Ecstasy Unveiled

Twenty-eight

“Beat you there.” Idess darted out of the Harrowgate and raced toward her house. Lore’s curse followed her, accompanied by heavy footsteps that were closing the distance between them.

“Idess.” His shout held a predatory, ominous warning. “When I catch you, I’m taking you where we land.”

And that was supposed to be a threat? “When? If,” she called out.

Laughing, she picked up the pace, dodging tree branches and leaping over tree roots that wove veins into the worn path to her villa. She risked a glance over her shoulder and screamed in delight. He was nearly upon her. Intense hunger burned in his dark eyes, and she suddenly felt what it must be like to be a rabbit running from a wolf.

Somehow she scrounged up one last burst of speed, enough to make it to her front door. He caught her there, pinning her against the wood with his big body. At some point he’d lost the glove he still wore, even though she regularly drained his death power to give him temporary bits of freedom.

One hand cupped her breast and the other gripped her hip and her entire body hummed with anticipation.

“I warned you.” His voice was breathless from the run and with need, the latter of which she could sense all the way to her soul.

She lifted her leg to put her aching sex in contact with his erection, and he hissed in a breath. “Right here against the door?”

“Yes.” His sizzling gaze challenged her as his fingers found her jeans buttons. But she wasn’t going to stop him. In fact, she nearly wept with relief at the soft yet urgent rasp of his knuckles brushing her skin as he tore open her fly. “You should wear skirts.”

“With no panties?”

A wicked smile tipped up his mouth, robbing her of her ability to speak. “With panties. That way I can rip them off with my teeth.”

The words, the images, were dizzying.

“And if I’m in too much of a hurry to take them off,” he said, as he drove his hand down the front of her pants, “I can move them aside.” Which he proved by tugging the silk to the side and pushing two fingers into her core.

She cried out at the wonderful invasion. “Lore…”

He braced his forearm against the door next to her head and leaned in as his fingers began a slow glide in and out. She expected him to kiss her, but instead he watched her, his breaths labored, his eyes half-lidded. Under his admiring gaze she felt like a beautiful treasure.

“I’ll never get tired of looking at you,” he whispered. “I want to watch you come every day. Ten times a day. A hundred.”

“You say the most wonderful things,” she panted. “You are never getting rid of me now.” It had been a week since they’d left the assassin den forever, and she had said the same thing every day since.

“Good.” He made a sinful twist with his fingers, and she arched into his hand, hanging right on the edge. “Damn, Idess. You’re drenched, so wet, and all for me.”

“For you,” she agreed.

“Mine,” he growled.

“Yours.”

His fingers raked a sensitive spot deep inside that ignited her, sent flame racing through her until even her breath burned in her throat. Every pulse of her climax sang with pure, rich notes as her body churned to life.

Lore brought her down with light, gentle strokes over her center, never once taking his eyes off her. Before he’d come along, she hadn’t believed that being watched during such a private, intimate moment would be so sexy, but the way his gaze grew hotter, his expression more intense, and his body harder… yes, this was something she enjoyed and wanted to repeat often. Her mind started flipping through future scenarios, more things she could do while he watched, and the fire sparked again.

“Inside,” he rasped. “Now.”

“What happened to against the door?” she said saucily.

“I want you so bad I’ll break it.” He nipped her throat before turning her around and giving her a playful slap on the bottom. “Bed. I need your bed.”

She opened the door and paused at the threshold. “Our bed now.”

Stark masculine pride and possession took over his expression. She shivered with appreciation as he swept her into his arms and carried her to the bedroom. With a gentleness she didn’t expect, he placed her on the bed they’d both been chained to. Still were, in a way, and she wouldn’t change a thing.

She trailed one finger along the whorls of his dermoire, and he marveled at the blessed sensation, didn’t know if he’d ever get used to feeling something he’d stopped praying for decades ago. “You said once that you weren’t always a killer. That you were more than that. You were right.”

“At the time I said it, I was lying.”

“And now that you aren’t an assassin? Do you still think it’s a lie?”

“No,” he said, as he trailed kisses along her shoulder. “I’m a man with a future and a family. Because of you. My old life is over, and I can’t thank you enough for that.”

She grinned. “I feel the exact same way.” Her hand drifted to his waist, and then lower, until he was gasping in pleasure. “For us, the end is just the beginning.”