She stared at him as if his words were a trick, but his incubus senses picked up the sound of her heart beating faster, her breaths coming in a rolling stutter, and he knew she was putting his audio to visual. “You’re a pig,” she said, with a lot less conviction than he knew she was capable of.
“You want me to turn into a raging monster?” Actually, he wasn’t in much danger at the moment, but she wouldn’t know that. He just… wanted her.
“You have plenty of slack in your chains. If you need release, you have a hand…” She cleared her throat. “The bathroom is right over th—”
“I need to touch,” he growled. “I’m an incubus, Idess. I need contact. A female. You. This is torture.” Sure, he was playing on her guilt, but he wasn’t lying. Having her so close and being unable to do anything about it was killing him.
Her chin came up, all haughty. “You ask too much of me.”
“Then, will you…” He took a deep breath. “Will you kiss me?”
Her lids flew up. “What? No. I can’t.”
“Is it against your angel rules?”
She swallowed hard enough for him to hear. “No, but—”
“Then give me that at least.”
“I don’t have much experience with kissing.” Her gaze jerked away, and he felt the odd need to comfort her.
“Neither do I,” he admitted.
“Liar,” Idess whispered.
“Not about this,” he whispered back.
Their gazes locked. Tension bloomed like a Sheoulin rose, dark, beautiful and, potentially, poisonous. And then, with agonizing slowness, she leaned forward and braced herself on his shoulders. The first, fleeting contact of her lips against his sent a buzz of lust through him. The second contact was bolder, lingering, and the buzz grew strong enough to send reverberations all the way to his toes.
She might not know what she was doing, but it didn’t matter, because what she was doing was enough. More than enough. He lifted his face to meet hers, to intensify the kiss that was already building steam. When her tongue flicked timidly across his bottom lip, he jerked as if he’d been goosed and damned near forgot why he’d asked her to kiss him in the first place.
Steeling himself, he eased his wrist out of the cuff. Flexed his fingers. Wished he could touch her, could run with this kiss and see where it would lead.
Instead, he struck.
Ten
The ominous sound of metal clamping around Idess’s wrist reached her ears a split second before Lore flipped her over and slammed her into the mattress.
“Remember when I said I’d get free and make you experience everything I had?” he growled.
“You bastard!” Still dazed from the kiss, she struck out with her free hand, but he caught her fist, tugged it up to his chained hand, and took it prisoner. Effortlessly, he pinned her with his heavy body and drove his fingers into her jeans pocket.
“I’m the bastard? You’re the one who chained me up.”
“You gave me no choice!”
“Yeah, yeah.” He smiled, and she knew he’d found the key to the cuffs. “Killing Kynan is a no-no. Bad Lore, bad.”
Snarling, she rocked her head up to catch him in his lying mouth, desperate to cause any kind of damage she could. If he freed himself… well, she didn’t even want to think about what he could do to her. To Kynan. He reared back, and she caught only a glancing blow to his chin.
“Feisty,” he mused. “I like it. Gimme more.”
“Oh, I’ll give you more.” The Bracken Cuffs prevented her from morphing into her fallen angel father’s form, but that didn’t mean she was helpless. She brought her knee up hard, nailing him on the inner thigh. He sucked air and wrestled her leg back down before trapping both her legs between his.
Cursing, he lunged, and she heard the click of the key in the cuff lock. In an instant, he was free, and both her wrists were secured. He rolled off her and yanked on the chains, tugging them taut and pinning her to the bed with her arms stretched above her. She shouted in frustration, but he must have taken it as a cry of pain, because he loosened the chains before looping them around the bedposts, effectively keeping her from getting to her feet.
For the first time, she wished she could still sense his emotions, could use the knowledge to get her out of this. Instead, she’d wasted hours burning off the blood link at a distance, feeling what he felt while safely away from him. She liked to think she was strong, but every time the lust he felt pulsed through her, she’d fallen to her knees and prayed for the willpower to not go to him.
“You’re going to pay for this!” She threw everything she had into an assault on the chains, screaming and pulling until she was sure her arms would pop out of their sockets.
Lore reached for her, but snatched his hand away at the last second. Foul words fell from his lips as he found one glove and his jacket on the floor. He tugged them on, and the next thing she knew, he was on top of her again, settling down as if her body was the most comfortable place in the world to be. His weight acted like a blanket, wrapping around her and calming her like a swaddled infant.