by Holley Trent
He pinched the ties of her underwear between his fingers and gave the ribbons slow, easy tugs.
She looked back over her shoulder at him, and he winked at her as he yanked the bows loose.
“But you should know that I don’t intend on keeping our relationship strictly professional. Or platonic.”
“Isn’t there a such thing as platonic sex? Isn’t that what you had with…all the others?”
“You’re asking if I was in relationships with the women I fucked?”
“I think so.”
“With some, I was. With others, it was mutual itch-scratching. I needed to touch and be touched, and they enjoyed the company while it lasted.”
“I don’t really want to think about that company.”
“No?” He pulled her panties from between her legs and tossed them onto the floor. “Why not?”
Reflexively, she tried to push her thighs together, but with him between her legs, there was nowhere for them to go.
“Thinking about you fucking someone else isn’t what I’d call a turn-on.”
“Are you sure?” He slipped his hand beneath her waistband and dragged his fingers along her wet slit. If he were so inclined, he could slide his cock into her and there’d be no resistance besides what her clenching muscles would provide. “I think you’re turned on. And I think you’d probably like watching me fuck someone.”
She furrowed her forehead and pressed her lips into a tight line.
Stubborn.
“Wouldn’t you?” Breaching her with two fingers, he pressed his thumb against her tighter entrance and made her squirm. “Loosen your lips and talk to me. You would like it, wouldn’t you? You’d watch with bated breath, pussy dripping for me and too scared to touch yourself. You’d wish that everything I was doing to her, I was doing to you, and you’d want it so badly that you’d think you were actually feeling it. Every thrust, every tickle, and even some of that delicious pain.”
He pushed his thumb into her ass, and clucked his tongue at her shout of, “Jerk.”
He kept his fingers scissoring inside her cunt and his thumb inching farther into her hole. “I’m still waiting on you to answer me. Would you want to watch?”
“Ugh!” She tried again to squeeze him between her legs, and he retaliated by putting some pressure against her G-spot. “Son of a bitch. Not if it’s anyone you care about, okay?”
“Why not?”
“Because I’d be jealous. Platonic fucking or not, I’d be jealous, because I’d worry you’d want them more than me. There you have it. I’m petty and immature, and I can’t be anything but what I am.”
He stilled his fingers and rested his other hand on her hip, giving it a gentle squeeze. Pushing her the way he was had a bit of cruelness about it, but he had to get her to open her eyes to what was going on. “You think me touching you like this is platonic? Or that I’m doing it because I can’t keep my hands to myself?”
“No… I mean, I figured folks who spent time outside of the clan were just more…open, I guess, that way. And I like it, so I wouldn’t tell you to stop.”
“You like me doing it, or would you be happy with anyone doing it? If it were Jody at your back right now, and not me, for instance—would you feel different?”
She glared at Will over her shoulder. “It’s mean of you to throw that in my face.”
“Why? I think it’s a perfectly valid question. I’d like to know if you’re hung up on him so I know best how to proceed.”
“Proceed with what?”
“I suppose it’s not perfectly obvious, and that’s my fault.” Slowly, he pulled his hand free of her, and moved from between her legs so he could pull her pants the rest of the way down. “Stay right there.”
He left her on the bed and fetched a strip of condoms from his toiletry case in the bathroom. He hadn’t wanted to go to this extent quite yet, but the fact of the matter was that carnal intimacy frequently made psychic barriers crumble between a couple, and he didn’t want to waste time. He wanted her in his home and his life, not out spinning her wheels and second-guessing what her place was. The sooner she came to the realization that he was it for her, the sooner she’d come into her own. He hoped, anyway.
To her credit, she hadn’t moved in the time he was gone, so he turned her over and rewarded her with a kiss. He’d been wanting to kiss her to bonelessness since encountering her frozen on the trail. He’d wanted to kiss the confusion right off her face, and maybe scramble her brain in new and different ways. Now, he’d have his chance.
He inched her shirt up as he nipped at her lips and leaned back just long enough to pull it over her head. “Put your hand on my cock,” he projected. “Feel what I’m going to put inside you.”
She was slow to obey, but that was probably more his fault than hers. She was struggling for air and trying to wrest some control of their kiss, but eventually she found him and gave him a squeeze through the fabric of his sweatpants.
“I’m hard, and not because I’m wanting you to see me bend someone else over to fuck until she screams.” He pulled away and pushed down his sweatpants and boxers. Tossing them onto the floor along with her bra, he added, “I’m hard because you’re so fucking beautiful, and you’re mine.”
Her eyes went round again. “What?”
He made a rolling gesture and tore a condom off the strip. “Hands and knees, so I can take you deep. Roll over so I can get inside you.”
She was still in that confused daze, but she did what he’d asked, and presented her ass to him without question.
“Beautiful.” He got sheathed up and pressed into her slowly, and he’d guessed right. She was so wet, so ready for him, and she gripped him tightly as if she worried he’d take it from her. “You can have as much as you want,” he whispered.
“Get out of my head.”
