CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Noelle yelped and nearly dropped her teacup when Tamatsu slipped his arms around her waist.

She’d appeared to have been lost in her thoughts there by the stove and hadn’t heard him arrive in her kitchen.

“Why’d you vanish from the negotiating table?” he asked. He took her cup, set it on the counter, and turned her around.

She blinked up at him, shock in her wide eyes.

“I know winter is coming, but have you forgotten who I am just that quickly?” he asked with a chuckle. “Should I be offended?”

“I …” Pushing her lips into something approximating a grin, she shook her head. “No, you were right. I was lost in my own thoughts and didn’t hear you come in.” She wrapped her fists through swaths of his loose hair and pulled him down for a kiss.

Short, but tender. He couldn’t be offended when she kissed him like that.

“So, did Blue and Willa come to terms?” she asked.

“When I left, they were still bickering. Tarik was trying to ease tensions by sending them on walks in separate directions. I think those two are going to argue themselves breathless.”

“Do you think I did the wrong thing by introducing them?”

“I hate to admit that I was wrong about him, but I honestly think he’ll do a good job.”

“But?” How she managed to lace so much skepticism into a single word, he’d never know.

“Ah, you know me too well.” He laughed. “I think Willa is right to be concerned. What sorts of new disruptions will his and his lieutenants’ presence bring, not only to the pack, but to Maria as well? I don’t imagine Mason Foye or any of the Cougar lieutenants are going to get along well with Blue. The culture there is different than what Blue is accustomed to.”

“Damn. I hadn’t thought of that.” She pressed her hands to her shoulders and squeezed as she laid her head to one side and then the other, grimacing. “Maybe Tito can smooth things over?”

“I’m sure he’ll try. Give them some time, and I’m sure they’ll devise a scheme everyone can work with. So, why didn’t you tell me you were leaving? Where’d you go?”

“I had to run an errand.” Straightening up, she cleared her throat and tangled her fingers in his hair. “I didn’t think it’d take so long. By the time I was done, I figured I’d head home to make sure nothing blew up on me at work. The travel has been disruptive lately and I …”

Her forehead furrowed again as her voice trailed off.

“Noelle?”

“Hmm?” She looked up at him, surprise evident on her face again.

“Are you well?”

“Yeah. I’m fine, just tired. I’m a little more scattered than usual, trying to pare down some of my responsibilities before winter. I imagine Jenny’s doing the same.”

“Is she still at Clarissa’s?”

“No, she’s actually at the office right now. John took her home.”

“Oh. I see. If you’d stayed, I would have showed you the house I found.”

“A house?” Her eyes brightened as if he’d spoken a magic word. “What house? Where?”

“In Maria, right on the edge of town. The back of the lot faces the mountains. Incredible view, but it needs work. The house has been vacant for three years.”

One of her cheeks bunched from her half grin. He knew that grin well—it was her ‘gotcha’ grin. “I bet you popped in and gave the place a full inspection, huh?”

He shrugged. “Perk of being an angel.”

“Tell me about the house.”

“Hmm.” He rocked her a bit, side to side, enjoying the feel of her against him. “Let’s see. Built in 1938. The kitchen and bathrooms probably haven’t been updated since the Eighties.”

“Ugh.”

“What. Don’t like the idea of a fixer-upper?”

“I’ve got money to fix stuff, but I’m not so thrilled by inconvenience. All the dust, and waiting around for delivery guys and contractors.” She took his hand and pulled him toward the stairs. “How cheap?”

“Five digits.”

“Oh? Must be tiny.”

“Twenty-five hundred square feet.”

“Not tiny. The house is a dump, then.”

“I wouldn’t call it that, but the neighbors told me the property has been on the market for a very long time.”

“You talked to the neighbors?”

He rolled his eyes. “You know what I meant. Tarik did.”

And he’d actually been amused. Apparently, his friend found the idea of a domestic Tamatsu entertaining.

“They said the market in Maria has been depressed for a while. That may change soon with that online retailer building their newest distribution hub in the county.”

Noelle went rigid as a pointer dog staring down its quarry. “Oh my. How big’s the hub and when’s it going to be done?”

He chuckled and got his little opportunist moving again. “Five hundred employees, they said. They’re supposed to break ground in December.”

“Hot damn. I need to do some research about the amount of real estate inventory in Maria.”

“I figured you’d want to. The town doesn’t have a broker. The last one retired, and he only worked half days.”

“Half days sound good. My schedule will be extraordinarily erratic come winter. I’d have to knock off work by three every day to make sure I’m in bed on time.”

