High Voltage (Fever #10)(110)



Well, fuck, he’d silenced me. I’d stand unspeaking for an hour if it meant he’d keep talking like that.

“You’re unbreakable, woman. None of it ever broke you. You’re my fucking holy place. Do you know that? Why the fuck didn’t I ever tell you?”

I swallow hard, tears stinging the backs of my eyes. His holy place. That’s exactly how he feels to me. He’s my temple. I slip into his presence and the world melts away and I’m safe and together we can face anything, do anything, survive anything, always find the next way to be together. I think that’s what love is; holding someone sacred, honoring them, protecting them, living up to the very best of them. The grief, the pain, the fury in his gaze slays me. Humbles me. I will never doubt the depth of this man’s emotion. It’s evident in every too-tightly drawn line of his body, the stony set of his face, the half-wild look in his eyes.

    I drop to my knees before him. Holy hell, he’s beautiful. I’ve never seen him like this, dressed only in a pair of low slung, faded black sweats, skin poured over rippling muscle, glistening gold in the firelight. This is Ryodan slumming. His face shadowed with beard growth I’ve never seen that makes him look diabolic, dark, fascinating. He smells like beast and feral fury and no shower in a long time and I don’t give a damn. He smells exactly right to me. Danger. Edges sharp enough to cut myself on. And I know he’ll heal my every wound if I do. His perfectly cropped hair is long, messy as if he’s been running his hands through it. He’s too lean, skin tight against bone, and I know he hasn’t fed in a long time.

I reach out and place a palm flat to his hard, chiseled chest.

No heartbeat. He definitely hasn’t eaten recently. “You might want to,” I tease. “I plan to wear your ass out tonight. Babe.”

He cocks his head, eyes glittering, nostrils flaring. “Even if I were starved you couldn’t wear my ass out. You’re an illusion. I let you get away. Hell, I fucking threw you away and I shouldn’t have. I should have fought for you. I should have told you everything. I should have persuaded you to reject what was happening.”

I slide my palm from his chest, down over his six-pack abdomen, trailing my fingers lightly over his velvety skin. “You didn’t throw me away. You did the hardest thing possible, sacrificed your own desires for my best interests. Trying to keep me here, almost completely black, unable to ever use my power again would have destroyed us both. Neither of us is wired that way. We push the limits. We adapt. It’s what we do.”

“And my illusion offers absolution,” he says with a snort. “I am getting better at this.”

I drop onto his lap, slinging my legs, one over each side of the chair, and take his face in my hands, stare into his beautiful eyes, fire and ice, blood and steel. “Do I feel like an illusion to you?” My dress is hitched up nearly to the top of my thighs. I lower myself, slowly, firmly, against him. He’s hard. He’s so fucking hard. And I’m so fucking, painfully alive and starved to have him inside me. I don’t need foreplay. Not this time. I just need it done. Him. In. Me. Over and over. Maybe the next time I get to be human we’ll bother with foreplay. Maybe I’m not much of a foreplay kind of woman.

    His hands close on my waist tightly, fingers digging in with anger, with grief. “You never do. I’ve spent hours touching you, holding you, days fucking you in my mind.”

I say lightly, “Do it again. But it’s me. I get to be a woman half the time. Dragon the other half. Still, I only have a week. Y’rill helped me change so I could come back and tell you I was okay, spend time with you until I learn to transform myself.”

“That’s the most lucid, coherent explanation you’ve offered yet,” he says dryly, gaze fixed on my lips.

“Because it’s the true one. Kiss me. See how real I am.”

I drop forward, brush my lips to his and my hands are at the top of his sweats and I’m so damned wet, it’s glistening on my thigh.

He inhales sharply, pulls back, glances down. Then his hand is on my thigh and he’s tracing the slick heat up my leg. He groans, “I don’t recall it ever being quite this real. Fuck!”

“Yes, please,” I say with a half laugh, half growl. “Now.”

Then he’s surging to his feet and he’s pushing me back on the floor on a thick fur rug, and I’m sprawling with my legs spread and his mouth is on my thigh, as he shoves my dress up over my hips, then his mouth closes, warm and wet between my legs and he’s licking and sucking and I hear someone screaming and realize it’s me and holy hell orgasm for me is a full mind-body explosion, my brain flies open and shatters into starry pieces and my body is electrified and I buck against his face as I writhe beneath him, then I’m surging up, still coming, desperate to get him inside me, because I’ve come too many times by my own hand thinking of him and this is real and I want it all and I’m launching myself on top of him, shoving him back to the floor and slamming down on him with violence and lust and need, and his eyes are flying wide and flashing bloodred as he snarls, “Fuck, you’re real!”

    I have no idea what convinced him and I don’t care and I throw my head back and half laugh, half roar as I take Ryodan Killian St. James inside me and clench every muscle in my lower body that I’m so bloody grateful to have and I don’t have to be careful with him because I can never break this man in any way, and I can vibrate—

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