She didn’t like the slight sinking sound in her voice, but she couldn’t help turning to look around her apartment as if she could, by X-ray vision, see through to the Steeplechase’s funnily endearing ugliness. She loved it, but her apartment was too small for two, and she would choose Theo over any amount of quirky charm.
And she couldn’t ask him to live in The Steeplechase. Unlike her, he actually had taste.
“We don’t have to,” Theo said quickly.
What was she doing? The last thing she wanted was for him to think that she could ever again have a home without him in it.
She poked one wing. “Okay, hotshot, put these away so we can talk face-to-face without you getting crimped.”
She watched intently as Theo folded his wings back into his human form, stashing them away in hoard space. She still couldn’t pick out exactly how they vanished. It was like the visual equivalent of trying to remember something that was on the tip of your tongue.
Theo turned to face her. He had the serious look he always got when he was convinced the right thing to do was to wait for the other person’s decision.
He said, “I don’t want to rush you. I know you love me. If it feels too much like a whirlwind and you want to go a little more slowly, I’ll understand.”
“You would? Because I wouldn’t get it if you wanted to slow down at this point. I mean, I’m your mate, you saved my life—”
“You saved mine back.”
“—and I took half your money. We’ve basically been married and divorced already, when you look at it that way. I think fast is our natural pace.”
He smiled that crooked smile that she always wanted to kiss off his mouth. “Maybe. But Dimitri’s hoard really doesn’t qualify as half my money, you know.”
“It’s a metaphor.”
“It is a metaphor,” Theo said haughtily, “that diminishes the size of my hoard.”
“Believe me,” Jillian said, lowering her hand down below the sheets, “I know your size everywhere it counts.”
The smile turned into a much more wicked grin. With a casual demonstration of shifter strength, he flipped her so she was the one on her back. He knew how much it turned her on for him to treat her as if she were as light as a feather. Her legs parted at once.
His mouth joined hers. He tasted like cinnamon and cloves, making each glide of her tongue along his into something especially decadent. His lips were just slightly chapped, which made them register more against her own, stirring her, making her more sensitive. She felt like her whole body was humming. What he could do to her with just a kiss was obscene.
And she loved that she had the same effect on him. He was already hard, his cock immense and needy. She knew that if she really wanted to, she could bring him off within a minute. She did want to. She should—certainly he had spoiled her enough that she should return the favor—but then he sank down with his mouth between her legs and any thought of doing anything but lying there and holding on for dear life was beyond her.
She whimpered as he lingered on her clit and then outright moaned as he slid two fingers into her. It was such a tease to have only a taste when she wanted everything. She was always so greedy for him.
It would have scared her to need someone so much if he weren’t him. She always knew he would give her whatever she needed. She could always trust that he needed her back. She could always trust him to look at her and see beauty and honor.
She lifted her hips, bumping herself against his mouth. But she could never hurry him when he wasn’t in the mood to be hurried, and now he only raised his head and looked up at her with an unbearable glint of playfulness in his eyes. His mouth was shiny from her.
“Patience, Treasure,” he said.
Treasure.
He had never called her that before. Not like that. But he’d said it not like he was introducing a new endearment but like it had come as naturally to him as her name.
With the next brush of his tongue, Jillian came. She clenched her hands around fistfuls of sheets and thought, Treasure, treasure, treasure. She felt like she was lit up like a pinball machine, the word flickering around her, activating pleasure centers wherever it bounced.
Somehow she needed him even more after she’d come. Right now, another orgasm wasn’t what she needed to feel fulfilled. What she needed was for him to be inside her. She wanted his face level with hers.
She got it because he too had run out of patience. He sank into her in a single thrust. She tightened around him, her inner walls tense with pleasure. Theo made a soft sound that could have been a gasp.
Jillian stroked her hand down the side of his face and waited until those gorgeous emerald eyes of his found hers.
“Not slow,” Jillian whispered. “I want what you want. I fell for you fast and hard. You don’t ever have to worry that I’m going to regret that.”
Theo exhaled. His muscles were quivering a little with holding himself still despite his obvious desire to move. “Fast and hard, Treasure?”