Forbidden Embers

by Tessa Adams

  “Fine. You know how I can talk to you in your mind?”

  “Like you did up on the mountain? Yeah. So?”

  “That’s not all I can do.” He shrugged, and looked so uncomfortable that all the pieces fell into place.

  “So you’re seriously psychic? And what? You just decided to pop into my mind, uninvited, and eavesdrop on what I was thinking? That’s how you could answer the question?”

  “I wasn’t eavesdropping. You were thinking really loud.”

  “Oh yeah. I’m sure I was.” She poked him in the ribs and grinned when he wiggled uncomfortably. “I’ll try to work on that from now on. You know, whisper my thoughts when you’re around.”

  “Now you’re just messing with me.”

  “You think?” She wrapped her arms around his neck, and this time she kissed him, long and lingering, just like he liked it.

  When they finally surfaced, he was above her, braced on his elbows, and they were both breathing hard. “So, you’re taking this pretty well,” he said, sliding a few strands of hair out of her eyes. “I’m assuming that means you have some psychic dragons in the clan?”

  “A few. When I was a kid, one of my close friends was psychic. She could do the same thing you can, just pop into someone’s mind and pick out a thought.”

  “Yeah, well, I don’t usually do that. It only happens when I’m really close to someone and . . . distracted.”

  “Really? I think I like the sound of that. I distract you?”

  “A Ghra, you’re about the only thing that distracts me.”

  “Oooh, I like that even more.”

  She wrapped her legs around his waist, rubbed her pelvis against his. “So, where were we before your little parlor trick so rudely interrupted us?”

  “You’re the one who turned on the light. And, besides, it didn’t seem to bother you the last time it happened.”

  “Last time? You’ve read my mind before?”

  “Not exactly.” His grin was wicked, intriguing.

  “So what, then?”

  He didn’t answer, but a second later she felt his mouth on her breast. Wet, hot, shockingly unexpected. And so skilled that she arched off the bed. Yet even as pleasure coursed through her, she realized that there was something familiar about this psychic touch that should be brand-new. That’s when it hit her. “So that was actually you?” she demanded. “That night, when I was sitting by the pool? That was you making love to me, not a fantasy?”

  “Maybe.”

  “But I didn’t know you then. I mean, we’d met, but we hadn’t . . .” She blushed, thinking of everything she’d let him do to her that night when she’d thought it was only her imagination. “You weren’t anywhere near me. How did you get inside me like that?”

  “I was having the same fantasy you were, I think. Or something pretty close to it, and somehow my mind found yours.”

  “Oh.” She wasn’t sure how she felt about that. “Does it happen often? I mean, do you regularly make love to women in their heads?”

  “No. Of course not.”

  “Really?” She eyed him suspiciously. “I have a hard time believing that.”

  “I swear.”

  “Okay, I can handle that, then.” She rolled him over so that she was on top of him, her legs straddling his hips. His erection nestled against her sex, and she rocked her hips. Shivered a little at the feel of the tip of his cock rubbing against her clit. “You were my first lover. I like being your first something.”

  His hands came up, cupped her breasts. Rubbed her nipples. “You’re my first in a lot of things.”

  Her breath caught, though she wasn’t sure if it was at the words or the sensations streaking through her. “Don’t say that if you don’t mean it.”

  “You think it’s usual for me to nearly attack a man the second I walk in the door, just because he’s touching my woman’s hand?” He thrust himself against her, made her gasp.

  “Is that what I am?” she asked brokenly. “Your woman?”

  “Well, you’re sure as shit not my man.”

  It wasn’t the answer she’d been looking for, but it would do for now, especially with him hot and hard between her thighs, and with her orgasm already beckoning. “Make love to me, Logan.”

  “I thought you’d never ask.”

  His hand came up, curled around the back of her head, and pulled her mouth down to his. She’d expected it to be hard and a little frenzied, considering the size and scope of the erection resting insistently against her. But he took his time nipping at her upper lip, sliding his tongue along her lower lip and then into her mouth, stroking gently over her own.

