“Because I should.”
She wet her lips, but even in this moment of desire, fear slithered in. The fear that he did this all the time, with every contestant he’d brought here. That he charmed and wined and dined and then once their guard was down, when they believed themselves not only in love, and he with them, that he’d take them. Own them. And then toss them aside once he was done.
He traced her cheek and then hissed at the power transference. Her head swam with his potent flame, her body buzzed, and she knew he’d been affected too because he was trembling. Clamping one hand onto the mantel at her back, he growled.
“You claim I play games with you, little siren.” He hissed. “But you’ve created a madness within me. Tell me to touch you.”
His voice was a sharp command and she couldn’t speak as common sense warred with desire. The angel and the demon, the opposing voices of reason, and one was definitely growing louder than the other.
She shook her head, clamping tight to her lip.
His nose came within a hair’s breadth of her lip and he inhaled deeply. “You smell of roses, always of roses. So lovely, so deadly. You think I’ve done this with others.”
Her eyes grew wide.
He chuckled and the sound of it made a spiraling heat gather between her thighs.
“Don’t deny it, Carrot. I can read you like a book. You’re unskilled, untrained at the art of seduction, and yet one whisper from you makes me want to do things that I…” He sucked in a sharp breath.
She was turning to mush. Right here. Right now. Being liquefied from the inside out, soon she’d be nothing but a puddle of want at his feet. Biting onto her lower lip, she was horrified by the whimper that spilled from her throat.
He hadn’t done this with others? Could it be true? Was it possible that he wasn’t lying? In the time she’d been with him, she’d not caught him in an untruth. What she’d read of the demone said they were masters at the art of deception but not out and out liars.
“Oh gods,” she breathed. “You must stop.”
His other hand seized the mantel as well, effectively caging her in his arms. The fact that no part of him touched her made the atmosphere between them charge like the sky before a storm.
“Tell me.” He enunciated each word. “To touch you.”
Her chest heaved, gods… was she living her own bodice ripper? Did she want him to take her, violently, explosively, against the wall, the floor, wherever?
The tremoring of her body said yes. “I won’t.” She clung to the last vestige of her sanity. Deep down she knew that if she let him, if he could in fact touch her without activating the curse, she might never survive him.
Rumpel was frightening because he was a great mystery still, a great unknown. She’d always imagined her first time would be with a sweet lover, a gentle and caring man. Someone bashful and playful.
But Rumpel was a predator. A stalking lion seeking to destroy her, and gods, she wanted him to. She wanted to be consumed, owned, and possessed.
“Say it!” he commanded.
And she was helpless to deny him anymore. “Touch me, Rumpelstiltskin.”
Shoving away from the mantel, his smile was wide and vicious, all teeth and fangs, and for a moment she thought he’d been playing yet another game and her palm itched to slap him.
But then he growled, “Close your eyes.”
“Why? What are you going to do?”
Clenching his own shut, he pinched his nose, and that’s when she noticed his hand was trembling. It was a shock to discover that he was just as affected as she was.
“Do it now and do not look.”
Desperate to know his touch, curious as to what he meant to do, she squeezed them tightly shut.
The faint scent of sulfur, not at all unpleasant as it was mingled with his unique odor of whisky and cloves and smoky cherries, permeated her senses. Then a warm hand framed her face and the touch did not spark with power, but it burned anyway.
Moaning, she drooped into it, seeking more. Wanting more, because she’d never known this before. A touch that did not hurt, did not demand, but made her body ache and want and need.
“You’ve bewitched me, siren.” His voice was deeper, fuller, and moved deep inside of her.
Words failed her in that moment, but they weren’t needed. Lips crashed into hers and then the hands that’d framed her so tenderly were now clamping tight to her waist and he was repositioning her, shoving her against the wall, but he moved one hand behind her head so that she did not bang her skull. And the compulsion to open her eyes, to see what he truly was, seized her. Was he more beautiful in his demone form? Or hideous? Did he look like the others?