Elemental Desire
Page 3
* * *
Eden drifted, conscious but barely aware of what was going around her. The first swat had startled her, the sting immediate. Relaxation had set in before the second swat, endorphins flooding her system and rendering her entirely passive. She really should think about the why of it, and she would. Later. Right now? Her only thought revolved around the heated silk of his shaft as it moved against her. Light touch, sleek skin, branding heat—all combined to form the opening of what she wanted to be an erotic mélange of epic proportions.
Need curled through her core. Her sex ached. She craved him like a drug.
Fingers traced her ass, drifting slowly toward unmarked skin. “Beautiful.”
The reverence in his voice surprised her, pulling her out of subspace enough that the stinging became more pronounced and a bit less alluring. “What’s beautiful?” When he didn’t answer, she looked over her shoulder. “Seth?”
“You’ll call me ‘sir’ and nothing else.”
“I like your name better.”
The gentle yet stinging slap to her untouched ass cheek made her jump. Her eyelids slid closed. Such a radical response to his touch. If only he’d… “Please, sir.” Words heavy with innuendo, she found herself pushing her sex against the heated length of his arousal.
“You need more.” Another question disguised as a statement. He was good at those.
“Yes.” Gripping the desk, she lifted her hips.
“Son of a bitch.”
His snarled curse ripped through her, white-hot and scarring. She’d be marked for anyone who came to her bed after him. After. The idea made her stomach pitch and roll. No. No one but him. Never again.
Disbelief struck her like a Taser set to incapacitation, shocking her so effectively she was knocked out of the moment. What was wrong with her? No one else? Ever again? She liked men, loved sex and wasn’t looking at Seth—sir—with any kind of permanence. He wasn’t programmed that way. Hell, neither was she. If she were going to get all psychologically involved, this might not be the best idea after all. She opened her mouth to call stop.
His cock breached her outer folds. The blunt, thick assault nearly split her in two.
“Goddess!” she shouted, clawing at the desk.
Hands grabbed her hips and, instead of holding her still, pulled her onto him with unrelenting force. All she could think about was the way he was filling her, stretching her farther than she’d ever been stretched. “Yes,” she hissed, trying to push back harder.
A stinging slap to the ass made her groan. Arousal flooded her sex.
“Sweet gods,” Seth said on a moan. “You’re tight.”
“Please, Se—sir. Please.”
“Begging doesn’t do it for me, Red.” The words were gritted out between clenched teeth.
“I need… I need….”
One hard shove seated him.
Eden’s animalistic cry echoed throughout the room.
“Again,” he commanded, pulling back and slamming home. “Because that does.”
She couldn’t help but comply.
The rhythm he set—fast, hard, demanding—put her at his mercy. She was on fire, burning alive. Something caliginous coiled inside her, dense and huge and uncontrollable.
Deft fingers sought out her clit and traced the very edges of that little bundle of nerves, teasing, never delivering the touch she needed that would send her over the edge. The harder she tried to maneuver him, the slower he thrusted, the less touch she received.
A near sob escaped her.
“Easy, Red. I told you I’d make you wait ten minutes for every minute you failed to obey me, did I not?”
Words were abstract. It took a minute for her to assign meaning. “Ten minutes?” It was all she could think. He’d make her wait ten minutes for release? She suddenly wondered if someone could be fucked to death. Or, in this case, die because they were almost fucked to death.
“I’m feeling generous.” He stroked her clit.
“Thank you, sir.” She didn’t know what else to say, couldn’t quite keep the sarcasm from her response.
He drove into her with several rapid, almost brutal thrusts. Then he slowed again. “You’re welcome.”
She fought not to beg. “I can’t do this.”
He froze. “Safe-wording on me?”
The thought crossed her mind, briefly illuminated as a possibility before sexual hunger squashed it flatter than a bug under a boot heel. “No.”
Slow strokes resumed, in and out with a roll of the hips. “Good girl.”
