On the Prowl

by Patricia Briggs, Eileen Wilks, Karen Chance, Sunny

  "My oath on it."

  I went limp at averting that other near disaster. "God, I'm sorry. So many things you can't do… I just—"

  "Hush. You are here before me, opened to my pleasure. AH is well," he soothed, and played his lips upon my mound, nuzzling the curly hairs there, inhaling my scent, breathing upon me as the golden fall of his hair brushed the sensitive skin of my belly, my thighs, like a thousand whispering kisses. I was too grateful to him to be embarrassed at being exposed so blatantly like that. Too thankful at feeling the bloodlust ease and another lust rise and take its place as he lowered his mouth and licked me, a delicate teasing stroke.

  Oh!

  Nerves tingled to life within me. Pulsed deep in my core, wetting me, spreading my legs even wider for him. I whimpered, then jammed my hand to my mouth as if to stop the sound.

  "No, let me hear your pleasure also as I taste it." And his words and the hot gust of his breath blowing over me there brought another low sound to my throat. Made me writhe, lift myself up to him. Begging, pleading without words to touch me again like that. With a low pleased rumble, he did. His head dipped down and his tongue lapped over me again with a surer, firmer stroke. Then another, and another. Driving me nuts. Giving me a taste of pleasure and making me want even more. "Tell me what you want."

  "I don't know," I gasped. "Just more. Harder… Oh God," I breathed as he obeyed me, and sensation lashed me with sharp pleasure. He bent my knees, pushed them back so that I was completely opened to him. And I could only clutch his head, hold him to me as he spread me apart with gentle fingers and speared his tongue into me like a rapier thrusting sharp and deep. I cried out, arched up into him as he began a driving rhythm, pushing his tongue deep and repeatedly into me, his forefinger feathering lightly over my plump and swollen pearl that he had plucked free from the outer folds. And I didn't know which sensation was worse, or better, or more unbearable.

  I surged against him like helpless waves lapping against the shore, begging him wordlessly, Bring me home. Bring me home. And he did, with a gentle squeeze, a pinching pluck of my swollen nub. A deep plunge of his thick tongue spearing into me, as if he were driving a blade home. I burst apart as light burst from within me. And a trembling rolling climax took and shook me, but didn't free me. I lay there in quivering aftermath, still hungry. Shit. Not for blood, though, thank the Mother. But for something else. His pleasure. And it wasn't just a woman's desire, but that something else. That something dark and Other that lay within me and held me, still.

  I opened my eyes, saw those animal-brown eyes, the eyes of his beast, staring down at me. "You didn't come," I said.

  "If you are well now, I can see you safe. Then shift, go hunt."

  It was an astounding offer, unexpected, especially for someone who had challenged Amber once and risked his life for the privilege of my bed. I looked up at that handsome, patrician face and this time saw past the surface beauty to the generous heart beneath it, and the unbelievable control he wielded. And my heart melted at what I found there, unexpectedly. It wasn't the sex that opened my heart to him; it was this kind and selfless act. The gift he offered so easily—taking care of my needs and submersing his own. My heart cracked open without my willing it, filling me with something more tender than I had ever expected to feel for him—the softness and sweetness of love.

  "No," I said softly, and drew him down to me, "I need you still." And kissed him gently with the new emotion I found welling up within me. Tasted myself upon his lips, his tongue. Sucked him deep into my mouth, fed upon him for a moment, then released him when the blood that filled him there also became too tempting.

  "I need your pleasure, your release. I don't know why," I murmured, holding his head buried against my neck, safely away from my mouth. "But I need it. I'm sorry."

  He laughed, his face pressed against me. Then lifting his head, he looked down on me. "I'm not. Tell me how."

  "From behind." The only safe entry left to us. "Take me from behind." I ran my hands down the strong column of his back and over the tight swell of his bottom to feather over his anal pucker. "Here," I whispered. "I need more than just your tongue in me, sweet though it is. Take me here, please."

  He looked at me for a heartbeat of time. Touched my face, as if what he saw there shining in my eyes was something he could not believe. Dared not believe. Looking at me as if I were truly seeing him for the very first time. And I was. I was. He trembled, and emotions too fast and fleeting for me to catch passed across his face.

