Embraced (The Eternal Balance #2)(25)

I waited for her to head into the bathroom, but she stayed where she was, back to me and head bent low. A moment later, she peeked over her shoulder, through a curtain of satiny hair, and undid the buttons of her jeans. Slowly, deliberately, she inched them down. Over her hips. Down her thighs. When she couldn’t reach any more, she bent at the waist, much farther than she needed to, and proceeded to slide the denim to her ankles.

An image of me rushing forward and grabbing her from behind rampaged through my mind. Right hand twisted around chunks of her long brown hair, I pulled back hard, tilting her head as far as it would go. My left hand kneaded her breast, sliding down to the waistband of her underwear. A moment of hesitation and then they slipped inside, fingers plunging into warm, heavenly folds.

She pushed back against me, the most delectable moan coming from deep in her throat as I moved my fingers in a circular motion. Her breath quickened, and—

The vision faded to black. In a way, the abrupt ending was worse than seeing it through. It left me raw and wanting, a single, twitching nerve in need of attention. “Sammy, don’t…”

“What?” She tossed her hair and peered over her shoulder again. Her grin was wicked. She knew exactly what she did to me. The way she twisted things up and set fire to my veins. “You can’t touch, but no one said you couldn’t look.” She stepped out of the jeans and faced me again, hooking both her thumbs into the waist of her barely-there thong. “You do want to look, right? I can feel it.”

Reason said turn around and walk out the door. Wait for things to cool off. She was jacked up on my emotions and desires, picking them up through the damn link. That’s the only reason she’d do this—purposefully try to drive me insane. It made spending any amount of time together as dangerous as a carload of Molotov Cocktails. There wasn’t any second of the day I didn’t think about her. No moment passed without fantasizing what it would be like to touch her. If it was true, and the link between us dumped even a fraction of my emotion into her, then we were a nuclear warhead waiting for detonation.

Because the cold, hard truth was there really was no such thing as just looking when it came to her. I still felt the vision. The length of her pressed up against me. The sounds she made. The feel of her on my fingertips, warm and slick. I was suffocating and Sam was the air.

I was on the other side of my bed, close to the door. Two steps. Maybe three. I could be out in the cool air in less than ten seconds.

Or I could be on the other side of the room in three.

I sailed over the bed. She fell forward onto her own mattress, and I was on her. “I need so much more than a look,” I whispered. As in the vision, I grabbed a handful of her long hair and pulled back so that I could whisper in her ear. “There is no way for me to simply look at you without touching. I want you. It wants you. Do you have any f*cking idea what that feels like?”

She shimmied, twisting her body to create a friction that made my eyes roll back. “I know what it feels like,” she said, her voice almost a growl. “And I know it’s against the rules, but I don’t care.”

I let go of her hair and shifted my weight, then turned her so that we were eye to eye. Her colors swirled, a mix of orange and pink—lust and hope—blazing against the muddiness. The demon stirred, its desire to feed overridden only by the craving it had for Sam. It was a war. Between my body and my mind. Between my word and my need. The demon’s need. Sam was a magnet and the pull was uncompromising. Relentless. I was nothing more than an object caught in her orbit.

I kissed her. Fierce. Savage. Our lips moved together, rough and bruising, and she was all there was. The demon inside shuddered with a wave of contentment at having gotten its way. Our way. But beneath that was the sting. The building pain that came from my happiness. It wasn’t something I could prevent—demons couldn’t stomach human happiness—and in that moment neither Azi nor I cared. All that mattered was the sensation of Sam beneath my fingers.

She moaned into my mouth and pushed up against me. The thin layers of fabric that separated us were too restricting. I needed to feel her. All of her. I grabbed the edge of my shirt and tugged it over my head, then yanked hers up. It snagged just below her chin. Sam reached for it, but as far as I was concerned, it was wasted time. I seized her wrists, dragging them above her head and pinning them there.

“If we—what will happen if—”

I reclaimed her lips, savoring the faint taste of cherries that lingered from her Chap Stick. The kiss left no room for argument. No allowance for questions. We were past that now. A boulder rolling downhill.

“I don’t give a f*ck,” I whispered, pulling away just enough to speak. I reached for the button of my jeans and yanked down the zipper. As soon as I did, everything went to hell.

The keening sound was like a bomb going off inside my head, but it stirred a feeling deep inside. A primal instinct that drowned out all good sense. The flash came next—a darkened female form writhing beneath me. It whispered strange words I didn’t understand, yet the sound of them ignited something feral and raw. Azi surged beneath my skin, pushing for dominance. Demanding it. I gave in, unable to pull myself from the intensity of Sam’s touch, and surrendered wholly to the demon. My movements became its own. My hands, Azirak’s tools. It hooked my fingers around the waistband of Sam’s underwear and tugged an inch. Then, another. She faded in and out, oscillating between herself and the faceless female demon.