  As he kissed her, she inhaled the familiar, musky scent of him, and ran her hands over the smooth, thick muscles of his chest. She already knew his body as well as her own, and she paused to flick her nail against his nipple, just like he liked it.

  He arched beneath her, murmured her name, and Cecily fought back a sudden, unexpected influx of tears. What was she going to do when he got bored and wanted to move on? How was she going to cope when he walked away, when all she wanted to do was hold on to him as tightly as she could? Her whole life, she’d been waiting for someone who got her, who laughed at her deadpan jokes, held her when the burden of her position got to be too much, woke her up in the middle of the night just because he couldn’t wait until morning to make love to her. Now that she’d found him, how was she supposed to just give him up?

  She knew he was wrong for her. He wasn’t a Wyvernmoon, wasn’t high ranking, didn’t have much money or a prestigious job. But somehow that didn’t matter when he was kissing her, holding her, loving her.

  “Cecily, darlin’, are you all right?” he asked as he gently ended the kiss. His eyes were quizzical as they stared up at her, his fingers gentle as they tilted her chin so she was looking him in the eye. She was stupid, worrying about a future that hadn’t happened yet when she had him here with her right now. Sometimes the present was the only thing that mattered. She needed to remember that.

  Curving her lips into a sassy smile, she drawled, “I’m better than all right. Or at least that’s what you told me last night.”

  He laughed, as she’d intended, and she ducked her head to trace the strong lines of his chest with her tongue. He groaned, fisted a hand in her hair and tugged her face up to meet his.

  “I’m the one who woke you up. We do it my way.”

  “We always do it your way.”

  “Is that a problem? I haven’t heard any complaints.” He slipped his hands up her stomach, removed the nightshirt he’d slipped over her head not that many hours before. Then skimmed his lips over her chest until he found her nipple and pulled it into his mouth.

  She went weak, every bone in her body melting as his tongue rolled slowly over her. She arched her back, pressed herself more firmly against him and gave herself over to the sensations rippling through her body. She wasn’t going to worry about the future right now. As long as she had Logan in her bed, she was going to stay firmly grounded in the present.

  Shifting so that she was lying beside him on the bed, she leisurely licked up the right side of his body, her tongue following every curve and angle of his tattoos. She’d done it before, on the first night they’d made love, but since then he’d been the one in control. The one driving her completely insane. Tonight, now, she wanted to get a little of her own back. Wanted to make him as crazy as he always made her.

  “Cecily, darlin’, let me touch you.”

  “It’s my turn to touch you. I want you to feel what I feel when you make love to me. I want to make you crazy.” She sank her teeth into his pec, relishing the way he jerked against her mouth.

  “I’m already crazy,” he said, grabbing her hand and putting it on his thick, hard cock. He thrust against her and she wrapped her fingers around him, stroking him from the base to the tip.

  “Cecily,” he said, and it was a warning, one she had no desire to heed.

  Instead, she leane
d over him, trailed her tongue down his breastbone to his navel. She circled his belly button, reveling in the fresh, clean, spicy taste of him. She loved doing this for him, loved kissing him and running her tongue over every part of his body.

  “Lower,” he groaned, his hands clutching at her as she ran her tongue along the light happy trail that ran from his navel to the thatch of golden pubic hair at the base of his cock. “Please go lower. I need you to touch me.”

  “What you need,” she teased in between soft, slow licks, “is to get a little patience. I already told you, I want to play with you for a little while.”

  She covered his abdomen with little nips, pausing to sink her teeth into the taut skin that covered the six-pack he sported, before soothing away the sting with a swirl of her tongue. His fingers tightened in her hair as his body grew tenser and tenser, and for a brief moment she wondered if she should give in to him and what they both wanted. Already she ached for his touch on her breasts, her sex. But then she thought of the long, lonely nights she would have in the future after he left, and decided that he could suffer a little longer. If this was one of the only memories she was going to have, there was no way she was going to rush it.