Without warning, he slammed into her with ball-slapping drives. The sounds of sex—the heavy breathing, words of encouragement and soft cries—combined to drown out the muffled thump of bass from the club. His free hand snaked up her front to palm her breast and pull her upright. Bending his knees, he pushed into her hard enough to lift her to her toes with every thrust. He was ruthless in his lovemaking. It was too much. She began to unravel in the most fundamental way.
He abandoned her breasts to grab her chin and force her head to his shoulder, arching her back to the very point where pain and pleasure met, winding around one another, weaving through each other. “Now, Red.”
He pinched her clit.
Eden’s scream ripped through the office. Her sheath clamped around his thrusting cock and bore down. She milked him, pulling his orgasm from him without mercy or regret.
He shouted in her ear, a base sound both carnal and pure.
Air whipped about, lifting and tossing anything not pinned down, from the shards of his pen cup to his desk. Nothing touched them, but the damage was impressive.
The earth literally moved beneath her feet.
Water sprang from the overhead fire extinguisher system.
The need for fire, to balance the three elements threatening to take her over, became too much to control. It flashed through her, burning her from the inside out. Another scream preceded her second orgasm.
“No!” Seth roared. Too late.
It was too late when she realized the flame she took came from him.
Chapter Four
Seth stumbled away from the woman. “What the hell did you just do?” The question was like sound dragged through shattered glass. Bone-chilling cold wrecked him. He’d never been so cold in all his long, miserable life. She radiated warmth so intense it felt like standing too close to an open fire, her skin glowing and healthy. Dragging a trembling hand down his face, he narrowed his gaze. Comprehension dawned, a blinding awareness over the confusion’s dark horizon. When he’d first smelled her, that smell of ozone and summer rains, it had been a warning. The calm before the storm. It was her. The witch.
She shoved her hair out of her face, confused. “What did I do? What the hell are you? You said that—” she gestured to his exposed Marker “—was a tattoo.”
He spun on his heel when the first fist pounded on his door. When the second joined the fracas, he hurriedly shoved his junk back in his pants and barked out, “Cover yourself.”
Without waiting to see if she complied, he yanked the door open. Griff, Bailey, Dominic and Rhyan charged into the small space, each of them demanding to know what had just happened. Seth swept a hand through the air to silence them before looking at Griff. “Go.”
“We just had a minor earthquake, my friend. Might not be worth mentioning if we were in, say, Los Angeles, but we’re in freaking Atlanta. People noticed.” He crossed his arms over his broad chest, his brows winging down. “What’s wrong with you?”
“Wrong? Why?” Seth shoved his hands in his pockets. It took him a moment to realize the troop was looking past him at Red. He glanced back and shook his head. “She’s our fairy godmother.”
“You bitch,” Dominic snarled. Hands flexing, he put himself in front of Rhyan. “What did you do? Who sent you after our boy?”
“I… That is, no one. I just…” She pulled her hair over one shoulder, her forehead wrinkling in thought. “Who said I’m a witch?”
“I’m an ifrit, you gods-bedamned thief,” Seth interrupted. “You were to bind your magic before you came onto my turf. You were to keep it bound while you were here.” His voice rose with every word until the last was shouted.
“Ifrit.” She paled. “Oh, goddess. I just… I didn’t mean to…”
“You’re a witch, a mercenary. Of course you meant to.”
“No.” She shook her head hard enough her hair swept around her shoulders. “I swear, I didn’t mean to do it.”
The tall, ethereal nephilim, Rhyan, stepped around her hulking male. “And what, exactly, did you do?”
“I think I stole his element.”
Seth’s knees nearly gave out. It was one thing to suspect but another entirely to hear his suspicion voiced aloud. He searched inside himself with increasing franticness, desperate to find the source of his immortality. She could steal part of it, thus commanding him to perform like a damn grinder monkey, but to steal all of it? It would render him mortal. Right before it killed him.
