Storm echo, p.26
Storm Echo, page 26
Psy couldn’t be so very different.
And fact was fact: the man was gorgeous and sexy and even if he’d never dropped his mask of frigid ice, a lot of women liked dancing with danger. He would’ve had no problem filling his bed every night had he wished it.
As if summoned up by her thoughts, their waitress returned to the table. “Is everything all right?” she asked brightly, subtly angling her body toward Ivan. “Do you need anything else? Anything at all?”
“Everything is fine,” Ivan said, his tone polite but empty of any ounce of emotion. It was as if he hadn’t even noticed that the woman was all but salivating over him. “Thank you for your assistance.”
“Of course.” The waitress gave a tight smile and walked away.
Soleil almost felt sorry for her. Ivan Mercant packed a serious punch.
“To answer your question,” Ivan said after the waitress was out of earshot. “The only woman I’ve ever considered in that context is sitting across from me. You walked out of the forest and something inside me hungered. For your smile, for your words, and for your touch.”
Her cheeks went hot at what was outwardly a cool and curt recitation, her breasts heavy and taut. “Eat,” she rasped. “You’re going to need your energy.” Because her cat was through with waiting—and so, it seemed, was the man with eyes as cold as frost.
She couldn’t take her gaze from him as he began to fuel his body with focused attention. A beautiful, honed knife of a body. Her hands itched to trace the lines of his muscles, learn the places where he was hard and where he was soft, nuzzle her nose into the curve of his neck, kiss and lick every inch of ink on his skin.
Snapping up his head without warning, Ivan pulled back the sleeve of his blazer to reveal a communications device as small as a watch. When he swiped it over the reader on the table, she realized it must hold a credit chip, too. The screen glowed blue to show that they’d cleared their bill, complete with suggested tip.
“Ivan—”
A single glance that made it clear he was in no mood to wait. And she remembered … they were bonded. In a way that sent erratic bursts of information across from one to the other.
And she’d just been indulging in fantasies erotic and wild.
As she watched with her heart in her throat, he caught the attention of a busboy and asked the lanky youth—who Soleil’s nose told her was a leopard juvenile—to package up their mostly uneaten food to go. “Fast as you can.” He slid a physical credit token onto the table, the amount it represented equal to half their bill.
Eyes going wide, the juvenile moved, and had the food back to them in a matter of minutes. The boy pocketed the tip after Ivan thanked him for his quick work, then grinned and went to hug Soleil before hesitating. Smiling, she wrapped her arms around him and squeezed tight. He was one of hers now, a cub to protect.
Wrapping his arms around her in turn, he squeezed her back as hard. “Welcome to the pack,” he said, the scent of him sharp and young and wild.
“Thank you, baby.” It just came out, that gently affectionate word.
He blushed and ducked his head but took it with a smiling roll of his eyes. Because she was a healer, and this was a pack in which healers were cherished and respected.
As she was heading to the door, she realized she didn’t know the boy’s name. But that was okay. Because she had his scent and he already felt safe enough with her to have hugged her. Even with her deadly Psy right next to her the entire time. Because the boy had sensed that Ivan was no threat to him—children knew, they always knew. “Thank you for indulging the cub.”
A curt nod. “He was excited to see you.”
She went to reply but Ivan put his hand on her lower back as she walked out the front door and her mind short-circuited, her cat remembering exactly where they’d been before the small interruption. Her body snapped right back to taut, exquisite readiness. She wanted to arch her back and moan, the slight contact a tease she could hardly bear.
The sun out on the street was a burn on her overheated, oversensitized flesh, her clothing suddenly too heavy, too rough against skin that wanted only to touch skin. “Ivan.” A husky plea.
He took her hand, the bag of food in his other. “We’re going home.” Cool, controlled words that crept over her skin like a caress from an assassin’s blade. “You can eat after.”
After.
She almost orgasmed then and there.
