My Darkest Passion (20 page)

“About passing and what that does to you. I haven’t been touched like this since before I gave birth. Not the way I need—we need, I mean.” She put her hands on either side of his head. “The connection. It wears on me a little more every day.” He brought her closer, hands moving, touching. He spread his thighs to balance them better. “I keep thinking about you. All this time. What you look like.” She touched his face, and it was a spark of pure sex. “Guys my age.” She shook her head. “Boring. I’d think, he’s no Harsh. I never feel calm around them the way I do around you.” She put both hands on his face. His hands were so low on her hips that it wouldn’t be wrong to say they were on her ass. “They never made me feel the way I do right now. Like I’m going to come apart if I can’t kiss you.”

“We wouldn’t want that. You coming apart,” he said.

“I know. It’d be awful.”

“What are you going to do about that?”

“This.” When she kissed him, he didn’t pull back, and she’d been more than a little afraid he would. His mouth was soft under hers, and he let out a breath, and then this turned hungry, and she wanted to feed that hunger. She was starving for him, for this connection between them, and so was he.

All the same, she was the one to pull back. “Just checking. Do you have a girlfriend?”

“No.”

“Boyfriend?” She said that as a joke, but he didn’t react the way she expected.

His mouth quirked, and the tension in her stomach ramped up. “Not at present.”

“In the past?”

“Yes.” Which would have been a more upsetting answer if he hadn’t slid his hands underneath her shirt. His thumbs came around the front of her body, and she melted into the heat of that skin to skin contact.

“You never told me that. How come you never told me that?”

“Common knowledge. If you’d been up North with us, it would likely have come up. I’m surprised Kynan didn’t mention it.” His hands moved over her, inching up her belly.

“He didn’t. Do you like girls, then?”

His smile turned lazy. “Very much, I hope you know. We had a girlfriend, after all.”

“You did?” Her mind filled with all manner of dirty images, and he laughed at her. In her head she was seeing his strong, brown hand touching a woman while he kissed a man. “God, Harsh, that is really hot.”

“Iskander,” he said. That was a name she knew. That day when Harsh sent a team to Infante’s place, he’d called Iskander, who was obviously, obviously in love with his human wife: Paisley of the red hair.

His hands slid up and his arms pushed her shirt up as he stroked her bare skin with the sides of this thumbs. She reached down and pulled her shirt off, both layers, and there was no doubt at all that he had a fully hetero appreciation of what he was looking at. “Are you sure about this?”

“Yes.”

He leaned in and kissed her stomach. “Here’s to keeping you from coming apart.”

“Oh, hell yes.” Her entire upper body tensed, but she stayed relaxed about what he might do. His palms made it to her breasts, cupping her over her bra, one wicked finger sliding over the peak of her nipple. “That feels good,” she said. “Do it more.”

“Agreed.” He brushed his finger over her other nipple and hesitated when he encountered her nipple ring. Then he reached around and unfastened her bra and God, he was looking at her breasts. Harsh Marit was devouring her with those bedroom eyes.

She knew he didn’t like her piercing any better than he did her blue hair, but his eyes, and his hands, and his mouth said he wasn’t having any trouble overlooking either one of them. She was getting that whisper of his psychic state that she’d discovered worked so well for her.

“So pretty,” he said. “Beautiful, in fact.”

She melted inside. Her body throbbed in all the places she’d begun to think would never feel that way again. She rested her hands on his shoulders, but then he flicked a finger over her piercing and he might has well have had a hand between her legs. He leaned forward and so did she, arching to him. His mouth settled on her breast with a firmness that made her think she might actually come just from that. With a groan, she buried her fingers in his hair. Thick and soft and black as anything.

She said, “You don’t even know how long I’ve been thinking about this.”

Their psychic connection went two-way, and—put a fork in her now. He kept his mouth on her breast while he dropped his hands to her jeans. The top button popped open easily enough and then he dealt with her zipper. He drew back. “Off.”

