Tory was stunned by his tenderness. He reminded her of a skittish fawn as he suckled her fingers. And when he looked up at her, she saw the unadulterated pain and torment inside him. His soul was as naked to her as her body was to him.
He licked her palm in one sensual swipe before he rose up to bury his lips against the center of her body.
Tory cried out as pleasure blinded her. She reached for his hair, only to catch herself. Instead, she clasped the door knob with one hand and bit her knuckle on the other one.
Her body took on a life of its own as he licked and teased her with his tongue. He lifted his hands to spread her wider so that his tongue could flick and delve deep inside her.
Ash reveled in the taste of the most private part of her body. The remnants of her last orgasm made him hungry for his own, but more than that, it made him want to hear her scream out his name.
Dying to be inside her, he slid his finger in, then froze as he found the last thing he expected.
He went cold inside.
"You're a virgin?"
Tory scowled at the venom in his voice as he spat the word out as if it were disgusting to him. "Is that a problem?"
He jerked away from her as if he'd discovered leprosy. "Why didn't you tell me?"
"I didn't think it would matter."
He cast her a feral look that made her pull her blouse closed. "It matters. Damn it, woman!"
She was completely baffled by his unexpected response. Why would he be so angry over the fact that she'd never been with another man? "I thought men liked having virgins."
Ash raked his hand through his hair as he struggled to keep his temper in check. But it wasn't just anger he felt. There was shock, guilt and a hunger for her so profound he wasn't sure how he kept himself from her.
"I'm not most men." He picked her jeans up from the floor and handed them to her.
She gaped at him. "So that's it? You're just going to leave because I've never been with anyone else?"
"That's exactly what I'm going to do." He tried to reach the door, but she put herself in front of it as she raked him with her own furious glower.
"Oh the horror of this situation," she said, her tone so thick with sarcasm he'd need a chainsaw to cut through it. "So what you're telling me is if I go downstairs and get laid by some other man first, I'll then be good enough for you?"
Jealousy ripped through him at the mere thought.
She narrowed her gaze suspiciously. "You don't like that idea either, do you?"
Ash struggled to breathe as images of her with someone else tore through him. No, he didn't want her with anyone else, but at the same time he didn't want to be her first. He didn't want to hurt her and honestly, he didn't want her to remember him or have any regrets. She deserved better than that. Someone better than him to sleep with her. "How can you be a virgin at your age?"
"I'm not ninety, Acheron. Good grief. I told you, I have a bad history with men. Every time I ever tried to sleep with one, something happened. Either someone came in on us or . . . in one case the guy fell off the bed as he climbed in and broke his collar bone."
She took his head in her hands and forced him to look at her. "I want to be with you, Ash. No strings. No commitments. I'm a big girl and I'm not going to turn into a stalker. I just want to love you for a little while."
Those words seared him and at the same time he wanted to curse because they made it impossible for him to walk away from her. "You don't deserve to be laid in a room in a bar for your first time."
"And that right there is why I want to be with you. You're the only man I've ever met who would even think about that."
Because he knew what it was like to be ruthlessly violated and to be haunted by it. For some reason, the first encounter lingered in everyone's memory. It was why he'd always made sure to take special care with virgins and why he'd been so good at what he did. No one deserved to be humiliated the way he had been. To cry from the pain of it and be laughed at while he begged for mercy.
Stop your damn blubbering, whore. It'll be over when I'm finished with you. He'd then been backhanded so hard, it'd broken his nose. There now. That pain'll get the other off your mind.
Why with all the powers that he had could he not purge his own memories? Why was eleven thousand years not enough to make the pain turn dull?
All he wanted was one moment free of those memories. One safe place where no one reminded him of what they'd made him. Of what he'd done to himself.
Tory frowned at the shadows she saw in Ash's eyes as if some painful memory tortured him. She wanted to soothe that ache more than anything. Why wouldn't he let her? "Ash?"
He reached down to put his hand on the scar where they'd operated on her. "You shouldn't be out of bed."
"I'm not in pain. I don't understand it, but I'm not. And I don't want to go to bed alone. Are you going to make me beg?"
Anger curled his lips. "You don't ever beg for anything."
She pulled his head down so that she could kiss him.
Ash growled as she stirred inside him an animal part that scared him. But he refused to give in to it. "I won't tup you like a whore in a backroom, Soteria. Let me finish playing with the Howlers."