In For the Kill (McClouds & Friends #11)(29)

Her offhand attitude about pain pissed him off. “I don’t want to be the one who hurts you! Don’t set me up for that ever again!”

“Shhh.” She pressed her silk-and-velvet-textured, honey-scented self against him. “It’s not pain I want. It’s pleasure. You flood me with it. You fill me with it. Here, feel me.” She took his hand and pressed it against the slick seam of her *, gasping as his fingers slipped inside. She was drenched. Plush and soft and yielding. “I’m so ready,” she pleaded. “Let me feel you inside me.”

Her delicious womanly scent made him dizzy, drunk. “My cock,” he said thickly. “Be specific. Say, let me feel your cock inside me.”

She squirmed sexily around his hand and whispered obediently. “Let me feel your cock inside me.”

He looked into her eyes, and the battle was over before it began. She could see straight to forever, in there. Endless distances, horizons upon horizons, whenever she looked at him. He cringed from the pain he knew would follow this suicidal idiocy, but he was dead meat anyway, so why not finish the job? Grind that motherf*cker into slop.

Sveti’s clear hazel eyes did not waver. “Do it, Sam.”

That uppity empress-of-everything tone just squeezed his nuts. He wanted to throw himself at her feet. Offer her his heart’s blood. Here, take it. It’s yours, anyway. At the same time, he wanted to drag her off that stupid pedestal. Pull her down to his earthly level, for pizza and beer. To grab and touch and hug and kiss and lick and f*ck and love.

But no way. She was having none of it. She wanted a little teasing taste, that was all. Then she’d fly off again to her lonesome heights.

“I’ll try to be gentle,” he said. “But when I get started with you, I never know what’ll happen. I forget my own goddamned name.”

“I know,” she soothed. “That’s what makes it so good.” She soothed him with a rain of gentle kisses against his jaw, and his cheek, his lips. He loved it. Though it made the pain infinitely worse.

“You can’t fight me,” he warned. “I won’t do it if you fight me.”

“I’ll be good. Move off me, so I can grab a condom, okay?”

He rolled off reluctantly, as if she would vanish into smoke. She stretched to grab a condom from his stash.

He’d let her deal with the condom, but almost ended up blowing his wad right then, from her tender squeezing and stroking. She tried several times to get the thing rolled on. It kept snapping off, and after minutes of that, he was shaking with silent laughter.

She shot him an irritated glance. “You could help, you know.”

He grabbed his engorged member and held it steady for her, hissing with pleasure as she smoothed the latex down.

“You said you had a contraceptive implant,” he said.

“Yes.” She followed up with a slow twist that made him gasp.

“But you’re a virgin,” he said. “Why the implant? What for?”

She shrugged. “I wasn’t happy being a virgin. I figured, my life might include sex at some point, but not babies.”

“No babies? Really? Ever? I thought you liked babies.”

“Sure, I like them. I just don’t want to have them.”

That surprised him. “But you always seemed so into the little kids,” he said. “Consumed, even. They hung off you. Like ripe fruit.”

“As coping mechanisms go, little kids are better than most,” she said. “You can’t feel sorry for yourself when you’re with them. You’re too busy, and they don’t care about your problems, no matter how bad they are. I like who I am with kids better than I like myself with adults.”

“I like who you are with me,” he said rashly.

“Sam,” she said. “I offer you my naked body, and you stall me with questions about how many babies I want. What’s wrong with you?”

“The only time you’ll really talk to me is when you’re offering me your naked body.” He cut off her reply with his mouth and bore her down onto the bed. Her body shuddered, resisting. He lifted his head.

“You promised,” he said. “Don’t fight me, Sveti. Relax.”

Her chest jerked as she tried to sigh out tension. “What if I can’t?”

“Then we wait until you do.”

“But . . . but what if I never . . .” Her throat bobbed.

“Then you’ll miss your plane.” He settled on top of her and resumed kissing. He would have this surrender, if he got nothing else.

It took a long time for him to get her there, but he’d have been happy to wind himself around her body forever. She kept dragging in all the air her lungs could take, releasing it in a shuddering sigh.

He timed his breaths to hers. Rolled onto his side to give her more air, and slid his hand between her thighs. Breathing with her. Hearts in unison. Slow, lazy, plundering kisses, as he played that pearly pink clit delicately with his thumb. Willing to wait, and wait. As long as it took.

He lifted his head later. The candle’s flame had burned to a dim glow deep in a waxen cavity. Her hair was spread out on the pillow, her lips parted from his kisses, eyes dazzled and heavy. Soft, relaxed. Ready.

He settled between her legs. Her face looked so different when she relaxed. She glowed, from the inside, with a soft-focus shimmer.