The Fortune Teller's Daughter (23 page)

He could find out. He could find out how far she was
willing to go with him.

Tying her now would mean waiting, and there would be
no waiting tonight, not when she looked so damn inviting, flushed and pliant.
He’d have her tonight and tomorrow they’d play.

Eli leaned over her and kissed her pert, peach colored
nipple. She reached for him, sighing his name like a prayer. Before she could
get a hold on him he took her hands and pinned them crossed over her head. He
held her still and returned to her beautiful globes, wide and round. They
danced under his touch. He licked at each nipple, unable to choose just one,
and after lavishing them with his licks and kisses, he finally locked onto the
right one and sucked until she writhed and gasped and begged for gentleness
that he would not give her.

And when he nipped the hardened, elongated peach bud,
she cried his name and thrust her hips up into his and ground into his erection
in the most innocent, wanton way he’d ever seen. It made him feel drugged and
irrational. He wanted to teach her passion and debauchery and pleasure. He
wanted her to want his control, here, in his bed, where he could adore her.

And, when he’d reddened her pale skin and tied her to
his bed and entered her in every way possible, he wanted to make love to her.

“Eli,” she begged, arching prettily beneath his body.
“Eli, please.”

He grinned against her breast and licked and bit the
soft flesh until he turned it red and left the softest, lightest marks. He’d
never hurt her. Never.

“How do you need me, Sera? I want to hear you say it.”

“Inside.” She fought for words as if they no longer
made sense to her. “I want this.”

He caught her words with his mouth and kissed her,
crushed her silent and she shuddered. He kissed her so that she’d know he
didn’t ever want to stop kissing her. He kissed her until her until he’d
memorized her taste, until she was mewling and begging into his open mouth and
kissing him back and even though he was holding her down, she was holding back.

And without warning, he broke contact and flipped her
over onto her stomach, her cheek pressed into her pillow and all her red,
lovely curls fanned out around her.

Still holding her wrists in one hand, he worked her
blue panties down to expose her plump, upturned ass. She bowed her back and
offered herself to him. It was such a sweet, giving gesture. He sighed from the
pleasure of it.

With his free hand he stroked her thighs, her waist,
her hips. Here the freckles were few and far between except for the galaxy of
them over her lower back where she had two delicious dimples above each cheek.
He stroked them with his fingers, their smooth divots giving him perfect,
kissable targets.

He let go of her hands though she didn’t uncross them.
He moved behind her, cupped her cheeks in both hands and proceeded to kiss her
spine and each dimple. She sighed and moaned and closed her eyes while he
touched her. He kissed the bottom swell of her ass, the backs of her thighs. He
stroked the inside of them up to her soft red curls, damp with her pleasure.
The same color as her hair.

Before he could touch her, he needed to get rid of his
pants. He fought out of them and took his place behind her, between her knees
and her bare feet. Her toes turned under, gripping the sheets. Everything about
her was so deliberate and full of surrender here in his bed. She had no idea
how badly that turned him on. For the rest of his life he would never be able
to resist her on her knees.

Eli had to have her. Like this. Bent forward onto her
shoulders, her hips meeting his. He had to make his mark and claim her.

Mine
.

He bent across her, his erection fitting between her
legs and surprising her with its hardness, its presence. She jerked and
squirmed and lost her position. He growled a warning and she froze.

“Will you let me have you, my Serafine?” He rumbled
his words against her back as he pulled her wrists back into his hands, one in
each, pinned to the pillow on either side of her face.

Her eyes flicked open, hooded and languid, staring at
her captured hand.

“Yes.” She swallowed, her mouth parting, allowing her
little pants to escape. “God, yes.”

He released one of her wrists and reached between
them, took his member in his hand and settled it against her wet, puffy lips.
She was so ready, so open, he almost slipped in before he was ready. If she
moved even a little bit, she’d impale herself on him.

“I want to hear my name on your lips.” He bent along
the shape of her back until his face was even with the back of her neck. He
kissed her ear and pushed the head just inside her spread folds. “I want you to
want me, Sera.”

And before she could respond, he thrust into her,
eliciting the most delicious scream from her red, swollen mouth.

She curled her fingers into the sheets, her eyes
flying wide open in surprise. He was big enough, not enough to hurt her, but he
couldn’t remember the last time any woman had made him so mad with lust either.
Inside of her was worse. She pulsed, hot as her heartbeat, squeezing herself
around the length of him as if she were trying to pull him in. She was so
tight, though wet and slick enough to make his entrance easy.

They fit together as if she’d been made for him alone.

While she writhed and swayed and pulled beneath him,
stretched and accommodating, he panted for control. For any other woman he
would have plowed her until he came, unconcerned with her comfort or her wants.
Before this night, he’d been a selfish lover.

Now…now there was only one pleasure that concerned
him. One that centered his whole world, finally, into orbit with the sun.

He kissed her shoulder, her smooth pale skin. He
kissed and licked at her freckles until she relaxed, until she was wiggling pleasantly
beneath his hips, and only then did he retreat and return. His body flexed and
the pleasure of mounting her made him delirious. Everything about her from her
soft, pliant body to her panting, almost giggling moans turned him on and made
it damn near impossible to control himself.

She caught the rhythm easily and soon their hips moved
together, matched from where his shoulders laid across hers down to where he
bent over her, impaled between her legs.

“Eli,” she moaned, eyes squeezed closed. “Oh.
Ooh
.”
She bit her bottom lip and tucked her chin to her chest. She stretched beneath
him like a cat. He wrapped one arm beneath her waist and locked her to him.

