Kinked (18 page)

Gods, his explosion was building, and it felt like it was a long time in coming. Years, definitely. Maybe his whole life.

BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP.

They both froze. She pulled her head up from his penis to stare at him.

There it was in her face, that wild juncture from which anything might happen, anything at all. She was a nexus point, pulling all possibilities together into herself.

He roared, “
I
F YOU STOP
I
WILL MURDER YOU
!–

Laughter broke out over her face, along with fresh heat.

While the electronic alarm jangled in the air, she bent and took him in her mouth again, squeezing on his distended flesh, and she didn’t stop until the fire poured out of him in convulsive spurts of lava.

She swallowed all of his semen with such evident relish, it caused him to spasm further. He emptied everything into her until he had nothing left to spill, no internal whip or twist, and he felt completely hollowed out and clean.

He had nothing left inside of him when she finally let him go. She looked drunk, a little dazed. She didn’t untie him. She straightened and turned away, then abruptly disappeared from sight as she sat on the floor. A moment later, his iPhone sailed across the air and stopped shrilling when it hit the wall. He wanted to laugh, to take her by the hair and shake her, then kiss her.

Instead he lifted his legs and pulled with his arms, curling over himself until he somersaulted over his head and off the table. He worked quickly to loosen the belt from his wrists.

When he did, he stopped and stared down at his arms. The belt had marked his wrists when he had yanked at it, leaving reddened welts. He rubbed the area. It wouldn’t last, nor would the thin, bright line of fire at the juncture of his legs.

The last half hour had been the longest half hour of his life, and the shortest.

He hated that it was over.

TEN

N
either one talked much after their “experiment.” Quentin dressed quickly, then they moved around with care, giving each other plenty of space as they set the cabin to rights before going to bed. He went outside to relieve himself and rinse out the food cans before crushing them. Then he toured the immediate area around the cabin but found nothing to concern him.

Mostly he enjoyed being out of the heat and closeness of the cabin. It was going to snow sometime that night. He could smell it in the chill, wet air. When he finished his patrol of the area, he stood staring up at the shadowed mountains swathed in clouds. He still felt clean, emptied out. It was remarkably, disturbingly peaceful.

As he moved about, the shallow cut at the juncture of his leg was a constant, irritating pain, even though it had already closed over. Every time he moved, he felt it. The sensation kept her words in the forefront of his mind.

Every time you move or shift your position, you’ll think of this moment.

Him, naked and splayed on the table. Her, standing between his spread legs.

His cock was the most disturbed part of him. It stiffened again into a hard, insistent ache.

He didn’t want to obsess about what had happened, so he wouldn’t. He was just surprised at how hot Aryal was, that’s all. She wasn’t his type, in about any way that you could imagine. He felt like he was a sexual tourist, trying out a few things that were aberrant to his nature. Soon the vacation would be over, and they would go back to their real lives.

Until that happened, he was here and now, squarely in the middle of tourist season, hard again with hunger and already plotting the details that he would offer for their next bargain. If he wasn’t concerned about the guards who were supposed to be on watch at the passageway, he would have walked back inside and offered her new terms immediately. But he was concerned, and they didn’t have time to hole up at the cabin for a day or two and play.

Afterward, though. Dragos had given them a time limit of a month, and a lot could happen in that span of time.

When he went back inside, she had already moved her sleeping bag to the top bunk and climbed into it, turned to face the wall. In the dying light of the fire, he stood and looked at her sprawled figure. Here was another way she was atypical. They’d had sex, but there was no cuddling, no soft words, no clinginess or seeking reassurances afterward. Hell, she was probably already asleep.

He grinned, climbed into the lower bunk and fell asleep almost immediately too.

The next morning they ate a quick breakfast and headed out early. Snow had fallen, a good three inches. The snowfall wasn’t enough to do much more than slow them down slightly, as the ground was slick and wet, but it was pretty. The evergreens and the bare branches of deciduous trees were painted in white.

This time Aryal didn’t take to the air. She chose instead to hike with him, and he didn’t question her decision. She had finger combed her hair into some semblance of order, and her expression was distant and thoughtful. He wondered what she was thinking.

At first he was loath to break the silence and simply enjoyed the beautiful surroundings and the animal movement of his body as they hiked. Then the fact that she didn’t say anything started to irk him.

About an hour into the hike, the final irritation from the cut faded as it finished healing. Aside from his broken iPhone, there was nothing left as evidence of what they had done.

And his internal whip came back, always driving, driving him.

Since she had scouted out the area yesterday, Aryal had taken the lead in the hike. He quickened his pace to catch up with her and took hold of her arm. She stopped and turned to face him, her head angled in inquiry.

Not that long ago, she would have swung around fighting if he had dared to touch her.

He moved to stand right in front of her, just to get as close as he could to the heat from her body. It licked along the surface of his skin.

Her expression was closed, revealing nothing. A single black strand of hair blew across her eyes, and she raised a hand to brush it back. The angle of her slim wrist and those long, dexterous fingers pulled at the whip inside of him.

“Half an hour,” he said.

