Kinked (Elder Races, #6)

Her angular face was suffused with color, those stormy gray eyes dancing. Her black hair spread out in a sulfurous fan, gleaming dark against the white snow. She didn’t care that his tightening fingers cut off her air supply any more than he cared that her hand was poised to tear out his throat.

His gaze focused on her mouth. She had a kind of strong femininity that was completely unlike the bright artifice and colors that so many modern women employed. No makeup, no jewelry, no fancy stuff done to her hair, and no floaty, flouncy clothes. Nothing about her looks took after conventional beauty, but her mouth was exquisitely formed, the bold lines of her lips softened by generous, curving flesh.

We all recognize something of our own wildness in you. Who had said that? Grym. Her lover.

“You and Grym can’t be mates,” he growled. “Someone would have said something if you were.” She would have been much more stressed at the thought of a month’s banishment from New York. Mates did not thrive well without each other.

If anything, she laughed harder. “You’re still an idiot.”

He had to do something to shut her up, or he really was going to kill her. The pure, hot flame of his fury shifted. The extreme emotion had torn him wide open, and a maelstrom of sexual aggression screamed in. The muscles in his body felt paper-thin, barely able to contain the emotion.

Shifting his hands to fist them in the thick, silken hair at the back of her head, he lunged down to conquer her reckless, anarchistic mouth.

He felt the surprise jolt through her body as his lips locked over hers. She lay flat underneath him where she belonged, and he didn’t coax, tease or entice as he would have with any other woman. He took. Breathing heavily, he forced her mouth open and plunged deep inside with his hardened tongue. His body, his mind, were all on fire. Dimly, a small part of him, the cool intellectual part that wasn’t wholly driven by his internal whip, grew a little thoughtful about his lack of control.

Aryal growled, a husky wild note that shuddered over his skin and went straight for his cock, and she kissed him back savagely. They ate at each other as if they were still fighting.

Their surroundings could hardly be any worse. It was chill, damp, and they were sprawled on the hard pavement and out in the open. Anyone could come along and see them at any time.

None of it mattered. Images ran through his mind like molten lava. He wanted to flip her over, get her in a head-lock and hold her there, strip down her jeans and take her in the ass.

Hard and rough, baby. No holds barred, no ritualized courtesy and no safe word, just pure animal rut. He wanted to dominate the shit out of her and make her scream while she lost everything to her own climax.

She shifted the hand from his throat to grip the back of his head.

He knocked her hand away and snarled against her lips, “Don’t touch me.”

Her eyes flashed. She bit his lip hard, and he reared his head back. A thin, warm trickle tickled his skin. She’d drawn blood.

“What’s the matter with me touching you?” she asked. Her gaze turned challenging. “Do you like it too much?”

She was too accurate. She saw too much.

She was a demon, Lucy Ricardo on crack.

“Hate sex,” he said. He didn’t recognize the sound of his own voice.

Get it out of his system. Exorcise her from his mind and body.

Fuck yeah.

“You want it,” she said.

He became aware of what they were doing. She had wrapped those long legs of hers around his waist so that their pelvises aligned through the layers of their clothing. She had wrapped her Power around him too, and it felt hot and keen like a slicing, summer wind. They were rocking together in a pagan rhythm that echoed the coursing in his blood. He had palmed one of her breasts, gripping the slight, high mound through her sweater.

His eyes narrowed. “You want it too.”

Her expression mocked him. “Don’t let it go to your head. Just your penis.”

He almost laughed, but the verbal sparring had brought his thinking back online and he remembered his rage instead. He thrust away from her with a muttered curse. Her legs loosened from around his waist, and he rolled to his feet.

Aryal stood too, shaking off the snow from her back and stamping her boots. He watched as she walked over to a clean patch of snow and scooped a little into her hands. She gritted her teeth as she washed the blood from her fingers. The cuts were already closed, but they looked angry and red, and she moved her hands like they pained her.

Served her right. Driving her talons through a metal door? He shook his head and strangled the impulse to be impressed, as he swiped at his knees, knocking snow off too. Some had melted, and his jeans had two wet patches that felt cold and clammy. She would have wet patches all down her back.

Then he anchored his hands on his hips. Instead of murdering her, he had determined to actually try to have things out with her once and for all, but by gods, she didn’t make anything easy.

“I’m back to my original question,” he growled.