Which meant that right here, right now, she was putting a stop to it. Time not just to nut up or shut up, but to make the choice that no matter what the future held, she would be fine just as long as she remembered to be Kylie.
Squirming in Dag’s embrace, she maneuvered herself to straddle his lap, pressing her knees against his hips and resting her hands on his chest. His own embrace loosened but didn’t fall away. His hands dropped to lightly clasp her hips and his face lit with curiosity.
She grinned and stroked the hard muscle hidden beneath his gray T-shirt. She knew he’d put it on for her, since he’d grumbled more than once that week over the necessity of confining human clothing when not in his natural form. Earlier, she’d been vaguely grateful. Now, she wished he hadn’t bothered.
“I’m done whining,” she announced, finding the edge of a pectoral muscle and tracing the curving line beneath the cotton covering. “I just thought you deserved to know that. And I should thank you for putting up with it. For that and for just now. What you said was really sweet. And you’re right. I’m a pretty lovable person, so I should get over myself and move on.”
He blinked, his expression looking a little dazed and more than a little confused. “You owe me no apologies, little one, nor any thanks, but I am glad to hear you acknowledge the truth.”
“That I’m lovable?” He nodded and Kylie let her grin turn wicked. “Yeah, I am.” She leaned forward and let her unbound breasts press against him while she whispered into his mouth. “Want to love me right now?”
For a second, she wondered if he had turned back to stone, but then he shot forward in a burst of speed, locked his arms around her and flipped her onto her back. While he loomed over her, growling his arousal, Kylie tipped her head back and laughed with giddy pleasure.
“I’ll take that as a yes.” She giggled, loving the flash of mischief that glinted in his eyes as he relaxed and realized her blue mood had truly passed.
“Take this as well,” he rumbled just before he dove into her mouth and dragged her into a riptide of desire.
She gloried in it, encouraged it, wanting to taste his wildness and the urgency of his need. When they had come together earlier, he had been careful with her, tender and seductive, until at the end when she had goaded him into letting go.
This time, she wanted him to hold nothing back.
She tried to tell him with the fervor of her response. She nipped at his lips, sucked at his tongue, and moaned at the rich, exotic flavor of him. She pressed herself up into his restraining weight, canting her hips to cradle his hardness, wrapping her legs around him and pulling him as close as she could manage. She twisted and writhed and dug her nails into his back, and all he gave her was the steady, smoldering heat of restrained passion.
Ha! She’d show him.
It would be great if she could pull off that trick of his and just make their clothes disappear with a thought, but she wasn’t a Guardian or a witch. She’d have to drive him crazy the old-fashioned way.
Breaking free from their kiss, she turned her head to nibble her way from his jaw to the corded muscles of his throat. She heard his growl echoing in her ear before he dropped his head and began his own assault on her shoulder. He pulled the neck of her shirt aside and scraped his teeth across her pale skin before retracing the same path with his tongue.
While he distracted himself nicely, Kylie slipped one hand from its grip on his back and slid it sneakily between their bodies. Her fingers burrowed beneath the waist of his soft, drawstring pants. At the same moment that she closed her fingers around his straining erection, she twisted her head and struck, sinking her even white teeth into the flesh where his neck and shoulder met.
Dag howled.
He shuddered like a bolt of lightning arced through him, lit up with violent arousal. Kylie had the fleeting thought that she hoped he hadn’t woken Wynn or Knox, before she decided to hell with it and stroked up his length with a tight fist. He muttered something sharp and guttural against her shoulder and half a second later she found herself imprisoned beneath more than two hundred pounds of male lust.
He had grabbed both her wrists, dragging her hands from him and pinning them to the bed above her head. While his own clothing disappeared with a thought, hers he dragged up over her head but didn’t bother to pull completely off. Instead, he bunched the fabric in his hands, twisted and manipulated it until she discovered for the first time that a properly knotted and tightened T-shirt could make an effective pair of soft, abrasion-free shackles.
Who knew?
She mentally kissed her second pair of panties of the day good-bye, since he tore them from her with even less finesse than the first pair. She wasn’t sure she’d be able to find all the pieces in the morning, but then again, she didn’t really care.