25. Chapter 25

CHAPTER 25

I zzie’s head on his chest shifted, and she nuzzled her nose into him, her breath a warm tickle against his skin. “Can we move down to the floor?”

Hell and damnation. Was it any wonder he was infatuated with this woman?

He buried his fingers into the thick of her hair as a smile touched the edges of his lips. “I was just thinking about how long I was going to lie here with my eyes open, unable to sleep because of the bed, but not willing to give up your naked body on top of me.”

She tilted her head to look at him, her chin resting on his chest, and a blush touched the apples of her cheeks. “I can remove myself. I don’t really know what to do after…that…this.”

For all of her well-honed skills at being deceptive as a guardian, she was an innocent. At least in this.

He found it oddly reassuring. Especially after all her lies. Most of the women he’d taken to bed in his younger years had been experienced. He’d only once had a virgin on his cock and he would have avoided that one had he known. But with Izzie, that he was the first one to breach her walls seemed right in a way he couldn’t quite explain. Probably because he was a possessive bastard and he didn’t want to imagine another man ever touching her, no matter how far removed in the past it was.

Virgin or not, he knew he’d never experienced anything quite as glorious as what he’d just felt in his veins. To have her writhing on his cock and knowing that he was the only one that had ever had the honor of doing so, made him feel more right in his own skin, more a giant among men, than anything ever had in his life.

He shifted upright, keeping an arm around her lower back so she didn’t try to escape him. “You are removing yourself from nothing. This is exactly where I want you, for as long as you will allow it.”

He reached back to the head of the bed and grabbed a pillow and the edge of the coverlet, dragging them to the floor as he stood. He kept Izzie locked to him with his arm clamped across her back as he kicked the coverlet wide to cover the wooden floorboards.

The smallest comfort never hurt—cold floorboards were something he’d managed to leave behind long ago.

Stretching himself out on coverlet blanketing the floor, Izzie shifted atop him, setting her left hip on the floor between his thighs and she entwined her legs with his, her lower belly rubbing along his cock and twitching it back to life.

An innocent movement that threatened to take over every thought in his head. For when he’d been balls deep in her, he’d never been so lost in a moment as in that one. Lost, with no past, no future, just that one moment in pleasure, where all he could think, could feel, was how ridiculously right everything was.

Something he’d never experienced and he already wanted it again. And again. And again.

But no. He had to give Izzie at least a half hour for her body to recover, or he would ride her raw. Maybe fifteen minutes would be enough.

She started to nuzzle into his chest, looking for sleep, but selfish ass that he was, he wanted her awake for another round. Searching for a stalling technique, he manifested anger he didn’t quite truly feel.

His fingers tapped along her spine. “I’m still enraged that you were part of Callum and Nemity’s scheme. All the lies you told.”

“Enraged?” Her head dipped, but not before he saw a wicked smile start to form. She shifted herself back on top of him, straddling his body as her lips found the center of his chest and she started circling kisses from scar to scar. “This does not seem as though you are enraged.” She slid her tongue out, trailing the tip of it up along a line on his neck. “In fact, this is as calm as I’ve ever seen you.”

His right hand moved downward to cup the curve of her ass. “It is hard to manifest any real rage when you are kissing me like that.”

“Then I don’t think I’ll stop.”

“I am yours to do with as you see fit.”

She grinned, setting her hands on the floor on either side of his head, propping herself up to look down at him. “Maybe this was what you needed all along—to break your celibacy.”

He reached up, tangling his fingertips in a thick strand of her dark hair next to her temple. “Or maybe it was you I needed.”

Her head dipped with an intake of breath, hiding herself from him.

He’d watched her do that time and again, dipping out of view whenever questions got too pressing and she was faced with something she didn’t want to confront.

His left hand slipped along the side of her neck, his thumb hooking under her chin to angle her face toward him. “What is it?”

“I…for how I came into your life…the lies.” Her eyes closed with a wince. “You should have rage at me. I don’t deserve this. Deserve to get a chance to touch you, hold you. I should be down on the streets right now, figuring out what to do next—where to go, how to survive. For not only did I lie to you, I failed at my job as a guardian. I failed the oath I took as a guardian the second I told you who I really was.” She paused, blowing out a long breath. “Hell, I failed the moment I stopped looking at you as just a job.”

“And when was that?”

She collapsed down onto her side on the floor next to him, her temple landing on his bicep as her fingers splayed out wide along his chest. Her middle finger paused, then traced the large round scar of gnarled flesh on the right side of his chest, the one she’d set her tongue to earlier. “This scar is so brutal.”

“It is and you are changing the topic of conversation.”

“Am I?” Her hand lifted, her fingers wandering, setting gentle wisps across his chin. “Are you ever going to tell me anything of what happened to you? Callum said you disappeared for six years.”

“One never knows.” He caught her fingers and weaved his hand along hers, bringing it to his lips. “Are you going to tell me when you stopped looking at me like a job?”

A soft smile came to her face. “It was when you tackled me away from the edge of the cliff weeks ago.”

He turned his head toward her, meeting her eyes. “Why then?”

“You cared enough to save me when you thought I needed saving, and you’re the only one that ever has. I have always known that, to the Guardians, I am a commodity—if they lose me, they will just find someone to replace me. I serve a purpose, nothing more.” Her look dipped, her fingers untwining from his to play about the line of his clavicle. “No one has actually ever cared about me enough to drag me away from a cliff. You did. And after that, it was hard not look at you and…not want more.”

“The Guardians treat you with so little regard?”

“It is the business of it—we all know what we signed up for, it is always easier to not get attached to anyone.”

