More Than a Man (16 page)

Her damned list. Of course she wanted him. A
new surge of irritation morphed into need. Need to fill her, to
hear her beg again. To stake his claim. Aya twisted their positions
and turned her away from him. He drew her back to his chest and
didn't bother pulling her out of the pool of light coming through
the ceraglass doors.

“Oh, no!" Noelle gasped. She tore from his
grasp and rushed past him to crouch over a cluster of trampled
flowers. She carefully lifted the broken stems and crushed petals
from the ground. "I can't believe they're dead."

She hung her head, her sigh audible even from
where he stood. Struggling to shove irritation and need aside, Aya
started toward her.

"I guess I’ll have to buy more," she said,
resignation edging away the sorrow.

He stopped short, sudden anger reining in his
instinct to comfort for her. "Is that your solution for everything?
You'll just buy more?"

Noelle's shoulders stiffened. She shifted the
mess of dead flora off her knees before standing and facing him. "I
don't know how to answer that question."

"How about without denying it?"

"Is this about John and Micah?" She asked,
exasperation in her tone.

Aya planted himself against the wall and
folded his arms across his chest, tucking his hands beneath his
arms so she wouldn't see his clenched fists. "I don't begrudge you
a past."

"But it is about them."

"No. It's not about them, or Engel, or
anybody else. It's about you and me."

"I'm not trying to be obtuse here, but I have
no idea what you're getting at. What do my material attachments
have to do with us?"

"They have to do with your thinking of me as
'material' instead of a person. A collection of parts you
special-ordered. No, this isn't about your relationships with your
previous husbands, but it is about your successive...purchases. You
were widowed for three months before you married again. Did you
even think of them as men at all? Or were they like a couple of
broken plants with you waiting for the weather to become favorable
again for re-planting?"

Noelle stared at him, her jaw slack with
shock, her face pale and blue in the garden light. Aya dug his
fingers into his palms, drawn to her, to take back the words.
Planting his heels, he held his ground. He needed her response.

An eternity seemed to pass before she pressed
her lips together and dragged soil-smudged fingers through her
hair. She exhaled slowly and said, “I didn’t realize you held such
a poor opinion of me.”

“This isn’t about what I think of you,” he
growled. “Answer the damned question. Were they men to you? Am I a
man to you, or am I something to be replaced when I go bad or
break?”

“They were…I don’t want to talk about them.
You are the most irreplaceable thing—person,” she amended, “person,
man, I’ve ever met. You’re not disposable. I’m terrified of losing
you to the man you’re going to become as time passes for us. You’re
not a doll. You aren’t going to be the person you are right now for
the rest of your life. The rest of our lives. What is that going to
mean for the couple we
are
? Do you wonder about that?”

Surprised into silence, Aya stared at her.
He’d had no idea she was carrying this around inside. He’d glimpsed
her insecurities, her tendency to ascribe motives, but this was a
step further. No, she couldn’t think of him as an object if she was
projecting his personal growth, envisioning him growing away from
her. He sucked in a breath, drew in the silence, the feminine scent
of her mixed with flowers and soil and night. He was so focused on
cementing his place in her present that he hadn’t had time to
consider the future. Evidently she had. When he opened his mouth,
she shook her head, cutting him off.

“I do. The reality of you as a thinking,
needing, desiring person is terrifying to me. I might have had some
input into the creation of the man you were when you showed up at
my front door, but my influence stopped there. Everything after
that moment has been contributing to shaping you. This moment right
here. Whatever you see five minutes from now when you’ve turned
away from me and gone back inside. The newsfeeds you read, the
holovids you watch, the music you hear—they’re going to change you
into someone who isn’t what I created. And what if they change you
into someone who doesn’t want me as much as I want you?” She hugged
her arms across her stomach and half-turned from him, squeezing her
eyes shut. “So no, I don’t think of you as a man. I think of you as
more than a man. I think of you as my future, but I’m scared.
You’ve said you are what I wanted you to be but I’m so afraid what
you want to be won’t be my husband.”

