Lust (22 page)

Her gaze slipped down as she heard the fastening of his britches. Slowly he opened the flap, and she pressed her eyes shut, hiding the vision. “Please don't.”

“Such innocence,” he whispered. “I wonder at it, even though I have seen you naked. Have felt your breasts and the honey of your quim.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

He sat forward and skimmed his finger down the filmy skirts of her gown. “You are only afraid to admit the truth to yourself. It is easier to deny what you want because I am a fey. You hide behind that truth because you do not have to accept that you have been tempted by something you cannot understand. That someone has broken past your defenses, your virtue, to glimpse the woman beneath the innocent veneer—and that someone was a faery.”

She shook her head, refusing to believe him.

“But what are dreams?” he murmured quietly, sending her skin prickling in awareness. “What of that voice
inside you? The one that speaks to you, the one that I answer? What man could know of that? No, it has taken a fey to finally awaken you, to make you respond. You could never have done so with a mortal man.”

“They were only silly dreams,” she said, denying everything he was saying.

“Were they really? Close your eyes,” he commanded.

Suddenly memories of a garden came rushing back. Thane was there, so was a dog. He was between her legs, touching her… Oh, God, his lips were moving over her, and she felt it, the heat and moistness of his tongue, the feel of him probing, circling, the exquisite pleasure that shot through her body.

“You remember now?” he asked. “Was that only a dream?”

“Why now?” she cried on a broken sob. Why now were these thoughts coming back to her?

“Because I have given you back the memories.” She watched as he sat back in his chair, studying her. “It was not the right time to reveal myself, then. You were afraid of what was inside you. You feared me. And I never wanted your fear. Only your passion.”

“You stole my memories.”

His eyes darkened and he lowered his lashes, shielding them from her. “You were not yet ready for the truth.”

“I'm not now, either,” she hissed. “I don't understand any of this.”

“There is nothing to understand. It is simple. You belong to me.”

“No, I don't.”

“You belong to the fey.”

“Perhaps,” she retorted, intending to wound and hurt the way she was at that very moment. “But not to the Unseelie.”

She turned to walk away, but he reached for her, his eyes black and glistening as he grasped her wrist, pulling her closer so that she was caged between his thighs. “You claim to know me so very well, but do you even know who you really are?” he whispered silkily in her ear.

“Of course I do. I am Chastity Ann Lennox,” she snapped as she tried to free herself from his hold. But then the strangest noise came from him. It was part growl, part purr, and she stilled, forced her gaze to meet his.

“You should not have told me,
muirneach,
for I cannot control what I am.”

Something grave had happened between them. She felt it. Her body giving way, her thoughts swaying and leaving her. She was no longer in control.

“Neither am I,” he whispered as he pulled her closer, his mouth brushing along her jaw. “I am ruled by my Unseelie blood, by the power you have just handed me. By the si—” He stopped, breathed heavily against her. “By the dark need inside me.”

“The dreams, they were real,” she whispered, giving voice to her fears as she tried to make sense of everything. “Everything was true. You used your fey magic to come to me, to enter my dreams.”

“Yes. But not without your help. Without that little
voice inside you giving you the thoughts, I would not have been able to.”

“You forced me.”

“No, never.” His lips brushed her jaw, across her ear. “You let me in. Accepted me. You listened to the voice inside you. It told you that you wanted me. Wanted to let go of the virtue. Even now that voice speaks to you.”

“It's your magic making me believe it.”

“No, it is not. It is your true self.”

“Please,” she whispered desperately, “release your hold on me.”

“I cannot. My body burns for a taste of you. My blood…it courses through me, seeking what has been denied me.”

Struggling in his hold, Chastity tried ineffectively to free herself. But Thane was too strong and determined to keep her where he wanted her.

“You fear me, but I am the same as I always was. Before you knew who I really am, there was no fear. Come,” he encouraged. Reaching for her hand, he drew her closer and forced her palm onto his chest. “Discover that there is nothing so terrible about me.”

“Everything about you is otherworldly. How could you believe that I could look at you, touch you, and think you simply a man?”