His brow furrowed. “It is a tricky thing, getting attached.”

“It is.”

He settled his head on the pillow, looking up at the cracking paint of the fleur-de-lis decorating about the edges of the ceiling. “I would have continued on as I was with my life, attached to nothing, had I not found myself dunking you into that tub.”

She popped up to look at him, her face wrinkled in horror. “You wanted me when I had vermin crawling all over me?”

He chuckled, meeting her eyes. “Not then. An hour after that when the vermin were washed away and I was pulling you from that tub. That was the moment that sunk me. I have wanted you since that instant, and as much as I have tried, I have not been able to shake that raw, visceral want my body has for yours.”

Her eyebrows lifted. “It isn’t sated after what we just did?”

“Not by far. I remind you I’ve been celibate for seven years. I’m just biding my time until I can sink my fingers deep between your legs again.”

She curled over, her lips going to his ear, her breath a whisper. “No one is stopping you.”

Great Judas, this woman was going to be the death of him. She’d already managed to decimate his control once, and she just did it again.

He rolled over on top of her, her laughter the softest balm to the ragged edges of his soul.

Kissing her, he shifted his right knee between her legs, spreading her. His right hand roamed down her body, his mouth following, his tongue already desperate for the taste of her skin, her breast.

Right breast first. Such a delicate little bud, his tongue loved to play with it, slide around it, test for the involuntary sounds that his machinations could produce from her.

Her hands wrapping around to his back, her head curled up into him, her breath against the left side of his neck.

She suddenly pulled away. “Thomas.”

Her nipple clasped between his lips, his eyes lifted to her. He was gorging himself on her and he wasn’t about to walk away from the table unsated. He set his teeth along the bud, shifting them lightly back and forth.

A mewl escaped her, her head tilting back on the pillow. “Wait. No.” She tilted her chin down to look at him. “I have a question—can you hear out of your left ear?”

“No,” he muttered onto her breast.

“I wondered.”

Regret at pulling his mouth from her nipple, he lifted his face fully to her. “Why? Did you just whisper something into it?”

“Maybe.”

“What was it?”

Her mouth closed tight. She wasn’t going to tell him.

With a laughing growl, he dipped down, raking his teeth across that sensitive spot just inside her left hip bone where the crescent-moon-shaped freckle sat. “What was it?”

She laughed, her legs curling up as she pushed him away. “Fine—I’ll tell you if you tell me why you cannot hear out of that ear.”

Upright on his knees, he heaved a sigh, then shook his head. What did it matter? Giving her this one little insight? “The tip of a very thin dagger was driven into my ear. Slowly. Torture until it popped through the membrane.”

She gasped, coming up on her elbows, her eyes horrified as she searched his face. “You…”

“I shouldn’t have told you.” He started to move to the side of her.

She grabbed him before he could escape her, tackling him down to the floor and straddling him. Her hands flattened on his chest as the crux of her settled against his hard cock—hard and ready to go, as it almost always was around her.

She shook her head at him. “No. You’re not going anywhere. I wanted to know. Now I do. Thank you for trusting me with it.” She reached down and grabbed both of his hands, bringing them up and dragging them to her chest, pressing his palms over her breasts. “Now I’m going to trust you to set just enough pain into me to make me feel all of this in a new way. Show me why you like it.”

“Hell. Iz.”

For a long second, he couldn’t move, couldn’t quite believe she was offering herself up to him like that.

At his lack of reaction, she weaved her fingers between his, setting his thumbs and forefingers along her nipples and she squeezed. Pain. Not a lot, but at the moment he saw it hit her, she groaned, her head tilting back as her eyes closed.

Fucking hell.

He’d never seen anything so beautiful.

He twisted her nipples. Sending a fresh shock into her system and her jaw dropped as she sucked in a breath. Her hips shifted over him, grinding down against his cock. A visceral reaction to the pain, not a conscious movement.

He rubbed gently around her nipples, then clamped down, squeezing. Another gasp. More grinding against his swollen cock. If he wasn’t careful, he was going to come long before he had her like he needed to.

“What did you whisper to me?”

She cracked her eyes, her lids heavy as she met his stare. “Your pain is my pain. Share it.”

His eyes closed, the words hitting him raw and brutal, her capacity to take on a demon like him.

She grinned. “And I think I might enjoy that pain a little too much.”

Her words set him off and he twisted her nipples harder—this gasp rocked her body and she curled over toward him, exhaling a moan as she set her fingertips onto his chest, her nails digging in and scratching down his skin.

He nearly came, erupting under her with the surge of pain she scraped into him.

She lifted herself, setting the head of his shaft at her entrance, and she slid down onto him. Not slow and easy like she should. No, her body swallowed his cock in one violent plunge, consuming him.

A growl lifted from her and she leaned forward, setting her teeth against his neck, biting, drawing blood, then licking it from his skin as her hips gyrated, grinding against him for her own pleasure.

Faster. Faster. Every thrust of her hips atop him long and hard until she lifted herself upright. He grabbed a hold of her hips to keep her stable, and she arched back, rasping screams coming from her as she rode him with a ferocity that sent him into obsession.

A shattered gasp and her inner walls clenched brutal around his cock. The force of her orgasm splintered him, all control lost, all feeling lost save for his ruthless release into her body. So savage, it made him wonder why he’d ever wanted to leave this earth, when the only place to feel this was here, with her.

She collapsed down on top of him, her breath rapid, her nails still sunk into his flesh, as though she needed him to tether her to earth.

Impossible. There was no way this would be better than the first time.

Yet it was.

And he only wanted more of it. More of her.

Would it ever be enough?