could possibly be while turning a dry hump into something as intense as the real thing, finally interrupted by his measured pull of breath. But his gaze was still unflinching. While the valleys persisted in his brow, so did that knowing glint in his eyes—that light emanating from the window he alone had carved into my mind…
Making it possible for him to give words speaking straight to my soul.
“For the first time in a long time, I am not confused.” He let go of my hands to slide his grip around my thighs. He repositioned me, making me open for him in a full-facing missionary. It was wonderful, and I was so damn wet—except for one glitch. Neither of us had taken off a stitch of clothing. “From the moment I walked out of my office and saw you today…everything simply seemed clearer.” He smiled despite the mutual quivers of our bodies, as he settled himself tighter between my legs. “Better.”
“Better?” My incredulity was as naked as my body yearned to be. He lived and worked in a palace on one of the lushest islands on the planet. He was a prince of this land.
But hadn’t I learned the prime paradigm of the rich and famous by now? Perfection was just redirected perceptions. The grass was always greener when one didn’t have to mow it.
But still…I’d brought a sliver of better into his world.
Made his grass a little greener, just by walking across it.
So why was I questioning it? Though he didn’t seem surprised that I did. Even flashed a hell-to-the-yes gaze at the chance to answer me.
“You surprised me,” he admitted, lips tilting up. “And strange as it seems, I am not surprised by much anymore.”
“Why would that seem strange?”
His eyes flared. His mouth quirked. Surprise was one breathtaking look on the man. “Between both my brothers’ betranlis and the interactions I have on the phone with New York and Los Angeles, I thought I had American females—how do you say it?—‘sized up’, yes? Figured out?”
Narrowed eyes. “Come on. We can’t be that different from Arcadian girls.” I hissed as he rocked harder against me. “Most of—the important stuff—is the same.” Through my sarcastic snorts, I managed to emphasize “important”.
