He learned fast with the children, and now he asked questions when he wasn’t sure about something, instead of arrogantly assuming he knew the answers. And it was such an unexpected pleasure to share a laughing glance with him whenever Max or Chloe did something hilarious or goofy. The pleasure brought with it a bittersweet memory of watching Petra and Niko’s exchanged glances of amusement over their children’s heads.
Learning to enjoy his companionship was spiced with the sense of immersion in his male presence. At times she felt like she was swimming in a sea of his Power, buoyed and sustained, all tiredness washed away by his dynamic energy. Then he made his quiet confession about his daughter that was filled with so much pain, her heart went out to him.
Something she did, perhaps the fact that she had the temerity to hug him, made him angry. Or maybe his own pain made him angry.
It was probably dangerous for her to think she might understand him. Dangerous, when he took her in an unbreakable hold and he looked at her so angrily, and she knew that he could crush her without a second thought, and she also knew he wouldn’t. He looked at her as if he might hate her, eyes ablaze, his marble face set like stone.
And then. Then.
You cannot take it back, he said. Any of it.
Michelangelo’s genius took her in his arms. His head arced down to hers, inhumanly fast, his carved features cut with intensity. She had no chance to react before his hard mouth settled over hers.
He did not engage in any tentative, preliminary exploration, as had virtually every other male (boy) she had ever kissed. Khalil’s kiss was a hectic, headlong plunge into her mouth. She lost her breath at the shock and the strangeness of it, clinging to his shoulders.
His mouth and body were hot to the touch, his Power scorching. She shivered at the sensations, and the muscles in her legs trembled. She felt his fierce energy slide along hers, and it was extraordinarily erotic, almost more intimate than a physical caress. Her skin felt hypersensitive all over, her arms and her nipples and the heavy, full undersides of her breasts and the private, moistening place between her legs, so inadequately covered by her clothes.
She dug her fingers into the raven hair at the back of his head and hung on, her mouth moving jerkily under his in a clumsy attempt to kiss him back. Fractured thoughts and impressions swirled in her head, blasted by a cyclone. His familiar energy, the exotic sensation of his mouth, the blast of pain, anger and sexuality that roared out of him. His hunger and his need.
He cradled the back of her head in the palm of one hand. His other arm circled her low at the waist. His hold tightened on her until her feet left the ground.
She felt weightless, as if she was floating in him. The fastening that kept his hair pulled back was a simple strip of leather, and it came undone underneath her fingers. The black, silken mass tumbled to his shoulders.
He lifted his head and looked down at her. His expression was tight and remote. The crystalline radiance of his eyes blazed like lighthouse beacons in the darkness, warning of treacherous, storm swept seas. His lips glistened with the moisture he had taken from her mouth. All she could do was stare dumbly at him as she trembled all over, for he was so rampantly glorious, it had stolen her voice.
He eased her down again until her feet touched the floor. She wasn’t sure she would be able to stand on her own.
But then she had to, because he let go of her and vanished without a word.
Khalil’s kiss burned in her memory that night and through Wednesday. She woke up at night, aroused, her skin damp with a light sheen of sweat, her sheet tangled around her legs. He had used his mouth with such experienced sensuality. Clearly he had taken human lovers before. Realizing that after the fact was devastating. It brought into the forefront of her imagination thoughts of what he might be like as a lover, something that once would have seemed barely conceivable but was now urgently compelling.
Sensations and images flashed through her mind. The feel of his hard mouth taking hers, and the sense of limitless strength in his enormous body. The sheen of his raven hair as it broke loose and framed his ivory, inhuman face and incandescent eyes. The heat contained in his physical form and his scorching, true presence. His regal demeanor, his pain and his anger.
Khalil’s pain and anger didn’t bother her especially. Grace understood pain and anger, rather more than was probably good for her. But what she did not understand was that he had seemed angry with her. What had she done, or not done, to make him angry? She brooded on that the next day.