CHAPTER 15
He had insisted that everything was fine, but for the rest of the night Asher seemed distant, his attention remote. Naomi couldn’t penetrate the shadows that shuttered his handsome, troubled face. Nor did he allow her to.
He deflected all of her questions and allayed her fears with reassurances that he would let nothing—and no one—ever get close enough to do her harm. He didn’t have to say the words for her to know that Slater and the dangerous men who served him were foremost on his mind. Asher’s concern was broadcast in his grim silence, and in the soldier-like way he prowled the house, an air of coiled readiness rolling off him in waves.
It was only when he took her to bed a few hours later that she felt him return to her completely. Naked beneath him as he brought them both to a staggering release, she had watched his dark blue eyes burn with desire for her and his glyphs dance with color on his gleaming skin. Feeling him move inside her, his powerful strokes obliterating everything except pleasure, there had been no room for doubts or worries about Slater and whatever might wait for her outside the shelter of Asher’s arms.
He woke her in similar fashion that next morning.
With sleep still clinging to her and her body lax from a blissful exhaustion, Naomi moaned as she felt Asher’s mouth kissing a warm path over her belly and then down onto her hip. His breath fanned hot against her sex as he nipped and teased her mound.
When his tongue cleaved into her seam and found her clit, she arched up on a hissed gasp of sensation. She opened her lazy lids, catching her bottom lip with her teeth as he began to kiss and suckle her in earnest.
“Asher,” she whispered, already panting, melting for him all over again. “Wait. Let me clean up before you—”
“Lie back.” His gaze smoldered as he glanced up at her. With one big hand splayed across her stomach, he used the other to hold her in place beneath his mouth. “I want you just like this. I like tasting myself on you and knowing this is all mine to enjoy.”
He dipped his head back down to her as he spoke, lapping at her with unabashed carnality as he held her gaze. He caught the tight bud of her clit between his teeth and flicked his tongue over it, dizzying swirls that had her practically clawing at the sheets.
“Oh, God,” she whispered, shuddering in response to every wicked stroke. “So good.”
He groaned a low rumble of approval, rewarding her with another long, shameless lick into the cleft of her body. Flames danced along her skin as she arched into him. Had she ever felt so wanton before? She knew the answer, because she had never wanted any man the way she burned for him.
Her thoughts scattered as he continued to torment her with his tongue. “You’re driving me mad, Asher.”
His low chuckle vibrated against her tender flesh, but he showed her no mercy. Her orgasm shimmered at the edges of her consciousness, just out of reach. And he knew it, dammit. He knew exactly how to play her body and he was proving to be a master of control.
“Oh, fuck . . . let me come,” she snarled at him, not caring how ravenous she sounded. It was too late to pretend she was anything less. When they were together like this, she had no defenses. She simply wanted him. Needed the pleasure only he was able to give her.
His fingers closed over her thighs and spread them wider, his hands as rough as his tongue was gentle.
She shivered as he pulled back and his warm breath washed over her.
“You’re so beautiful here,” he murmured, his voice an unearthly rasp. “Silky soft. Sweet and hot. Who needs food when I have you to feast on?”
Gone was the tentative teasing now, in its place pure hunger as he ate her alive, licking and sucking, sending pulsing waves of heat from her fingertips to her toes.
She moved her hips against his mouth with abandon, the ache in her belly spreading and growing, deepening into a need she couldn’t contain.
“Please, Asher,” she begged, catching his thick brown hair in her fists as shudders rippled through her core. She wanted to make it last, but the pleasure was as sharp as a knife now, and she was balanced precariously on the edge.
“You want to come, baby?” His low voice taunted her senses, his mouth still moving relentlessly over her inflamed flesh. His tongue dipped inside her and she groaned. “Come for me, Naomi. Give it to me now.”
She couldn’t hold back her release if she tried.
Her back bowed as he thrust two fingers deep into her body. The sudden invasion combined with the ecstasy of his clever tongue as he worked her clit in magical circles was more than she could withstand. Her climax built and swelled, until all she could do was cry out his name as she toppled from the precipice.
“Asher.”
Blood rushed to her head and light exploded behind her closed eyelids at the tremors rocked through her in an endless wave of release. Her bones were liquid, her limbs weightless. Her nerve endings had become electrified, her senses shimmering like tiny diamonds behind her closed eyelids as she held him tight against her with one hand, riding the crest of her orgasm to the very end.