  Logan’s hands fisted in the sheets as Cecily’s mouth explored every inch of skin on his chest and stomach before dipping lower to nibble across his hip bone and down the outside of his thigh. She was everywhere and anywhere, except where he wanted her most, and the fact that the omission was deliberate was slowly driving him out of his mind.

  It tormented him, the question of when she was going to stop playing, when she was going to relent and get serious and touch him the way he longed to be touched. As she spread his legs, her lips lingering on his inner thigh, he arched involuntarily, his cock begging for her attention. For her lips, her tongue, her sweet, sexy little mouth.

  But she only laughed, then brushed her cool, soft fingers against him—once—before continuing on her journey down his body. She nibbled at his abdomen, ran her lips and tongue over his balls, dug her fingers into the back of his thighs as she brought him closer and closer to the temptation of her pretty pink lips.

  He opened his mouth—to demand, to protest, to beg that she let him take her—but before he could do more than call her name, she leaned forward and slipped his dick between her breasts. Her elbows pressed tightly against her sides so that the sweet pressure of her breasts surrounded him, driving him so close to the brink that the world around him turned dark and fuzzy.

  “Cecily.” Her name was a prayer, a curse, a plea for mercy, but his dragon wasn’t feeling merciful. He finally managed to pry his hands away from the sheets, only to end up with them tangled in her hair as she began to slide her upper body back and forth against him in a rhythm that was guaranteed to blow sky-high the last shred of control he was clinging to with bloody, battered fingertips.

  “Cecily, darlin’, sweetheart. Please. Please. Please.” The words poured out of him, tumbling from his mouth one after another as he lost himself in her. As he gave every part of himself over to her. His brain, his body, his straining, aching cock. He gave her everything, and in return she gave him the most unbelievable pleasure of his life.

  Electricity coursed down his spine, and he didn’t know if it came from her or if it was just because of what she was doing to him. And in those crazy, lust-crazed moments, he didn’t care. All that mattered was her. And when she lowered her head and took the tip of his dick in her mouth, nothing in his life had ever felt so good.

  Arching into the wet heat of her mouth, he thrust his hips again and again. Begging her to take him deeper. To take all of him. He couldn’t help it. Nothing in his long, long, long life had ever felt this good. Nothing would ever feel this good again. He was certain of it deep down in the soul he so rarely liked to think about.

  She moaned deep in her throat, and that one sound, on top of everything else, sent him careening over the edge. He thrust furiously against her, driving his cock deeper and deeper into her mouth. Deeper and deeper down her throat as it closed tightly around him.

  He tried to rein himself in, tried to stop himself from taking her like a madman. But he was in a frenzy, his dragon so close to the surface that he could no longer tell what was him and what was the beast.

  He strained against her, desperate to get deeper, desperate for her to take every part of him inside her. His cum boiled up hot and uncontrollable. His hands clenched onto her shoulders, and for a minute he really did fear hurting her. But then she clutched at his ass, his thighs, pulled him even deeper down her throat as her tongue tickled the sensitive spot at the base of his head. He lost it completely and came apart in her arms.

  His orgasm was a vicious explosion that took over every part of him until everything around him ceased to exist. Until the only things in the world were her and him and the incredible fire that burned between them.

  Ecstasy consumed him, enveloped him, burned him alive with his own flame. With hers. And still she took him, swallowing every drop of his cum and then sucking him back to wild arousal.

  Dazed, desperate, determined to get inside her before he turned feral, he turned her so that she was facedown on the bed, her hands wrapped around the iron slats of the headboard. Then he locked his hands over hers on the iron slats and positioned himself behind her. With one hard thrust, he buried himself balls-deep inside her.

  She gasped at the invasion, but she was wet and hot and tight, so tight that he couldn’t have stopped even if he’d wanted to. And he didn’t want to stop. He never wanted to stop. He wanted to fuck her forever.