His eyes shuttered, and she felt his heart thump slow and steady beneath her palm. “Then if you cannot think of me as a man, discover me as a fey.”

 

Thane watched with hooded eyes as Chastity's gaze roved over his body. Allowing his fey glamour full rein,
he sat back in his chair, capturing Chastity's hips with his thighs. His body burned. His sin was so close to coming out and claiming her.

But this moment was crucial. He knew that. This was the moment when Chastity would either accept him for what he was, or run from him. Either way she would be his. He already had power over her. She had given him her name. That alone could compel her to do his wishes. But he did not want spells and magic. He wanted her desire to be her own. He knew he was keeping things from her. But he would tell her later. After he had made love to her. After he had made her see that his desire was real, and that beneath the passion there was the first stirring of love.

He'd never thought to have it. But there it was, lurking deep inside him. Somehow it was happening. He was falling in love with Chastity.

Slowly her palm moved over his chest, and the smell of her skin, the scent of her sex covering her fingers coated him. He had come to her as an essence in a bottle, but he much preferred this, her perfume covering him.

He said nothing, just allowed his head to tip back against the chair and permitted her hand to discover him. Gods, her hands felt good, and his heart sped up, his body heating. This night was so important—for both of them. He couldn't allow his sin, or anything else, to botch it up.

“You're warm,” she murmured. “Your flesh is much hotter than ours.”

Yes. They were warmer blooded, the fey, than mortals. Especially the Unseelie.

“Your heart. It beats so slowly.”

His was beating much faster than normal as her fingers crept up to his neck. Gods, her scent. He wanted to reach out and lick her fingers. To taste her.

“Your skin. It's…incandescent.”

“The moonlight,” he murmured as he closed his eyes. “Nighttime is our element. Our powers are at their strongest and our true glamour is revealed in its glow.”

Trembling fingers moved over his chin, her fingertips grazed his lips and he could not resist the lure of brushing his tongue along her fingertips, tasting her sex on her own fingers. Imagining what it would be like to part her and swipe his tongue along the pink silk of her quim.

She gasped, surprised, but she did not pull away. Instead, she continued her study of him, and he allowed it. Allowed himself the pleasure of sitting back and enjoying her touch, which burned into him. Lust for the moment was satisfied. Purring inside him, but soon his sin would deprive him of this simple pleasure. It would want more, would want her complete surrender. Thane wanted that, too, but the sin in him wanted to go about it in a different manner. The Dark Fey in him wanted to seduce, to have her utterly consumed with him before he claimed. Lust wanted only to fuck.

All night he had been battling his sin, and he was winning. But for how much longer, he had no idea.

Her fingertips grazed over his lashes, then moved up to his forehead and over to his hair. The feel of her
fingernails scraping his scalp, raking through his hair, was heaven, and he could not hide the purr of satisfaction. His skin tightened in goose bumps at the feel her fingers tightening…holding.

The bond between them was established once more, and he was pulled into her. He could see in her mind her desires. But he wanted her to see his. His mouth on her, his face buried in her cunt as she raked her fingers through his hair, holding him to her. He wanted to sit in his chair and have her come to him, to lie down naked at his feet in surrender. Yes, he wanted that from her. Her complete submission.

“Don't,” he whispered, his voice broken and hoarse. Her fingers were gently sliding down to his ears. He could not have that. But she gave no heed to his warning and ran her fingertip along the curved tip of his ear.

He groaned, his cock stiffening even more and shoving free his britches. No place on a fey's body was more highly sensitive than their ears. While the Unseelie's ears were not long, they were gently pointed, and his ears were as sensitive and responsive as that of a clitoris on a woman.

When she stroked them again, he cracked opened his eyes, seeing the rapt attention she focused on his ears.

He was going to come if she continued touching them, and he thought how wonderful it would be to come like this, with her fingers outlining his ear, her pointed tongue licking up the shell.

