Lover Arisen, page 26
So maybe it was both.
She glanced at the Book. It was still open to her page, the wording dark on the parchment.
The male’s right leg came off the floor, the thigh muscles bunching as his bare foot lifted. He put his arch and sole back down… and yanked the other one up. His ass was the last thing that was liberated, and though he had to grind his perfect jaw to do it, he managed to get himself totally free of the lockup.
“Impressive,” she said in what she hoped was a cool tone.
Inside, she was jelly, no more bones, not even cartilage. She had melted—and the fact that her instincts told her she better not let him know just how much he affected her was a huge part of the excitement.
They stared at each other, and she knew he was measuring her just as she was doing the same to him. Opponents? Yes, but it was going to be so much more than that.
“I’m not kissing you until you tell me your name,” she said. In a pretty fucking good stab at being prim.
By way of response, he turned away from her and headed for the door.
“Wait—what?” Devina demanded.
As a ringing set off in her skull, like she’d been sucker-punched in the side of the head, she hurried after him. “Where do you think you’re going?”
As he came up to the lair’s exit, the male looked over his shoulder. “I don’t have to tell you anything.”
“You’re not leaving—”
“I’m absolutely leaving.”
Devina jabbed a forefinger at the steel panel in front of him. “There’s nothing on the other side of that for you.”
“Au contraire. There’s all of Caldwell.”
“No, there’s not.” She was getting bitchy and she felt no need to hide it. “You’re not on the same plane of existence as the building you think you’re in—wait, how do you know you’re in Caldwell?”
“There is only one place I want to be.”
“Yeah, and it’s with me. Fuck Caldwell.”
One of his brows arched. “You know, I’ve never cared for females who swear. It’s unladylike.”
Devina closed her eyes—and pictured herself stabbing him. About a hundred and fifty times.
Then she popped her lids back open. “You want to know what I hate in males? Dickheads who say things like that.”
“Guess we’re not a match made in heaven then, are we.” He paused. And seemed to be memorizing what she looked like. “Pity. You’re fucking hot.”
“Well, I don’t like males who curse,” she parroted.
“Good thing I’m out of here, then.”
Andjustlikethat, he was gone.
The rat bastard literally stepped through the door as if he knew exactly how to manipulate the space/time continuum.
“Wha… what just happened here?” She spun around to the Book. “What the hell just happened here?”
As flames sprouted off her fingertips and the tops of her shoulders, and she felt the heat rise to engulf her head, she marched over to the Book, intending to rip it up with her bare-fucking-hands.
“Was this all some kind of joke? What the fuck is wrong with you—”
A burst of gale-force wind blasted up from the open pages, and kept her from taking hold of the Book, kept her from getting too close. As her hair peeled back from her face and she threw out her arms to maintain balance, the gust instantly resolved itself.
And the ink on the parchment glowed again, so vividly, it was like getting hit in the face with the sun itself.
Devina frowned and tilted in so she could read the page once more. None of the text was a news flash—
One part had an iridescent, rainbow sheen to it, the words standing apart from the rest as if highlighted with all the colors on the color wheel.
Devina read the passage yet again, her eyes bouncing around even with the glowing—or maybe because of it. Rubbing her face, she wondered why this all had to be so hard, and with an exhausted exhale, she thought about walking away from this bullshit.
Then she pictured that erection. He’d still had it as he’d left. And he better not be using it on anyone else—
The words of the spell glowed even more brightly. Then they started to blink as if they were a sign in a bar window.
“I don’t know what the hell you want me to do,” she muttered.
The illumination faded, the text returning to the matte brown cursive of the rest of the letters. Then the page curled up—and unfurled.
Like the Book was washing its hands of the whole thing, having met its responsibility.
Devina glanced at the door. Then she walked over and put her hand on the solid steel. She could feel a vibration in the metal, remnants of the power the male had used to walk away.
Narrowing her eyes, she glanced back at the Book. “Who is he really?”
She didn’t expect a response. But she got one.
On the white walling above where the Book had perched itself in thin air, a pattern appeared, the glow of it not that different from what had just highlighted parts of the spell. As her eyes adjusted, she tried to figure out what the vertical line with the three horizontal ones coming off of it was—
“Do we have to play games,” she muttered. “Just come out with…”
Her voice drifted off as a second symbol manifested by its side on the left: Four angled lines that formed two points—and now, a third image, a little farther out from the two that were together… a tent shape—
Letters.
The Book was spelling something for her—and it wasn’t until the final symbol in the sequence, all the way to the left… the first one, actually, in the word… that she saw…
The name.
OMEGA.
“Holy… fuck,” she breathed.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Whereupon things took an unexpected turn.
As Erika sat on her bed and listened to the sound of the shower in the guest room across the hall, that was the thought that kept cruising around the track in her head, an omniscient narrator with a British accent. Balthazar had been in there under the water for a while now, more than long enough for her to have had her own shower. Then again, she was efficient with the shampoo and soap routine. Always had been.
