Impulse: Southern Arcana, Book 5 (23 page)

Heat blazed in her eyes. She tilted her head back and let him push deeper, trust spun out between them so tightly it was almost tangible. Her magic
was
tangible, a seductive whisper that grew louder when he pulled her head back by her hair and thrust forward again.

Her body trembled. Her eyes fluttered shut. His next advance took him all the way into her throat, and Julio jerked back with a shudder. “On your feet, sweetheart. Up.”

Sera staggered upward on unsteady legs and would have toppled over if he hadn’t reached for her. “Sorry,” she whispered, clutching at his shoulders. “I’m on another submissive bender. Or I’m just high on—”

He cut off her words with a kiss as he backed her toward the high bed. When she fell onto the mattress, he yanked at the button on her shorts and dragged them off her hips.

“You’re hot when you’re impatient,” she murmured.

“Then I must be smoking about ninety-five percent of the time.” Julio teased one finger under the edge of her panties. “Too nice to rip, huh?”

She laughed. “Fuck it. You can rip anything you’re willing to replace.”

She probably expected him to tear the delicate fabric, so he coaxed her legs up in the air and peeled off her underwear slowly. “I hate to be predictable.”

“You’re not.” She dropped one foot to his shoulder, her knees still pressed together almost shyly. “You’re perfect. This is perfect. Can you feel it?”

He could, and not just with her skin bare under his hands. He felt it driving down the road, when she slipped her hand into his without a word. And he felt it in the hours before dawn as he lay curled around her, listening to her heart beat, slow and steady. “I feel it, Sera.”

“I’m yours.” Almost a question.

“Mine.” He parted her legs, pushed her knees to the bed and left her open to him. “Should I show you?”

She sucked in a breath and squirmed, tried to wiggle away and groaned when he dragged her back. “Yes. Prove it. I need you to prove it.”

He reached over and dug a condom out of her bag with one hand, the other locked around her ankle like a vise. “I’m going to make you come. Then I’m going to make you scream.”

“In that order, huh?”

“In that order.” He rubbed his shaft over her clit, rocked against her as he tore open the foil. After a moment’s pause to sheathe himself, he pushed lower, harder, slicking through wetness and parting her with the head of his cock.

Sera groaned, her fingers curling helplessly in the quilt as she tried to lift her hips, tried to position herself so he’d slide inside. When he eased away just far enough to stop her, she snarled. “Julio!”

“Sera.” His own voice was a reverent whisper, one that made him smile when he heard it.

It did something to her too. Softened the edge of her impatience, even though she was still wet and hungry and squirming in his grasp. She tilted her head back, baring her throat with its lingering marks from his teeth. “I forgot. You already know that teasing gets me crazy hot.”

“So does this.” He began to thrust into her, and she was so wet it didn’t take long. She shivered, and he held her still, held her until his hips met hers and he was completely buried in her body.

“Yours.” A satisfied sigh escaped her, riding a wave of that giddy submission that was more shifter than human. “I think I get it now.”

He braced his hands by her hips with a groan. “Get what, love?”

Her voice turned dreamy. “The human kink is hot. But it can’t give me
this
.” She stretched her hands above her head and arched her back, leaving all of her body vulnerable and exposed to him. “She’s safe. She knows she’s safe. We
both
belong to you.”

There was no room for halfway, no way to please only half of either of them. “Both,” he agreed, flexing his hips. “Do you know what that means?”

A whimper. “Super-hot sex?”

He shook his head. “It means
more
. It means not fighting yourself, sweetheart. Getting what you need.”

She clutched at the covers above her head and stared at him, her chest lifting with each unsteady breath. “What does it mean for you?”

No more running, no more distance. “It means I want to be in your life,” he whispered. “And I want you in mine. I love you.”

Sera went utterly still. Even her whispered plea barely stirred the air. “Say it again.”

“I’m in love with you.” The revelation of their days on the road, the vague possibility made fact. “I don’t know when it happened, exactly, but it’s true.”

She surged up in a graceful movement, crashing into his upper body as her arms tangled around his neck. She clung to him, halfway to upright, and her mouth closed on the front of his throat in a vicious, bruising bite. “
Mine.
”

His throat throbbed, and his teeth scored her lower lip when he caught her mouth in a kiss. She snarled against his mouth. Her fingernails dug into his back, pricking the skin.

