Dragos Goes to Washington (Elder Races #8.5)(8)

Closing his incandescent eyes, he turned that feral, inhuman face into her caress and pressed his lips to her palm.

“How many thrusts was that?” His voice had gone guttural.

It took a moment for the meaning of his words to sink in. As wrecked she was, she burst out laughing weakly. “See? It’s like I told you—I get so busy with my own pows, I don’t pay any attention to what you’re doing.”

Breathing hard, he pulled out. Before she had a chance to make a disappointed face at his abrupt departure, he took her in a strong, unbreakable grip and flipped her so that she lay on her stomach, with the pillow still underneath her hips.

“Then don’t mind me,” he growled. “I’ll carry on without you. Because I’m not done yet.”

Not done yet.

The words ran down her spine in a liquid sizzle.

He had reached for the mating frenzy. Oh gods. It sent her muscles to shaking again, a deep, uncontrollable reaction.

Strength and energy flooded back into her limbs. She came up on her elbows. Tucking her knees in, she raised herself to him. It was one of the most primitive and enjoyable positions, and it satisfied something animalistic deep inside her.

Looking over her shoulder, she whispered, “I’m ready when you are, big guy. Let’s go.”

Like darkness eclipsing the moon, he came over her. It felt so right, so good as he penetrated her. It felt necessary. Closing her eyes, still shaking, she opened herself up and let her own mating frenzy come.

At one point, someone knocked on their door. When Dragos roared for them to go away, they did so, laughing. It was Eva.

Pia managed to pull herself together enough to say telepathically to the other woman, Please feed Liam supper, and tell him Mommy and Daddy are very tired and will see him in the morning.

Sure, I’ll tell him, Eva said. But you know he knows better, right?

It’s called polite fiction, Pia snapped. That’s what families tell each other, right?

From down the hall, Eva laughed harder.

Pia was tempted to snap at her again, but just then Dragos did something to her to make her eyes roll back in her head, and the rest of the world faded away.

The rest of the evening and the night passed in a heated blaze, until finally exhaustion lay an inexorable claim on her and she fell asleep, draped bonelessly across Dragos’s chest with his fists clenched in her hair.

Sometime later, much later, awareness brought her out of a deep sleep.

The first thing she noticed was that she was alone in bed, and every muscle ached. It was a good, deep ache that came from utter satiation.

Warm sunlight lay across one arm and shoulder.

Sunlight?

She managed to get one eye unglued. It revealed another bright, sunny day outside the nearby open balcony windows.

Sunlight never poured through those windows until late morning and early afternoon. They were so, so, so late, and she hadn’t even packed yet.

“Oh, no,” she muttered. It came out more like a croak.

“I’ve got to tell you, lover. That’s not the most rousing thing you’ve ever said after a full night of lovemaking.”

Dragos’s voice came from across the room. With an immense effort, she turned her head and let it plop back down on the pillow.

Dragos lounged on a nearby chaise. He had showered although he hadn’t shaved, and he had dressed in jeans while remaining shirtless and barefoot. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw that he had the bedroom TV turned to a news channel with the volume muted. He had his laptop on his lap, but as she watched, he set it aside.

“It’s so late, and I haven’t finished packing,” she said. “What am I saying? I haven’t even managed to sit upright yet.”

One side of the bed dipped as he knelt on it to reach over to her. Pressing his mouth to her shoulder blade, he said against her skin, “I packed.”

At the touch of his lips on her sensitive skin, heat coiled low in her body. She pushed it away, eyeing Dragos warily. “What do you mean, you packed?”

“I mean, I packed. Everything. My stuff, and your stuff.” Running a flattened hand down her back, he nodded to the doorway.

She rose up on her elbows to look. All the suitcases were stacked by the door. “Makeup?”

“You had everything set on the counter.”

She could hardly believe it. Dragos was the least domesticated person she knew. Scanning the floor, she found that it was bare of all the clothes he had tossed the previous night. “Toiletries?”

“Yes, your toiletries too. Don’t look so skeptical. I watch what you do every day. I know what you use.” His voice had deepened again as he kept stroking her back.

He loved to touch her, but late as it was, they couldn’t afford to get lost in the mating frenzy again, or they would be two days late getting to D.C. and miss the White House thing altogether.

She reached for his hand, meaning to push him away, but somehow her fingers got tangled up with his instead.

Pulling his hand to her, she rested her cheek on it and mumbled, “Jewelry.”

Even as she said it, she knew it was the most stupid of all her questions. Knowing him, he had probably packed the jewelry first, and only after he had gone through the case thoroughly in order to admire the jewels inside.

“You had your travel jewelry case out and ready to go,” he said. “What do you think?”