And for that one moment alone, no matter what else happened between them or how badly this might end, he would be forever grateful to her.
Then he opened his eyes again and looked his fill of her. The barest hint of moonlight in the room was enough for his still sharp vision. It followed the curve of her cheek, and gleamed in her shadowed gaze. As he watched her lick her lips, his erection grew full, hot and tight.
As she hesitated, he remembered she had a human’s senses, and he said quietly, “I’m here.”
There, that catch in her breath. He drank it down as if it were the finest wine.
Then suddenly he was angry. He was so angry, he was filled with rage. Rage at his dead enemy, rage at himself. He didn’t want this. He needed to be selfish right now, goddamn it, yet he could not exorcise regret.
“Where are your friends, and why aren’t they looking out for you?” he snapped. He stalked toward her. “What are you doing here with me? Don’t you know you have no business being with a man under a curse? How foolish can you get?”
The dark room reverberated with the lash of his anger. She stood quite still. He grabbed her by the shoulders, and only then did she move.
She lunged forward, knocking clumsily into his chest as she threw her arms around his neck and clenched him tight. “It’s okay,” she said. She sounded quiet and strong, and very sure of herself. “I’m okay. You are going to be okay.”
Astonished, he let her hold him. “You don’t know that.”
She stroked his hair. “I know that I didn’t give you permission to look out for me,” she said. “I can and will look out for myself, and I will be okay because I say so.”
He moved his hands compulsively down her back. She was exquisitely shaped, nature’s violin, playing that invisible, ineffable thing that was her spirit. He did not know that he could feel such anguish at her beauty, or such…exultation.
“You’re pulling me out of my body,” he muttered.
“Shhh,” she whispered. She cupped the back of his head and drew him down to her, and when she kissed him, their lips nestled together again just as they had that morning. He experienced a weird, sensual sort of synesthesia. Their kiss was like a hug, and as he slipped his hands underneath her sweater, the touch of his fingers was like a kiss on her warm skin.
Their bodies shifting together made a delicate, intimate sound. He drew her sweater up, and she helped him by raising her arms over her head. As he reached for her again, he discovered that her soft, round breasts were already bared for his touch. He cupped them, exploring their weight and shape. The velvet jut of her nipples pushed into his palms.
When he flicked the sensitive, delicate flesh with his thumbs, she let her head fall back as she made a muffled sound, gripped at his wrists and shuddered.
The line of her slender, exposed throat cut him loose. Control skidded away, and he turned into an animal. She cried out as he grabbed her by the waist, lifted and threw her onto the nearby bed. Then he sprang. He was on her so fast her body didn’t have time to bounce on the mattress. With rough, jerky movements he undid the fastening of her jeans and yanked them down her hips.
While he worked on undressing her, she took hold of his T-shirt and pulled, her hands shaking with urgency. He barely noticed until it restricted the movements of his arms. Then he had to pause, growling, to yank his shirt over his head. As he did so, she sat up and ran her palms down the extended length of his muscled torso to the fastening of his jeans. Her trembling fingers fumbled at the button.
He put his hands over hers and squeezed. “I’ve got it,” he muttered.
“Hurry.”
That single word, said in such an agonized whisper, sent a line of fire down his spine.
He rolled away from her and tore off his clothes. When he reached for her again, he found that she had finished kicking her jeans and panties off and was naked too.
He fell on her ravenously. The sense of her naked, curvaceous body against his sent a wave of heat over his skin. He yanked her thighs apart and felt between her legs. Under a soft tangle of short hair, her private flesh felt plump and swollen, slick with wetness, and his erection tightened until it was an actual pain. She smelled and felt like an invitation. He came down on her and positioned his cock at her drenched, fluted entrance.
Vaguely, in the back of his mind, he knew this wasn’t the way to go about doing things. He hissed, “Foreplay.”
Way to class it up, dickhead.
She gasped, “Next time.”
She pulled at his shoulders and arched her pelvis up. He threw back his head and thrust into her. Her slick passage gripped him tighter than a fist. He shook his head, growling as he trembled all over, trying to give her time to adjust to his abrupt invasion.
But then she squeezed him with her inner muscles and undulated her sexy body so that he slid out partway and then back in, and he descended completely into madness.