Page 71 of Demon's Bane

“Oh,” she gasps. “Your wings. I shouldn’t have—”

When she tries to rise, I keep her right where she is with a gentle hand to her back. “You’re not hurting me, little mate.”

Though she shoots me a skeptical look, Joan eventually relents and settles back against me, and I can’t stop my purr of satisfaction.

She laughs softly. “I think I like the purr.”

“Good,” I say in a tone I barely recognize. Deep and warm and content.

At peace, I realize with a pulse of surprise.

Have I ever felt peace like this? Certainly not here, in this cabin that’s been little more than a shell to hold my tired body after a long day of work. And even before, I can’t remember a time when I felt this kind of calm, unhurried happiness.

Joan’s body is a warm, wonderful weight against me. She’s quiet, and I’d almost think she was falling asleep, if it weren’t for the lazy stroke of her hand. Fingertips trailing over my skin, her touch makes my pulse leap as it maps a route over my chest, my abdomen, then lower, until I realize what it is she’s after.

I catch her wrist just before it reaches the top of my pants.

“What?” she asks, innocently, like she doesn’t know just what kind of power she holds over me, just how helpless I am in the face of it.

Holding Joan’s slender wrist in my hand, I wonder if it’s possible to die of wanting.

Because in this moment there’s nothing I want more than to have my mate touch me. To feel her hands on me, her mouth. Anything she wants to give me and any way she wants to have me, I’m already hers.

But that doesn’t mean I want her to feel like she owes me anything, like I expect her to pleasure me simply because she gave me the honor of pleasing her first.

“Little mate, I don’t expect you to—”

Joan cuts me off by curling her other hand around the back of my neck and dragging me to her so she can claim my mouth. When she gets a taste of herself clinging to my lips, she groans into the kiss and it’s another blow to my perilously thin restraint.

My grip on her goes lax, and she pulls her hand free. A moment later, she places it on the laces at the top of my pants.

“Do you want me to touch you, Rhett?”

“Like I said, you don’t have to—”

“Iwantto. What do you want?”

I bury my fingers into her hair and stare into her deep brown eyes as the very last threads of that restraint snap, no more than tatters at the frayed edges of my mind. “I wantyou, little mate. That sweet mouth of yours. Your hands. Anything you want to give me, I’ll have it.”

The smile that turns up her lips is dark and knowing and satisfied. “Good. Then stand up.”

Powerless to do anything but follow that command, I rise from bed. Joan follows, standing in all her naked glory before me as she trails gentle hands over my shoulders and chest, mapping all the lines of my tattoos, brushing across my pierced nipplesas she stops to lean in and tease against the silver bars with her tongue. She continues downward, making my abs clench and my tail whip restlessly behind me as she makes just as careful a study of my body as I did hers.

It’s torture, her touch. And ecstasy. After all those long days of being glamoured around her, it seems near-unbelievable to have her touching me like this,lookingat me like this, with eyes glazed in warm appreciation.

And then she falls to her knees on the soft rug beside the bed.

My cock jerks at the sight she presents. Soft, creamy thighs bent beneath her, breasts jutting out and nipples hardened against the slight chill in the air, head tilted up to give me another taunting smile before her hands land back on the laces.

With a few deft tugs, my cock springs free, and my mate lets out a gasp of pleasure and surprise.

I’m already fully hard for her, aching, and a burst of living flame burns through my veins when she reaches out to touch.

Like she did with the rest of me, Joan takes her time exploring.

It’s all I can do to keep myself still and controlled as she tests the length and the weight of me, curls her hand around my shaft in a tentative stroke.

“What’s this for?” Joan asks, brushing her fingertips over my knot.