Moonshadow (Moonshadow #1)

It was such a demanding thing to do to order her to climax, so very Nikolas and quite entirely imperious. She didn’t know whether to laugh or to be offended or shocked. Instead, she felt a primal response rise up from deep inside. Arching off the wall, she gripped him by the back of the neck as she slammed into an orgasm.

He watched every moment of it, fiercely, as he kept moving in short, fast jabs. The twisting pleasure wrung at her. She clenched on him, shaking, until the last of the waves subsided.

Still inside her, he sank to his knees. Sitting splayed on his muscular thighs, she wrapped her arms around his neck while he began to move again, harder and more urgently. Biting at his ear, she egged him on until he froze, muscles bunched, and suddenly the intolerable tension broke and she felt him spurting inside her. Rocking gently, she helped him as he had helped her, drawing out every last moment of pleasure.

Just when she thought his climax was subsiding, he gripped her by the hips so hard she felt the pressure from each individual finger, and he picked up the pace, to gasp in her ear a few moments later as he spurted again. His expression was taut, beautifully wrung out. Loving every sensation, every glimpse, she ran her fingernails down his back, only to have him arch up into her again, with another renewed wave of climax.

It was odd, addictive, delightful. She’d never experienced anything like it, but all her previous lovers had been human. Nikolas presented her with an entirely different, unknown landscape. Pulled out of her preoccupation with her own pleasure, she breathed every part of him in.

Finally he held her hips stationary as he gritted, “We have to stop.”

We have to stop, he had said, not I can’t do any more. He still felt as hard inside her as he had when they had first started. Did that mean he could actually go further, do more, climax again? She spiraled dizzily into wonder.

But he was right. They didn’t have time for leisurely exploration. Still, her fingers wanted to cling to him, and her arms wanted to remain wound around his neck. It was physically and emotionally difficult to detach.

Did he feel the same?

Almost as if he had heard her thoughts, his arms tightened around her. “I don’t want to let you go,” he growled. “And I don’t want to stop now, but the day is flying by and we must stop. This is why I don’t have anything to offer a lover—there’s no time to give you the attention you deserve.”

Oh, that old thing.

That old understanding she had worked so hard to establish between them last night. This was just supposed to be sex, just an interlude. They weren’t even supposed to like each other.

How had she put it? They had the opportunity to give each other some pleasure. There was nothing more to it than that. It certainly wasn’t his fault that she had gone and changed the rules of the game in her head without him.

Don’t be weird at him, Sophie, she admonished herself fiercely. In terms of pleasure, affection, and a transcendent experience, he’s given you so much more than you had expected or asked for. Don’t ruin it now.

He was studying her too closely, his expression brooding, so she gave him a quick smile and a kiss. “Thank you,” she said. “That was more than I could have expected.”

He scowled. “What the fuck does that mean?”

She blinked. “What do you mean, ‘what the fuck does that mean’? Last night you said you couldn’t give a lover time and attention. Today you repeated it. So okay, I said thank you. Was I supposed to beat my chest and say, oh my God, we had sex in the bathroom? Because if so, I didn’t get the memo.”

He took her head between his hands and said between his teeth, “You said thank you the same way you would thank someone for buying you lunch. You make me crazy.”

She shouted, “I said it was more than I could have expected! What else was I supposed to say?”

In answer, he rose to his feet, grabbed his clothes off the floor, and stalked out. Utterly bewildered, she sat, legs sprawled on the bathroom floor, and watched him leave.

After a few minutes, she stirred to gather up her own clothes. She looked down at them, then started banging the heels of her hands on her forehead again.

Sophie. Sophie. Sophie. This. Is why. You don’t. Kiss assholes. He gives you another orgasm, and all of a sudden you’re in love with him. And somehow you both get naked, because that’s a really bright idea that never goes wrong, and then you start shouting at each other for no comprehensible reason.

After a moment, she set her clothes carefully aside and turned on the shower. She washed away all the evidence of what they had done together, dressed, and got back to work.

Her excuse was, apparently she had no sense.

And his excuse remained exactly what it had always been, inexplicable.





Chapter Sixteen





As evening fell into darkness, clouds amassed on the horizon, and the air grew damp and electric with the energy of impending rain. The puck had disappeared some time ago. Now that Sophie knew what his magic felt like, she could recognize his touch on the wind.

They were going to get a fine storm that night. For someone who was only partially recovered, Robin was exerting a tremendous amount of effort.

At first Sophie thought she would start shouting at Nikolas the moment she laid eyes on him again, but they had no more time to waste on personal issues.

The three of them ate a quick, cold supper. Nikolas slapped meat between two slices of bread and wolfed it down. Gawain ate beans out of the can while he stood at the kitchen counter. Sophie followed Nikolas’s example and ate as much of a sandwich as she could choke down past the nerves tightening her stomach.

“Robin might be able to wash away your scents with his storm,” Sophie said worriedly, “but he’s also exposing himself. If I can sense his magic on the wind, others will be able to as well.”

“If they’re still anywhere in the vicinity, they’ll be out searching for him.” Nikolas’s expression had turned grim. “We have to plan on it and tell the others to hurry. This night could turn ugly.”

Taking his warning to heart, she double-checked the spells she had painted on her arms earlier to make sure they were still viable, and she pulled the Glock out of the micro gun safe, inspected it quickly, and tucked it in the waistband of her jeans at the small of her back.

A gun tucked in the small of the back was not only uncomfortable, it was insecure. It could slip out her waistband in a struggle, and she would have preferred a proper holster, but she hadn’t brought one with her from the States and they hadn’t thought to give her one. She would just have to make do. Last, she slipped extra ammunition into each front pocket. She didn’t want to risk running into one of those monstrous Hounds without being prepared.