“You don’t even know,” he said, staring at
her. Noelle averted her face, tucked a lock of hair behind her ear.
The pale curve, delicate and soft, sliced through the remains of
his control.

With a snarl and a half-formed thought, he
reached for her. The tentacles snaking beneath his shirt reached
her first, one twining around her waist as his fingers gripped her
upper arm. Noelle gasped, her slim frame jolting in his grasp. Aya
twisted her to face him. Light spilled through the doors,
illuminating her face and highlighting the surprise that softened
her mouth. She looked from his eyes to his hand and lower, her
focus fastening on the dark vine squeezing the narrow dip above her
hips.

"Aya," she whispered, tongue slicking her
bottom lip. The second tentacle reached her before she worked out
another word. It slid beneath her skirt, around her upper thigh.
Sensitive contact points rubbed over her soft skin. The sensation
sent a bolt of heat to the base of his spine. He stepped closer,
his chest against her breasts, and shielded her from view with his
body.

"You don't even know," he repeated. "Every
part of me, every thought and feeling, is trained on figuring out
how to possess you. How to learn you, how to be what you need. If
you're feeling fear right now it shouldn't be fear of me not
wanting you. It should be fear of me wanting more than you want to
give of yourself."

He slid his hand beneath her hair, his thumb
beneath her chin tilting her face toward his. "Look at me, Noelle.
You made me. You made me to want you. I don't resent being created,
I don't resent that I didn't grow into you. I only resent that
you're holding something of yourself back from me. You're giving
but you're not giving everything."

Her lips parted, breath quick between them,
and something bordering on fear glimmered in her eyes. The
almost-fear sheared at the tenuous fibers of restraint still
intact. Aya gripped her nape, bent his head and spoke against her
open lips. "I want every part of you. Do you understand what I
mean? Every part of me inside every part of you."

Aggressive, hot, he licked into her mouth.
She whimpered as he mashed her lips against her teeth. He knew the
kiss was too hard but he couldn't soften it. He'd seen
understanding in her eyes and he'd heard the quiet groan of
surrender she'd tried to swallow.

Freed by her assent, his remaining tentacles
took the same path the first two had traveled, beneath his shirt
and toward her.

The low wall separating her garden from the
neighbor behind her beckoned. Aya encircled her waist and lifted
her to sit on the stone. Noelle's head tilted back, her hands
beneath his shirt, lifting the fabric and freeing his tentacles.
Beneath her skirt, two flicked at the soft skin of her inner
thighs. She spread her legs wider and pressed her knees to his
hips. The sound of music from the party inside disguised her moans
from the neighbors but not from him. He heard her excitement and it
fueled his.

The tentacle at her waist climbed higher,
testing the lower curves of her breasts. Aya raised his head but
held her mouth open with his thumb on her bottom lip. "The man I
want to be is the man who possesses every last inch of you, who
owns every last fantasy you're hiding inside your stubborn head.
You won't give me your hopes and dreams willingly but I want them.
Tell me now if you don't want me to take them from you."

She swallowed hard, her fingernails sharp
little points between his ribs. The flared tip of a tentacle
touched her chin, stroked her jaw, nuzzled the soft skin at the
corner of her mouth. Her lashes lowered as if she was looking down
at the thing, the part of him she hadn't planned for, but he knew
she couldn't see it. Her tongue appeared anyway, licking delicately
along her bottom lip. His body responded, his cock longer, harder,
his tentacle rising eagerly to connect with her tongue. Noelle's
eyes flared wide at the taste. Instead of recoiling, she swallowed
again and curled her tongue around the thick rope, a quiet sound of
pleasure humming in the back of her throat.

"If you want every part of me," she said
slowly, raising her eyes to his, "you should take every part. We
can go inside—"

"Not inside," he rasped, grinding his
erection between her legs. Damp heat emanated from her pussy. He
could feel it through his trousers and he wanted in. "Right
here."

He flattened his palm at the center of her
breastbone and stroked down, pulling her low neckline until her
nipples popped free of the cloth.