Chapter 40
Lover, lover
Die for me
In this sweet kiss
This carnal b—
—“Unfinished work 7” by Adina Mercant, poet (b. 1832, d. 1901)
IVAN DID HIS research before every operation. He liked plans, liked having worked out every possible scenario.
He’d have researched sexual contact with the same single-minded determination had he ever believed Soleil would come back into his life and want to interact that way with him. But he hadn’t, and so he had no plans, nothing but an urgent physical drive that threatened to wipe his mind of all rational thought.
He fought it long enough to say, “You’re sure? Even knowing—”
“I’m sure.” Her voice was breathless from the speed of their walk, her eyes no longer human … and the erotic images that kept flashing into his brain without warning an education.
He could do that. And that.
He hesitated. So many of the images were of her touching him, caressing him. As if she found him as much a compulsion as he found her. His penis threatened to go fully erect; the only reason it hadn’t already done so was that he’d thrown literally all his years of control into suffocating the reaction until they were in the apartment.
He still barely made it.
Slamming the door behind them with a force he’d never before shown, he used his palmprint to activate full security, then ran a telepathic scan as Soleil raced up the stairs ahead of him. He followed, his heart pounding and his skin so hot that he half expected to see steam coming off it.
No intruders detected in his telepathic scan.
He set it to run automatically in the background as he entered the bedroom behind Soleil and shut the door. First, he put the food carefully aside. She hadn’t eaten; he’d seen that. He’d feed her after, his need to look after her a driving force. But first, he had to touch her, the hunger inside him a new thing he didn’t have the language to describe.
As he pulled off his blazer, she threw off his jacket.
He was only three buttons into unbuttoning his shirt when she kicked off her trainers and tore her dress off over her head. Her bra joined the pile of clothing a heartbeat later. His brain just … shut down.
She was …
Mouth dry, he swallowed, unable to take his eyes off her as she walked toward him, her breasts bouncing a little with each step. She stopped when almost to him and raised her hands to squeeze her own breasts, her lips plump and her pupils dilated. “Ivan, I need your touch.”
Ivan needed no further instructions.
Snapping out of his frozen state, he covered the distance between them in a single stride and hauled her against him, one hand on the back of her neck, the other splayed on her lower back.
When she gasped, he fought to think. “Was I too rough?”
A small growl in answer, before his changeling lover hooked her legs around his waist with a single jump, her claws kneading lightly at his shoulders as she nipped at his throat. Ivan’s erection was a thing of stone by now, rigid almost beyond bearing, but her lips, her teeth, her mouth as she explored his throat threatened to push him over the edge.
“I don’t have control,” he gritted out.
Wild eyes holding his. “Neither do I.” A tearing sound, his shirt in shreds around them.
Ivan protected his clothes. They were important. Except now. Now, he just wanted to be naked. Groaning as Soleil pasted herself against his bare chest and claimed his lips for a kiss, he palmed her buttocks with one hand and walked them toward the bed while they kissed.
A rational part of his mind knew that he was probably technically very bad at the skill, but Soleil didn’t seem to care. She devoured him, and he devoured her in turn, and all the while, her thighs gripped his hips, as if she’d climb him. Ride him.
Soleil ripped away her mouth, her lips wet in the aftermath. “God, yes. I want to ride you into oblivion.”
Another transfer through their bond.
Pulling her head back to his with a hand fisted in the softness of her hair, he kissed her hard and deep, using all the things he’d learned in the first round. When she bit lightly at his lip and pushed at his shoulders, he released her directly onto the bed. He knew what she wanted, could see it in his mind. Flashes of his body, of his skin, of his erect penis.
His hands shook as he tried to undo his belt. “Fuck.” Ivan rarely swore; it was about control, about maintaining discipline—but he didn’t have any today.
When Soleil got up on her hands and knees and crawled across the bed to kneel in front of him, her face at eye level with his abdomen, he forgot to breathe. “Lei.” Fisting his hand in her hair again, he let her take over, let her undo his belt, lower his zipper with care over the steely outline of his erection.