Fury pounded through his veins with every tick of the second hand on his wall clock, mounting until he thought he might erupt. That was all the evidence he needed. As angry as he was, if he’d still been the Keeper of his element, he would have been a towering inferno right about then. Son of a bitch. “Put. It. Back.”
Wide, grey eyes stared up at him from the loveliest face he’d ever seen. “I don’t know how.”
Dominic stepped past Seth and into the woman’s personal space. “You’ll put it back or I’ll rend you limb from limb and use the pieces to bait ghouls.” His grin made Seth cringe. “And I hear they like to play with their food.” He made a slow pumping motion with his hips.
Red’s eyes went from wide and terrified to narrow and pissed-off between heartbeats. Seth didn’t know whether to admire the hell out of her or ask where she’d like her personal belongings sent when she stepped right into the nephilim and bumped her chest to his torso.
“Screw you, you wingless wonder. If twerking while baiting ghouls is your shtick, more power to you. But you should know you’ll be much more appealing to them than I am. See, you might be fallen, but your origins are still angelic. That means, as lower caste demons, they’d love to play with you.” She shoved him back a step. “So I’ll make you a deal. You take me to the Oakland Cemetery right now, and we’ll just see who gets asked to date first.”
Dominic gaped at her. “Where’d you park your broom, Hilda?”
Seth shoved the two apart, though he was admittedly rougher with Dominic. The larger man hardly moved. “Back off, Conan.”
“Your flame is your life’s blood. Without it, you’re mortal.” Griff stepped in tight and the three of them stood nearly shoulder to shoulder, the nucleus of energy in the room.
Seth laced his hands together behind his neck and pulled, the strain on his frame noticeable. “No, I’m not.”
“What?” the two men said in unison.
“Without my element, I’m dying.”
* * *
Eden heard the words but refused to believe them. Her kind cherished life. They valued the individual as well as the group, and she knew the coven’s elders would be furious with her for violating a being’s right to life. Mouth dry and palms sweaty, she stepped closer to the cluster of men. “I’ll ask my mentor how to return your flame, Seth.”
He looked over at her, eyes that had blazed with passion now flat and cold. “I don’t think so, witch.”
The last word was issued as a vile epithet.
Bailey stepped close to Seth and laid a hand on his arm. “Are you really dying?”
He only looked at her in answer.
She closed her eyes and took a fortifying breath, her chin quivering. Eden thought she’d lose her mind before the other woman finally opened tear-sheened eyes and gazed up at Seth.
The idea Eden could, quite literally, turn the succubus into a barnyard animal made her feel a little better. Until Bailey cupped Seth’s face in her hands and gently kissed each corner of his mouth. Then she simply wanted to be the woman who Seth allowed to touch him.
The woman settled back, hands still on Seth’s face. “What do you have to lose by letting…” She looked back at Eden and let a small smile play around her mouth, sad but sincere. “I’m sorry. I don’t know your name.”
“No problem.” She shrugged, nonchalant. “Seth just calls me Red.”
“What’s your name?” Griff asked as he stepped close to his woman’s side.
“Eden.”
Dominic snorted. “As in ‘the garden of’? That’s better than a MasterCard commercial—priceless.” Rhyan tagged him in the arm and he scowled at her. “What’d I say?”
Eden spread her feet, shaking her hands out and rolling her head back and forth. “You want to go another round? Because I’m game. Try to play harder, though,’kay? I always feel bad taking people with the IQ of a fencepost and beating them about the head and shoulders with it. Seems so unfair.”
“I don’t hit women,” he said, jaw clenched, “but I’m about to make an exception.”
“I won’t break, so bring it…Fabio.”
Eden looked around the room to find everyone watching her. Everyone except the very man she most wanted to appease. He kept his back turned. “Seth, I didn’t capture your element on purpose. Let me make this right. Please.”
