Firecracker (Last Call, Book Six) (4 page)

Oh, sweetheart.

“
You asked for it,” he
murmured. “Remember that.”

Then he thrust deep into her mouth.

She hadn’t performed oral sex in a very long
time, but some things never changed.

The power in it, for one, so paradoxical when
Jarrett was the one gripping her head and forcing his cock past her
lips. He was large, thick and long and undeniably masculine. She
choked a little before she remembered how to fight her reflex, how
to tilt her head and let saliva ease his path.

His first smooth thrust into her throat
brought back the memory of the werewolf who’d taught her how to
take a man deep, a rough, cocky bootlegger who’d paid for a charm
to bind the fire beneath her skin.

It had even worked...for a while.

She wouldn’t think about their tragic end—not
now. Right now she’d concentrate on Jarrett, on his dangerous eyes
and the heat in him that matched her own.

He pulled back and thrust deep again, this
time holding her head firmly for several long seconds. Then he
released her with a groan. “You like that, don’t you?”

She liked how much
he
liked it, how his eyes
got wild around the edges. Even more perversely, she liked the
roughness of it. “I love it.”

“
What else do you love?” But
he thrust back into her mouth before she could answer, his skin hot
to the point of sizzling on her tongue.

Feeling alive. Consumed. She fought to
swallow him, and it wasn’t enough. Not until he lost control. The
next time he pulled back, she smiled up at him. “I love fire.”

Jarrett grinned and pulled her up by her
shoulders. “I should have guessed.” He caught her mouth in a quick,
blistering kiss, then spun and bent her over the bed.

Of course there was a mirror. Why wouldn’t
there be? The room was designed for seduction and sin—and she
looked seduced and sinful. Tangled hair framed her face, and Phoebe
barely recognized herself in the debauched stranger trembling on
her knees. Naked and flushed, her lips swollen, eyes glazed, she
looked like a wild creature, not the subdued professional she’d
become in recent years.

Behind her, Jarrett stood in deep shadow, his
muscles flexing in sharp relief under the slanting light from the
lamps. When he met her gaze in the mirror, his eyes flashed red.
“Lovely,” he murmured, and gripped her hips.

She tensed against his first thrust, her
anticipation heightening with each breath as he loomed behind her
with fiery eyes. “What are you going to do to me?”

“
Ride you until I come.” He
leaned over her back and whispered his next words into her ear. “I
want you to watch.”

It was odd that she could shiver with his
skin blazing like a furnace at her back. “Hard. I may not have a
werewolf’s healing, but it’s more difficult to hurt me to begin
with.”

“
I’m not worried.” The head
of his cock rubbed against her.

Tearing her gaze from his wasn’t easy, but it
was worth it. She’d never seen anything as shamelessly erotic as
their bodies poised on the edge of joining, the thick crown of his
erection parting the inner lips of her cunt. She wanted to watch
him thrust inside, watch him bury himself inch by inch as she
stretched to accommodate his girth. It might hurt a little at
first, she remembered that. But only until friction burned away
everything else.

Crude words felt awkward in her mind and
clumsy on her tongue, but she forced them free on a rush of
adrenaline. “Fuck me. Fuck me with your cock.” They sounded fake,
high and forced, but maybe practice would make this perfect, too.
“Fuck me, please.”

He slipped his arm around her, across her,
his forearm pressed to her throat. “Shh.” Then he slid into her,
slow and unyielding.

Pressure. Pleasure. She was torn between
closing her eyes to savor the way he filled her and staring at the
dizzying sight of her body trapped and penetrated, the arm around
her throat a dangerous visual symbol.

She was at his mercy. Oh, not in reality—she
was familiar enough with the bar to know that a true violation of
her consent would unleash powerful protective magic—but even
playing at this sort of domination intoxicated her in a way that
seemed shameful. She spent every day wrapped tight in a façade of
civilized humanity, but in this moment she was unbound.

Her cool skin heated again as longing kindled
deep inside her. She could be what she was, an elusive creature of
legend, a lover too dangerous to touch. No sweet, tender sex, but a
triumphant claiming, rough and beyond the polite rules of human
society.

Phoebe moaned again and raked her nails along
his arm. “Hurt me.”

Jarrett growled, flame licking between them
as his arm tightened and he thrust hard, burying himself to the
hilt inside her.

So much. Her lips parted on a soundless cry,
breathless because his arm had cut off her air. Not the pain she’d
asked for, but she was shocked at how it heightened her arousal.
Her fingers and toes tingled, and that tingling melted into a
hunger for more.

His arm relaxed, just a little, and he
groaned. “Fuck, you feel good.”

She gasped in a breath and flung her head
back. “You’re big. You fill me.”

Jarrett bit the back of her shoulder and
stilled. “Fuck yourself with my dick, honey, I want to feel you
move.”

Filthy words, and he didn’t sound awkward
saying them at all. They rolled from his tongue and crashed into
her, intensifying her pleasure as she fought his grip in an attempt
to move. He had her too well pinned to do more than rock fitfully,
never making it more than an inch or two away before she jerked
back against him.

“
More?” he
whispered.

