Page 49 of Will It Hurt?

Jinn

Something about this wytch stirred things that had long been buried. Years had passed with me none the wiser as I’d survived without a lover’s touch. Thrived, even.

Maybe I’d been waiting for this. Not her, necessarily. But a reminder that I was still made of blood and want. Not just a mother with a flailing daughter, but a person with needs.

Aisla stared up at me with all the defiance in her soft little body, putting up a front that was fooling no one, least of all her.

Something about her prickly nature slid under my skin like a caress.

Irritation sharpened the softness of her cheeks, turning her classical features into something fierce and unyielding.

The furrow in her brow, the way her lips pressed into a tight, unamused line—it should have made me tread carefully, but instead, it pulled me closer, like the proverbial moth cast upon the pyre.

Curse it all, I couldn’t look away.

I wanted to feel the burn of her ire and the sting of her annoyance. Most of all, I wanted to taste it all on her tongue.

“Prove it,” I said again, raising my knuckles to her cheek. “Prove I don’t affect you, little wytch.”

She stilled, defiance thrumming the air around her .

I let my fingers wander down along jaw and the little dip below her ears. Down over her neck and under her chin. Down, down, down.

She quivered.

It was unmistakable, but she tried to hide it anyway.

Little liar.

“How am I supposed to prove that?” she asked breathily. “There’s no test to prove anything—not conclusively.”

I brought my thumb back to her lip, tracing the softness of their contours beneath my touch.

She didn’t stop me; she didn’t breathe a single word of protest. In fact, I doubted she was breathing at all.

“Of course there is,” I said, watching the way her pupils expanded like dark ink spilling into water.

“Oh?”

The little breath of air was meant as a question, but it lingered like a lusty sigh.

“If I press my lips right here,” I rasped, feeling the pillowy softness of her lower lip beneath my thumb. “And your pants come away dry, then I’ll admit I don’t affect you.”

Her heartbeat trebled, and I relished the stuttering pulses.

“Open,” I rasped, and she did, taking my thumb between her lips.

The warmth of her tongue pressed against my skin, deliberate and slow, making my fangs itch to descend. She drew back just enough for her teeth to graze the pad of my thumb, soft but suggestive, before pulling me deeper.

Her eyes stayed locked on mine, half-lidded and smoldering, daring me to react as though I was only doing this to call her bluff.

Was I ?

It had been a painfully long time since anyone had looked at me like this, as though my touch stroked them just right . If anyone had looked my way, I’d been blind to it behind Belle’s needs.

I couldn’t remember when I’d last felt a lover’s touch. A decade, surely. Perhaps more. The years blended to form one long stretch of time. There was Before Belle and After Belle, and my life had been filled with so much joy that sex simply hadn’t been necessary.

With Indira and the others, sex was a fixed commodity. The noises of it, the fluids, the mixing of blood and pleasure… That had been fun for a decade or so. As a fledgling, I’d indulged to my heart’s content. But the allure had faded quickly.

The tangle of strangers’ limbs had held no temptation. Not to me.

But now…

Aisla’s breath came shuddering out against my thumb as though she’d been holding it all this while.

Maybe it had started as a twisted little game—me trying to prove a point. But with her tongue stroking across my thumb and taking it deep to the back of her throat, I ached to step forward and take her lips with my own.

Underneath it all, I traced the quickening of her heart and the rush of her blood through her veins. I would be deceiving myself if I said her blood didn’t call to me. From the moment she’d turned up the street to the Hall of Surgeons, I’d felt a sudden quickening of blood through my veins.

If only I could say her presence didn’t affect me…

But that would be an outrageous lie.

Especially now, her warmth beneath my touch left me…

Aching.

Needy .

Hungry for a single taste.

Whether it was her lips or her blood or her pussy I wanted, I didn’t know.

I slipped my thumb from her lips and traced a path over her cheek with her saliva. Panting, she stared up at me, challenge still rife in her gaze.

“Had enough?” she asked, her chest rising and falling beneath the several layers of clothes she’d piled on.

“I don’t think sucking my thumb has proved anything, little wytch, except for the fact that you’re good with your tongue.”

The tongue in question stroked across her bottom lip.

“Your heart is beating very quickly for someone who isn’t affected by me,” I said.

“Don’t study my heartbeat,” she retorted.

I shrugged. “I can’t help it. It’s my nature.”

Her nose crinkled. “I tend to forget you’re a predator when you’re all dressed up in tweed.”

My fingers moved into her hair, gathering it in a fist.

She stilled.

“Does that make you my prey?”

Her breaths ghosted against my lips.

Close. Too close. And yet, not close enough.

“I will win this game of yours, you know,” she whispered, and I tasted each word. “I will not give in.”

A smile crept across my lips. “Then I’ll have fun losing.”

It was Aisla who tipped forward with a rasp of breath. It was Aisla who slicked her lips against my own. It was Aisla who sighed into my mouth.

And it was I who quivered under her kiss.

Her fingers delved beneath my vest and clutched my waist .

“We will not be discussing this,” she murmured against my lips. “This never happened.”

I made her quest easier by unbuttoning my vest and letting it fall to the floor.

“You would be hard to forget, little wytch.”

Something flickered in her eyes, warring with the desire that made her gaze darken.

Her throat worked as she said again: “This. Never. Happened.”

“You mean this ?”

Her gasp echoed around us as I placed two palms on her bottom and raised her to the sturdy oak table. Her arms rose to my neck, lingering there even when it became clear that she was in no danger of unbalancing.

“Jinn.”

Soft and deliberate, my name slipped from her lips. The single word slithered between my ribs and untethered something inside me.

My forehead touched hers, warm and familiar.

“Kiss me,” she breathed.

Was there anyone in the world who could ignore a breathy command like that?

I cupped her jaw between my palms and raised her lips to mine, taking it with a deliberate slowness that tested my infinite patience.

She tasted like her blood—a watered-down version of it. Or perhaps I was tasting her knowing that her blood simmered so close within reach. But each taste, each flick of her tongue marked me with the unique something that was all Aisla.

Desire seared my belly, hot and sharp, the unfamiliar sensation taking me by surprise.

The past few decades had been full of love and laughter with teaching Belle how to be a vampyre, and I had sorely neglected everything else in my life.

Romance was one of those things that had been set on the back burner.

And romance with a human had never interested me in the first place.

But this one… This fiery five-foot bundle of irritation and annoyance would be my indulgence. After all these years of unintentional celibacy, I would break my fast with a thorough tasting of her lips.

Her fingers slid into the hair at my nape just as mine crept beneath the hemline of her jumper, digging past several layers to find her skin.

She gasped into my mouth, humming her pleasure.

Someone who tried to kill me shouldn’t taste this good.

She really was a loud thinker. As soon as the thought crossed her mind, she stiffened in my arms and released my lips, breathing hard against me.

I tracked the erratic beating of her heart and the rush of her blood as she sat back, lips wet with my saliva.

“Um.” She cleared her throat, her cheeks flushed a deep red.

There was no need to guess what was going through her mind. The crease between her brows said it all.

Nothing about this makes sense!

I wished to say this attraction defied reason—and in many ways, it did—but anger and lust rode a fine line.

She probably wanted to tell herself it had been a game, a moment of recklessness. But the truth was simpler than that: she had kissed me because, for one careless second, she had wanted to.

“We will not talk about this,” she reminded me, tugging her clothes back down primly over her waist. “Not a word.”

And I let her have her way.