Page 31 of Countdown to Murder (A Paranormal Halloween #3)

Mira

I was close to losing control when we came in from our swim, but I forced myself to shower, put loose clothes on, and calmly load up my plate.

I focused on my heart rate, my scent, my emotions, and my stress level — it was important Panda didn’t know how close to the edge I was.

Not because I wanted to hide it from him, but because it was important that I could.

And to prove this to myself, once I’d had enough to eat I was no longer in danger of losing control, I told him how close I’d been.

“You hid it from me?” Brisk words. Carefully checked anger. No, not anger, but heated words that could easily boil over.

“I needed to know if I could. I’m telling you now because I understand it’s important not to have secrets in a relationship.”

The heat didn’t go away.

“You’re mad?” I asked.

“Irritated that I didn’t sense it. I need to be able to read you better.”

“No one can read me unless they’re in my head, which means the vampires who trained me, and a good portion of the Chattanooga coterie.” I blew out a breath. “And Apollonius and Mordecai, apparently.”

“Those two can read just about everyone. How many vampires have had your blood?”

“Too many for me to go on a mission to kill them all. Besides, I like most of the ones in Chattanooga. The only one I had a real problem with in Chattanooga moved to Alaska.”

“Gavin?”

“He was never inappropriate. There’s no specific reason for me to dislike him, he just set me on edge.”

“Which means you’re a decent judge of character.” He sat back and looked at my plate and then the lasagna pans. “You ate, what, two-thirds of a pan before you felt in control?”

“Yes.”

“Good to know. Mornings were hard for me when I first changed. Nathan gave me some protein bars so I could eat the second I was awake. Some are nut based, some are whey based. You should experiment around with both and see which helps the most, and the fastest.”

Panda heated the apple pie, put extra-large pieces on two plates, along with ice cream, and walked to the bedroom with them.

I followed him in, stopped at the roses, and smelled them. I’d seen them earlier and thanked him for them, but again, I wasn’t really sure what to do with them. I understood the concept, but it felt as if they should have a use. You eat the fruit and smell the flowers?

I looked at him, standing beside the bed with both plates on the side table.

“Why did you bring the food in here?”

“Because we’re going to have fun with dessert. A game. I can’t feed myself, and you can’t feed yourself. Also, since this might get messy, I’m going to strip down to my undies. You should, too.”

He situated the huge beach blanket he’d bought but we hadn’t used yet over the top of the bedspread, stripped to his boxer briefs, and carried the plates to the bed.

“Damn, I want some pie.” He looked to the plates as if he was sad. “I sure wish someone would come along and feed me some.”

I stood at the side of the bed, cut into the pie, and fed him a bite. I hadn’t understood why he wanted me to do it until I did. It seemed... intimate.

He grinned and cut a piece of pie from the other plate, loaded some ice cream with it, and held it in front of my mouth. “The fun of this dessert is the mixture of hot and cold. Open for me.”

I opened my mouth and let him put the food into my mouth. Being fed was way more intimate than feeding someone, and heat once again traveled between my legs. The oddest things made me want to touch myself there.

No, if I was honest, I wanted Panda to touch me there.

He knew how to play my body in ways I hadn’t known were possible.

And this was a prime example. The fork going into your mouth, the sweetness that followed — why the hell did this make my clitoris throb and need to be touched? How did he know this would happen?

“Clothes off, Darlin’. I want to make a mess with you.”

It sounds completely silly to say that ten minutes later, I was licking ice cream from his stomach, and he was licking apple pie filling from the skin between my breasts, but that’s what we did, and by the time the food was gone, neither of us much cared because we were sating a different hunger by then.

I licked and tasted with my nose, my tongue, and my Jacobson’s organ, and I thought I’d drown in the raw, male taste of him.

Testosterone and masculinity and lion. He licked me between my legs, and I managed to get him naked while I licked my way to his beautiful penis.

Dick. Cock. I didn’t care what it was called, I wanted to lick it.

* * * *

Panda

I hadn’t planned on her trying to go down on me. I’d meant to talk to her about fangs and venom and how much control she had, but I hadn’t, and now I had a king cobra shifter with her mouth around my dick, but if I went soft I’d have to admit I was scared.

As soon as the thought went through my head, I was okay.

I wasn’t afraid of Mira. She wouldn’t hurt me.

She licked and sucked for several minutes, and I enjoyed it while staying keyed into her.

The second I realized she wasn’t sure what else to do, I lifted her to me, kissed along her jawline, rolled us over so she was on her back, and kissed my way down to her nipple.

I sucked and nibbled, careful not to hurt her, but she squirmed and wiggled, and the lion in me needed to hold her still.

I grabbed her hair, held her head at the angle I wanted it, and I kissed her while I held her head.

My body thrummed with need. I let go of her hair and worked my way down her body.

By the time I reached her beautiful pussy, she opened for me — wet and needy.

When I finally lifted my head, she took in a long, shuddering breath and reached to pull me back.

But the lion needed her to lie there and let us work, so I stroked her outer pussy lips, then between her lips, and slid a finger inside her. Tight. Hot. Wet. My dick pulsed and jerked, but I had to get her ready.

Mira’s body arched and a choked scream came out. She planted her feet and shoved her pussy up, fucking my finger since I apparently wasn’t going fast enough for her.

Another finger, and another, and her eyes opened, alert.

Her body moved and undulated, unrestrained, with none of the caution she’d displayed earlier.

Her fingers stroked my chest. My shoulders.

She let herself be vulnerable. Let me see her need, her emotions, and I knew I couldn’t keep her on edge like this for long.

It had to be now, whether I was ready to do it or not.