Black, his mind went black.
When he stumbled back from her, she made a rumbling sound in her throat that was very much a growl. But he couldn’t be close to her and not break. And he didn’t want this over. Kicking off his shoes and socks, he tore off what remained of his clothing.
His erection jutted out, wet at the tip.
Soleil was off the bed and on him before he saw her move.
Changeling.
Cat.
Taking him to the ground in a tumble he controlled so she wouldn’t hit the floor first, she rubbed her body against his, his erection captured between her thighs, sliding between her slick folds. And he realized she must’ve torn off her own panties.
His back arched, his eyes threatening to roll back in his head. Gripping her hips, he shifted her so that she was astride him. Then he said, “Take me.” Because he was hers, had been hers from the moment she walked out of the forest.
Primal eyes but tender fingers brushing over his lips, she didn’t draw it out. Neither one of them was in any mood for slow. Slow would hurt today. Moving into position, she pressed a kiss to his throat … and then she took him. With a wild possessiveness that left him with fine claw marks on his chest and a passionate tenderness that had her hair cocooning them in softness as she kissed him even as her body moved with erotic abandon.
His brain had no pathways to process this experience, so he just gave in and surrendered to her. To his cat who owned him, body and soul. And when his spine locked, his entire body turning to stone before it broke into a million splintered stars, she fell over the edge with him, her cry high and her head thrown back to reveal the line of her neck.
It bore the mark of his lips.
SOLEIL wasn’t sure she was still alive. She could hear someone’s pulse. Maybe it was hers. Or maybe it was that of the man on whom she lay, his inked skin her pillow and her hands spread out over him. They were all but pasted together with sweat, and his hand was fisted in her hair, his other one on her butt.
He liked doing both, she realized hazily. That was fine with her. She liked it. She’d have made it clear if she didn’t. And he didn’t seem to mind the light scratches she’d given him. She stroked her fingers over them now, smiling in satisfaction, the cat inside her smug. “I’ve marked you.”
A rumble under her was the only response.
She smiled again, kneading lightly at his chest with her claws while she just enjoyed the full-body contact with the man who was her mate. Of course he was; there was no question on that point. She’d also figured out why the bond hadn’t completed itself—because her Psy was trying to protect her.
Honestly, she’d be irritated with him if she didn’t adore him. Also right now, she was pleasure drunk. Her toes couldn’t even curl, they were so lazily sated.
She kissed his chest again.
He flexed his fingers in her hair, curled them back in.
As he lazily stroked her bottom, her eye fell on a shred of white not far away. “Damn,” she muttered. “That was my last pair of panties.”
“We’ll go shopping.” His voice was husky and languid in a way she’d never before heard from Ivan Mercant.
Curious about what he looked like in the aftermath of what had been an unashamedly carnal bout, she made herself rise up into a seated position, her bottom half against his abdomen. Then she took in her lover.
His perfect hair was deliciously mussed, the ice blue of his eyes foggy, and his lips delicately bruised. Kiss-bruised. Touching her fingers to her own lips, she smiled. “We’re a pair.” And that was before she took in the scratches on his neck. Oh, her cat was sneaky, all right. It had marked him where no one could miss it.
His eyes shifted from her face to her throat.
“What?” she said.
“I marked you, too.”
Delighted by the idea, she wanted to find a mirror, see, but she wanted to be with him more, so she prowled up so they were nose to nose, her hair thrown over one shoulder to pool against one side of his body. “Hi.”
He ran a hand over her spine. “Hi.”
They just looked at each other and oh, they were kissing. Slowly, and with intense focus, as if nothing else existed in the entire world. And it didn’t, not for these moments in time caught between pieces of chaos. This time was theirs, and Soleil intended to enjoy them to the hilt, well aware that Ivan’s priorities would have to shift the instant he was back up to full psychic strength.
