She startled, then shook her head emphatically, gazing back at him. “None. I’m exactly where I want to be.”
He brought a hand to her waist, slid it under the cloth of her shirt to the slope of her side. The smoothness of her skin had him closing his eyes again to weather the hard beat and flush of heat that was his new body’s response to her nearness. Would Death give up forever for a single mortal day? Easily. Layla had more magic than all of Shadow combined.
His eyes were still closed when her lips touched his. The contact set off a clumsy avalanche of motion: a sudden shift for better access, a tug of his sleeve, a grasp and salty taste of skin, a confusion of limbs shedding shirts and pants. When he swung her weight around to the bed, he’d lost everything but one shoe, held fast by a gathered pant leg and boxer at his ankle. He kicked himself free as she, naked, scooted back to the pillows, laughing at him.
Then she shrieked, happy, when he pounced. The shock of skin on skin set the room careening, but he didn’t care as long as he held Layla. He went for the flushed cleft between her breasts, his hand stroking up her thigh, until her luscious bottom filled his palm. He squeezed, then adjusted the position of her leg a little higher, and knew she liked it when she brought the other leg up to match, sliding her hands through his hair to grip his shoulders.
A taste on the tender underside of her breast, too. He had to breathe deep at the thump of want that fuzzed his brain. A pause to wrestle with his laboring heart. Then he brushed his mouth up to the hollow at her throat, just below her ear, where her life beat against his lips. A long life, which she’d won for herself. He would not allow his cursed gate to take it away.
For tonight, however, she would be his. He was granted this much at least, though it embittered his heart that the time should be so brief. Good thing he wouldn’t need the tainted organ after tomorrow.
He moved upward, nipped her earlobe, tasted the smoothness of her cheek, grazed her mouth with his teeth. She wrapped her legs around him and hooked her ankles. Her smug expression told him she didn’t intend to let him go. So he pushed her further, cruising his free hand around her hip, and discovered just how much she desired him. The wetness between her thighs told him that, even without the gift of Shadow.
Blood and heat gathered within him into a churn and swell of sensation and need. He tensed everything to speak through a shudder of awareness, so she would understand, too.
“You and I,” he said.
“Yes,” Layla answered. “Absolutely.”
His face was flushed, back tensing, ribs flaring with each tight breath. The slow wave of the motion sent dark currents of rapture through her body. No man ever could have made her feel like this, not when her psyche had already known Shadowman.
Layla pulled him down with her legs and wrapped her arms more tightly around his shoulders, so that his slanted eye was next to her human one, and they could look at each other soul to soul. She guided him to her entrance.
“It’ll be okay,” she said and adjusted her hips slightly to tease him.
Which made him growl against her. The vibration tickled, so she laughed again. Kissed his mouth, soft and deep. Fine-tuned their fit. Connected.
Which stopped his breath completely; every strand of muscle and sinew in his back, thighs, and delicious ass was strung tight. A damp sheen broke out on his skin. A pleasure groan rumbled low in his chest.
She used her legs for leverage, and took them deeper, torturing them both. A bright pulse of delight gathered deep in her womb, begging for friction.
And he answered with a slow, filling pump.
His black irises widened as he moved again, a subtle ripple of Shadow in the room. Mage. Right. Problem? Too late now . . .
His hands took hers, fingers lacing, and braced them above her head on the mattress. His shoulders flexed as he balanced his weight on either side of her for total possession. A riot of sensation consumed her mind, body, heart, as he claimed her again. She arched to rub her breasts against his chest.
He drove deep once more. “Layla . . .”
Breeched all barriers, stole her breath, and silenced the world until it was reduced to the pounding in her head. The darkness in the room became a sea of reckoning Shadow. Relentlessly he moved, wave upon wave, quickening his tempo. It was primitive, dark, magic and flesh, a cataclysm, volcanic, creating as much as it destroyed. She’d never be the same, but it didn’t matter anyway. When his forehead dropped to touch hers, she sobbed and clenched him tight. An extended shout was ripped from his throat, and she met him with her own lift and fierce cry.