Hostage to Pleasure

CHAPTER 36

She curled her fingers into his chest instead of complying. “You’re an incredibly handsome male,” she said. “Perfect bone structure, pure blond hair, eyes so blue they should be impossible. Your only ‘flaw’ is this tattoo.” She traced the three jagged lines on his right biceps. “It’s an echo of the markings on your alpha’s face.”

He gave a short nod.

“A symbol of absolute loyalty.” Her lips parted. “Knowing that just makes you even more dangerously beautiful.”

He felt a blush heat up his cheeks. His looks were simply another hurdle he’d had to overcome as far as he was concerned. “Took a long time for people to take me seriously.”

“Yes, but you see, Dorian,” Ashaya said, stroking her hands down his chest and back up, “you intimidate me.”

“You didn’t seem intimidated on the couch in the apartment.” He raised a hand, fisting it in her hair. It fascinated him, it was so wild, filled with what felt like a thousand colors from pure black to a golden brown. He wanted to know what it would feel like brushing over him. It also made him wonder about the colors in other, lower places. His fingers curled in anticipation.

“That was an aberration. I know you did what you did to help me.” She pressed a kiss to his chest and glanced up through her lashes. “Tonight, I find myself asking how I could possibly measure up to a man so beautiful.”

Dorian wondered if women were born with the ability to cut their men off at the knees. “Shaya, I look at you and I think sex.”

Her fingernails dug into his chest, making his cock jump.

“Then I think about all the ways in which I’d like to have sex with you. All of them involve licking my way across every inch of you.” Bending his head, he flicked out his tongue and tasted her just above the ragged pulse in her neck. “God, I love your skin.”

“My skin?” She glanced uncomprehendingly at her own arm when he rose from nibbling at her. “It’s brown.”

“It’s melted chocolate and coffee with cream, exotic as the fucking desert, and so damn erotic, I have wet dreams about you naked on my sheets, your skin smooth and hot from the sun’s rays.”

She swallowed, chest heaving. “You make me sound edible.” He purred. “You are.” He wanted to strip her bit by slow bit—the cat was desperate to know if her skin was the same luscious shade all over. “If it isn’t,” he whispered, taking her mouth in a ravaging kiss, “I’ll happily rub every inch of you with sweet, lickable oil and stroke you until the sun has its way with you.”

She seemed to be having trouble breathing. “Dorian, that made no sense.”

“Didn’t it?” He bit her lower lip and saw her pupils dilate as her hands moved down to grip at his waist. “I have this fantasy.”

“Oh.” She rose up on tiptoe, unconsciously following his mouth.

He rewarded her enthusiasm with another kiss. “Of sliding my hand from your nape, down the sweep of your back and over the sweet, sweet curves below.”

She blew out a shuddering breath when he cupped her bottom with one hand. “I said, slow.”

“We’re just talking.”

Her next look was an accusation. “You know perfectly well what you’re doing.”

He smiled, feeling the cat purr again. He did know what he was doing. Ashaya was a creature of the intellect. She was so damn smart it turned him on like nobody’s business. He knew instinctively that to truly reach her, to awaken her sensuality on the level he needed, he’d have to tempt her mind as well as her body.

With the smile continuing to flirt over his lips, he released her and moved his hands to his belt. Ashaya watched with un-hidden feminine intent as he undid the buckle and pulled the belt slowly through the hoops. When the metal buckle clunked to the floor, she gave a little jump, but her eyes didn’t move from the denim-covered erection he made no effort to hide.

“I want you so bad,” he said, “one touch and I’ll come.”

Her chest moved up and down in a ragged rhythm.

He flicked open the top button, went to the fly, pulled it down a little. “Damn,” he said, holding her eyes. “I forgot the boots.” Grabbing one of the two chairs in the room, he sat down, legs sprawled. As he bent to undo the laces of his combat boots, he flicked his eyes behind Ashaya. Even this deep into sex, his protectiveness wouldn’t allow her to be vulnerable. Only when he was sure the security panel was still flashing “Safe” did he pull off the first boot and drop it.

Ashaya remained in place as he did the same to the second. Neither did she move when he got rid of his socks and sat back up. She was rubbing her hands down the front of her soft khaki cargos, the dark blue of her T-shirt molding to the generous curves of her breasts. Damp, he thought, nostrils flaring at the scent, her skin was damp. That made him think of other, wetter, slicker parts of her.

Groaning, he sprawled back in the chair. “My cock hurts, sugar.”

“What do you want me to do?” A husky offer couched as a question.

He waved a finger at her T-shirt. “Off. Please.” He put every ounce of charm he had into his smile.