“I’m not in your head. Your body is talking to me. It’s telling me it wants all I’ve got to give.”
“Better listen to it, then.” She rocked back and took more of him in, and let out a stream of swears he hadn’t heard the likes of since that time a guy at his gym dropped a weight on his foot.
“Dirty girl.” He pulled out of her and gave her pussy a light swat that made her cry out. “Still want it?”
She reached under her body and between her legs and grabbed his cock. “Stop teasing me.”
“I’m just trying to make sure you want it. You probably think the boy from next door is a pervert.” And she wouldn’t be wrong, exactly. He liked what he liked, and quite often, what he liked was what no one else did.
“So what does that make me? Put it back inside me. Please?”
“I love hearing you say please.” He leaned back a bit more, just out of reach of her greedy hand.
“Please, then. You want me to beg?”
“No, I don’t want you to beg, sweetie. I just like hearing you ask.”
“Well, I’m asking. Please.”
Will drew in a long breath and eased back into her. “Anything you want.”
“You say that like you mean it.”
“People should always say what they mean. Why waste time veiling the things that would be so much better if they were clear?”
She hooked her toes around the backs of his thighs and dug her fingers into the blanket. Her eyes closed and jaw fell slack as he increased the speed of his thrusts, the depth of his strokes.
Already, the prickling heat rushed toward his core and his brain went to an odd, numb place and he couldn’t process anything except Erin’s delicious proximity and the rightness of her being there. Everything else was disconnected as if his mind were a computer working in safe mode, making programming fixes in the background while his body went about business as usual. He was aware of his movements, his urgent strokes that drew pleas for mercy from her. And he knew he was in his apartment in his inner sanctum, but beyond that, information seemed out of reach while the magic—which he finally recognized—reknit. Cleared away what wasn’t h
is and rewired him for the next stage in his life.
Fixed him for Erin, because as scattered as she was, he needed redirection as much as she did. He didn’t know what home meant, but she was it. She’d show him.
“Will!”
Full consciousness settled back into him and more mindful of her pleasure, pressed his fingers to her clit. He rubbed as he thrust, leaning down to whisper, “Do you feel me?”
She didn’t answer, but he excused her for it. She sank her teeth into the covers and screamed through them. Her sex spasmed around him and body shook with her orgasm, and she was his and…
She still wasn’t as visible as she should have been on the Afótama web.
Something was wrong.
CHAPTER TEN
Body shaking and teeth chattering, Erin tried to shape some words for Will, but the only noises that came out were sputters—like a motorboat’s engine that tried and failed to turn over again and again.
“Shh.” He pulled the covers up around her and pulled her against his body, his front to her back.
“What just happened?” Telepathy seemed easier than talking at the moment, and she didn’t care for once if she was broadcasting on every available frequency. If the folks downstairs could hear her, so be it. She wanted to know why she thought she’d die if Will rolled away. That wasn’t normal, and she’d had sex with enough Afótama men to know that with fair certainty.
“Tell me what you’re feeling, and I’ll try to explain.”
“So you know?”
“I know my half of the story. Tell me yours. Let’s put them together.”
“I…” Hell. She didn’t know how to explain it. She’d been in the middle of the most violent orgasm she’d had to date, and she’d felt like she was going to come apart at the seams if Will moved away from her—like she’d cease to be if he refused her. She’d be a pile of nothingness, and she wouldn’t care about her responsibilities anymore because the most important one had been him.
“Okay. How about if I start?” He rubbed her arm and laid gentle kisses on the top of her head. “I believe we’re joined.”
“Joined?” No way. She couldn’t possibly have been granted a gods-blessed pairing. She was a nobody, and Will…Will was a man she never would have imagined having. He was top-shelf Afótama, not the run-of-the-mill modern Viking. “No, that can’t be right. You must be mistaken.”
She tried to roll over so she could see his face, but he gave her no room to move.
“Be still.”
“I want to see you.”
“You have plenty of time to see me. Let your body rest for the moment. And does it aggravate you so much that I would be it for you?”
“No!” That was an easy enough statement to make aloud without stuttering.
“Then what is it?”
“It just seems like it would be a mistake. Why would the gods stick you with me when you could be with an Afótama woman with some power?”
“I’m not convinced pairings are made based on power. I think they’re made so each person gets exactly what he or she needs.”
“Well, I know what I need. What is it that you think you’re lacking? Because from my perspective, you’re pretty near perfect.”
“You’ve got your blinders on. If I were perfect, I wouldn’t have spent twelve years avoiding this place and trying to function outside of it.”
“Seems like you did just fine for yourself.”
“Sure. Anyone would do fine if they fucked often enough just to get their touch quota filled. You can’t really ask a woman to just hold your hand for a little while because the freakish, supernatural parts of your DNA make you desperately skin-starved. Out there in the real world, there aren’t that many scenarios where you can get away with touch for the sake of touch. There has to be some motive connected to it, so you make up whatever lies you have to, do whatever you must to get what you need.”