She was ready.

I lined up and realized we hadn’t talked about condoms. Theoretically, I couldn’t get her pregnant.

Mammals and reptiles rarely produce offspring, but that might not be the case with a descendant of Echidna.

The sphinx may very well have been the product of Echidna having sex with a lion, and who knows who Cerberus’s father was. Is.

I’d put the condoms in the top drawer of the side table when I’d unpacked, so I leaned over, opened the drawer, and pulled one out.

Mira opened her mouth to say something, and I shook my head.

“If it can wait, let it. You’re ready. I’m ready.

We can stop everything and talk if it’s important, but if it isn’t.

..” I had the condom on by this time, and I put it back to her entrance and gave her a few seconds to decide whether she needed to tell me something.

Her gaze locked on mine. No words. I pressed until the head was in and stopped.

“Mine, Mira. If we do this, it means we both agree you’re mine and I’m yours.”

A brief nod, and that was all I needed — one final agreement that we both wanted this, and we both knew where we were headed.

My hips wanted to plunge in all at once, but my brain told me that would be bad. The lion seemed to be in agreement with my hips. I fought for control, slid in a tiny bit more, and she gave a keening moan, as if she wanted me to just get it over with as well.

“Gentle, or all at once?”

“Gentle seems cruel.” The words were silent, with no air behind them because she was holding her breath, and yet, I understood.

I still didn’t feel good about slamming in all at once, so I set my intentions for halfway in, and I finally allowed my hips to hammer towards her, but I didn’t account for how tight she was, and I barely went in an inch.

I ran my hand up her ripped abs and caressed her small breast, kneading and molding it, rougher than I’d been with her yet, but it seemed to drive her higher.

My hand slid back down her body, those long, lean muscles. Ribs. Abs. Hip bone. Back up, and I kissed the spot under her ear.

“Please!” It came out as a gasp, and my protective instincts were at odds with the savage beast that needed to take her as badly as she seemed to need to be taken.

* * * *

Mira

If he didn’t stop trying to be gentle with the poor little virgin, I was going to flip us over and force myself down onto him.

A savage wildness flowed through my veins, and I needed him to take me and make me his in the worst way. I couldn’t form words or sentences, but I finally managed to get out, “Won’t. Break.”

He shuddered over me as if I released some primal beast he’d been holding inside, and he pulled himself nearly all the way out and then slammed into me.

Once. Twice. Three times. With each shove he went an inch deeper.

And then two inches deeper. I have no idea how many times it took until his body was touching mine and he was all the way inside me.

My legs seemed to know what to do, and they wrapped around him.

I focused on wiggling my toes because I realized my legs wanted to do what they couldn’t when Mordecai told me to — my legs wanted to turn to snakes and trap him to us, force him to fuck us hard and fast whether he wanted to or not.

He froze. “Are you okay?”

I clenched my jaw but managed to get a whole sentence out. “If you don’t fuck me, I’m going to take charge and fuck you.”

That seemed to be all he needed to know, because he moved so fast, my eyes couldn’t keep up.

The sensations were magnificent — his dick spreading me wide, piercing me deep, and moving so damned fast, creating heat where it had already been hot.

Panda was magnificent, and for the first time, I saw the hard edges of him — the tendons of his throat, his ribs, his arms. Muscles working in concert above me, taking me, making us one when we’d been two before.

No, we were four, not two. Man, woman, lion, snake.

And then my thoughts were gone. There was only our slick bodies moving against each other. My hands on his shoulders, my legs wrapped around him, pulling him towards me. It was like a storm on the beach, sudden and intense, thunder and lightning, rain and wind, waves crashing against the cliff.

The orgasm came at me from out of the blue, a tornado whipping in and taking control, uprooting everything and destroying the walls that’d kept me safe from my emotions. Tears flowed not because I was happy or sad, but because I couldn’t contain everything.

I was raw, inside and out, and I needed his dick to keep moving, to keep stirring everything up so I could know what was there, what was hidden.

I twisted under him, trying to help him go deeper, but he put his hands around my ribcage and held me still while he pounded into me.

His pupils dilated until his eyes were a shimmery black outlined by golden rings.

His lashes fell and then rose. One of his hands moved to the magical spot between my legs, and reality splintered.

Ecstasy slammed into me and I lost control of everything.

Nothing mattered except his dick, his hands, his mouth, and the overwhelming pleasure suffusing every neuron in my body.

* * * *

Panda

When she finally, completely lost it, her legs took on a life of their own while I came deep, deep inside her.

It’s a damned good thing I was wearing a condom, because I wouldn’t have been able to pull out.

Each of her legs became a giant snake, with a huge snake head in the place of her feet, and I couldn’t move away.

Operating on the idea that on some level, Mira was in control, I ignored the snakes and kissed her jawline, below her ear, her neck. I couldn’t move away without fighting the snakes, but they didn’t seem to want to bite me, and they hadn’t flared in a show of aggression.

But the heads were bigger than a Dobermann’s, and my dick went soft after I came. I can usually keep it hard and keep going, but my balls were deep inside my body, and my dick was doing its best to follow them.

“Mira, Darlin’. You okay? Talk to me, sweetheart.”

Her hand lifted and ran through my hair, and her legs shifted and relaxed. I could see a foot out of the corner of my eye, and I rolled to the side and brought her with me.

“Do I need to feed you again?”

“No. I’m good. How long until we can do that again?” She rubbed her hand down my jaw, over my beard. Her voice was sleepy, relaxed. Had she even realized what she’d done?

“Food first.” I caressed her hair, her arm, and I moved her so she was tucked up into me, her back to my chest.