She didn’t smile in return, but her eyes filled with something hot… exquisitely possessive. Putting her hands on the bottom edge of the tee, she pulled it over her head in a single efficient move. He about swallowed his tongue when she did the same with the black sports bra she had on underneath.

“Shit.” He pulled down the damn zipper of his jeans, releasing the pounding length of his erection.

Her eyes went to him. She licked her lips. And he had to squeeze himself hard at the base to keep from coming right then and there. “You’re not shy.” His voice croaked, he was so damn hot for her.

She walked closer, pure, welcoming female. “You told me you look at me and think of sex. I assumed that meant you liked my body. Don’t you?” Hands on hips, head tilted in a way that was woman personified. She was so confident looking, he almost missed the hint of uncertainty in her eyes. Then she spoke, and he remembered that his mate was very good at hiding her fears, her hurts. “Dorian?”

“Shh, I’m looking.” He traced the lush weight of her breasts with his gaze, angled down the curve of her waist to hips that seemed made for a man’s hands. Lower. God, he wanted to bite down on her flesh, mark her in the most primitive of ways.

The cat spread inside him in a languorous wave of sexual need. Now, it said, she’s ready. Her arousal was a drug soaking into his very pores, threatening to make his earlier teasing come true—he might lose it simply by looking at her. In desperation, he squeezed himself tighter. “Baby, if I liked your body any more, I’d turn myself into a eunuch trying not to come.” She was even more sexily built than he’d imagined, a curvy goddess straight out of his hottest dreams.

She looked down at his erection, fascination in her gaze. “Why”—her eyes traced the length of him, her teeth sinking into her lower lip—“do I find the sight of you holding yourself so arousing?”

“The same reason I’d love to see you pleasuring yourself.” Oh, hell, he hadn’t just said that and put the image in his mind! “Fuck.” Squeezing his eyes shut, he tried to think of baseball, trees, anything but the vision of Ashaya with her hand buried between her legs, head thrown back in sweet release.

It didn’t work.

His eyes snapped open just as Ashaya leaned closer and ran a single wondering finger down his aching cock. He came.

Ashaya had never considered pleasure before meeting Dorian. Even then, she’d considered it as something predictable in a general sense. When he touched her, she felt pleasure. That was the equation. Contact = pleasure. She’d never once thought that watching him lose control would birth a pleasure so deep and rich, it would eclipse everything that had come before.

His eyes opened after several long seconds. “That wasn’t exactly what I had in mind.”

She was startled to see a hint of embarrassment in the vibrant blue. “Dorian,” she said, not bothering to hide the depth of want clawing at her, “that was the most erotic experience of my entire life.”

Sensual charm curved his lips, wicked and teasing. “Give me a few minutes and I’ll give you something to compare it to. You’re so damn pretty, Shaya.”

“A few minutes?” Feeling suddenly shy, she crossed her arms over her chest. The smile on his face widened, becoming touched with the feral wildness of the cat. It made thinking difficult. “I believed males needed a longer recovery time to mate.”

“Not this kitty cat.” Rising to his feet, he said, “Get ready to play.”

She found her body straining after him as he disappeared down the corridor she assumed led to the bathroom. When he returned, he was completely naked. She heard a sound of incredible yearning fill the air, and was shocked to find it had come from her. Dorian’s body went utterly motionless. A second later, he moved with such speed that she gasped to find him in front of her, pulling her arms apart.

“Let me see,” he said, exerting gentle pressure.

She didn’t fight him. “There’s a hunger,” she whispered, scared at the depth of that need, at what it demanded from her. “It’s almost painful.”

He didn’t tell her to stop analyzing their interaction, didn’t accuse her of not acting like a normal woman, both fears she’d harbored. Instead, he smiled and said, “Show me where.”

When he let go of her arms, she spread the palm of her right hand over her navel, partly touching skin, partly the material of her cargos.

“There?” Brushing aside her hand, he replaced it with his own. She looked down, mesmerized at the erotic contrast. His hand was thickly masculine in comparison to her own, the hairs on the backs of his arms shimmering with light, his fingers marked with faded scars. He was beautiful to her. But when he looked at her, she saw a startling truth—she was beautiful to him, too.

“Yes,” she whispered, and it was a permission not an answer.

He took her at her word, this man with a wounded soul and the heart of a leopard, a man so complex that she knew he’d be a puzzle she could explore the rest of her life, if she only had the chance. She sucked in a breath as he changed the direction of his hand, arrowing his fingers down under her waistband and inside her panties in a firm move.

Sensation exploded behind her eyelids. She felt her knees collapse, her body begin to quake with pleasure so extreme, it caused blackness to slide over her eyes. She should’ve been terrified. Except it felt too good to fight. So she surrendered.

