Page 26

TWENTY-SIX

Sorsha

I could tell Pickle wasn’t feeling so comfortable with our current situation from the massive nest-build he’d undertaken. The motel bathroom tub now held two bath towels, one hand towel, and at least four rolls worth of shredded toilet paper. He looked a little ridiculous curled up in one corner, his small green body taking up barely a tenth of the space, but I wasn’t going to pick a fight with him over it. At least, not until I needed to take another shower.

“Sleep tight,” I told him with a pat on the head. By the time I’d finished brushing my teeth, he was snoring with raspy little hiccups. I held back a laugh and shut the door to muffle the sound.

Like that, the intermittent rumble of passing traffic drowned him out. The yellow light of the parking lot security lamps streaked through the thin fabric of the curtains. I padded through the glow to the bed, sprayed the air with another puff of the lavender-scented freshener I’d bought, and settled down under the covers, hoping I was tired enough to tune out the lumps in the mattress. The padded surface did a pretty good imitation of the Sahara dunes.

I’d closed my eyes but not yet drifted off when a faint shift in the air made me suddenly certain I was no longer alone. One of my shadowkind friends had slipped into the room in their supernatural way. Ruse, I assumed, but as I started to roll over, it wasn’t his languid voice that reached my ears.

“Sorsha?”

Snap was standing in front of the door between our rooms, as if trying to do the best approximation of having entered the normal way without actually having opened the door. In the dim light, his curls darkened from gold to bronze, but the smooth planes of his face still managed to catch a little glow.

As I sat up, he kept totally still. I couldn’t tell whether that was because he wanted the distance or he thought I might.

My pulse stuttered. Had our enemies tracked us down yet again despite all our precautions? “What’s going on? Is something wrong?”

“No. I mean, I don’t think so.” His tongue flitted over his lips. “You said, yesterday, that if I decided I wanted more, I should tell you.”

His gaze dipped—just for a moment, but obviously enough that the warmth of his attention grazed my breasts through my undershirt. I’d only worn that and panties to bed, where the sheet was now pooled around my waist.

As his meaning sank in, the warmth drifted lower to settle between my legs. All at once, my whole body felt flushed.

“I did say that,” I agreed. “So… you do?”

He hesitated, and then the smile that transformed him from handsome to heavenly spread across his face. “Yes. Very much.”

I found I wasn’t totally sure what to do next. With Ruse, it’d been easy. He’d known exactly what he wanted and what he could offer. Snap was clearly discovering all this for the first time. It was thrilling to think I’d been the one to stir up that sort of desire in him… but also a little intimidating.

I didn’t have the best track record with men. Somehow I always seemed to end up disappointing them in the end. It’d be an awful shame if I inadvertently traumatized the guy so badly he fled back to the monk way of life.

We didn’t have to rush into anything. I needed to figure out how far I wanted this to go. Obviously given who and what we were, it couldn’t be anything more than a fling—like with Ruse, enjoying what we had in the moment—but it was hard to see taking any shadowkind as a lover as a totally casual act.

For now, we could simply explore the possibilities. I scooted over on the bed to make room. “Why don’t you come here, then, and we’ll see where the moment takes us?”

Snap crossed the floor as swiftly as he’d been still before and sank down next to me. As he gazed into my eyes, his lit with an eager shine. His hand came up to trace across my cheek and into the fall of my hair. His smile faded.

“I want you to know I’d never hurt you. My abilities—I have to focus to use them; it doesn’t happen automatically. I wouldn’t put you in any danger.”

His voice held so much resolve that my heart wrenched. He really thought I might be afraid of him, of what he could do. Hell, I didn’t even know what that was , and I still didn’t have the slightest concern that he’d ever inflict it on me, not after the way he’d reacted the other day when we’d talked about using his powers on living things.

I reached up to wrap my hand around his with a gentle squeeze. “I know. I’m not worried.”

“Good.” His smile returned like the sun emerging from behind a passing cloud.

He leaned closer, his nose nearly brushing my temple. His breath painted heat down the side of my face. The scent that rose from his skin was fresh and bright as spring clover, with a darker mossy undertone like a reminder that there was more lurking beneath the surface.

“There’s so much I want to do,” he murmured. “I don’t know where to start. I don’t know what you’d like.”

The desire that had settled low in my belly tightened into something sharper. At this point I suspected I’d be all for whatever he went with. “Why don’t you start with what you’d like, and I’ll let you know if we need a change in direction?”