She said something, something muffled by his lips, then said it again. And again. A bite, a kiss, a mumbled word, until he realized she was chanting the same thing over and over as she kissed him with single-minded purpose. “Love you. Love you.”

“I know.” He lowered her to the bed and straightened, pulled her a little higher with a hand under her ass. “Sera.”

Another hungry growl, and she shot back up, her teeth snapping shut on his shoulder this time. There was no keeping her still, so Julio clutched her to his chest and dropped to sit on the edge of the bed with her in his lap.

She nuzzled his throat and bit his chin, then rocked her hips with a whimper. “No one’s ever been mine before.”

“All yours.” He guided her hips with a firm touch. “Ride me, Sera. Harder.”

“Harder,” she agreed, bracing herself on his shoulders. Her knees dug into the bed on either side of his hips as she pushed up and drove back down, moaning every time she took him deep. “You can’t fuck me hard enough. I want to feel you for days.”

“You will.” He chased her nipple with his tongue and thrust up to meet the next rock of her hips. “If you forget, I’ll fuck you again.”

“Yes.” Her body tensed under his hands, and she threw her head back and froze. “Fuck, too soon—I’m gonna come too soon—”

No such thing as too soon, not tonight. Julio grazed her nipple with his teeth and pinched the other. “First you come, then you scream. Isn’t that what I said?”

Her hips jerked as she moaned in reaction, and apparently that was enough. Her slick body clenched tight around him, over and over as she gasped out choked noises, unintelligible and desperate.

Julio coaxed her through the spasms, then pulled free of her body and let his cock nestle in the cleft of her ass. “You’re so hot when you come.”

“You’re hot when I come too.” Her forehead thumped against his shoulder, and she shivered. “I’m not a very good submissive, I guess. I lost it.”

“There isn’t only one way to be, Sera.”

“I get scratchy when the coyote’s too close to the surface. As long as you don’t mind…” She licked the throbbing spot on his throat and laughed. “Though if you’d thrown me face-down on the bed, that would have worked for me too.”

He hummed in her ear. “Through with me already?”

“No…” A tentative rock of her hips, her ass rubbing against his shaft. “
Are
you going to throw me face-down on the bed?” She sounded breathless—and hopeful.

The bottle of lube still lay on the bed alongside the slim vibrator from her case. “On your knees, sweetheart.”

She eased out of his lap and up onto the bed, damn near shaking as she got her knees under her and lowered her elbows to the mattress. Her pussy glistened, and he rubbed his fingers over her before tasting her clit with a quick flick of his tongue.

“Oh damn.” Her voice was ragged, edged with something
wild
. “Fuck, be careful. This submissive magical bender you keep sending me on gives me a hair-trigger. I think I’ll come if you blink at me too hard.”

He traced his thumb up to her ass, then followed the same path with his tongue. “Blinking isn’t on my agenda.”

She laughed hoarsely, squirming under his touch. “You’ve been staring at my ass for
months
. Did I make it into your spank bank?”

He caught her hips and held her still. “Honey, you licking your
lips
featured heavily in my fantasies.”

“What else?”

“Your tits.” He reached out without looking, found the small bottle with one hand. “I wanted them in my mouth.”

“Every time you came into Dixie John’s, I’d imagine you fucking me. Right there in the restaurant. In the bathroom, over the sink. Or maybe up against the wall where someone could catch us. Fast and dirty—” She groaned and dropped her forehead to the bed. “That was back when I thought you knew the definition of fast.”

Julio warmed the lube on his fingers and began to massage it into her skin. “Is that a complaint, Sinclaire?”

She growled. “That’s a threat, Mendoza.”

“Shh.” He knelt behind her and rubbed his cock over the swell of her ass as he wound one hand in her hair.

“Please.” Her body trembled, and she strained toward him. “You don’t have to be so damn careful. I’m not fragile.”

“You’re not going to die if I go slow, either.”