It should have wiped her out, the intensity of how hard and how often he’d made her come since that first time they’d been naked together. But being with Asher did something wild to her. It had unleashed a craving that only seemed to deepen every moment she was with him.
She wanted to chalk it up to the fact that she’d gone so long without physical intimacy or desire. Or maybe it was the newness of being with a man as attractive and powerfully sexual as Asher.
For all she knew, this insatiable desire might have been an elemental response from the part of her that wasn’t quite mortal finally coming into contact with the part of him that was Breed.
But Naomi sensed a more profound connection than any of those things.
She was starting to care for him.
Impossible. They barely knew each other. This was all hot and thrilling and overwhelming because of the circumstances. Life and death. Danger at their heels. And the fact that he had stepped in to save her from it all like some dark knight she never dreamed might actually exist.
That’s what made being with him feel so damned exciting. That was the reason she felt so totally, gut-churningly wild for him, even after they’d scratched that initial itch.
Except none of those things seemed to explain the raw ache that had opened up inside her since she’d met Asher. An ache that was only growing deeper and harder to ignore every time he touched her or grazed her skin with the sharp points of his fangs.
Try as she might, she couldn’t dismiss the longing she had for something she’d been so certain all her life that she would never want.
The kind of bond she now knew she could only ever share with Asher.
God help her, she was astonished to acknowledge the very real possibility that she was falling in love with him.
“Hey,” he said, his deep rasp a thick rumble as he moved up the length of her body. He gently tapped her temple. “Everything okay up here? Are you all right?”
She blinked, still reeling from the aftershocks of bliss and her own startling realization. “Yeah,” she murmured, gazing up into molten eyes and the ruggedly beautiful face that never failed to steal her breath away. She reached up to caress his cheek. “I’m more than all right, Asher.”
It terrified her, how right everything could feel when she was with him.
Because sooner or later they would have to leave his bed and face reality.
But not yet.
Not now.
She kissed him, suddenly desperate for him all over again. He groaned against the hard crush of her mouth on his, then let out a hiss when she slid her hand down and wrapped her fingers around his rigid length. “On your back, vampire. It’s my turn to torture you.”
# # #
He did as she demanded, despite that he was harder than ever and desperate with the need to be inside her. He had sworn to himself when he escaped Dragos’s collar that he would never surrender himself to anyone’s whim ever again. But that was before he met Naomi.
This female owned him, and he couldn’t deny it.
Especially not when she was staring at him with pleasure-glazed yet still hungry eyes.
His veins throbbed, not only with the need to fuck her, but with another raging urge too.
As he lay back on the bed and watched her straddle him, he bit back a snarl. Blood rushed to his cock and an ache began to pulse in his gums as his fangs extended even further. The razor-sharp points felt like daggers against his tongue.
He reached for her hips, ready to slam her down onto his erect cock, but she batted his hands away. Her smile was sensual, yet determined. “Patience, now. I haven’t even started.”
He let out a rough breath. “I have no patience when you’re naked and within my grasp.”
She tilted her head, one of her slender black brows arching over her almond eyes. “Are you suggesting I tie you down, then?”
Holy fuck. Even though there were no restraints in existence that could hold him, the idea of giving himself up to Naomi’s pleasure sent lava coursing into every cell in his body. Even though it was torment and a test of his control, he kept his hands on the bed and simply watched as she rained little kisses on his chest and abdomen. Her pink tongue darted out to lick the swirls and arches of his dermaglyphs.
“I love to see their colors,” she murmured, exploring him slowly with her mouth. She ran her parted lips over the glyphs that circled his pectorals, then her small, blunt teeth came together over one of his nipples and he nearly jolted off the mattress.
“Christ, woman. Be careful, unless you want me to bite you back.”
It was a mistake to make the threat. Not only because it was an empty one—a breach he would never make. But also because his logical mind was taking a backseat to the hunger—and the thirst—that was racking him with hooked talons the longer Naomi toyed with him.
Now that he’d said the words, the image sprang to vivid life in his head. Naomi spread beneath him, her slender throat bared and arched to him like an offering. His mouth lowering to her, his fangs piercing her vein.
He could almost taste the sweetness of her blood in his mind. It would be delicate like her scent, and bold like the woman herself.
He squeezed his eyes closed and set his jaw, fighting off the ache there that signaled his need to feed. Now more than ever, he was almost desperate for it. That animalistic strike.
The hot, dark taste of blood—Naomi’s blood—flooding into his mouth. The sensation of pounding deep inside her as he drank, her tight channel squeezing him as she came.
