Harlequin Nocturne September 2014 Bundle: Beyond the Moon\Immortal Obsession (10 page)

“Ask your question,” she prompted, trying to remain as casually unaffected by his overwhelming sensual draw as possible. Her eyes fell to his crotch, where his very obvious erection bulged against the leather. She could not wait for that.

Patience is a virtue, she reminded her whimpering heart.

“I…” The cat had gotten his tongue. And Thomas wasn't anywhere nearby.

Pleased she'd challenged his sensual calm, Verity smiled. Looking down, she brushed her hair across her nipple, teasing him with the play.

Rook tongued the inside of his cheek. He rubbed his hands over his scalp. “Have you family?” came out quickly.

“Not much. A man who has lived for centuries can certainly understand that, yes? I've my grandmother Freesia, but she doesn't live in this realm. My mother and great-grandmother Bluebell are gone. No siblings or other family. I've never known my father. My mother never talked about him either. I used to dream he was a prince, but over the years I have grown to suspect he was probably a frog. Shirt, please.”

He tore the T-shirt off over his head and dropped it near his feet. In a hurry? Verity dropped her mouth open at the sight of the ripped abs and pecs. Hard. As. Rock. And every movement eased the muscle in a sensual wave. There at his left shoulder was a raised mark a few shades darker than his light tan coloring. Looked like a scar, or—she couldn't determine, only that it was round. A bullet wound? She couldn't imagine it would be so wide.

But she didn't want to waste another question now that they were both down to one item of clothing.
If
he went commando. And the way the game was going, she would reveal all before he did. Which didn't seem fair. Where was the competition? The chance that one could win over the other?

“We need a challenge round,” she said suddenly. “That is, if we're both down to the one bit of clothing. Are you going commando?”

“Is that another question?”

She blew out an exasperated breath. He wasn't going to let her win this one. “No.”

“Then pose another question.”

“Fine. I want to know what memories my fire magic stirred up in you.”

“And if I refuse to answer?”

She grinned. “Then it's your turn to ask a question.”

He tapped his chin with a forefinger, obviously weighing the question. It was a tough one, surely. And she expected he would not answer. Or at least, if she had strategized correctly, he would not.

“Why fire?” he challenged. “Tell me why a witch chose to study fire.”

“So you're refusing to answer my question?”

“I am. I…can't get into that now. I hope you can understand.”

“Very well. Why fire?”

This one hit her hard and stirred up a batch of memories. But she wasn't about to refuse his defiant dare. She was strong, and she'd learned to overcome and use the bad times to enforce the good.

Striding past him to her spell table, she looked among the accoutrements, found the glass vial about the size of her thumb and displayed it for him.

“My mother was burned at the stake late in the nineteenth century,” she offered. “She had fallen in love with a man who, unbeknownst to her, was a witch hunter. You can guess that he tricked her and soon led her to the flames. I witnessed it. My soul compelled me to the gallows on that day. These are her ashes.” She shook the vial. “And after watching such an atrocity, I was determined to never fall victim to something I could control. So I focused all my studies on fire.”

“I'm sorry about your mother.”

With some difficulty she swallowed the rising hollow that threatened tears. But she was strong because of her mother's death, and she didn't need to cry over it anymore. Besides, this night was going to end the way she desired.

“Pants,” she ordered with a flick of her fingers.

The man fingered the metal button at his waist, popped it open, then slowly drew down the zipper.

Anticipation quickening her core, Verity realized her skin was warm and shivering and her loins were wet. She shifted her hips, pressing her thighs together. So ready for him. And they hadn't even touched.

He got the zipper halfway down, paused, put up a finger and turned away from her to shrug down the fitted, armored pants to reveal a very sexy backside. Sans Skivvies.

He stood upright and, arms out to his side, turned toward her. “Happy?”

“You've nothing else to take off,” she said, not caring that her argument was moot. Because, oh mercy, his shaft sprang up tight against his stomach, long and hard, the head of it gorgeously thick and red. Her fingers ached to take him in hand and command him. “Yes, very happy.”