“Really? So early?” He let her nudge him back against the bench in front of the bed and, having no other choice, he sat. “I don’t remember you nodding off before dark when we were last together.”

“Seems to get earlier every year.” She knelt and tugged at the laces of his boots. “And I’ve got to be finished early in the day if I want to get things done before bed. I still need to eat and clean and balance my checkbook and such.” She tugged off one boot and then the other, somehow managing to keep at least one hand pressed to the skin beneath his pants legs all the while.

“Noelle, what’s your hurry?” They didn’t need to rush, and he was certain he could think of some good ways to keep her awake if he wanted to.

“To be in bed before I fall asleep in some random place?”

He chuckled again, half from her obliviousness and half from the tickling of her quick fingers against her arches as she peeled off his socks. “No, I understand why you’d want to be down for the night before exhaustion took you. I’m referring to your aggressive drive to get me undressed.”

“You’ve never complained about me wanting you to be naked before.”

“Yes, but usually, I’m the one initiating the fervor.”

She pulled her hands away and sat back primly on her heels. “You’d like me to wait?”

“I didn’t say that.” He worked free the button and fly of his slacks and, standing, sent the pants downward along with his briefs.

He sat.

She whisked the pants away, carefully folding them at the creases, still watching him.

He unbuttoned his shirt and handed that to her, too, along with the undershirt beneath. Then he leaned back onto his forearms and cocked a brow at her.

She sighed and hurried into the closet.

Minutes later, she emerged nude, but carrying her robe on her forearm. He didn’t have much time to catalogue the perfection of her because she hit the lights.

I can still see you, love.

She draped her robe over the arm of the chair by the bed and then returned to grab his hand. “Come.”

He’d barely paused before she added, “Unless you don’t want me?”

“That will never be an issue.”

“I hope you’ll always mean that.” With that inscrutable statement, she pushed him down onto the bed and was straddling him in a moment.

“Not going to bother with the covers?”

“Do you really need them?” Pressing her hands to his chest, she leaned forward and plied his jaw with soft kisses. Slowly, she worked her way to his chin, then down the column of his neck.

He let out a breath and skimmed his fingertips down her spine. He loved touching her and exploring all the silken shapes that comprised the whole of her. “I think the covers add to the intimacy. Sometimes, I like to see every lewd detail. Sometimes, I just want to feel.”

She stopped kissing and rolled her gaze up to him, blinking blue eyes in a way that hinted that perhaps she didn’t know what to make of him. She’d have forever to learn to predict him.

He nudged her hair back from her cheeks and tucked the dark swaths behind her ears. “I can’t imagine there ever being points there.”

“Oh.” She ran a fingertip across the top of her left ear. “Mine weren’t especially pronounced. Family defect. Clarissa had fantastic points, though. So did Jenny.”

“Hmm.” He smoothed the pads of his fingers over the tops of her cartilage. “I wish there were pictures.”

“I don’t.”

“Why not?”

“I was quite gaunt. Most of us were. We weren’t padded in the same way as we are here, passing for human. I imagine I would have looked rather severe with my skin drawn so tightly over my bones.” She sighed and continued moving her train of kisses down his neck, pausing to say, “Clarissa used to sketch. There may be some drawings of me and the others in her entourage on parchment somewhere. Unless she’d found some way to preserve them, they’d likely be crumbling by now.”

“I’d like to see. I’ll ask her.”

Sighing wistfully, Noelle resumed her kisses. They turned into licks somewhere around his sternum, and she leaned rightward and lashed her tongue over his jutting nipple.

He generally wasn’t much for foreplay. He didn’t need it any more than he needed to waste his time fiddling with unsatisfying appetizers before having a big meal. But it was new for him, and new was exciting. He liked that she wanted to touch him in those ways and that she was interested in how he’d respond.

She seemed to be logging each reaction of his, looking up every time he gasped, every time his muscles twitched beneath her lips or fingers.

She’d worked her way all the way down his belly, and her chin bumped against the top of his cock. Hard, of course. There was rarely a point he wasn’t erect when he was around her.

As she worked her gaze upward and pushed up onto her arms, he drew in a deep breath.

“Don’t martyr yourself,” he told her.

She wrapped her fingers around the base of him and worked her thumb across the sticky head. “Whatever do you mean?”

“You’ll want to be thorough.”

“Most men like thorough.”

“If I gave a fuck about most men, I’d still be in the angelic host. I prefer to be in your bed.”

“I love the way you look in my bed.” She bent, lips skimming over the end of him ever so gently. So, so soft, the muscles of his ass clenched from the anticipation. “I’m sure I’d like the way you’d look in my mouth, too. Perhaps some day, we’ll bring a mirror to the party so I can confirm that.”

