Love Me to Death (Underveil, #1)(42)

Feelings? What feelings? He didn’t have any. He said so himself. He felt desire. He had told her that love was a myth fabricated by humans to justify lust. Well, she had plenty of that. As mad as she was, her body still screamed for him. Well, it could scream until it was hoarse. She would never capitulate. If she had to go along with his charade, so be it, but it was only a show.

“Don’t fight me,” he warned, leaning toward her. “She’s watching. They are all waiting for her report.”

Surely, he was joking. But when his gaze shot to the woman behind her, then back to her face, she knew he wasn’t.

“I’m going to kiss you, and you’re going to act like you like it.” He moved closer, as if testing her. “In fact, you are going to like it, because no matter how mad you are, your body knows and wants me.”

His lips touched hers, but the contact was as light as the flutter of a butterfly’s wing.

She drew back to speak. “You can talk all you want, Nikolai, but neither my body nor my mind is listening. That ship sailed and it left without you. The minute this cord is gone, so am I.”

Nikolai knew she was dead serious. She would leave the minute the cord no longer bound them. Well, as much as it pained him, perhaps he should see to it that the cord stayed in place a while longer. At least until he could win her over. Because no matter how f*cked up it was, fate had put them together, and despite the misgivings and obstacles, he planned to keep her.

He leaned in to kiss her again, and she pressed her lips in a thin line. Good thing the woman watching could only see the back of Elena’s head because the look on her face was that of a person who had just swallowed a bug.

After repeated unsuccessful attempts to get her to kiss him back, he lay down, pulling her with him, and covered them with several thick furs. She tried to turn her back to him, but he pinned her in place, facing him, with his hand on her pelvis. “Relax, Elena.” He ran his hand over her perfect, bare, round ass, and he groaned.

“Take your hands off me,” she whispered so quietly he could barely hear it.

If only he had known she hadn’t been asleep when Aleksi had come to the cabin, he could be deep inside her now. How could he have been so careless?

He kept his hand wrapped around her cheek, but stilled. The old woman watched them from the corner of the large covered wagon. These nomadic family groups were notoriously suspicious of outsiders. It was important he convince her they were lovers running away, which was damned hard to do if one of the lovers was rejecting the other.

“Stop fighting me,” he whispered. “We need these people to house us for a day or so until I can teleport again. They won’t do it if they think I lied. We need their cover and trust.” And he needed Elena’s trust. He craved it even more than he craved her body.

He slid his hand up to rest benignly at her waist, and her muscles relaxed slightly. “Just go along with me. Kiss me once to make it look like you are not here against your will.”

“I am.”

The old woman cleared her throat. “She doesn’t want you, eh?” she asked in Romani.

“She does,” he assured with what he hoped was a believable grin. “She is worried about her father. And like all good women, she wants me to work for it.”

The woman laughed. “In my day, I would have made you work for it, too.”

She settled in as if going to bed, but left the lantern lit so she could watch them. Nikolai gritted his teeth. All it would take to set this woman’s mind at ease would be one kiss. One kiss, and they could hide among these people until he was back at full power. Fydor would never think to search for him among humans.

He looked down into Elena’s eyes and ran his hand from her waist to her thigh and back again. “Kiss me once. That’s all it will take. A real kiss.”

“It’s not going to happen.”

Yes, it was. Nikolai bit the inside of his cheek, just enough to taste the coppery tang of blood. Only a drop, probably, but it might to the trick. “Then, I’ll kiss you.”

He kept his hand on her waist and pressed his lips to hers. She remained still as death while he swept the seam of her mouth with his tongue. Then she inhaled sharply though her nose. Her lips parted and her tongue met his. Yes! Finally.

She growled low in her throat and angled her head to deepen the kiss and then pushed him on his back. Nikolai fought for self-control as he looked into her red eyes. He wanted her and didn’t even care if they had an audience. But, being human, she would. And even that tiny bit of blood had driven her out of control, he realized as she swung her leg over him and climbed on top.

Reaching under the parka, he clamped down on her hips to still her. The woman grinned and reached up for the light. After extinguishing it, her rustles indicated she was finally going to bed.

He could have Elena right now, and he’d never wanted anything more in his life, but he knew that when her blood lust faded, so would her lust for him. She would regret it, and he wanted their first time together to be perfect—not a blood lust–induced quickie in front of an old Romani woman in the back of a cart. “Easy, baby,” he said. “That was sufficient to convince her.”

His cock was straining so hard against his jeans he was sure it would bust the zipper. He had no idea she’d react this aggressively. Imagine if he had really bitten down hard, releasing more than a mere drop of blood. He grinned. That would be the plan later, after she cooled off from what Aleksi had said.