He responded with a pleased hum that sent a tingle over my skin and dipped his head as he inhaled deeply. Drinking in my scent, I realized. Holy mother of pearl, he’d barely touched me and I was already soaking through my panties.

His hand drifted down to my neck, his fingers stroking across my collarbone. His lips pressed lightly against my cheek, charting a path across it to the crook of my jaw. At every point of contact, my body lit up with quivers of bliss. A shaky breath spilled out of me.

Snap paused. “Is this all right?”

“Oh, yes,” I said. “That was a good sigh. You know, there is one thing most people find they like a lot…”

I’d meant to let him lead this exploration, but I couldn’t help myself—so shoot me. I tipped the angle of his jaw and guided his mouth to mine.

His breath caught as our lips met, and then he was kissing me as if the understanding of how to perform that act were written into his soul. My fingers twined in the silky curls at the back of his head. The heat of his mouth was so hungry yet tender it drew a whimper from my throat.

With the parting of my lips, he deepened the kiss. His forked tongue teased over the seam of my mouth, sparking pleasure. Oh, yes, I’d like some more of that, please.

His hand had slipped farther down, following the curve of my breasts—and stopping with a flinch I could tell he’d tried to suppress, just shy of the protective badge I’d left pinned to my undershirt. Shit, I’d forgotten about that.

“Sorry,” I mumbled against his mouth, and drew back just far enough to tug the undershirt off. I did trust him—enough to go without that small ward tonight.

Snap took in the sway of my breasts as I bared them, neon brilliance gleaming in his eyes. He cupped one, carefully but with more confidence than when he’d started, and seemed to study the shape of it, the point of my nipple, the way that nub pebbled with a tingle of pleasure at a swipe of his thumb over it.

His smile widened. He kept his hand there, caressing the curve of my breast and the peak at equal measures, and brought his mouth back to mine. I could have drowned in the sweetness of that kiss.

He lingered on my mouth before taking his kisses lower: past my jaw, down my neck, over my collarbone, setting me alight everywhere his lips touched. When he reached my chest, he raised my breast as if it were one of the mortal delicacies he so enjoyed savoring. As he sucked the peak into his mouth, I couldn’t help gasping. The flick of his tongue over my nipple, the forked tips encircling it with a slight tug, brought an even headier rush of pleasure.

“I know what Ruse meant now,” Snap murmured. “About how you’d taste. He was right. You’re better than any peach.”

“Considering how much you enjoyed the peach, that’s a pretty high compliment.”

He chuckled and pressed a peck to the curve of my breast. “He has tasted you—everywhere. Hasn’t he?”

The heated flush that had taken me over deepened. “Why, has he been talking about it?”

“No. I only—” Snap pulled back so he could look me in the eyes, his expression turning slightly apologetic. “The first night, you told us to leave you alone, but Ruse didn’t come away with us. After a little while, I went looking for him. I slipped into your bedroom in the shadows, and I saw— He was down here.” His fingers glided down to my lap, and a flush colored his own cheeks. “I didn’t mean to spy. I left right away.”

At least he had some small sense of privacy. But the thought of him watching the incubus with me in the act, even for a moment, spurred on my desire.

“Ruse can be… very appealing,” I said.

“It’s in his nature to be.” Snap eased down the sheet to uncover my thighs. “I saw how much you enjoyed what he was doing to you.” He kissed my cheek and then my mouth again, long and harder than before. I’d almost lost the thread of our conversation, caught up in the press of his supple lips, when he slid them away to speak again.

“I want to make you feel as good as he did. I want to bring you that kind of pleasure. And even more.”

Well, I certainly wouldn’t complain about that. But I did feel the need to say— “You know, Ruse has centuries of experience perfecting his technique, plus powers and a form specifically designed for seduction. I’m not saying you shouldn’t be ambitious, but maybe we should focus on one step at a— oh. ”

His hand had skimmed over my panties, grazing my clit at the perfect angle to provoke another gasp. Snap gave me a grin that might have had a hint of the incubus’s smirk to it and repeated the motion. Then his long, lithe fingers dipped lower, and curiosity came back into his expression. “You’re wet.”

“Yeah,” I said. “That means you’re already doing an excellent job of making good on your ambitions.”

He pressed between my legs more firmly, setting off a pulse of pleasure, and I bit my lip. I ran my hand down his chest to make my own exploration of his lean frame. This shirt definitely needed to go. As I pulled at it, he released me just long enough to help remove it.

With all that divinely toned muscle bared, Snap leaned toward me. He hummed happily at the sweep of my fingers over that terrain and returned his attention to my sex.