Fuck.

“Or perhaps a camera,” he suggested.

She grinned knavishly. “And here I was thinking you were a Luddite.”

“I believe I am evolving.”

“Splendid.” She sighed and her breath tickled his belly. “I’d love to make myself a martyr to fellatio tonight, but I’m impatient.”

“Is swapping traits a side effect of tethering?”

“To some degree, but are you not still impatient as well?” Her grin was sinister and sexy as she crawled back up toward his head. “Because every time I touch you, you thrust.”

“I am impatient. I’m hungry, but curious. I’d like for you to explore me.”

“And I will. But right now …” She pressed her hands against his chest once more and eased down onto him.

He had to help her a bit. He didn’t have the right kind of magic to suspend gravity where his cock was concerned, so he held himself up straight, and she took him within.

She inched slowly down, muttering in one of her old tongues as she did.

He grabbed beneath her ass and held her steady. “You swear as if I’ve been the one withholding myself from you. You left me.”

“You know why,” she said huskily.

“I brought you what you asked for.”

“You did.” He was in as far as he could go, so she leaned her chest down to his then, and slipped her feet beneath his thighs and her hands beneath his backside. “And I’m going to try to give you what you need.”

“I need a lot of things, Noelle.”

“And I need far fewer than you. That’s how we’ll make this work.”

The woman rolled her hips as though her bones weren’t connected the way most human-shaped beings had theirs connected. She stirred him around inside her while rocking back and forth, driving her nails into the flesh of his ass.

He liked the sting almost as much as he savored the silken glide of her around his shaft.

He closed his eyes and held his hands away from her so he didn’t squeeze her like she was squeezing him. There was far more of him, and he was stronger. He didn’t want to bruise her. He didn’t want to mar the perfection of her.

She put her lips against his chest, over the place where his heart beat and she kissed as she clenched around him, sucked as she rode him to distraction. “I’m sorry for what I have to do,” she whispered, and he opened his eyes.

“Do what you must. I like the sounds you make when you come. I love how you take your pleasure from my body.”

And he loved her. Every messy bit of her, his chaotic little elf.

“I—”

There was something wet against his chest. Her tears, he realized, but her eyes often watered when they were together. It wouldn’t have been cocky for him to say that he was large and her body responded to that.

“This is for you,” she said, riding him faster, squeezing him harder. “I want you to … please.”

“I can wait.”

“I don’t want you to. Please. Give me you.”

He didn’t understand why she was asking for that. Centuries ago, he wouldn’t have queried. He would have come and rested his body for the few minutes he needed before going again, but he’d been a different person then. He hadn’t really understood companionship then—the give-and-take, the trading of attention.

“Please,” she whispered, putting her lips over his heart again and inching her hands to his. She pressed them against the bed and twined their fingers. “Do this for me.”

“Why?”

“Because I need you to. I … want you to.”

“Can you not—”

“Please.” There was such pain in her voice, and such urgency.

He wanted to pull her off him, but his body had other ideas.

She was rocking faster, squeezing harder, and he couldn’t not give her what she asked. His body craved it. The affliction he carried demanded it.

As heat coursed through his body and he closed his eyes to breathe through the pleasure, something else filled him. It expanded too quickly inside him, and he couldn’t push back out. It cut through him like a hot blade, through his gut and lungs and up to his chest, and then his head. It made his brain ache and his ears ring so loud that he reflexively plugged them and closed his eyes.

He’d processed Noelle’s whisper of “John?” a moment too late—realized that there was new magic in him a moment too late.

She’d done something to him again, but he didn’t know what, yet.

She was standing at the bedside, drawing the belt of her robe closed, and Gulielmus’s son appeared in a flash.

Tamatsu jerked erect. “Noelle—”

My voice … He put a hand to his throat.

Swaying violently to the right before being corrected by John, she shook her head hard, and then vanished along with the traitor.

Tamatsu scrambled to his feet and hurried into the closet for pants and shoes, screaming wordlessly as he went.

What the fuck did she do?

He needed to know where she went.

He refused to have that woman disappearing on him again, not after he’d already decided that they’d renovate a house and fill it with children. He wasn’t going to let her take that away from him or from her, either.

Whatever she’d given to him, he was giving back. If she’d talked to him, he would have told her to keep it, but they had never been very good at talking. He had plenty to say to her as soon as he found her.

She was never going to get him to shut up again—not until she promised to stay put. She was fae. Once she made an oath, she wouldn’t break it.