“Nix,” I said, not exactly sure why. Was I saying his name to have him touch me, to warn him that we would be too loud in a dorm-style building? To tell him he was being unreasonable? That he was absolutely right and I just wanted to be in the palace in a big bed and beneath him, all the bad stuff just… gone? Poof! I had no idea. My mind was scattering like leaves in a fall wind.
I mean, I was in a confined space with the hottest man in the entire universe and he was naked. His cock had gotten hard for me. Only me. I knew about the Aleran males’ awakening. How they might search for years for the right woman to turn them on and wake them up. It was like instant puberty. From zero to hero instantly. And for Nix, that one in a million woman was me.
No wonder he looked like he wanted to eat me alive.
If that wasn’t hot as fuck, I had no idea what was.
And what was I waiting for? I wanted him inside me giving me orgasms. By the dozen.
“Yo
u doubt I’m your mate?” he asked, glancing down our bodies at his cock, which bobbed between us. When he stepped closer, it pressed hot and heavy against my belly. “That this is just… fucking to you?”
Yes, I wanted to fuck him. I’d had sex before, but never like this? God, it had never been like this. I wanted him.
“Nix.”
Reaching out, I grasped his cock, stroked the full, ridiculously long length of it. His eyes fell closed and his hips jerked. I felt powerful, knowing what I did to someone so serious, so in control all the time. Leave it to me to turn on someone so uptight and rigid. He just had to be a queen’s guard.
“I’m supposed to be finding my mother’s kidnapper,” I said randomly. “Not going at it like a rabbit with a man I don’t know.”
He stilled my hand by gently gripping my wrist. “You know me,” he said, his eyes meeting mine. Holding me pinned just as much with his gaze as with his grip. “I am yours, Destiny. That is all you need to know. To feel. But as to the rest? Your hand is on my cock and you’re thinking of your mother?”
I bit my lip, said nothing. He was right. My body was melting and my mind was screaming at the rest of me to get a fucking grip and get back to work. I didn’t have time to take care of myself. I had to find Mom. She needed me. Trinity needed me. Faith needed me.
Nix cupped my face with a gentle touch and angled my head so I looked up at him. “Destiny, there is nothing else you can do tonight. You neglect your health, push your body to the point of starvation. Tempt death to take you. You do not take care of yourself. That is what happens when you’re in charge.”
“Nix.” God, his eyes were dark. And the emotion I saw there scared the hell out of me. Shit. He was right. How had a man I’d just met known that much already? I did push too hard. I broke things. Bones. Skin. I had scars. I’d kept the emergency room back home well-stocked in casts when I was a teen.
And this Ardor? I had waited too long, but I hadn’t realized just how close I was to the edge until Nix had shown up and set my body on fire. Who knows? Maybe I would have been fine. Maybe I could have held on for another week. Or two. “I’m fine.”
“I hear that word a lot from you, yet I find you covered in a dead man’s blood. I do not believe you are using it properly.”
“I don’t think—”
Nix interrupted, placing his thumb over my lips. I wanted to lick and nip and suck him into my mouth. “Thinking. Too much thinking. I might have been a virgin before you, but even I know that right now what my mate needs is to be a sweaty, screaming mess from a good, hard fuck, from my energy pouring into you, feeding your Ardor, taking me inside you forever. That’s what you need and I’m going to give it to you.”
Forever? What the hell was he—
His free hand cupped my pussy, slid over my wet folds. Over my clit. Back and forth. Teasing me.
I never finished that thought. No longer cared.
“I love the feel of my cum in you. Knowing I’ve been here, taken you.”
I whimpered, circled my hips as he slipped two fingers inside.
His hand moved away and he turned me around, pressed my breasts to the cold, smooth wall of the shower tube. “Nix!” I cried.
His answer was to kiss me. My shoulder. The back of my neck. The side of my face. Luring me into trusting him, he raised my hands over my head and locked one large hand around both of my wrists as water poured down on both of us.
“You need to take better care of yourself, mate.” He washed my body with one hand, making quick work of the job, making sure all traces of the earlier violence were gone. It wasn’t sexual, but his touch made me feel cared for. Pampered. That was before the sharp slap landed on my ass. The sting had me gasping, then coming a little as the fire spread and his hard cock slid up and down the small of my back, the curve of my ass.
Holy shit. Hot. “I’m fine.”
Another swat, the sweet sting moved through me like liquid heat and my pussy clenched around nothing. Empty. Hungry. My core twitched and spasmed in the beginnings of an orgasm. I tugged at my wrists, tested his hold. He wasn’t hurting me, but there was no give. His heat was like an inferno at my back as he towered over me.
Hot. So fucking hot. I wanted more.