And then she did, moving forward and brushing his hair back, exposing his left ear. Bending forward, she
inhaled him, heard her purr of satisfaction as she ran her nose up his neck, and over to his jaw, to his ear. Christ, it was like waiting to have his cock touched. And may the gods help him if he were to discover what it would be like to have his cock in her hand, and his ear beneath her tongue.

Lust roared through him, and he gripped the chair tight as her tongue delicately came out and ran the length of his ear to the pointed tip. His cock throbbed, filling, and suddenly his thighs clamped tightly around her, capturing her.

He ignored her weak protest and snaked his arms around her middle, bringing her flush with his chest, a chest that felt firm and warm beneath his clothing. Then he released one arm and threaded his fingers through hers, holding their entwined hands against her side, while his other hand trailed down her throat to her décolletage and down over her breasts.

“You are playing with fire, little mortal,” he said, his voice harsh and full of sexual desire. “Never toy with a fey's ears unless you are prepared to suffer the consequences.”

She met his gaze. “Perhaps I am.”

 

Chastity watched as Thane's eyes darkened. Her gaze flitted from his eyes, which changed color almost constantly, to the gently pointed ears. Placing her fingertip to one, he growled, then pulled her to him.

He cupped her breast, brought her closer, and she felt his breath hot beneath her ear, smelled the perfume of
him, spice and claret, beneath her nose. His thumb slid over her nipple, which hardened painfully beneath her silk gown, and he chuckled deep in his throat when she whimpered and squirmed against him.

“Fair is fair,
muirneach,
” he whispered. “You play with my ears, and I will play with what fascinates me—your tits.”

She gasped at his crudeness, at the way it aroused her. At how she wanted more. To hear more. To feel more.

“I know this is something you desire,” he whispered as his finger slid away from her breast and skated down her belly. “You want to know what it is to feel passion. You want the feel of a man's hands on you. You want to know what it is like to have me big and hard inside you. Have I gotten it all correct, Chastity? Have I left out any parts?” His fingers were now at the junction of her thighs and he was stroking his fingertips against the curls that lay beneath her gown.

Her stomach coiled and tightened and she felt her blood thrum heavy in her veins. He was in her mind, hearing her thoughts, repeating them to her word for word.

“I want to take you, fuck you, have you writhing beneath me. Then I want to love you, to feel you clinging to me, begging me to give you release. And then I want to hold you. To kiss you in the dark and watch you fall asleep. And then I will wake you by sliding down your body and lapping at you, waking you with my mouth.”

She was in his mind now. Hearing his desires. She gasped, made breathless by the picture he was painting for her. It was not only his words she heard through their
connection, but she saw the images he saw. The picture of her, naked, thighs splayed, Thane's shoulders between her legs as he covered her sex with his mouth. She saw, too, how her fingertips toyed with his ears.

“Do I frighten you with my passion, Chastity?” he asked as he leaned forward and kissed her throat. “Or does what you see in my mind excite you?”

She moaned and her legs weakened when he pressed his lips, then his tongue, to her neck. In a warm, wet slide he trailed his tongue down her throat, to her breasts.

“Excites you, doesn't it? I can tell by the way you tremble against me. It is not a shiver of fear, but of desire, a yearning for more. You want to discover the mysteries between men and women. You want to learn why women will risk all to meet their lovers. Why you would risk everything you are for just a little, forbidden taste of what this fey could give you.”

“Yes,” she hissed when she felt his fingers expertly reach for the edge of her bodice. Slowly he inched it down until her breasts were nearly spilling out of her gown. She arched her back when his nails caressed her breasts, scant inches from her nipples. “Show me,” she gasped.

“Are you wet?” he asked, his lips brushing her ear as he whispered the words. His finger traced her jaw. “If I were to touch you, to spread your legs and feel you, would you be ready to come for me?”

She pressed against him, unable to talk or think. How could she when he was even now lowering her bodice so that her breasts were exposed? With his thumb and
forefinger, he gently rolled her nipple, and automatically she reached for his wrist, knowing she should stop this. But he refused her and instead brought her hand to his britches and pressed it against the bulge behind the flap.