Verity slipped off her panties and dropped them about her feet. “I concede. It's a tie. What next?”

Chapter 8

R
ook plunged to his knees beside Verity and kissed her thigh, inhaling the sweet herbal odor of the cream she had explained protected her from the flames. He almost went down the route of
what if
—what if Marianne had known about the flame retardant?—but stopped himself. He knelt before a goddess, and he would not step toward the heart-wrenching lure of his past now.

Now was for warm skin and luxurious smells and violet hair spilling between his fingers and fluttering lashes dusting the air and the flex of her stomach muscles and the tempting curves of her breasts as seen from his position below them.

He kissed her hip, tonguing the skin and nipping it gently. Her fingers drove through his hair, igniting shivers across his scalp. He bit gently and she cooed, arching her back as his palm fit against her lower spine, his thumb gliding into the divot of one Venus dimple.

She tilted out her leg and fit it against his torso, a lift of her toes touching his heavy testicles. The skin around them tightened, hugging them up to his groin in anticipation. He gripped her firmly, sandwiching her stomach and back with both hands as he glided his tongue up her rib cage, following the herbal scent to the sweet, heated valley beneath her breast. Nuzzling up into a heavy globe, he nipped at the underside, wanting to tease himself by prolonging the treat. His face against her breast. Heaven.

Verity rubbed her mons against his abdomen. She was hot and wet.
Mon Dieu,
he should touch her there—but not yet. And there was that foot again, her toes tenderly testing at his tightened testicles, attempting to stroke up higher, but they were not positioned correctly. He'd let her continue to try; his focus was on devouring her moans, her wanting squirms, her gasps of pleasure.

“Oh, Rook.” She bent forward, and he slashed his tongue along the divine center between her breasts. She wanted him to suckle her, but he continued to tease with lashes and testing licks. “Please.”

Now that was what he liked to hear. And that quiver in her tone? Nice.

Rising to stand, he clasped her derriere and lifted her. She was light as a bird, and she wrapped her legs around his torso. And right there at his chest, those gorgeous breasts settled, full and round. The areolas were dusted a deep pink and the nipples so tight they peaked up in offering.

“Suck me,” she begged on a gasp.

He opened his mouth over the curve of her breast and let her feel his teeth. Never so dangerous as one with fangs. He had taken a vampire bite a dozen times over the centuries and knew that piercing was erotic as could be. But her reaction to his tease pleased him. Shudders coursed through her body, raising Braille dots across her skin. He let his fingers wander over them, reading them, quickly deciphering before they disappeared. What he read was want.

Rook danced his tongue around the ruched peak of her nipple. Her fingernails drove down the back of his scalp and to his neck, prickling up his flesh. As he suckled her, her body shifted against his, her mons pressing hard to his stomach, demanding, grinding the core of her against him to heighten her pleasure. She was unfettered and took as she pleased. An armful of heat and want and desire, this witch.

The bed right at his side, he turned and laid her across the quilt, replacing his tongue with his fingers to squeeze her nipple while he tended the other wanting bud of flesh with his mouth. She slid a hand over his and encouraged his rough squeeze, and that was all it took to turn his rigid cock into a pulsing, demanding column of steel.

Swearing, he pulled her leg down to slap against her other leg, imprisoning his cock between her thighs. Hot and moist there, he pumped within the loose prison. Mercy, but he had to maintain control. It hurt so damn good to not let loose and come.

Sucking in her nipple deeply, lingering and holding it until he thought it must pain her, he then lashed quick tastes across her breasts. At her sides, her hands clutched the quilt, and he took a moment to watch those long, graceful fingers in an involuntary act of seeking. Needing to grasp on to something, to anchor to the pleasure.

Still he thrust his penis hard between her thighs. She had tucked an ankle under the other to tighten the clasp. He could come right now, but he would not when he was so close to entering this intriguing woman he was beginning to believe had been led to him by destiny.

* * *

Rook's every touch permeated her skin. Verity felt him rush through her system. Every lash of heated tongue, every demanding clasp of fingers, owned her. Embedded deep within her soul.