Her whimpered moan made it clear she didn’t entirely agree, but she didn’t fight his grip on her hip. Instead she waited, body relaxing in degrees as she gave herself over to him. Whether through conscious effort or instinct he couldn’t be sure, but he could almost
feel
the shift in her as impatience melted into trust, and then heated to anticipation.

Beautiful, pliant—and all his. Julio pressed forward, the head of his cock slowly broaching the tight ring of her ass. “Say it, Sera.”

It took her three tries to get even one word out. “Yours.”

Her body clasped his as he thrust deeper, bending over her to drag his tongue up her spine. “Beg.”

“More, please. Please—” Her back bowed, and she rested her cheek against the quilt before reaching back to grasp at his thighs. “It’s never enough. I always want more of you. All of you.”

“You have me.” Pleasure cinched tight, clawing at him, and he slipped one hand down, under her body, to stroke her clit. Her hips jerked, grinding down against his fingers as her pleas increased in volume.

A few demanding touches was all it took to make her voice break on a hoarse cry. And when he slipped his thumb inside her, curved it to find that spot that made her shake, she did scream, almost loudly enough to drown out the sound of the quilt shredding under her grasping hands.

One orgasm wasn’t enough, could never be enough, and he told her so in a hoarse whisper as he drove her higher. Harder. She snarled in response, but she still rocked back into his thrusts, meeting each one with a keening moan.

When she came apart again, the clenching shudders of her body were eclipsed by the swell of submissive magic. The truth that words couldn’t encompass, and the thing that pitched him over the edge as surely as the clasp of her body.
Mine. Yes.

He managed one more thrust before the tense pleasure gathered at the base of his spine exploded and he came with a shout he muffled against her skin.

She was still trembling when his orgasm subsided, a hoarse whimper escaping her every few seconds. Her hips twitched with each noise, and he could feel the lingering spasms, the aftermath of an overpowering climax.

He had to get off of her, so he rolled to one side and fell to the mattress, pulling her with him. Sera groaned and tried to ease her hips away from his. “I love you, but I think I’m about to die of orgasms. So you need to not be inside me for a while.”

“Careful.” He slowed her movements, then released her. “And I don’t think you’re about to die.”

She shivered when he slipped free of her body, then rolled onto her stomach. “That’s good. Dying would mean never getting to do it again. Even if it would be a pretty sweet way to go.”

“If either of us died, the other one would have to actually get up. Presumably.”

“Uh-huh.” She sounded giddy. “The world’s a little fuzzy right now.”

Tomorrow, the traveling—the
work
—would start again. But tonight… “Doesn’t matter if it’s fuzzy, sweetheart. Not a damn thing to do right now but rest.”

“Mmm.” Twisting, she curled around until her cheek rested on his shoulder. “Let’s pretend we don’t ever have to leave this bed. Just you and me and cuddling and room service. No clothes required.”

He kissed the top of her head. “Words to live by.”

The only problem with the fantasy was that their respite would be short. They could pretend they never had to leave the bed, but it wasn’t true. Sooner rather than later, reality would intrude.

Chapter Thirteen

Ten hours of sleep, two hearty meals and a long drive later, Sera was still floating.

Her flip-flops slapped against the concrete floor in Georgia’s tiniest gas station, and that was the only reason she knew she was touching the ground at all. For all the time she’d joked about going on a submissive bender, she’d never really understood what the reality could be. Not in the moment and not in the aftermath.

Last night hadn’t been shameful indulgence in a dirty need, or a guilty binge followed by a morning of regret. Hell, last night had barely been kinky. They’d only skated the boundaries of the sort of dominance games she’d plunged into headfirst dozens of times, but the driving need for
more
that had always hollowed out her gut and left her listless had been markedly absent.

Julio didn’t have to prove his dominance to be dominant. He simply was. She’d goaded Josh for
more
, had pushed them both into darker sex and more extreme expressions of dominance, but every act had been hollow because she’d confused needing an alpha shifter with needing a dominant lover.

Not that she didn’t want the dominant lover. She peeked over the rack of chips and bit her lip as she watched Julio studying the drinks, his expression relaxed and easy. She had a feeling that Julio had no intention of rushing
that
aspect of their relationship, no matter how recklessly she offered. And the need to push him had faded with the warm glow of contentment. She was safe. She was cared for.