There was no time for worry. Or fear. Only pleasure.

When the darkness receded, she found herself lying on the bed, still half-dressed… and being watched by human eyes that held a very feline satisfaction. “I said slow.”

He smiled. “Oops.”

Charm.

This leopard lying next to her had a whole arsenal of it. According to what she’d been taught during her passage through the Silence Protocol, charm had both negative and positive aspects. Some used it as a weapon, others as a tool. But, she realized as she lay there limp from pleasure, all that changed if trust was involved. Then, it became a caress, a stroke, a kiss. “When we first met, I would’ve never predicted you could be this way.”

He circled her belly button with a finger. “When we first met, I was a mean bastard.”

“I don’t think that’s changed.”

He paused his playful touching. “Oh?”

“I’ve just earned a free pass through the meanness.”

That made him relax, a husky chuckle her answer as he shifted position to brace himself over her. His kiss was deceptively lazy this time, a slow tasting that made her sigh. When he kissed his way down her neck and to the valley between her breasts, she thrust her hands into his hair and held on.

The scrape of his shadowed jaw was rough against the tender skin of her breast. She sucked in a breath. He murmured an apology, licking his tongue over the sensual hurt until she could barely bear it. There was so much more to this sexual dance than she’d ever imagined. So much more to the man she’d called the sniper.

“Thinking again?” he murmured, pressing his lips to her navel.

She looked down to meet his heavy-lidded gaze. “About you.” In her hands, his hair was soft, sleek. “I know my Silence was broken, but I was brought up in an environment where control was everything. I thought it would be harder to give in this much.” To trust this much—until both body and mind were so in sync, she couldn’t imagine being any other way.

“Come on then, sugar. Give in to me some more.” His lashes swept over her skin as he laid his forehead against her and pressed another kiss to her navel. When he rose, it was to his knees. Unsnapping the tab, he gripped the zipper of her cargos. “Down.” He suited word to action.

It felt as if he was touching each newly exposed inch of flesh, his eyes were so intent. She discovered that she was holding her breath, released it in a slow exhalation as he got the pants off and threw them over the side of the bed, leaving her dressed in one last piece of clothing. Her panties were plain black, certainly nothing like the delicate, lacy garments she’d seen displayed in the windows of human and changeling boutiques.

But Dorian didn’t seem to mind. “You’re damp.” He ran a finger over that dampness, making her bite back a cry. Then he did it again. And again. It sent twisting tendrils of sensation straight through her. But… it wasn’t enough.

“I feel… alone.” She needed something, something important. It felt as if she should be able to see it on the psychic plane, but the ephemeral something kept slipping out of her grasp. “Dorian?” It was almost a sob.

“I’ve got you.” One smooth movement and the panties were gone. “Christ, you’re beautiful.” A harsh male exclamation and then he was spreading her thighs, whispering for her to wrap them around him. She did, able to feel him nudging at her, hot, hard, rawly male.

She cried out into his kiss as he began to enter her, stretching muscles that had never known such use. There was no pain, only the most exquisite kind of ache, as if her body had been made for this man, for this moment. The emptiness faded from inside her, overwhelmed by the amount of sheer sensation her mind was attempting to process. A part of her, a tiny hidden part, knew that something remained missing, but then Dorian bit her lightly on the shoulder and the thought fragmented.

“Biting is okay?” she gasped, adjusting to the blazing heat of him inside her.

He kissed his way up her neck, over her cheek, back to her lips. “Hell, yeah.” One male hand slid under her to cup her bottom, angling her for a deeper penetration.

Arching upward, she dared to use her teeth on the powerful cords of his neck. He hissed out a breath, squeezing her bottom. “More.”

No longer capable of rational thought, she dug her nails into his back and scratched hard. It made him growl and tug her head back for a firestorm of a kiss.

“Open.”

She bit his lower lip instead.

Snarling, he held her in place as he tangled his tongue with hers. She wrapped her body around him, giving back as good as she got.

Then Dorian began to move.

Slow.

“Faster,” she said, tearing her lips away from the seduction of his mouth.

Male heat in those bright blue eyes. “No.” He drew out inch by torturous inch… then pushed back in the same way. It was like the first time all over again, her muscles stretching, her body quivering with a thousand tiny quakes.

“Dorian.”

Teeth nipping over her lips, releasing. “You wanted slow.”

Her hands slipped over his sweat-slick body as she tried to urge him to increase the pace. It was impossible. He was pure lithe muscle to her soft female form. “Now I want fast.”

“No.” Another smile, another slow withdrawal and reentry. “I want to play.”