Her sleek eyebrow rose slowly, and the expression in her eyes turned assessing.

She was surprised? He didn’t buy it. “Oh come on,” he said. “You can’t tell me you haven’t been thinking the same thing.”

“That’s a double negative,” she told him.

Even though he knew she did it on purpose to needle him, it still drove him crazy when she turned pious. If there was anyone who had
no room at all
to pull off that attitude, it was she.

He put a hand at the back of her neck, a deliberately possessive hold, and pulled her even closer to him. He did it to needle her back, but she allowed it. Look at how far they had come in such a short time.

Not far enough. They had so much farther to go, the end of the road lost in a tantalizing, mysterious distance.

“Admit it, sunshine,” he growled. “You want another bargain too.”

She yawned a little and scratched at her ear.

Wasn’t
anything
straightforward with her? The reason why it didn’t matter that he knew she was trying to rile him? Because it was working.

His gaze focused on her fabulous mouth. The image of her sucking on him flared in his mind, as searing as a flash fire. Those lips, closed over the thick rigidity of his cock, her throat working to take him in.

His entire body pulsed with urgency. He pulled her the last of the way toward him and fastened his mouth over hers, succumbing to the urge to ravish and take.

She met him halfway, and they ate at each other. She gripped his hips, and he ground his heavy erection against her as he circled her neck with one hand. She felt as if she had a fever, she was so hot. As he lifted his head to look down at her, a violent tremor shook through her body.

He could not keep his lips off of her. He ran them along her cheek, amazed at how soft her skin felt, and sucked the tender lobe of her ear into his mouth. He told her telepathically,
I want to put a collar on you.

A leather collar, with a buckle. It would show darkly against her light skin. And her hands chained behind her back. She wouldn’t be able to shapeshift in that position. Her wings would have no room to materialize. All that wildness, that fierce freedom, claimed and owned by him.

Mine. Mine.

Her answer was a telepathic snarl.
Dream on, motherfucker.

Where’s your spirit of negotiation, sunshine
? He hadn’t even gotten the chance to feel her wetness last night. The lack disturbed him greatly. He pulled the hand from her throat and ran it down the front of her body to cup her between her legs.

She hissed and arched her hips, rubbing against his palm. She said,
I don’t even know what you would have to give up in order to make that happen. Maybe your soul for all eternity.

He laughed, the sound rough in the early morning air.

I wasn’t joking,
she told him. Her telepathic voice had turned uneven.

Of all the things they should be doing, this was not on the list. His hand slid upward to the fastening of her jeans. He didn’t know why she had chosen to wear jeans on the trip instead of her usual fighting leathers, but he didn’t pause to ask.

She growled at him in warning, but he was beginning to read her nuances and could tell it didn’t have much heart.

He unbuttoned the jeans, unzipped the fly, then whispered in her ear, “Take off your backpack.”

She shook her head jerkily. Both of them were panting as though they had been racing a long time. “We should keep going.”

Going and going and going, hurtling forward down that dark, unknown road.

But that wasn’t what she had meant. “We won’t stop long. Take it off.” He licked the shell of her ear. She tasted like every addictive drug ever named. “Consider this a little something to sweeten the pot on our next deal.”

“We haven’t made a deal.” But her hands moved. She unbuckled the strap at her waist, and shrugged out of her backpack. It fell to the snowy ground.

He pressed his mouth to her pulse. It beat a rapid tempo at the side of her throat. She felt it too, this hectic, crazy rush.

Then he straightened, spun her around and pulled her back against him. He moved so fast that she cried out, and reached over her head. She tried to get a hold on him by gripping him at the back of the neck too, but he jerked his head to one side. She grabbed the collar of his jacket instead and held on so tightly the tendons in her wrist stood out.

He pulled her hips back so that his cock was nestled between the cheeks of her ass. Then he pushed her hair to one side and bit her at the nape of the neck. They both stood frozen like that for a long moment.

He took one hand and slid it from her hip to the open fastening of her jeans. And inside. Underneath her underpants into a tangle of her damp, warm hair.

Do you know what I imagined the first time I consciously thought of you in a sexual way
? he asked telepathically. He held her in place with an arm clamped around her ribs, and his teeth at her neck.

Her ragged breathing sawed at the chill air. “What?”

I thought of taking you in the ass too. Pinning you and taking you. Clearly we have been thinking along the same vein.

“It’s a dominant thing,” she whispered.

It’s a sexy thing.
He probed deeper, wiggling into the tight space, and his fingers plunged into silken, wet flesh. Holy gods. They both groaned.

He stroked her, a slick slide along a small, stiff nubbin of flesh, while he bit her hard. She shuddered and cried out a second time.

Now her lean, strong body was arched back against him. He put his head on her shoulder, stroking her with a hard, steady rhythm. “My cut healed,” he said into her neck. “I hated it when you marked me. I was so pissed at you I almost kicked you in the face. Now, it’s strange. All I can do is think about how it’s gone. Half an hour each, sunshine. You can’t be done. Admit you want it too. Agree to it.
Do it.”

“Yes, goddammit!”