  And that’s what he did. Taking her from behind like the animal he sometimes was, he fucked her and fucked her and fucked her.

  Fucked her until she came around his cock, her sweet body milking him like there was no tomorrow.

  Fucked her until she bucked wildly against him and came again.

  Fucked her until she screamed his name and begged for mercy.

  And still he didn’t stop. He couldn’t. She had broken something open inside him, something that he had kept buried his entire life, and there was no shoving it back down. It was wild and feral and uncontrollable. And it needed her. Needed him to mark her, to claim her, to spill his cum so deep inside her that she would never get his scent out of her skin.

  When she came for the fifth—or maybe it was the sixth—time, he slipped a hand down the curve of her ass and pressed his thumb inside her anus with one unapologetic thrust. She screamed his name, her lithe, strong body bucking beneath him as she came again.

  He felt the contractions start deep inside her, and he knew, in that moment, that he was hers. That she owned him. That even as he took everything she had to give, he belonged to her.

  The knowledge, combined with the incredible pleasure of her orgasm, was too much. He couldn’t hold on any longer, couldn’t hold anything back. Grabbing on to her hips so hard that he was sure he left marks, he pushed forward at the same time he slammed her back against him.

  She screamed, a loud, wild cry that raked down his nerve endings and pushed him right over the edge of the precipice. And then he was flooding her, his cum jetting into her in rhythmic pulses that gave her what he had never intended to give another person.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  When it was over, Cecily slid peacefully back into sleep and Logan just lay there, listening to her breathe for the longest time. In, out, in, out. She was so beautiful that it hurt to look at her, with her blond hair fanning out around her head like a halo. He wanted nothing more than to settle in next to her and stay there, touching her, cuddling her, loving her, for as long as she would let him.

  Panic assailed him at the thought, gripped him by the balls and wouldn’t let go. Forgetting his earlier wishes, he scrambled out of bed and nearly fell on his ass in his desperation to get away from her—and his feelings for her.

  His throat was parched from fear, and he walked toward the bathroom on trembling legs, calling himself a pussy even as he did
so. He’d spent his life locked in battle, had fought more wars than he could hope to count, had taken on the world alone for centuries. And yet here he was, shaking because of one little dragon whose head didn’t even reach his shoulder.

  Flipping on the bathroom light, he found a glass sitting on the counter. He filled it with water, drank it all in one long gulp, though his hands were shaking so badly that he ended up spilling a third of it onto the counter.

  He cleaned the mess up with a hand towel, then filled the glass again. Only after he’d finally succeeded in washing away the dryness coating his throat did he look in the mirror at the shuddering mess he had become. His eyes were dilated, his skin was pasty white and his breath was seesawing in and out of his lungs like he’d just run a half dozen miles or so full-out.

  What was he going to do?

  What the fuck was he going to do?

  He couldn’t have fallen for her, couldn’t be in love with her. Doing so would be incredibly stupid, and while he was a lot of things, he was rarely stupid.

  And yet feelings were building inside of him that were so real, so powerful, he couldn’t deny them. There was this sense of rightness that he felt whenever he was near her. The need he had to hold her, to protect her, to make sure that no one—least of all those bastards her father had left in charge—ever had the chance to hurt her.

  But how could that be? How could she have come to matter to him so much in such a short time? How could she have broken down every barrier he’d erected? He’d come to destroy her, goddamnit, to rip her clan apart, factionnaire by factionnaire. Brick by fucking brick. How could he have been so insane as to fall for her when he knew what he had to do?

  But when he’d been sitting in that parlor with her that night, holding her while she cried for a little girl she’d never met, he’d known there was so much more to her than he had ever wanted to believe. It was bad enough that she kept him hot and hard all the time, that she made him lose perspective on things much bigger than the two of them, but when he saw how much she cared about her people, she melted him.