  "Mona Lisa," he murmured with shaking breath. Then as if the emotions, the awareness between us was too much, he lifted me up and turned me around so that my hands and knees were braced upon the ground. He wrapped himself around me, his head buried in the small of my back, and I felt something hot and wet fall against my skin. His tears.

  "Dontaine—"

  "Shhh. It's okay. I'm all right. Just give me a moment."

  I wanted to turn around and hold him, but he would not allow it. His arms tightened around me, holding on to me as if I anchored his world. As if he would be cast adrift and drown if he let me go.

  All I could say was his name, "Dontaine," softly and yearningly. He gave one big, almost convulsive shudder against my back then released me until only his hands were upon my hips. The softness of his lips pressed against me. Ran slowly, deliberately down my back, starting from my nape downward. The curtain of his hair fell like a silky halo lightly brushing over my skin. But the greatest sensation were those velvet-soft lips pressing feather-light against me. I couldn't believe how sensitive a back could be.

  When he reached down past my hips and continued still… When the silky firmness of those lips and the warmth of his breath fell unerringly on my tailbone and pressed a little bit harder, a little bit firmer, just there… A lightning bolt of sensation shot from my tailbone straight to my groin, washing me with heat so suddenly that I bucked and swayed and cried out beneath him. Had his hands not held me at the waist, I would have fallen onto the ground.

  "Oh God. Dontaine!" And his name was a demand, a plea.

  "Trust me," he said.

  "Yes." How could I not?

  "I won't get you pregnant," he whispered. "Just let me play in your wetness for a moment."

  I nodded but didn't really understand what he was saying until he lifted my upper torso up off the ground and eased me back against him to lie against his chest. "Just a little wider," he said huskily, and shifted my knees farther apart. My sensitive back was in bliss, cradled against the lean coiled muscles of his chest, my hips and bottom snuggled deep into his enveloping lap. He surrounded me from behind, bigger, harder. And the hardest part of him, that special wide thickness, slid between my legs in the space he had created for himself. He rubbed his shaft against my wet outer lips, so hard, so full, that I felt as if I rode atop a log. A hand, strong and sensitive, spread low over my belly in a stark claiming, holding me to him, holding me still, as his hips undulated gently against me. The softest of motion—a slow push forward, a slow wet slide back—to trigger such an avalanche of rich sensations.

  The lush eroticism of what I saw—that claiming, controlling hand, the brief tantalizing peek of the red-purple head of him pushing out between my legs, then pulling back, disappearing from sight for a pounding heartbeat of time as if into me… it made my eyes flutter close, made me clutch his cock-hard thighs. Made me squirm back against him, groan his name in pleasure and suffering. Because I wanted him in me. So badly that my stomach clenched. And deeper, beneath his splayed hand, my empty womb tightened.

  As if sensing my need, his hand pressed harder into me, assuaging my need for a moment, replacing it with an even greater need for his hardness to fill me. "How pretty you are," he murmured, his deep, husky voice a trilling vibration against my neck.

  He covered me completely from behind, leaving me feeling oddly vulnerable, oddly naked, in front. It took me a moment to realize that as I could see us, so could he see me, and that he was watching a
part of me that under his stirring gaze suddenly ached to be touched. My breasts, small and high, grew even tighter, more swollen beneath the caress of his eyes—the part of my body I was most sensitive about because I was no more than a handful, and barely that. But stroked so intimately below by his thickness, aroused so much by his voice, his careful touches, I was too far gone to be embarrassed. My nipples pointed outward, hard, peaked tips pouting to be touched. And he answered their call. His hands slid upward to cup my breasts, just holding their slight fullness, as if offering my nipples out to the darkness. And the sight of those long, tapered, sensitive fingers holding me so was as arousing as his actual touch.

  "Please," I begged, trembled, arching against him, pushing my breasts outward and even more into those beautiful masculine hands.