The unmistakable evidence of his own arousal showed in the bulge below the waist of his pants. There was the involuntary response that had started us down this unexpected path. It shouldn’t go untended to.

I teased my fingers over the bulge, and this time it was Snap who sighed. His hips shifted nearer to me, seeking out that contact. I stroked him again, harder, and he burrowed his face into the crook of my neck. His teeth nicked the sensitive skin there with a shudder of breath.

“That sensation… makes it very hard to think,” he said.

I laughed lightly. “The point of doing this isn’t to think. It’s to feel. And you can feel a hell of a lot more than this, if you’ll let me show you.”

He nodded into my hair and then raised his head to claim my mouth. The roughness of his kiss and the friction of his hand still fondling me through my panties left my head spinning. I managed to focus enough to curl my fingers around his erection through the fabric for a better grip.

He swayed into my hand with each pump up and down, chasing the pleasure I was paying him back with. At my nudge, he tipped with me so we lay on the bed next to each other. I squirmed even closer into his kiss and his touch.

Maybe it was best if we stuck to hands for this first spin around the block. Much simpler than navigating the mechanics of full-on sex, especially when Snap could hardly be prepared for the intensity of those sensations. I could already tell he’d get me off just fine like this. Hell, I wasn’t sure how much longer I’d last as it was.

I found the wherewithal to jerk the zipper of his pants down and discovered Thorn wasn’t the only one for whom dressing didn’t come automatically. Snap hadn’t bothered with any kind of underwear. He probably hadn’t realized they were a standard part of a mortal outfit. How would a shadowkind know, after all, if no one had happened to mention it? It wasn’t as if he’d had to consider clothes at all where he’d come from.

For now, it only made my intentions easier to carry out. I closed my fingers around his naked cock, reveling in the smoothness of the skin over his rigid member, and Snap let out a guttural sound. His tongue flicked right into my mouth to twine with mine, provoking a giddy shiver. I kissed him back just as enthusiastically as I swiped my thumb over the head of his erection and spread the precum forming there down its length.

Snap yanked at my panties and delved his hand beneath them. My chest hitched in delight at the stroke of his fingers right across my clit. The same instinct that must have guided his first kiss brought his touch down to my opening, testing the slickness there and then slipping inside me. He began a gentle pumping motion that became more blissfully forceful with each repetition.

I moaned, bucking toward him in pursuit of release. “That’s good. So good.”

He brought his other hand to the side of my face, watching me as the motions of his fingers built me up to that ecstatic shattering apart. Pleasure had flushed his face a deeper shade than before, and his breath came raggedly, but his attention never left me.

The swivel of his thumb over my clit and one final thrust inside me sent me reeling with the burst of my orgasm. My eyes rolled up, stars sparkling behind them while my body clenched around his fingers.

Snap caressed my cheek even as he rocked inside me through the aftershock. His voice came out soft and fierce at the same time. “My peach. My Sorsha. Mine .”

I wasn’t in any state to argue that sentiment, if I’d even wanted to. It was all I could do to keep my hold on his cock and stroke him faster to bring him with me.

As the rest of my body sagged with satisfaction, he let his eyes haze, giving himself over to the pleasure now that he’d fulfilled my end. A groan reverberated from his chest. His hips jerked.

He tugged me to him suddenly, his mouth crashing into mine. A tremor raced through his body as the hot gush of his release spurted across my hand.

“Oh,” he mumbled. “That?—”

He cut himself off with a breathless laugh and kissed me once more. This one lit me up from head to toes even in my sated state. I nestled closer to him instinctively, resting my hands against the warmth of his chest.

When the kiss ended, I glanced at him coyly through my eyelashes. “So, was ‘more’ the right choice?”

“Yes. Yes. And for you too.”

Apparently my enjoyment had been so clearly on display that he didn’t feel the need to ask. I was okay with that.

As I tipped my head to rest it on the pillow, Snap gazed down at me. A hint of uncertainty crossed his face. “What usually happens now?”

Ah. Yeah, I guessed in some ways that was a trickier subject than the sex act itself.

I skimmed my fingers up and down the taut planes of his stomach. “Sometimes people like to consider it done and leave. Sometimes they’d rather be close for a while longer, so they stay together while they sleep.”

“Then I will stay,” Snap said decidedly. He wrapped one arm around my shoulders and lay his cheek down by me on the pillow, tucking my head under his chin. His mix of bright and dark scents enveloped me. I relaxed into his embrace with only a small pang of regret that for all I knew, this might be the only interlude we’d get before our lives went even more to hell.