She couldn't stop herself from thinking that, indeed, her soul felt Rook enter her skin, her mouth, her thoughts and her desires. And it welcomed him, wanted him to stay, sighed at his presence. Perhaps even recognized him.

He kissed down from her well-suckled breasts to her panting stomach, lashing his tongue into her naval. Verity tilted up her hips but sighed as his penis slipped out from between her thighs. That thick, hot part of him she wanted to grip, yet it eluded her grasping fingers as he moved down the bed. Tufts of his hair tickled her below the naval—so sensitive there. Now his kisses grew lighter, merely dusting her instead of the intense, biting kisses he'd given her breasts.

Breathless, her fingers grasping at air, Verity could only close her eyes and take in whatever sensations he next gave her because she had lost control and didn't want it back. She was ready to step over the edge, yet when her toes touched air he would alter his pace, and the weight of his touch granted her a reprieve for moments of gasping delight.

“One final question,” her lover murmured. He looked up from where he hovered so close to her wanting, quivering core.

“Anything.”

“We've begun something,” he said. His hand glided down her outer thigh and hooked under her knee. “Do you really want this?”

He was asking something beyond whether she wanted him to bury his tongue deep within her and bring her to orgasm. And although she didn't want to stretch her thoughts too far from the pleasure, Verity knew what he implied. Did she want to step into a relationship with a hunter? A man whose job must always come before her. A man who was inexplicably tied up in a hunt for her ex-lover.

A man she wanted to trust.

Who said it had to become a relationship? She was determined to keep it to three dates—make that three romps in bed. Tonight was only the first.

“Oh, mercy yes,” she answered. Shoving her fingers through his hair, she clutched, and as he lowered his head to her, she moaned and let him put her leg up over his shoulder.

The heat of his tongue seared her wetness, stroking along her folds and mapping her out slowly, intently. Verity gasped, tilting up her hips. “Deeper,” she cried.

Her lover's fingers glided inside her while his tongue tickled higher, aimed for her apex. He bent forward two fingers and skimmed the ripples of her G-spot. Verity released the sheets she'd clutched tightly. Her head tilted into the pillow, her mouth gaping open, but no sound touched the night. And as his tongue touched her clit and his fingers gently curled against her sensitive insides, she launched into an indulgent free fall into bliss.

Lost within the utter abandon of orgasm, Verity sighed softly. Her body shivered, her muscles tightening. She felt Rook wrap his arms around her legs and tongue her deeply, tasting her, drinking her., He worshipped her like a goddess.

She needed him to feel her ecstasy, and she tugged at his hair. “Inside me. Please. Quickly.”

And then he filled her with his molten hard shaft, thrusting into her bliss, pushing her farther, his hardness dragging at her swollen clitoris and playing her to another orgasm that hitched a ride on the fading tail of the previous. Her muscles tightened about his cock. Rook groaned, and his palm slapped the bed beside her head.

“So good,” he muttered. “Yes!”

The man above her matched her frenzied shudders, his hands clasping her arms tightly. His abdomen muscles clenched against her belly, and in that moment she owned him. He surrendered to her, coming deep inside her and releasing a part of him to her.

* * *

They lingered in the glow cast by the pale moon.

If the victim does not drink blood before the next full moon, the vampire taint will pass through their system.

Verity frowned and turned away from the light. Nuzzling her nose into Rook's hair made her forget the annoying thought she'd had about vampirism. She didn't doubt that her spell had worked.

Okay, so she had doubted it a little when Lyric and Vail had questioned her about it.

No. You're fine
.

She slid a palm over her lover's chest, the dark hairs soft against her skin. His eyes were closed, but he wasn't sleeping; he'd just come and his body still panted as he lounged in the delicious reverie of after-orgasm.

“I wish my necklace hadn't been stolen that night. You were so close to your soul,” she whispered.

He clasped a hand over hers. “I marvel that you've had it for so long and felt the need to keep it safe.”