  "Yes," he said, and brushed his thumbs over my nipples. The pleasure of it jerked me back. Pulled a gasp from me. And started the play of moonlight once more upon my skin. A white trembling glow that started there, from where he touched me, spreading outward to the rest of my body. For one moment, I was a brilliant white thing against his skin made darker in contrast, and then light spilled onto him, and he began to radiate with light, also, spilling it out into the black velvet darkness. I watched as the light took us both, filled us, two children of the night aglow.

  "Beautiful," Dontaine breathed, a whisper of sound in my ear. As the light played upon us, he played upon me, his artist hands molding my breasts, squeezing them, lifting them, plucking my berry-red tips, squeezing my nipples, pulling them, making me arch and cry out, writhe against him.

  "Please, Dontaine. Please."

  Heeding my plea, a hand left its nipple play and sought darker, more sultry depths. Two ringers sank into me, came back coated with my fluid. Reluctantly, he released me, urged me forward once more onto my hands. That wet hand touched me where I had touched him, circling my anal pucker, coating it with my own wetness. Eased in a finger gently past the tightness.

  "So tight," he murmured, pushing in a second finger. I shuddered, groaned, as he stroked slowly in and out. Lovely, lovely, but I needed him. His pleasure, not mine, sweetly killing though it was. "I don't want to hurt you."

  "You won't. God, you won't. Please, Dontaine, I need you in me."

  "Then let me come into you." His fingers left me and I felt the hard wet head of him probe me for entrance. He pushed forward, but I was so tight and he was so wide, he did not enter. "I don't want to hurt you," he muttered, voice tight, strained.

  "No, no. You won't. Please, please!"

  "Don't..." He pushed in hard and the head of him popped in past the tight sphincter. ". ..let…" Another push. "… me…" A gentle slide. "… hurt you." More of him filling me, cramming me.

  "You won't… it doesn't!… Yes, yes, that feels so good… Oh, Dontaine," I cried when he was finally seated deep and full within me. And I both lied and told the truth. He was too big and I was too stretched for it not to hurt a little. But it hurt in a good way. Oh God, yes. So good, so good. I groaned as he shuddered against me, holding himself still, buried deep inside me.

  "Mona Lisa…" I felt him trembling with restraint But it wasn't restraint I needed. And pain did not matter. I needed his release.

  I pulled forward then slammed myself back against him, and he gave a guttural cry at the tightness of me running over his length so unexpectedly like that. His hands clamped down on my hips, holding me still. "Stop," he muttered harshly. "You'll hurt yourself."

  "You're hurting me by not moving," I cried plaintively.

  "Behave," he said, his hands like iron manacles as I tried to rock against him. His tone became whiplash sharp. "If you don't, I'll pull out."

  The threat stilled me as nothing else would have.

  "I'll give you what you want," he said, breathing heavily, "but we do it my way. You'll take what I give you, as slow or fast as I want to give it to you. Do you understand?"

  I nodded wildly.

  His hands left me, and I stayed obediently still and trembling beneath him. A harsh breath, two, then he leaned over me, covered me, like a stallion blanketing a mare. His lips brushed across my nape. "Trust me," came his warm breath, stirring the soft hairs there.

  "Yes," was my reply, and his teeth grazed lightly over my skin. So delicately, so dangerously. Setting off sunbursts of sensation where he touched.

  "Don't… move," he said huskily, a stark command. Trembling, I obeyed him as his hand slid across my belly and then lower until his fingertips, calloused and rough from sword practice, lay just over the swollen nub of my pearl. Only his words, and his threat, held me back from surging forward into the waiting promise of his touch. One moment, two. Then he rewarded me for my restraint by pulling a tiny increment out of me and pushing back in. The slow push and slide of him like that pushed me forward with his downstroke, so that his fingertips grazed my swollen nub, spilling a hot wash of sensation in me in both front and back.

  "Oh!" I moaned, cried, with that slight movement. But I held still.