“Yes, love, yes. So sweet. I’ve never…Sera…”

He was as lost as she was. They’re words dissolved
into sounds of pleasure, gasping, groaning, their names the only thing they got
right in the dark.

After minutes, hours, days, the intensity between them
grew until he was humping her backside, holding her still as he rode her. She
couldn’t keep up, shaking and spreading herself, begging for more without
knowing what that meant. Her core squeezed him, slippery and sensitive, forcing
gasping groans from him. Harder, harder, harder, until he was banging against
her, bruising her thighs with his need, this beautiful, giving girl that he’d
caught and captured and took and took and
took
…

Eli slammed his fist into the pillow above her head,
jerked her hips into his, buried himself to the root one last time with such
force he saw stars. He buried his face into the cove of her neck and cried her
name into her skin as he burst inside her.

Light and sound, the cold and the feel of his sheets
beneath them fell away. There was no language, no carnival, no anything beyond
this woman’s body. Shaking, he held himself to her, no longer her captor but
her worshiper, bent in supplication at her alter. He rasped her name, begged
for her to love him, such things he’d never said to another woman in his life
spilled from him in irrational words that may or may not have even been
English.

And beyond all possible belief, she answered him. She
said
yes, yes, yes
. I love you. I love you. I love you. I’m so in love
with you. Don’t stop touching me.
I beg you. I beg you. I beg you.

He didn’t. Couldn’t. He’d have died first than stop
touching her. Still buried inside her he moved from holding her to him to
touching her. He slipped his hand between her legs and searched for the heart
of her pleasure, swollen and slick with her cream and his. He touched her,
touched her so that she danced in his arms. She lifted her shoulders off the
bed, dropped her head between her elbows, and arched her body into him.

Sera’s explosion was only a moment behind his, and
then she was rolling in waves of her own ecstasy. She threw her head back and
he caught her so he could hold her against his chest, eyes closed and lost in
her own world. Her head fell back to his shoulder and he kissed her cheek, the
corner of her mouth. She begged his name and kissed him, kissed him messily
without an ounce of self-consciousness. She kissed him as she came, as she
shook and clawed at his hands and held him tight to her.

When she stilled, panting, her eyes shining like stars
as she stared into him, through him, mesmerized him, they collapsed back to the
bed. He rolled off her, but didn’t let her go. He held her against him, buried
himself in her sweaty hair. She clutched him, breathing hard, searching his
face for…he couldn’t know. He’d never had a woman look at him the way his
Serafine looked at him now.

She loved him. She’d said it, even though she
shouldn’t love him. Even though he was so far beyond being loved. She’d said it
anyway. Even now she didn’t look like she regretted it.

Mine
, he
thought

Then, no.

Hers.

__________________

Eli caught
me in my escape from his bed and hauled me back into his body, growling
playfully into my neck as I squealed and wiggled to free myself, not that I
tried very hard. He nuzzled and kissed at my throat, despite the mess of hair
haloing my head or my pale, naked body. He still felt warm from being buried
beneath blankets with me all night.

“Sera.” He
said it like a promise. “Meet me at my stage today.”

“As if there
were anywhere else I could be.” I laughed and managed to twist around to face
him. He knelt on the edge of the bed in front of where I stood. He kissed my
nose and the little spot between my eyebrows. He felt lighter, more unhurried,
and I wondered if this was the real Eli. The one who’d existed before the
accident that forced the carnival to close. The one he wouldn’t talk about. His
was not the face of a broken, damaged man. He seemed young again. Ageless as
always, but new.

He kissed
me, much softer than those we shared last night in the dark, but just as
delicious.

“Good. And
detach from your shadow today. As much as I like Micah, it’s only you I want.”

I grinned at
the image of Micah as
my
shadow when it was more likely the other way
around. Micah would have loved the image of us being so inseparable.

“I have to
help Lily go through her closet. We’re reorganizing, apparently, which actually
means I’ll pull things out and she’ll offer advice from her fainting couch.”

“Lily,” he
grumbled and glanced around as if she might have materialized in his wagon
suddenly. “I bet she’s got plenty of advice for you.”

“About you,
you mean.”

“Suffice it
to say, she does not approve of my obsession with you.”

“I bet.” I
hesitated, but it seemed too late for shyness now. “Were you two…lovers?”

“Us?” His
eyes widened a fraction. “No. Never. I know what she is. I am not interested.”

“You don’t
like her because she’s a courtesan? That seems a little judgy, Mr.
I’ve had
plenty of women
.
Many. Often. All of them
.” I affected a terrible
British accent and he tugged me impatiently against him with a playful nip at
my mouth.

 “She is
more than just a courtesan, Sera. I thought you would have figured that out by
now. No one here is only
just
anything.”

I didn’t
understand what he meant. Or at least, I didn’t know
how
to understand
what he meant. I thought of Micah dodging questions about her age, the
carousel, everything about the Magician. “You mean, everyone here is like you?”

Now it was
his turn to hesitate. “Not like me. No one is like anyone else. They all have
secrets about where they come from, what they can do. They are not likely to
tell you, so don’t bother asking. Knowledge, here, is power. If anyone knew
what they were, beneath their skin, it would make them targets.”

“But
everyone knows what you are.”

“Yes, well,
I can’t hide who I am.”

“I am not
anything.”

“You’re
Cora’s.”

“And what
was she?” He gave me a look like he was about to deny me again, but I
interrupted. “She’s dead, Eli. She can’t be made a target anymore.”

“I think
what she was made her a target in the first place. She had power over the past,
present, and future. Among other things.”

A vision of
her standing with her hands hovering over her cards, plucking them out
seemingly at random to tell someone their future in a fake, exotic voice rushed
into my thoughts. “So she was a real fortune teller.”