And God knew, he had more surface area to cover. That body of his was—
Behind the guest room door, the spray was cut off and she heard the shower curtain get pulled back. Then there was dripping. Followed by the sounds of a towel flapping around.
OMG, she was stalking him with her ears. And wow, that was a mental picture, him all naked and damp, his body gleaming from—
The image was just too damned hot, so she busied herself plumping pillows. Then she got to her feet and fussed with the duvet. On or off with the overhead light? Glancing at herself, she pulled her t-shirt down farther over the flannel boxers she had on.
Definitely off. The bedside lamp with its low glow was more than enough. In fact, pitch black was preferable, except for the fact that she wouldn’t be able to see him that way.
Tiptoeing across the area rug to the light switch, she was nervous, but not because she was thinking of turning back from this. No, she was nervous because she knew she wasn’t going to stop things, and one-night stands had never been something she’d done before. She was all for sexual expression; she just had had trouble opening up… given all her baggage.
Click.
As she hit the switch and things got dimmer, she looked through her open door to the stairwell. In an instant, she was back in that dream, hearing noises, going downstairs… seeing that shadow behind her in the mirror—
A huge shape stepped into her field of vision, and she started to yell. But Balthazar’s voice cut through the panic.
“Erika! What’s wrong?”
She was so relieved it was him that she reached out and grabbed his forearms. Then, before she looked like a fool, she pulled herself together.
“Sorry. Sorry—I’m sorry…” Babble, babble. “I don’t know what my problem is.”
“Oh really?” he said softly. “Then I’ve got a helluva list to show you.”
She laughed a little. And then she wasn’t smiling, although not because her mind was trying to scare itself.
Balthazar had traded his sheet for one of her towels, which considering his size made it seem like she’d hung her rods with handkerchiefs. He smelled like Dial soap and her own shampoo… and he was so beautiful, his body all cuts and hard angles, veins and muscle.
“Kiss me,” she said.
She didn’t have to ask twice. His mouth was on hers and oh, God, it was even better than it had been downstairs. He was raw hunger and urgency—and he was right. He was the best she’d ever had and they hadn’t even gone horizontal yet.
She could fix that.
Wrapping her arms around his neck, she pulled him back into her bedroom, to her bed.
“Erika…” he said. “I want you.”
“Me, too.” She shook her head to clear it. “I mean, I want—well, you—you know what, I’m not very good at this.”
He cupped her face in his broad hands. “You could have fooled me. I think you’re perfect.”
Lowering his head again, they went back to the kissing, and the next thing she knew they were lying down and he was on top of her. His body was so heavy, but the mattress was soft—not that she would have cared if she’d been on a brick walkway. Splitting her legs, he settled right between them—and flannel boxers were no real barrier to his stiff erection.
Every time those hips of his moved, he stroked her with that hot, thick length. And she couldn’t wait for more, for all of him.
As they kissed more deeply, she ran her hands down his ribs to the top of the towel. Her brazenness surprised her. But in a way, she wanted this right here and now because then it meant he was real, this was all real—
He broke off the kiss and eased back.
“Don’t stop.” She rolled her own pelvis into him, as if to remind him what they were doing. “I know you don’t want to end this.”
Balthazar’s eyes traveled around her face and then a hand smoothed her hair back. When he hesitated, she had a thought that he was maybe going to turn away from her.
Even though she could feel exactly how much he wanted this—
From out of nowhere, she thought of the brunette from back in the bookshop. Talk about buzzkills. That… demon… was the last thing she wanted to welcome into this sacred space. But the exchange she’d witnessed between the two of them begged all kinds of conclusions that made Erika sick to her stomach—and she had a feeling that was where he’d gone in his own head.
“I’m not her,” she heard herself say. “She’s not here.”
“Isn’t she, though,” he answered in a hoarse voice.
“No.” Erika stroked his shoulder. “This is just you and me.”
After a moment, the tension that had come into him eased some. “I’ve wanted this since the moment I first saw you.”
“You did?” A flush hit her face. “Was that before or after I put a gun on you?”
“During.” He smiled a little. Then smiled a lot. “You’re hot when you’re all ordering me around and grrrrrrr.”
“You like that?”
“Mm-hm.”
“Well, then kiss me again. Right now.”
She didn’t have to ask twice. Even though Balthazar clearly had other things in the back of his mind, he returned to the mouth-to-mouth, and it was so good for them both, the way he dominated her, penetrating her with his tongue, pushing those hips against her. Under his body, she was alive in ways she hadn’t ever been—alive in a good sense, as opposed to the twitchy, paranoid awareness she usually operated out of.