He growled and shut his eyes, trying in vain to bar the images—and the thirst—from his thoughts. The necessity to find a blood Host was getting urgent the longer he was in Naomi’s presence. At least if his physical hunger was slaked he might have the strength to hold one of his needs at bay when it came to her.
Not fucking likely, but he’d be damned if he took anything more from her than he already had.
Cain’s reminder last night of what Asher had been—and everything he could never be—had been well-timed. Asher had been getting too comfortable with Naomi. He’d been finding it too easy to imagine what his life might be like with someone to share it with. Someone like Naomi.
No. Not like her.
Only her.
He’d told himself that keeping Cain’s appearance from her was only to soothe her fears about Slater closing in on her or Michael. But Asher’s motives had been selfish too. Naomi didn’t know about his past. She didn’t know how many lives he’d taken, including too many innocent ones.
His lie burned, but every minute that had passed since his confrontation with the other Hunter only made it harder to find the words he needed to say to her.
She continued to kiss and lick and nip her way down his torso. He lifted his head to watch as she drifted lower, and the look in her eye sent a battering ram of lust slamming into him. His already swollen cock pulsed and leapt, clear fluid weeping onto his stomach in anticipation of what she intended for him.
“You’re gorgeous,” she murmured, her eyes caressing him as admiringly as her hands. “I could never get tired of looking at every inch of you, Asher.”
He wanted to reply. To tell her that he was nothing compared to her. He wanted to shower her with all the words that couldn’t possibly do her justice, but all he managed was a strangled groan, lost in her warm grip as she wrapped her fingers around his shaft. Then she began to slide her hand up and down his length.
Her long, unhurried strokes had his pelvis rocking as he strained toward her, into her grasp. “You’re killing me, angel. God, I’d do anything as long as you keep touching me like that.”
“Anything?” She laughed softly. “Better not make promises you may not want to keep.”
She was teasing, unaware of just how apt her warning was. He had a hundred promises he wanted to give her, but had no right to speak a single one.
And then he had no words at all, once he felt the heat of her warm, moist breath on the head of his cock.
“Naomi—” Her name was hardly more than a broken snarl as she closed her lips over him and drew him deep into her mouth. “Ah, God.”
He bucked, reflexively driving his fingers into her dark hair. Her tongue was pure fire and she was burning him alive as she stroked and pulled and sucked. She couldn’t fit the full size of him in her mouth but that didn’t stop her from trying. He almost had to peel himself off the ceiling as she deep-throated him, those tight muscles gripping him like a warm, wet fist.
All the while, she made sexy little sounds, moans and hums around his girth that told him more than any words could that she was as equally consumed with pleasure as he was.
If he couldn’t taste her now, he needed to get inside her at the very least. He quaked with the effort of letting her continue, taking her tongue lashings like a martyr would, suffering this sublime torture in silence.
But then she began sucking in earnest, pulling back until she’d almost expelled him before drawing hard and deep, working the base of his shaft with her fingers, urging him to thrust with her hand around his hips.
The rhythm was like a heartbeat now, relentless, impossible to control. He tightened his grip on her hair.
“Jesus,” he ground out, his vision blurring in a haze of red, his fangs extending even further as his climax bore down on him like freight train. “You have to stop before I . . . ah, fuck . . . Naomi—”
He broke off as he realized his warning had the exact opposite effect. She only tightened her grip and moved faster, moaning now, desperate, needy sounds that short-circuited his brain.
“Fuck!”
He bellowed her name as every nerve ending fired at once, sending shockwaves through his body. He came harder than he ever had before, hot jets scalding him from inside as she suckled him mercilessly.
A sensation he’d never felt before wrapped around him, squeezing tight in his chest as he stroked Naomi’s hair and surrendered to the heat of her mouth. The feeling he had for her went far beyond lust. It was something profound and elemental, something primal and undeniable. Something possessive and permanent.
Mine, he thought, as he pulled her up to lie next to him.
He stroked her beautiful face and the glossy lips that had just given him such intense pleasure.
Mine, he told himself, even though he knew it he had no right to wish it.
He lowered his head and kissed her deeply, until they both were desperate for air. Then he let his fingers trail down her soft cheek and along her graceful jaw line, until he paused on the diminutive scarlet symbol that rode just above the fluttering pulse that hammered in her throat.
“Mine,” he said, his fangs bared and aching.
But before he gave in to the one mistake he could never undo, he flipped Naomi over onto her knees, spread her legs wide, then buried himself to the hilt inside her, letting her know she was his in the only way she ever could be.