  "Yes," he crooned and licked my neck, a hot slide of tongue that was both soothing and arousing. "Yes." And did it again. Pulled out, an increment more. Pushed back in. And though he still crammed me, stretched me, it was not unbearably so anymore. The sharpness of pain faded beneath his careful rocking in and out, and more pleasure spilled out, zinging through me with each lengthening stroke. Each firmer, harder thrust back into me, pushing my pulsing, swollen clitoris more firmly against the rough-gentle play of his fingertips. It was exquisitely pleasurable torture, even more so because I had to hold still, had to endure it. I whimpered with my pleasure and with my restraint. He nipped me, grazing my neck again with his teeth.

  "Ah, love," he murmured, groaning, burying his head in the fall of my hair. "You feel so good. Remember… hold still," he warned, and I braced myself for more wonderful, terrible things to come.

  Like a pulse from deep within him, I felt his energy ease, loosen, rise. Grow sharper, more electric. Until my very skin tingled from head to toe where he covered me with his greater length. He touched me nowhere in front except for the tantalizing play of fingertips upon that most sensitive, swollen nexus of nerves within me, a touch that came and went as he did within my body. And because he touched me nowhere else in front but there, perhaps that was why I felt it most excruciatingly. Tingling, electrifying, shocking jolts that were both blissful and torturous. Both heaven and hell.

  My need grew, swelled even stronger, as his thrusts grew harder, more wilder. Until that fine line of pleasure and pain became blurred and then became one, and it took me and threw me up into the heavens. Ripped me apart with agonizing pleasure while I floated there in the air. Convulsing me. But even in my explosive release, a part of me was still hungry, thirsty for something more. And that more was what surged within me like a wild tide battering against the shore. He pulled from me and then stretched me back anew, cramming himself into me with poling, thrusting force, with sharp gasping breath, with soft desperate cries. But still careful of me, not completely letting go. And therefore, still reaching for, still striving for his peak.

  His balls, heavy, large, and tight, smacked into me, bounced against my bottom as he seated himself deep. I reached back and grabbed them carefully, and he stilled with his length and thickness buried deep within me as he felt my hold upon him. We both held our breaths as I squeezed his tight sac, his twin balls. Pulled lightly.

  Like a rocket suddenly launched, he toppled free. And as he spurted within me, hot pulsing jets, I felt his energy—that electric, buzzing energy—explode out from him in a showering sparkle. His life-force. And that part of me that had been waiting, hungering for this moment, this release, opened up wide and sucked it—him—that part of him in. Swallowed it down as surely as demons swallowed down blood.

  Epilogue

  I'D joked before that I was like a vampire, sucking up my men's gifts. But I hadn't known before what I was talking about, and it hadn't really been true. Now it was.

>   My lover had given off energy during orgasmic release, spilt it out of him like firecrackers bursting, and I had drunk it down.

  Okay.

  I was lucky I was only hyperventilating and not grieving. I was lucky Dontaine wasn't dead.

  He wasn't, thank God. He was peachy keen, in fact. With a cherry on top. But it was too close to what I had done with Mona Louisa. The fact that I'd sucked all her energy, all her light, her life-force, out of her—and I'd done that all by my little ole self, no demon-tainted ghost involved—and into me hadn't bothered me much. The bitch had deserved it. But this… doing this to someone I cared for… that just freaked me out.

  Knowing that Halcyon, my Demon Prince, had sipped -down a little of me when I had come apart, orgasming in his hands… that was fine with me. Actually nice, knowing how good it felt. But that was the trouble—it was too nice. Too wonderful. It could easily become addicting, like getting that necessary shot of caffeine every morning.

  I glanced over at Dontaine, sitting next to me on the plane. His long, beautiful, tapered fingers wrapped around mine, and he gazed at me with an expression I'd never have imagined on that proud and arrogant face—the soft and tender look of love. A look that plucked an answering chord within me, God help me. He should have looked at me with fear instead. But that was okay. I had enough fear pounding in me for the both of us.

  I looked at that handsome sculptured face sitting beside me and wondered if it were possible to love a man to death. The word succubus whispered through my mind. Creatures of myth, old legends, ancient tales. But the problem with myths and legends and ancient tales was that they were usually based upon a kernel of truth. A little kernel that could take root and grow into a frigging great big oak tree that could end up falling on top of you and crashing you.