She shuddered. “I thought you were going to
ride me until you came.”

“
I will.” He groaned the
words. “I want you to come with me.”

On any other day, she would have scoffed at
the idea of another orgasm after three in rapid succession, but
nothing seemed impossible now. “Then keep talking. It makes me
crazy.”

“
Yes?” Heat licked over the
skin just under her ear, and it took her a moment to realize it was
flame, not his tongue.

She almost came apart right there.

Phoebe lifted her head and stared into the
mirror. Behind her, Jarrett watched their reflection in the mirror,
his jaw set and clenched. The corner of his mouth quirked up, and
he pulled back and drove into her.

Hard.

One of them flamed. She
didn’t know which one, and she didn’t care. Her entire body
trembled with the strength of her reaction, and she wanted
more.
Needed
more.
Phoebe closed her eyes and gave in to the rising pleasure, letting
it carry her beyond safe sensations and into the dangerous
unknown.

Fire licked over Phoebe’s back to singe
Jarrett’s hands. He thrust against her with another groan, and
shuddered.

If she didn’t come soon…

His fingers bit into her skin as he clutched
her hips. “One more time, honey. Just once.”

She moaned, and her pussy
clenched tight around him. She was close, riding that frustrated
edge, but her writhing wasn’t pushing her over. She gasped out a
curse and clutched the sheets. “Make me.
Make me.
”

She liked it rough, walking the fine line
between sex and violence. Jarrett gripped her harder, almost to the
point of bruising, and slapped her hip. “Now, Phoebe.”

She erupted with one sobbing cry, coming hot
and tight around his dick as the flames licking over her skin
flared toward the ceiling.

Her pleasure ignited his, a sudden flash that
slid down his spine and swept him away. He thrust into her again,
an agonizing bid to both end and prolong the ecstasy, as if this
moment would kill him when it ended.

As if he could live in it forever.

Phoebe shook under him, and Jarrett held her
through it, murmuring softly until the flames consuming them began
to die down.

The scent of charred fabric reached him as
Phoebe whimpered. “I think the blankets are smoldering.”

His hands were shaking. “Even we can’t burn
through wards like these, sweetheart.”

“
Are you sure?”

One spot on the
bedspread
was
smoking. Jarrett cursed and batted at it. “Jesus.”

Phoebe laughed hoarsely and crawled up the
bed before collapsing on her side. “That’s a shame. I was going to
catch my breath and then ask you do more bad things to me.”

“
Shower.” Impossible for the
thought to heat his blood this quickly, and yet it did. “You said
that was safe, right?”

“
Usually.” Her head tipped
off the bed, and she stared at the cabinets lining the opposite
wall, the ones filled with high-end toys. “I wonder if any of those
are waterproof. I could test it out for us.”

“
Already?” Jarrett slid to
the bed and rested his head on her stomach. “You saying something
about my performance, Phoebe?”

“
Yes.” She pushed trembling
fingers into his hair. “You’ve stripped away all my restraint, and
now I want to do debauched things like make myself come while you
watch. You watching is the most important part of that
fantasy.”

“
Just
watching?” He stretched up and caught her nipple between this
teeth for a moment. “I could help.”

He fingers tightened in his hair as she
hissed in pleasure. “You wouldn’t help. You’d take over.”

“
Guilty.” He soothed the
quick bite with his tongue “But you wouldn’t mind.”

“
Maybe not.” She stroked a
finger across the back of his neck. “What about you? Is there
anything you want? Any fantasy I could try to fulfill?”

Jarrett rolled beside her
and propped his head on his hand. “I think you already have,
sweetheart.” To be able to let go, to
not
hold back… “We got a little
fiery.”

“
We did.” Her smile was slow
and shy. “And a little rough. My fire-resistant lovers are usually
afraid to go that far, even if I ask. You’re the first man I’ve
been with who’s actually fireproof.”

“
Too bad the room didn’t
turn out to be, too. Though I think you’re on to something with the
shower thing.”

“
Lots of steam. Everything
gets wet and slippery.” She touched his cheek. “You have wonderful
bones. Your whole face is just beautiful. Strong angles, hard
lines...” Her fingers ghosted to his eyebrow. “I would love to
paint you.”

“
You still do that?” A
stupid question, and he wanted to call it back as soon as he spoke.
Artists were always artists, even if no one ever knew.

But she didn’t seem to find it stupid. “I
work as an art dealer, but I still paint. Sometimes I sell my own
work—not that of my current identity, of course. Though I only have
another ten years or so in this body, so it might be time to
discover myself.”

He slid his fingers into her hair without
thinking. “I like you like this.”

Sadness filled her eyes before she closed
them. “A thousand weeks,” she whispered. “That’s all I ever get. A
little more than nineteen years and I have to start again.”

Dammit.
Jarrett gripped her chin until she met his gaze again. “How do
you come back?”

“
I don’t really go. I
just...burn.” She wet her lips. “It’s the one time the fire doesn’t
touch anything else, only me. It doesn’t hurt, but it doesn’t feel
good, either. It’s just intense, like it’s swallowing me whole. And
I don’t know what happens after that. I lose consciousness and wake
up later, naked and...different.”