“Just doing what my soul demanded of me. Weird, eh? I've never thought about soul mates much, but do you think?”

He shrugged. “I've never given it thought either. I'm just thankful that I found you and recognized my soul. Oz is too.”

“You'll find it. I'll help you.”

“I didn't find it tonight. Sundays are always slow, for reasons beyond my comprehension. I should be knocking on every vampire's door. But instead, I was compelled toward you.”

“Kind of how I was compelled toward your soul all those years ago. The necklace has been a sort of companion over the years, if you can believe that. You lose everyone you care about when you live a long time.”

“I understand. All too well. I've been fortunate to have one good friend through the ages.”

“Is he in the Order also?”

“Yes, we founded it together. And that's all I will say about that.”

“You don't need to give me Order details, but I think it's wondrous you've had a friend for so long.”

“We grew up in the late sixteenth century. We have been through everything together. He knows me better than Oz, even.”

“And what about Oz?” Verity propped her head on the heel of her hand. He looked at her now, and she traced his mouth. The curves of him were firm and masculine. Devastating. “If Oz is inside you, can he…? Well, does he, uh…”

Rook chuckled. “You're asking if he's aware of everything I do. Including making love to a woman?”

She nodded, but inside she winced.

“He can and he does. To an extent.”

The idea of a demon having been aware of what they'd shared—she wasn't sure what to think of it.

“As I am aware of his actions and emotions when I give him free rein once a month.”

“You can set him free from you? How does that work?”

“He becomes me, or rather, himself within my body. Which isn't my body when he's out, but yet, it is. It's complicated. I do it on the night of the full moon. When Oz is out I remain within him, knowing, experiencing, as he is within me.”

“Is he aware of our conversation right now?”

“He's probably sleeping. But then again, he could be. I don't think about it much. It is simply what I have been for centuries. It doesn't seem strange to me. Does it bother you?”

Verity tilted her head to his chest. “It is a little weird. Did I just have sex with two men?”

“No, you had sex with me. With…an audience.”

Yikes. Really? That was too much to take in. So she would take a cue from Rook and not think about it too much. Or at least try not to.

Still. “Do you and Oz discuss your conquests?”

His smirk answered that question.

Verity rolled to her back to stare up at the crystals overhead. She'd had sex with a hunter. And quite possibly a demon. This whole trust thing was going to prove more challenging than she could have ever anticipated.

Good thing she intended to dump him sooner rather than later.

* * *

Rook noticed the flashing light on his cell phone, which he'd left on the spell table. He planted a kiss on Verity's forehead, then slipped out of bed and padded over to the table. Dawn stretched an orange dash across the horizon.

A text message from King told him Aaron had been ambushed by Zmaj last night and was in the Hôtel-Dieu, the city hospital.

“Hell.”

King never texted unless it was important. He was probably wondering why Rook hadn't been out with Aaron. He'd made the first rounds and then…had gotten distracted.

Pulling up his pants, he shoved his feet into his boots and tugged on his shirt and coat, then stuffed his weapons back in the pockets.

“That eager to get away from me this morning?”

Verity lay on her side, the sheet covering her from hip down. Pale morning light glittered in her hair and on her eyelids. Rook wanted nothing more than to slide next to her warmth, bury his face in her hair and press his hands against her skin.

“Sorry. Bit of an emergency.”

She pushed up on an elbow. “With the Order? What's up?”

“A knight was attacked by vampires and is in the hospital.” He shoved the last stake into one of the loops at his hip. “I have to go. I don't want to leave you like this—”

“I understand,” she said. “Someone's been hurt. You need to go to him.”

Rook hadn't intended to go to the hospital—he'd thought to go after Zmaj—but she was right. He should debrief Aaron.

He took the first step down from the attic room and paused. Every part of his body was dressed and pumped to go out and stake some vampires. And every part of his heart wanted to rush back to Verity.

So he did. He stepped over to the bedside. Pulling her up in his arms, he kissed her, finding the slow, lingering rhythm they'd learned last night, and only reluctantly pulled away.