Oracle's Moon (Elder Races #4)(76)

She shivered as his intense male energy slid against hers, and they aligned again. That strange thing they did together felt more than good. It felt incredible. She struggled to ignore it and whispered, “That doesn’t mean I’m wrong.”

“You’re wrong,” he said, with such confidence it shook her. It really shook her. “The kiss wasn’t a disaster. It was perfect.”

She swallowed hard. She didn’t want to think about that kiss, because he was right, it had been perfect. His wonder, their tender exploration. “I…don’t think it counts when you weigh that against everything else.”

“Of course it counts,” he said. He stroked her cheek, down her neck, and along the edge of her neckline. He watched where his fingers trailed, his expression turning hungry. He told her huskily, “I had to release my other form so I could transport back. I do not have the Power to create it a second time in one evening. Although I want to, very much.”

Grace’s heart started to pound. She swallowed hard and whispered, “I shouldn’t have left you like that.”

“I shouldn’t have left you alone at the bar,” he whispered back. His fingertips trailed down her bare arms, then his hands settled firmly on her hips. He lowered his face to hers, slowly, eyes intent.

“We should have left as soon as we saw how busy it was.” Her eyelids felt so heavy. They fluttered shut.

“I should have kissed you a second time in the car. And a third time.” His mouth settled over hers, and he kissed her deeply, in a spiraling aggression that she met with her own escalating urgency. He growled at the back of his throat and muttered against her lips, “This is not the same. But it is still so damned good.”

Arousal pulsed through her in a gush of heat, agonizing and delicious. Her ni**les peaked, and the delicate, private area between her legs ached. Khalil hissed against her lips, and his energy roared in response, a flash fire of raw sexuality.

“Is it…less?” she asked.

“No,” he murmured. “It is different, that is all. But I want to know what it is like to make love to you the way humans do. I have never made love to anyone like that before.”

Never?

She whimpered. “Make love?”

He ran his hot mouth over her cheek and down her neck. “Make love,” he said against the tender skin at the base of her throat. “I want you to teach me everything you know. I want us to teach each other. I want you to show me how good it can feel to be skin to skin. But right now, Gracie…” He lifted his head and looked down at her gravely. “Let me show you how I can make love to you.”

She didn’t even think to say no, because that was how far he took her in a single conversation, how much farther they had come since they had first met. Instead, she looked up into his starred eyes as she slipped her fingers into his midnight hair, pulling it free from the tie as she told him, “Yes, please.”

He smiled as he stroked her face. Then he kissed her again, and all his aggression and intensity came roaring back as he drove deep into her soft, inviting mouth. His sexuality danced along her skin, and her hunger for him flashed hotter, brighter. He groaned, or she did. The silk of his long hair tangled in her fingers as she fisted it, kissing him back with jerky, out of control movements. Then he lifted her up.

Not with his hands.

His presence intensified, and her feet left the ground.

It took a few moments for realization to sink in. Breathing heavily, disoriented, she stopped kissing him. “Wait—are you…?”

“Wait, what?” he asked, cupping her face in both hands as he nipped gently at her lips. At the same time, his large, strong hands spread across her back. “Am I, what?”

What?

She dragged her mouth away and looked around wildly.

She was suspended a few inches off the floor, completely supported in midair. Her feet didn’t dangle. Her knee wasn’t strained in the slightest. Khalil watched her expression with a heavy-lidded gaze, his lips curved in that sinful, sensual smile.

As his hands—both his hands—slid under the hem of her top and spread around the sides of her rib cage, resting against her skin.

And long, hot fingers slid through her short hair, cupping and massaging the back of her head.

And two hands slid down her thighs, to the sensitive skin at the back of her knees, cupping them firmly.

She stared at him, blank with shock. “Khalil.”

His smile widened, a tender, mischievous look. “Relax, I’ve got you,” he murmured. Then his smile was burned to vapor by the incandescence inside of him, and all that was left on his elegant face was savage hunger. “My gods, I can feel you everywhere.”

Because they were aligned, Power to Power, male to female, his presence surrounding and sustaining her. Her lips trembled as she whispered, “I’ve never felt anything like it, like you.”

His diamond eyes blazed. “Good.”

His head drove down, and he took her mouth again, hard, and she lost track of everything. Her thinking burned to ash.

His hands were everywhere at once. Literally. Clever fingers teased her tank top up and caressed the underside of her br**sts, trailing in decreasing circles until they reached her pink-tipped ni**les. He rolled the sensitive tips between thumbs and forefingers.

While clever fingers edged their way under the hem of her shorts, tracing the crease where her bu**ocks met her thighs, easing around to the front and teasing the sensitized skin of her inner thighs before they burrowed gently underneath the elastic of her panties.