She was a healer, had no argument with his priorities. Those people needed him.
But that time hadn’t yet come, so she could monopolize him without guilt. Kiss him with lush eroticism while he touched her as if he’d never touched anything so beautiful, even though she was too thin, her ribs and hip bones sticking out, barely any curves to her.
Then there were the scars. So many scars quite aside from the familiar ones from the childhood accident. Changelings had good healing capabilities but she’d been badly wounded, and her body had directed its energy into keeping her alive. The scars would fade over time, but they were yet rigid and obvious.
The one where the ax had thunked into her back was the deepest, but there were myriad others, all of which Ivan touched and stroked the same as he did the unmarked parts of her body. As if learning her piece by piece.
And the way he’d looked at her when she’d first stripped for him? Oh, the man had been fixated on her breasts, hadn’t given a fig about any scars. He’d just wanted to put his hands on her. It made her lips curve as she made her way down his body.
Because her Ivan had loved her body before, and he loved her body now. She could imagine him touching her just the same when she was an elder of a hundred and twenty with skin seamed by life and bones that no longer worked quite the same. And oh how she hoped they’d get that moment—and all the ones that came before it.
Kissing the image of her he had written on his skin, she found herself being tugged up by a gentle pull on her hair when she would’ve wriggled her way farther down.
Lifting her head, she said, “I’m not done.”
“I want to taste you as you imagined.”
Soleil parted her lips to ask what he was talking about, but then he squeezed her hips in a nudge to move up and she got it. Her entire body went hot. She blushed at the sheer brazenness of her thoughts, but fantasizing about naughty things with her man wasn’t a crime.
“We need to get a control on this bond,” she muttered, her cheeks hot.
Ivan shaped her buttocks with his hands. “No. I like instructions and suggestions in this area.” Then he urged her higher.
And because she had about as much willpower as a noodle when it came to resisting him, she went. Up, and up. Until he was gripping her hips to hold her in position, and tasting her exactly as she’d fantasized.
He drove her insane.
It wasn’t about technique or sophistication. No, it was about Ivan Mercant’s sheer enthusiasm for the task. He explored her with his tongue and his lips as if he couldn’t get enough of her, his attention to detail on luscious display. Soleil whimpered and came.
He licked her through it.
Then started all over again—after pressing a tender kiss to the inside of her thigh.
God, the man was lethal.
Chapter 41
Dear Aunt Rita,
I’ve been dating my Psy neighbor for a month and things are getting physical. Only the thing is, he’s a virgin. I’m fine with that, but I think he feels a little lost so he stops things anytime the flames start to burn.
What do you think I could do to put him at ease, because I really, really want to jump his hottie bones. (I did ask him if he wanted to exchange skin privileges and got a definite yes.)
͠Mare who wants to be Bare
Dear Mare who wants to be Bare,
First thing—you may need to slow this express train to Orgasmsville to allow your lover to catch up. Remember, Psy have only just begun to embrace touch.
Secondly, I suggest leaving the current issue of Wild Woman just lying around when he’s in the vicinity—opened to page 27. You’re welcome.
͠Aunt Rita
—From the August 2083 issue of Wild Woman magazine: “Skin Privileges, Style & Primal Sophistication”
SOLEIL WAS SUNK. Because if this was the sexual education of Ivan Mercant, she definitely didn’t feel like the teacher. “No more.” She tugged at his hair after a second orgasm racked her, her internal muscles clenching over and over.
Another kiss to her thigh before he released her so she could wriggle her way down to collapse over his body. His cock, hard and ready, burned a line of heat against her thigh.
“I’m up for it,” she managed to gasp, “but my muscles seem to have melted.”
A big hand in her hair, a kiss pressed to the side of her face, the scent of Ivan in her every breath as he shifted to a seated position, taking her with him. Then he was somehow on his feet with her in his arms. She kept forgetting how highly trained he was, his muscles honed to an edge.