She slid of his lap and toed off her shoes, socks, and then her jeans, and she didn’t mind at all that she was naked and he wasn’t, not when he was looking at her like that, not with the wave of arousal coming at her through their link.

“Awesome,” he whispered. He touched her, stroked her stomach. “So beautiful.”

“Thank you.” She dropped to her knees between his spread-apart thighs and got busy with his trousers. He leaned against his chair, pushing his hips forward when she covered his sex with her hand. “I love giving head,” she told him. “I think it’s just about the greatest thing, especially if you let me know how you like it best.”

“I’ll do my best not to disappoint you.” There was humor in his reply but all that vanished when she took him in her mouth. “That,” he said. “Like that.”

She loved the feel of him, the taste, texture and scent, the pulse of his cock in her mouth. He was hard, so hard, and for a while his hands gripped his chair. His thighs tensed, too. She explored him, waited for his reactions and she amplified all that for them both until he let out an incoherent groan.

His fingers scraped through her hair, and she loved that he was losing control. She loved the control that gave her, and she especially loved the way her pleasure and his merged. He stopped being so damn careful of her, and that was just insanely hot, to think of Harsh Marit losing control with her.

She reached for his clothes and between them, between her attention to fellating him to the point of him losing his mind, they got him undressed. He stood up, a hand on her head, and she fell into his physical beauty, and his response to that was a smile so wicked she was the one losing control. Beneath her hands and wherever their bodies touched, the heat of his skin transferred to her and she loved the heat, wanted more.

As he moved closer to orgasm, her sense of him went vivid. Not human. At all. His power hummed through her. Her arousal was violent, white-hot and desperate when he reached for her through their connection and let her feel how her being human set him off. He shared his reactions, how and where to touch him. All his sensitive places, his reactions, the fact that he wanted control of the pace, and just how much he liked that she could submit to what he wanted when her nature was to never submit.

“Yes,” he said right before he came, and she fell with him, off the same cliff, and it wracked her, wrung her out, set her heart pounding in time with his. He brought her to her feet and they locked gazes, and while she watched his eyes flickering between human and not the least human, he fingered her piercing, tugged enough to force a moan from her.

She wrapped her arms around his shoulders, beyond thought, beyond caring about much besides getting him inside her. She kissed him into mutual insanity with the pulse of his magic sizzling through her, sometimes gentle, often not at all.

They didn’t make it to the bedroom. They got as far as the couch where he drew himself over her, right on the edge of a physical transformation. The thrum of his power shivered through her, a dark edge that sent her wild. There was just nothing like it in the world.

“God, yes,” she said, whimpered really, when he thrust into her. Hard, so hard. She wound her legs around him and arched to him, and her body sang with tension.

“More?” His question rasped from his throat.

She twisted her head and bit his upper arm. “Harder.”

He lowered his head to her shoulder, just above her collar bone and he returned that bite, wrenching a gasp from her when his teeth broke skin, and he tasted her blood. His reaction sent her where she needed to be: here. Now. In this moment only. His body remained human, but the mind that touched hers wasn’t.

He turned her over and she ended up facing the back of the couch, her hands braced while he thrust hard from behind. Inside. So good. He drew one arm back and a moment later she smelled blood. His blood, and he leaned close, arm around her, held to her mouth where he’d scored his skin.

While she tasted, the roll of his hips against her slowed, and he pushed up and inside her and it broke her completely, rolled her into an orgasm that paralyzed her, and in that moment of arrest, his mind slid around hers. His other hand gripped her hip and she was going to die from this. The wave broke, and she shouted, moaned, and her body clenched around him, and he followed her into oblivion.

“Good?” she asked him when she could speak. She was partly across his chest, head on his shoulder.

He wrapped a hand around the back of her neck. “Try not to be so smug. You know it was.”

She shifted down and kissed his belly. “So was that the best head you’ve ever had or do I need to practice on you?”

“I have no objections if you feel you need to keep your skills sharp.”

“Oh, yes. I think I do.”

He sat up and flipped her onto her back, and she didn’t even have time to wonder if that was going to be a problem for her, because he was sliding his mouth down her stomach and he kept going lower until he his mouth was between her legs. His tongue flicked out.