In the dark and the shadow of his body, her
nipples were shadowy smudges, colorless peaks, a richer shade
punctuating the soft flesh around them. Aya planted his hands on
the wall at either side of her hips and bent to flick his tongue
around one nipple. Noelle's knees climbed higher and her hands slid
around to clutch at his back. The tentacles between her thighs
found the lacy edges of her panties. A strangled whimper sounded
above his head as one tentacle nudged beneath the scrap of cloth
concealing her sex.

Wet and warm, her arousal coated him. The
sensitive tip played in her cream, dipped into her vagina and out
again. The other tentacle wrapped around her leg and snuck lower,
dragging her wetness between the cheeks of her ass, searching for
the tight entrance he'd already claimed. Aya allowed both needy
appendages to tease her and directed a third to encircle her
breast, squeeze until she moaned and the nipple stood taut and
pouting for his mouth. He left the one dark tip glistening, likely
sore from the force of his sucking and the scrape of his teeth, and
turned the same attention on the bud presented.

Higher, his fourth tentacle continued to
trace the shape of her lips. Noelle licked at it, sipped at the
dark flavor, teased with the edges of her teeth. The sound of
feminine laughter reached them through the ceraglass.

He raised his head and kissed her throat,
whispering, "I need you. All of you."

She invited him to take her, but her touch
claimed him instead. Aya closed his eyes and grasped her hips,
lifting her from the wall. He clutched her to his chest. Her legs
wrapped tight around him, trembling as he continued to stroke her
sensitive flesh.

"I'm not saying no, but we’re outside.
Someone’s going to see. A neighbor’s going to walk outside or
someone from the party’s going to realize we’re still gone or
something." Her mouth closed around his flesh and she sucked,
drawing the tentacle past her lips, across her tongue. Her hands
fastened on his neck like a collar, thumbs touching at the
base.

When he withdrew, Noelle bit her bottom lip
and stared at him. A promising sign. "I'm sorry. I'm just—not
everyone will see you the way I see you. Sex in public is one
thing. Sex in public with you...all of you...is something else
entirely. Manporium has recalled husbands for being lawbreakers
before. I—what are you doing?"

Aya adjusted himself and backed away. Head
tilted, he studied the overhang above their heads. "That's the
balcony off our bedroom, isn't it?"

Our bedroom
. It gave him a thrill to
say it, confirming his place in her life. Their life.

She smiled. "Yeah, but there aren't any
stairs or anything."

"Do you keep the door locked?"

"It's on the same system as everything else.
A security pad outside in case someone's out there and gets locked
out. What—"

She stopped talking and raised her eyebrows
at the finger he raised to his lips to hush her. After she pressed
her lips together, he crooked the same finger and beckoned her
close. Noelle glanced at the first floor doors uncertainly.

He made a low, exasperated sound and she
hastily straightened her neckline before crossing to him. Her legs
were probably wobbly after being spread and raised. And he was
going to spread her open again.

Her hands went immediately to his torso,
seeking skin, seeking the marks. Beneath his rumpled shirt, she
skimmed her fingertips over the slightly raised marks.

"Whatever you're going to do," she whispered,
rising on tiptoe to kiss his throat, "I hope you do it soon."

"Don't scream," he cautioned. He didn’t want
to scare her. Excited was good. Terrified, not so good.

Noelle raised questioning eyes to his, but he
shook his head and winked. "Hold on."

Before she could wrap her arms around his
neck, he pushed the tentacles out, one slipping through her fingers
and around her waist. He shot the other three high above their
heads, searching for a grip along the edges of the railing.

Gaping, Noelle scrambled to grab his
shoulders. He scooped one arm around her hips and lifted. The
weights strained a bit, pulling at his abs and rooting down into
his back muscles, but the tentacles were strong. The edges of the
metal balusters dug in, a sharp pain to add to the dull throbbing
in his groin. He reeled them both up toward the balcony, enjoying
the way she clung like a barnacle.

"Omideity," she yelped. "Aya!"

"Getting to the stairs will require seeing
your guests," he explained with a grunt as his free hand connected
with the balcony rail.