“Sweet Jesus,” he whispered. “You’re an angel.”
Her fingers skated up his denim clad thighs and lowered the zipper of his jeans. The words she wanted to say bounced around in her throat until she overcome her final vestige of shyness. “I’m your angel.”
Possession whipped in his eyes. “Oh yes, you are. Even when you’re thinking of doing something quite the opposite of angelic.”
She leaned down and kissed the trail of dark hair on his belly. “Do you want me to stop?” she asked, exploring the outline of him with her fingertips.
In response, a sconce on the wall zapped and went dead.
“I need to be a gentleman,” he grated.
Her lips curled against his skin. “With that mouth?”
“Does it…offend you?”
“No.” She fisted his length in her hand, awed by the texture, smooth over hard. So hard. And long. “I like it,” she whispered.
“Are we talking about my mouth or my—” He cut himself off with a groan when Ginny gave him a test stroke, loving the way his hips lifted as if propelled, his abdomen flexing almost violently. “Christ. It’s going to kill me to stop you.”
“Why do you want to stop me?”
“Want to? No.” He yanked on his chains once, then visibly calmed himself. His eyes remained closed for several seconds. “I’ve never…released, Ginny. Not since I was Silenced.”
Her brow knit. “You told me you’d been with—”
“Pleasure is one thing, but without my mate…without you, there’s nothing to show for it.” His expression was a mixture of humor and hunger. “So to speak.”
“Oh.”
“I’m going to be inside you when it happens for the first time. And before we ever get there, I’m going to need full use of my hands and mouth.”
Wicked images danced in her mind. “Oh.”
His lips twitched, as if he could read her thoughts. “I’m already worried about tempering my strength with you, Ginny.” Those eyes dropped and raked up her thighs. “I won’t have you anything less than ready on top of it.”
Her nipples tingled. “Oh,” she whispered again, like a simpleton. “When we…will you… get me pregnant?”
“No.” Regret shone on his face. “No, I can’t. If I did have that ability, you know I would—”
She stopped him with a kiss. His answer didn’t inspire a sense of loss or make her question the decision she’d made upon walking into the apartment. She would never have children. It was a fact to be absorbed and not a blow to the system. Her life could still be full, just the same, without this part of life she’d never strongly considered to begin with.
“Okay,” she said quietly, rubbing their foreheads together. “Okay.”
“Okay?” he breathed.
“Yes.”
His throat worked. “One more thing, Ginny?”
“Yes?”
“I derive more pleasure from holding your hand than I’ve had in my entire goddamn life combined. Just so we’re clear.”
A pressure she hadn’t been aware of living in her chest evaporated like it never existed, leaving warmth and yearning behind. “Can I please unlock you now?”
His nostrils flared. “Yes, I think so.”
Ginny pinched Jonas’s zipper between her fingers and drew it back up slowly, watching the play of muscles shifting on his stomach. Even while so still, the energy Jonas threw off was electric. Urgent. Focused on her. She almost stumbled when she reached her feet and turned to retrieve the keys. Jonas’s growl and rattling of the chains reminded her the skirt was still hiked up around his hips—and that she wasn’t wearing a top.
Muttering apologies, she yanked down the skirt and pulled the tank top over her head. Beginning to lose her patience over having him in captivity like some animal, she hastily grabbed the keys. She remained standing while freeing his right hand from the first shackle, her breath catching when he immediately slung an arm around her hips and drew her close, open-mouth kissing her stomach, drawing on it greedily as if it were her mouth.
“Sh-should I keep going?”
He pulled his mouth away, rolling his forehead side to side against her stomach, before withdrawing completely. “Yes.” Those eyes found her and held. “I’m in as much control as I’ll ever be around you.”
With a click, she opened the second shackle and immediately found herself across the small room, trapped between her vampire and the door. “As soon as I get a handle on myself where you’re concerned, Ginny,” he groaned into her neck. “I am going to fuck you endlessly.”
Everything south of her belly button clenched. “There’s that mouth again.”
His grin was so promissory, it almost made her cry. Stepping back slightly, he lifted Ginny in his arms and opened the door without laying a finger on the handle. One look at Roksana where she stood at the end of the hallway and Ginny knew she’d heard quite a bit of what took place in the room.
Elias and Tucker appeared on either side of her, their shoulders relaxing when they deduced that all was well. “Looking good, prince,” Tucker called, good-naturedly. “You get a haircut or something?”