“They teach you that in med school, Dr. Marit?”

He lifted his head long enough to say, “I have long considered the female anatomy to be a specialty of mine.”

Then there was no talking for a while because it was his turn to make her insane and it turned out he was really good at it. But the best part came after they made it upstairs when he touched every inch of her, and she didn’t have to explain a damn thing because he already knew. He knew to leave those dark places in her alone. She returned the favor.

The moment when he pushed into her again was sweet beyond words and it turned out Harsh Marit could also be a thorough lover who gave her all the time she needed while they weren’t lost in the ferocity of sex.

She wanted to cry because he felt so good, because he was everything she’d dreamed about, because her body was so engaged in having him push into her, and God, that withdrawal, so slow sometimes, that he had to be drawing her soul out too, that she didn’t think about anything but the contact.

At one point, she rocked her hips against his and, arms around his shoulders, said, “You fuck good, Dr. Marit.”

He pried open his eyes and said, “Not good enough if you can talk.”

“Bastard. Do that again.”

Which he did.

“Best sex ever,” she said afterward.

He laughed, all warm and silky-smug. “I wouldn’t dream of giving you anything less.” He pulled her into his arms afterward, and nuzzled the back of her neck. “I’ll take you out to dinner tomorrow night, all right?”

“How long are you in town?”

“Long enough to take you to dinner if you’re free.”

“Tomorrow, then.”

Addison wondered if it was going to be possible for her to go back to passing for human. Maybe it was time to take Nikodemus up on his offer. If she could.

21

T
he darkness of the alley was no problem for Harsh. From where he stood with his back to an industrial-sized Dumpster, he could pick out the vermin by sight and sound both. He had an hour and a half before he was supposed to meet Addison for dinner. Plenty of time, if that asshole would just fucking show up.

A crawling sensation came to life in the center of his chest and raced outward until his fingers tingled and every hair on his body danced in warning. The psychic vibration was a survival mechanism that had served those like him for millennia; it meant something dangerous was headed his way.

Without conscious action on his part, his magic burned white-hot and at the ready. Another survival instinct, but an unusual consequence of that was that the part of himself that he kept walled off pushed at his internal wards. He was so used to that dark and inaccessible corner of himself that it took a reaction like this to remind him it was there and an ever-present threat.

Harsh smiled. Time to play.

Giuseppe Infante appeared in the mouth of the alley. His knock-off Italian suit and a self-satisfied grin made Harsh wish he’d killed the asshole when he had the chance. He’d not been idle while he was licking his wounds in Portland and wherever the hell else he’d been all this time. The image of Infante with blood running down his chin was burned into his memory, and it was sickeningly clear that he’d killed more of the demonkind.

“Hey,” Infante said. Even from here, his eyes glowed with the hallmark sign of a copa-induced high. “Fuck you.” Which was his special way of reminding Harsh that he and his kind believed a safe demon was a dead demon.

Since silence was bound to get a bigger reaction than anything Harsh could say in response, he stayed where and as he was. Quiet in a way Infante could never be. He got his reaction in short order. Infante shifted his weight between his feet and his smile turned into a sneer. Infante and asshole mages like him loved saying they lived by that motto about safe demons, but that was bullshit. Men like Infante were hypocrites.

The mage hadn’t come alone. Frankly, it would have been suicidal for him to do so. The man knew better than to think he had a chance in hell of harming Nikodemus’s right-hand man, not without a lot of help and luck. So, yes. If he’d shown up without the usual bodyguards, that would have been shocking.

Five against one looked like good odds even if Infante remembered just how badly he’d fared during their last two meetings. If the mage ended up dead this time, Harsh wasn’t going to cry.

While he waited for Infante to get good and pissed off, distant music thrummed in the air. Traffic noise was ever-present, as was the acrid scent of polluted air. Even this early in the evening, humans carried on with their normal lives, unaware they might one day wake up to the consequences of a war between species they didn’t know existed.