Dim Sum Asylum(67)

“So I guess we’re not going to talk about our feelings or—”

“Let me show you how it’s going to be so damned nice to shut you up for a few minutes.”

His eyes were nearly black, and despite the heat coming off his body, his fingers were gently cool. I tried to fight the lure he’d cast, but it was no use. The second he was on me, I was lost.

His hands were in my hair, a painful clench against my skull as he tugged my head back, exposing my throat. Trent’s mouth was on mine before the soft moan escaping me had a chance to linger on my tongue. He held me there, pinned to the cabinet, the stone digging into my hip as he pushed my lips open with his tongue, taking what he wanted—needed—from my mouth.

If my skin was on fire before, it was now molten from the heat he’d pulled up from my core.

I dug in, shoving my hands up his shirt and across his chest. Finding the hard points of his nipples, I pinched and twisted, matching him tug for tug as he yanked my hair, angling my head so he could bite my neck. His teeth sank in, and I gouged my nails into the tender buds I’d captured between my fingertips.

His eyes ran to storm when he lifted his face. The sun was long gone, and we stood in the faint light coming up from the mist-veiled city. Shadows filled every crevice of his strong face, casting his fine bones into a pale granite. I could see the Nordic in his blood, a wildness tempered by fire and cut sharp from ice. His massive thighs kept me prisoner, holding me in place as he tugged off the SFPD T-shirt I’d pulled on after my shower.

“Pele and Morrígan, look at you.” He skimmed my shoulders, his rough fingers tracking the markings he found there. “You’ve got wings. Under your skin. How far…? I need to see you. Have you. You have no idea how much I wanted to taste you last night, Roku. No fucking idea.”

Common sense wiggled its way into my brain. I didn’t want it there. No, what I really wanted was to have Trent Leonard spread me out on my bed and fuck me senseless with the iron-hard cock I could feel through his jeans.

“Hold up.” It felt futile pushing at Trent’s chest, but being part fae had some advantages, strength being a definite benefit as I shoved him back a step. “I don’t have anything here. I mean… fuck. I don’t even think I’ve got anything in the kitchen we can use.”

“Yeah, well, I do.” His grin was both boyish and sly.

“Thought I was a sure thing?” I tilted my head back to get a good look at him.

“No. Figured if you turned me down, I’d end up driving someplace to jack off my frustration.” He gave me a quick suckle on my lower lip. “Now, why don’t we go find that bed of yours.”





Seventeen


“GODS, YOU are… gorgeous,” Trent whispered, stroking at my hip where one of my smaller wing markings ran over the bone and down to the tight flesh along the back of my thigh. “They’re literally under your skin.”

“Or a part of it. I don’t know really. There aren’t a lot of people like me to ask,” I purred under his touch, loving the feel of his fingers along my ribs. “They’re deeper than a tattoo. My mom wasn’t going to let anyone poke at me to find out, and I don’t care why. It’s just something that happens. Like my hair growing longer.”

“They get brighter where I touch them.” To hear Trent’s awed whisper, it was as if he’d discovered Christmas, pizza, and crème br?lée all in one package. I would have teased him, but I liked what he was doing with his hands. “Roku, you are… you’re beyond any man’s wildest dreams.”

I’d never found my markings all that fascinating. To me, they were pale echoes of my mother’s dragonfly green-and-gold wings, scattered hexagonal shapes loosely arranged into a spread of colors and darker spines as if they were folded down in rest. The colors ran over my lightly freckled shoulders, down my ribs, and to the back of my knees, vibrant and bright against the pale of my skin. I’d been torn between putting my mother’s star on my shoulder or where it should be on my mottled skin wings. I wore the murdered and forgotten dead along the larger of my right wing’s ribs, a scatter of black prickles swirling into an ever-expanding constellation. They were smaller than the ones I wore on my wrist for John and the girls, and I’d decided on my shoulder to honor my mother because I didn’t want to put her death marker on my ass.

Especially since my new partner intended on being there.

He kissed the stars trapped among the colors, then reached for my wrist, stroking his thumb over my dead’s remains. I shivered, ghosts walking over my grave and a chorus of mocking demons dancing down my spine, but Trent didn’t let go. He merely pressed into the spot where I’d left my goodbyes to the souls I’d failed to protect, his other hand stroking the colors up into my skin. My body grew warm where he lingered, and my cock responded in kind, liking the contact.

I couldn’t remember the last time someone touched me. Not like this. I refused to think about the kisses John gave me the morning I’d left to go to work and came back to a pyre, but the sense of longing lingered in me. I’d missed being touched. Missed coming home to someone who had a smile on their face solely because I’d come through the door. I wasn’t insane enough to think I’d have that with Trent, but lying next to him on a soft bed made me want more than a wet mouth and a hot, oiled slide of flesh inside of me.