Erin didn’t particularly want to think about just how often he’d done what he had to do or how many women he’d done it with. If she thought about it, she’d be angry, and she had no right to be angry.
Or do I?
He chuckled. “Of course you do.”
“Get out of my head, Will.”
“Stop being so loud, then.” He loosened his arm from around her waist and pulled her hair back behind her ear.
“Does this…mean you’re not going to touch anyone else?”
“Is that what you want?”
“I don’t have the right to want that.”
“Are you sure?” He eased her onto her back, and propped his head against his fist, looking down at her. “Dig deep and tell me you don’t feel like you have a rightful claim.”
“On you?” The very idea was laughable, but obviously he didn’t think it was so funny. His expression was a perfect blank. She cleared her throat and fidgeted with the top edge of the sheet—anything to waste time. Instincts said, Mine, mine, mine, but self-doubt danced in front of it, singing, In your dreams, stupid.
“Do you want me, Erin?”
“Are you kidding me? That’s so not the issue.”
“Then what is?”
“How are you so sure?”
“Because I’m confident in my gifts and understand, the best I can, the magic I have. Within my self-awareness comes the knowledge that you’re the missing piece of me, and now that you’re here—at home—I feel more complete.”
“Well, I feel something like that, too, but—”
“You expected there to be more? Magic, I mean.”
“I don’t know about more, but with everyone I know who found their partners, they became better telepaths. Better psychics. I…I don’t know what’s wrong with me. You say you’re sure, and I want to believe you because I want you so bad, but I still don’t have anything new to offer.”
“I don’t think there’s anything wrong with you. I think you’re exactly the way you’re supposed to be. So that begs the question of what are you? The conclusion I’ve made in the past few minutes is perhaps you’re not Afótama.”
“That’s ridiculous. My parents are Afótama.”
“Yes, I’m pretty sure they are.”
“But it seems the natural assumption from there would be that they aren’t my parents.”
“I don’t want to upset you, but it does make me wonder. How do two blue-eyed parents end up with a brown-eyed child? It’s virtually impossible.”
“It’s a mistake. Just a fluke, I guess.”
He glided his fingertips down her arm and said nothing. His presence—soothing before—agitated her now. He’d made an assertion that undermined everything she knew about herself—that accused her parents of being less than honest, and to what end?
She sat up, brushing his arm away. “Why would you say something like that? What do you get out of making me suspicious and questioning my parents?”
“I don’t get a damned thing about it except a lot of heartache. That’s the way it goes, isn’t it? When you hurt, I hurt, and I’m wired to want to fix it. The truth hurts sometimes. Really, it does, and I do the best I can to deliver it softly when I have to be the one dispensing it at all. I wouldn’t hurt you on purpose, Erin, but this… I had to make the suggestion.”
She scrambled to her feet and stomped off in search of her clothes.
What he was saying couldn’t be true. Every youthful memory she had was of her parents—of being a Petersen—and for Will to suggest that she might not be one just to explain away what a garbage psychic she was…
But that didn’t make sense. He had nothing to gain from that.
She stood in the doorway of his bedroom, clutching her clothes against her chest. Slowly she turned and looked at him. He sat at the edge of the air mattress with his arms draped over his knees and his forehead furrowed with worry lines.
“You wouldn’t lie to me just to make me feel better, would you?”
“I’m sorry. No. I wouldn’t. You should know I can’t lie to you. Not easily,
anyway. Not anymore.”
Not since they’d made love.
She forced a swallow down her tight throat and locked her gaze onto the floor in front of her feet.
“Do you want proof, Erin? I can help you get proof if you want. Things tend to be easier to discover when you have an inkling of what sort of information you’re looking for.”
Do I want proof? Did she really want to know that she might not have been Afótama at all, and that her parents weren’t her parents?
She forced herself to meet his gaze and pushed a long, ragged breath through her parted lips. “I want to know.” Maybe knowing would ease some of the anxiety—the feeling of wrongness she couldn’t shake from her day-to-day life.
“There are two ways you can go about it. You can dig, or you can ask them outright.”
Although there might have been something so satisfying about digging and having a much-deserved a-ha! moment, more than that, she wanted to be freed from the suspense, and soon. She didn’t know how long she could hold onto it without falling apart.
She pulled on her clothes, tidied her ponytail, and dragged her tongue across her dry lips. “I’ve gotta go home.”
Will nodded slowly and twiddled his thumbs. “I guess you do. I hope you’ll come back.”
She didn’t know when she would, or if she would.
She didn’t know anything.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Will waited for as long as he could before going after Erin, but after a few hours of anxious pacing while supervising furniture deliveries and awaiting phone calls from study participants, he had no choice but to act.
Her distress was needling at him, even from a distance. It was urgent and physical and not an Afótama tendency. The Afótama’s psychic gifts were about thoughts and words—communication. What he was getting from Erin was what the people from Fallon did. They read emotion. Outside of close family and friends, most couldn’t hear each other or visualize each other on a mental web, but they could feel each other.