Shoulders squaring up, he turned to face her. “What’s the catch?”
“Catch?” she asked stupidly before slapping a hand over her mouth. “Sorry.”
“We’re done playing.” He ran his hands through his hair, shoving it back. Distrust ghosted over the planes and angles of his face. “Spell out your terms, because your kind doesn’t do work pro bono.”
“‘My kind,’” she repeated yet again. This time, though, she didn’t bother apologizing. Everyone else in the room faded back until she and Seth faced each other without obstruction.
“You make money off your magic, never give anything away. If there’s not a catch, there’s a cost. Spell it out.”
Griff stepped forward and stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Seth. “Whatever it is, I’ll pay it.”
“We’ll pay it.” Dominic stepped in, framing Seth.
The three men were like walking orgasms. Or they would have been if they hadn’t been glaring daggers at her.
Seth stepped forward. “I fund my own freedom. Name your price.”
Fury and shame swam alternating laps through her veins. Fury because she wasn’t the bad person they seemed to consider her; shame because she hadn’t protected Seth. “I need to call my mentor first.”
Dominic shook his head and looked away, muttering unintelligibly.
“I just need to sort something out. Give me five minutes.” She swallowed audibly. “Alone.”
Griff and Dominic erupted in violent opposition.
Seth only continued to stare.
Bailey moved closer to Eden. “I’ll stay with her.”
“No.” Griff’s vehement denial was almost shouted.
Her chin jutted out and she glared at him. “I know you didn’t just tell me what to do.”
“I promise I won’t touch her,” Eden quickly interjected. She knew with relative certainty that this was the best chance she’d get at privacy. “Please.”
“I told you begging doesn’t work for me.” Seth whipped around and headed for the door. He paused, hand hovering above the handle, and spoke without looking back. “Touch her and I’ll hand you over to my father.”
“Might help scare the hell out of me if you tell me who he is,” Eden said snarkily. The urge to slap her hand over her mouth was almost overwhelming. Why not just leave well enough alone, idiot?
This time he did look back. The smile on his face chil
led her through and through. “King Aganjú. I would imagine you’ve heard of him.”
Eden stumbled against the desk, blindly clutching at the edge for support. “You’re the ifrits’ crown prince?”
“One and the same.” He walked through the door, letting it fall shut on the silent group.
Dominic glanced at every face in the room, finally landing on hers. “Holy shit. You should’ve requested a last meal, because you’re a dead woman.”
Eden sank to her knees. If King Aganjú was even half as violent as his reputation, she might as well have just slit her own throat.
Either way, she was doomed.
Chapter Five
“You’re the freaking crown prince?”
Seth had known the men would question him, but he’d admittedly hoped they’d give him a moment to collect himself. Instead, the two had charged after him, cornering him near Griff’s office. The outburst had been all Dominic while Griff looked on, features drawn.
“Yeah.” He shoved his way into Griff’s office and dropped into the nearest chair. Gods, but he was exhausted. “What does it matter?”
“It doesn’t.” Griff sank into his chair and laced his hands behind his head. “Unless your dad decides we need to be punished for not keeping you safe.”
“I’m not your damn responsibility,” Seth growled.
“Save the hand-slapping girly fight for later, you two.” Thumbs hooked in his jeans pockets, Dominic leaned against the far wall. “We need to sort out how to get your element back. If we do, chances are we won’t hear from dear ol’ dad.”
Griff glanced at Dom before kicking his feet up on the corner of the desk. “Hate it when the nephilim has a point. Always makes me think the world’s coming to an end.”
Seth couldn’t even dredge up a chuckle. There was too much happening, too much that had been yanked out of his control, and control was everything to him. “The king—” never anything but “—won’t bother anyone but me. And if I die? He’ll only have one more thing to count as a disappointment. Forget it,” he growled when Dominic opened his mouth. “Push me and I’ll prove to you the man is every bit his father’s son when it comes to carrying out creative violence.”