When his lips eventually left hers once more, it was not because he was rethinking anything anymore. It was so he could go down to her throat with soft brushes that made her feet arch into points and her thighs tremble—and she could have sworn she felt a sharp point dragging over her skin. The idea it might be his fang—and come on, did she think he’d packed a pocketknife in between his eyeteeth or something?—made her arch into him, and as her breasts came up against his hard pecs, he groaned.
What a sound. The kind of thing she felt inside her own body.
Before she was fully aware of what she was doing, her hands slipped back down to the towel, and man, that thing came off like it had been hanging by a thread. Balthazar took care of tossing it to the floor—and oh, God, the heat in that erection of his.
He was so damned big.
Things got hotter and hotter, their bodies moving together in a wave pattern, surging and retreating, a preamble to what was going to come. And it was so good. So good—
Until she felt one of his hands go to the bottom of her t-shirt.
The sweep of that palm to her waist and then the warmth of his skin on her own was not a record-scratch, stop-everything kind of thing because she’d been expecting it. But it pulled her out of the sex.
She didn’t want him to see her scars.
Not because she was embarrassed or ashamed of them. But because she didn’t want the spell to be broken with all that shit from her past: He would inevitably ask about them, and she would feel compelled to explain, and then he would get that look on his face that people did, that sorrow that was on the knife-edge of pity.
And suddenly, once again, as always, it would become about what had happened to her and her family, that single, defining night, taking this single, electric night away from her.
She was tired of being cheated of normal things like a sex life that was about pleasure and nothing more. A work life that was uncomplicated. A leisure life that wasn’t tainted by the chance a documentary was going to be made about her tragedy.
“Can I keep that on?” she asked roughly as she put her hand on his to stop him.
His head lifted from her neck. There was a passing shift in his expression, like he didn’t understand why she wouldn’t want him to see her breasts or touch them or kiss them. But then he nodded.
“Of course. Do you want the light off?”
He was so concerned as he asked the question, as if he would have done anything to make her feel comfortable.
Funny, how the simplest things could make someone feel cherished.
She stroked his face and had to blink a couple of times. “No, because then I can’t watch you.”
That smile of his came back, that naughty, sexy smile. “Good. I want your eyes on me.”
On that note, he eased back, his weight lifting from her. As his enormous chest retreated, she did what he approved of and looked down his ribbed abdomen. His erect sex hung from the front of his pelvis and the sight of it made her moan and shift her knees up so she was even more open for him.
Except he eased her legs back together.
Just so he could take off her boxers, though.
Lifting her hips to help, she brought her arms over her head, one of her hands finding her mouth, her fingertips brushing against her lips. Arching again, she felt uninhibited and free thanks to keeping the top half of her covered—and she had a thought that she was glad he hadn’t made a big deal out of the request.
Compatibility had a lot to do with mutual respect.
And holy crap were they in lockstep with each other.
* * *
As Balz let Erika’s boxers drop to the floor, he was totally into the sex—and yet aware that his heart was breaking.
It was a strange duality, being stretched between the extremes of wanting to fuck his woman so good she cried from the release… to wanting to hold her so she could tell him herself exactly what was under that shirt she wanted to keep on.
He had accessed her memories before. He knew that her skin carried the legacy of all that physical and emotional pain. And he wanted to know her origin story firsthand because she chose to tell him.
Now was not the time, however. She had made that clear.
“You’re beautiful,” he murmured as he resettled on top of her.
Her legs accommodated his larger body, stretching wide to give him a place, and he loved the way she penetrated her mouth with her fingers, probing the interior like in her mind, she was playing out how it would feel to have his cock buried deep in her body.
“So are you,” she said. “Beautiful.”
“Really?” He winked at her. “You can tell me more if you want.”
Her laugh was the best sound in all the world. “Fishing for compliments?”
“A male wants to know he pleases his female.”
As she got serious, he wanted to kick himself. But then she whispered, “I wouldn’t mind being yours, you know. If the world were different. If… we were different.”
He studied her face, memorizing, for the hundredth time, what the curve of her cheek was like, and the arch of her brows, and the lashes around her deep-set hazel eyes.
“I’m going to make you mine tonight,” he told her. “And then we’ll see about tomorrow.”
It was the best he could do. And as she just closed her eyes and nodded, he knew she was equally aware that there would be very few tomorrows for them.
Better make the dark hours count, then.
And what do you know, his erection was right where it needed to be—almost. As he rolled his hips, he reached down between their bodies, grabbed his shaft, and stroked himself on her core. In response, she moaned and arched once again. Her arousal scented the air even more thickly with that perfume that got into his brain and altered his chrome-dome’s chemistry, yet even as his blood pounded through his veins, he wasn’t worried about hurting her. He would never—
Balz jerked his head up and looked over his shoulder.
“What is it?” she asked.
As his instincts prickled, he lifted himself away from her, got to his feet, and yanked the duvet across his female.
