Serpent's Kiss (Elder Races #3)(55)

“A Djinn.” He barked out a laugh. “Is this the same Djinn that kidnapped Niniane and threw Tiago into a frenzy?”

“The very same,” she told him.

He swiveled to look at her. A strange angry feeling gnawed at his insides. “What did you do for him that got you three favors?”

Her expression shuttered. “That is not my story to tell.”

“It had to have been a hell of a thing to get a Demonkind that Powerful indebted to you.” He said roughly, “You had to have given him something rare and precious, something no one else could have given him. And he had to have wanted it very badly.”

Carling raised her perfect brows. She said, “All of that is true.”

He felt goaded by her impenetrability, by what clawed at him from within. He started to growl.

Her eyes widened in surprise. “Are you growling at me?” Her face hardened. “Whatever the hell is going on with you, I suggest you think twice about it.”

Instead of stopping, he actually bared his teeth at her. Bared his teeth. He turned her chair while she was still in it, moving so fast she made a muffled sound of surprise. He slapped his hands onto the table on either side of her, pinning her in her seat. “What did you do for him?”

She looked from one side to the other at his corded arms trapping her in place. The angle of her slim eyebrows turned wicked. “Remember what I said earlier? Do not try to restrict my movements.”

“Damn it, Carling,” he hissed. He leaned down close so that she came nose-to-nose with his angry face. “Now is not the time to cop an attitude with me.”

“Pause that.” She flicked his chin with a forefinger, hard. “Who’s copping an attitude here?”

His expression turned murderous. “Your life is riding on what happens next, and maybe mine is too. You know how capricious and malicious the Demonkind can be.”

“I know exactly what the Demonkind can be. Khalil and I have known each other for a very long time.”

“What did you give him that got you three favors?”

“That’s none of your business!”

“Like hell,” he bit out.

She glared at him, her dark eyes snapping. “He’s the one who came to me. He asked me for help, and he offered me three favors. He has no reason to resent me, and now he can’t renege, and that’s all you need to know.” She thrust her face even closer so that the tips of their noses touched. “Now get out of my face, Wyr.”

The low, rough sound he emitted at that was infuriating, fascinating. Wait. Was he still growling? Or was he purring? His eyes drifted half closed. He gave her a heavy-lidded, sleepy, sensual, entirely disingenuous look.

“Make me,” he said. “Witch.”

The force of feeling that punched out of him was stronger than anything she could remember sensing before from anyone, the molten sirocco that reformed her world.

Violence. Rage.

Not simple hunger. A voracious, ravening urgency.

It clawed all common sense from her bones.

She growled back, shoved him away, and then she launched out of her chair to body slam him.

Surprise bowled him over more than anything else. He fell back onto the floor with a force that would have knocked the breath out of anyone human, and she came right along with him. Still growling, she landed on her knees straddling his body and planted her hands on either side of his head. Her loose caftan rode up to her bare thighs, and her hair came loose and spilled all over them in an extravagant waterfall of midnight silk.

He stared up at her, transfixed, all the rage knocked out of him.

He was such a beautiful man. He was far more beautiful than he had any right to be, and then he started to laugh and his handsome face creased with vivid recklessness. Her legs tightened until she gripped his long, lean torso with her calves, and there was so much Power that coursed through the massive muscled body between her legs, it caused a railroad spike of need to slam into her body from the long-dormant nerve endings at the apex of her legs.

As old and disciplined as she was, as solitary as she had been, out of choice as much as anything, it was all too much for a woman to take. She made a muffled sound and reached for him with both greedy hands.

He surged into a sitting position even as she sank her fists into his tangled hair. His arms came around her waist. Her legs were still on either side of him, and he yanked her down onto his pelvis so that the empty part of her that ached so desperately slammed onto the hard swollen length of his erection. He jammed his open mouth over hers.

Then they were together, locked in the same place of extremity, shoving their tongues into each other. Nothing about it was gentle or civilized. She jerked at his hair, pulling it with enough force it had to have hurt. He hissed against her lips. He pulled her lower torso closer as he ground upward onto her, hard, with his hips.

She was locked rigid into place, her need so severe that when she tried to pry her fingers out of his hair, she couldn’t. All of her plotting, all of her fine thinking, was vaporized until what was left came out of her in a thin, shaking animal whine.

His lungs worked like bellows. Heat blazed out of him. The rough vibrating rumble in his chest turned into a raw groan. He ran one hand up her spine to grip the back of her head, supporting her head and shoulders on his arm. With his other arm, he clenched her hips firmly against him. She took the hint and wrapped her legs around his waist as he rose up on his knees. He bent over to place her on the floor and then he came down with her, until there it was, what she had envisioned for what had seemed like forever, as she lay down with weighted limbs and his heavy body settled full on her.