Serpent's Kiss (Elder Races #3)(80)

“I, what?” He bent to pick up something at his feet. It was another shopping bag.

“You didn’t dress the way you usually do.”

“I wanted to look nice for you.” He walked toward her, his big swordsman’s body flowing like a panther’s.

He had thrown away his T-shirt and dressed up for her. Her voice came out all husky and wrong, as she accused, “You said you were going to buy yourself new jeans.”

“I did that too,” Rune said. He stopped in front of her and let his gaze travel down the length of her body. A quiet smile touched the corners of his well-cut mouth.

Before she knew it, she heard herself ask, “What do you think?”

“I love it,” he said. “But the important question is, what do you think? Do the boots fit? Is the outfit comfortable?”

“It is, actually.” She scratched her fingers through her strange, short hair. “I’m just surprised. This isn’t what I was expecting.”

His gaze searched hers. “Do you like it?”

She looked down at herself as well. “I do. I’m not sure it’s me though.”

“It can be you if you want it to be,” said the tempter from the Garden of Eden. “Sometimes, you know, as a mood thing.” He held up a finger. “Wait, don’t make up your mind yet. We’re not done.”

She pursed her lips. “What do you mean, we’re not done?” His eyes smiled into hers. “Humor me for a while longer. Please? It won’t hurt. It’s just for fun. And this time it’s not even wicked or bad,” said the voice of original sin. “And you might even like it as well.”

Fun. There was that word again, that incomprehensible, three-letter word. His eyes were so warm and inviting, as warm as his body, and more compelling than any fire. It was so easy to indulge him when he coaxed, she found herself smiling back. “Whatever. Just, fine.”

“Thank you, Carling,” he murmured. He kissed her lightly and took her by the hand, and she found herself going back into the bathroom with him. He coaxed her into sitting on the counter. Then he dumped the contents of the shopping bag onto the counter beside her. She looked down at a pile of Guerlain cosmetics and burst out laughing.

Rune opened up a palette of eye color and held it up to her face, considering. He nodded and set it aside.

“You’ve got to be joking,” she said.

Next he opened a blusher compact, held it up to her face, and considered again. He squinted an eye, shrugged then set the blusher aside.

“Rune,” Carling said, staring at him. She had no words to describe the incredulity she felt.

“What?” He gave her that sleepy, dangerous smile. “You said you’d humor me,” he said. “So humor me.”

Carling said, “But I have phone calls to make.”

“Seremela is on her way, the Djinn is working on his task, and any phone calls that need to be made can wait fifteen minutes.” As she struggled to find some argument, Rune raised an eyebrow. “Am I right?”

She heaved a put-upon sigh, because really, sometimes there was just no other way to communicate something.

“I know,” he soothed as he opened a packet containing a sable brush. “High-heeled boots, jeans and now this. It’s all so very hard to take.”

“You have no idea,” she muttered.

“Hush. Now close your eyes.”

Then, because humoring him for fifteen minutes would be much faster than arguing with him, she did just that. After all, it wasn’t as if she had never worn makeup before. She had worn makeup countless times. During the Roman Empire, she’d had a cosmetae just for the purpose of putting on her cosmetics. She had worn her face and hair powdered in the Rococo style, in mid-eighteenth-century France. She had grown to find the canvass of her own face so utterly boring she had walked away from all of it long ago.

But for Rune to take such a ludicrous notion into his head, to do this here, now. It turned something that had become old, cynical and eventually tedious into something utterly strange, erotic and somehow touching.

She gripped the edge of the counter with both hands in the effort to hold still as he made love to her face. He stroked brushes over her sensitive skin. He prompted her to tilt her head with a featherlight touch of fingers and barely audible murmur. She felt the heat of his body burn against the outside of her knee as he leaned his hip against her leg. She smelled the scent of his arousal as she listened to the sound of his unhurried breathing and the light shift of cloth against skin when he moved.

It was clear that he had no agenda of seducing her into sex, and none of it felt like objectification. He merely enjoyed her, and it was such a new experience it threw her back to that first new experience, that terrifying time when she was made up with kohl, green malachite and red ochre so that she could seduce a god. How strange, that something that happened so long ago could still have the power to fill her eyes with tears.

Or maybe that was just Rune, reawakening her soul.

And she let him.

“Purse your lips,” Rune murmured.

She did, and he kissed her mouth with soft lipstick. She opened her eyes the merest sliver to look at his quiet, intent face. The light from over the bathroom mirror shone in his eyes and filled them with light. He put a forefinger under her chin to hold her in place as he studied her.