Turning off the shower, Vasic slid open the shower door. Ivy was determined to stay . . . but lost her nerve at the last second. “Damn it.” Twisting out of the door, she stood with her back against the wall beside it, her skin hot and breath short.
When he stepped out, a towel wrapped around his hips, she bit down on her lower lip. He was beautiful. All sleek muscle and strength, a finely honed blade of a man. Trickles of water from his hair trailed down his back, and she had to fight so hard not to reach out and touch. She wasn’t sure he’d accept it. Not tonight. “You didn’t dry your hair properly.” It came out a husky whisper.
Turning toward her, he braced himself with his palms on either side of her head, his bare skin inches from her, the heat of him smashing against her hungry skin. And his fury . . . that was a stunning thing, the storm in his eyes molten silver.
“I can’t give you what you want.” It came out ice-cold, but those eyes, those eyes . . . “I thought—” He shook his head. “You can’t change the core of a man, Ivy. You can’t take a man christened in blood and make him into something better.”
Ivy narrowed her eyes, furious at the way he continued to see himself. “I don’t want you to change. Haven’t I made that clear?” Rising on tiptoe, she fisted her hands in his hair. “I want you. All of you. Even the part that infuriates me.”
Vasic could feel the numbness that had crawled over him in a defensive reaction to the carnage he’d seen, the bodies he’d handled, begin to crack. Jagged and sharp, each crack echoed through his mind, ice splintering across a frozen lake. “I handled the dead with my hands and my mind today,” he said, and it was a brutal, inescapable truth. “Do you really want those hands on you?”
She released his hair . . . and something broke in him, only to heal even stronger when she tugged one of his hands off the wall and intertwined her fingers with it. “I’ve told you—I want your hands on every inch of me.” Passion glittered in her eyes, was hot on her cheeks, and a large part of it, he realized too late, was anger. “You used these same hands, that same mind, to save lives today. Why don’t you ever focus on that?”
Vasic set his jaw.
Gripping it in her slender fingers, Ivy forced him to meet her gaze. “No more, Vasic. You don’t get to live in purgatory, and you certainly don’t get to punish yourself by shutting out everyone who cares for you. If you want to brood, you do it with me so I can knock some sense into you.”
Vasic couldn’t take his eyes off the vibrant life of her, the numbness in a thousand pieces by now, no match for the force of Ivy’s fury. “You,” he whispered, “are the most beautiful thing I’ve ever had in my life.”
Eyes afire, she shook her head. “No, you are not getting out of this fight that easily.” A glare. “I want a promise.”
His skin hurt with need for her, but he didn’t close the distance between them, uncertain of Ivy’s temper. “What do you want me to promise?”
Fingers still on his jaw, she pressed down. “That you will never again attempt to drive me away because you think I’d be better off without you.” A hard, fast kiss that was a punch right to the gut. “That will never be true. I wake up excited to see you, Vasic. I dream of you. Your voice, your mind, your hands. I love every part of you. I imagine a future with you!” Face flushed and body tensed, she sounded angrier and angrier with each word. “Don’t you dare try to tell me you’re not worth it! Don’t you dare!”
Vasic didn’t have the will to repudiate her. He’d used it all up. If she didn’t want to heed his warning, then he was going to be selfish and make his claim, accept hers. “I promise.” It was a vow.
Chest heaving, Ivy stared at him, the suspicion on her face making something twist deep inside him, the strange emotion at once gentle and fierce. “Wait for me in your bedroom,” he said, taking what he needed because Ivy had said he could have it. Have her.
Ivy had fought for his right to have her.
She never denied him, never punished him by withholding the touch he craved—her touch—and he planned to take terrible advantage. Now and always. “I need to make sure everything is secure before I join you.” The mattress on his bed was hard, would discomfort her. “I want you under me, naked and aroused and mine.”
Ivy’s cheeks went a hot peach. Running a hand down his chest, she scowled. “I’m still mad at you . . . but don’t take long.”
Vasic didn’t, but he was thorough nonetheless as he completed a security sweep of the floor after pulling on a pair of jeans and boots. Then, apartment door bolted behind him, he walked into Ivy’s room. Kicking off his boots by the side of her bed, he just looked at her for a minute. She’d changed out of her earlier clothes into the flannel pants she liked and that lacy, strappy top that didn’t cover much at all. The upper curves of her breasts were visible to his gaze, her nipples peaking below the fabric he could tear with a single tug, it was so ridiculously flimsy.
Ivy rubbed her feet on the sheet. “Why are you looking at me that way?”
“I’m thinking how easy it would be to tear off your clothes.” It would leave her bared to the skin, the cream and gold of her open to his touch.
She shivered, and he’d had enough of looking. Getting into bed, he came over her and placed his gauntleted arm above her head, then gripped her jaw as she’d done his. “Open your mouth,” he said. “I want to taste you.”
Ivy’s fingers clenched on his nape. “Vasic.” Her lips parted.
Not hesitating, he placed his own over hers and indulged as he’d never indulged before Ivy. Her body was soft and silky underneath the hard weight of his, her taste lush, her welcome unhidden. He wanted more, took more, controlling the kiss with his grip on her jaw. Ivy didn’t seem to mind, her free hand rising to wrap over his shoulder from behind as she held him to her.
The voluntary dissonance trip wire in his mind sparked a warning, but it was only a yellow alert, a reminder of the power he had to control. Ignoring it, he continued to keep Ivy trapped below his body as he smashed the rules of Silence to rubble and kissed her in unrestrained demand. Ivy wasn’t very good at being angry with him—she gave him the wetness, the raw intimacy that he craved with a wild generosity that only made him hungrier.
Humans and changelings had hobbies, he thought in one corner of his mind. This would be his.
“Sex can’t be a hobby,” Ivy gasped, tiny nails digging into his flesh in a bite that made him want to demand more, and he realized he’d telepathed the words to her.
“Why not?” He reinitiated the kiss, having had nowhere near enough. It’s a physical act. All physical acts require practice if an individual wants to improve. And Vasic intended to become an expert at making Ivy utter those small, soft, intrinsically female sounds that went straight to his already painfully erect penis.
“I don’t think you need to improve.” Ivy moaned when he slid his mouth down from her jaw to her neck and nipped at her, her body moving restlessly beneath his. “God . . . How . . . Where . . .”
I had to think about something good while I was on the street. I thought about what I wanted to do to you. The second the words were out, he wished he could recall them, not wanting the ugliness of the past hours in their bed.
But Ivy wrapped a leg around his waist, and said, “Excellent use of your time,” and it was all right.
Sucking on the pulse in her neck because the rapid tattoo of it fascinated him, he felt her stiff little nipples rub against his chest. He wanted to suck on those, too, wanted to lick and bite and taste every naked inch of her, wanted to drown his parched soul in the pleasure that was Ivy Jane.
His Ivy Jane.
? ? ?
IVY was melting in Vasic’s arms, her need at a keening pitch, the weight of his body pinning her down in a delicious prison . . . which was probably why it took her several seconds to realize she was no longer in bed. In fact, she was no longer in her bedroom. Breath ragged as their lips parted, she whispered, “I can feel sand underneath me.”