“What the fuck, Ash? Is that why you changed your mind and fucked me that day? I was going to disappear into a cloud of purple prose when the clock struck . . . Fuck, you did think that! You were up waiting for me to disappear.”
“Fine, I did think that. You didn’t seem that interested and then all of a sudden, you were. What was I supposed to think? But I worked out pretty quickly I was wrong.”
“Why didn’t you say anything?”
“How does one have that kind of conversation, Gabe? We had something good going and I didn’t want to jeopardise it with what would have to seem like crazy talk. I’m sorry, OK? I get I should have said something. I don’t usually hide things from people I’m close to, but seriously, there is no entry in the Miss Manners book for this kind of shit.”
“You think what we have is good?”
“You came through a trans-dimensional portal, no questions asked and threatened a furry crime lord for me. Of course, I think what we have is good.” He took a step towards me, some of the tension bleeding from his body, watching me, taking me in almost warily. “You seem like you’re a good boss, a good friend and. . . .”
“And?” he asked, taking a step towards me so that I could feel the heat of his body against mine, but not his skin, the proximity creating a weird buzzing feeling of need inside me. I’d been too tired, too overwhelmed and too bugged out about being in an alternate realm to think much about Gabe, but right now?
“And you fuck like the devil,” I said in a low hiss, watching his tongue flick out and sweep across his lips. “Sometimes it feels like you’re going to split me in two, but oh, my God, what a way to go.”
He was on me in the next moment, hands burying themselves into my hair, lips on mine, crushing me with his kiss, leaving me no choice but to hang on. I wrapped a leg around his hips, wanting him closer, harder against me. He grabbed my butt and jerked me up, forcing me to bring both legs up and lock them around his waist. I groaned as he pulled me hard against him, moving over to the wall to support my back and then grinding slowly and surely against me.
“Get it out,” I said in a hoarse whisper. “Fuck me.”
“If he’s the animal Natty says he is, he’ll smell me on you.”
“He won’t; his men might. There’s plenty of strong perfumes here; I can drown your scent out.”
“No, you can’t,” he growled. “It fucking kills me, seeing you flirt with that psychopathic cunt. You’re mine, Ash, curse or no.”
“Then show me,” I said, pulling back and smiling.
Jeans were hastily unbuckled and jerked down; I paused in my own disrobing to see that long brown body emerge. “You want this?” he said, giving his big dick a couple of tugs. All I could do was nod. He spun me around to face the mirror over the sink; my jeans pulled down my legs before I had a chance to do anything, a warm, wet prickling sensation settling between my legs in the next. “Oh, fuck . . .,” I whimpered as he licked and sucked at my clit. His hard suction was almost too much, pleasure and tension ratcheting up my spine, me fighting the urge to grind against his face and pull away because I just couldn’t handle it. “Not going to last,” he said between pants, spearing fingers inside me. I gasped as he forced me open. “Lying next to you at night, feeling your legs around me on the bike. I need this; I need to be in you.”
“Gonna need lube,” I said, feeling the steady build of something huge inside me. He pulled away, leaving me feeling horribly empty, then there was the strong scent of lavender and then uh! The head of his cock pushed inside me, a few short, stabbing pulses and then he surged forward.
“Fuck!” he sobbed, resting his head against my shoulder. He took a moment to collect himself and then his hand snaked down my front, fingers sliding either side of my clit. I was caught, on the end of his throbbing dick, shoving itself inside me over and over, the big head dragging over something that grew tighter and seemed to swell as he went and his fingers, plucking pleasure from my aching nub.
“Oh, God, Gabe . . .!” I gasped, pushing back, meeting him stroke for stroke. I widened my legs, him growling as he managed to go that bit deeper, his strokes growing faster and more erratic. “Gabe!” I hissed. Fuck, I was coming, wave after wave of glorious pleasure, spreading out from my cunt in waves, leaving my hips bucking spasmodically.
Once the pleasure had washed away, I wasn’t sure where we were at. I got dressed, looking into the mirror with the convoluted frame briefly, unable to meet my own eyes for long. Gabe seemed to be having the same problem. “You’d better have a wash,” he said as I began to pull on my jeans, “put on some clean clothes and wash or burn those. You must stink of me.”
“Right,” I said, knowing what he said was true, but finding it hard to turn the water on in the low-footed bath and empty the glass container of bath salts into it as my partner stood there, eyes fixed on the floor.
“Gabe, I’m–”
“Let’s focus on getting your sister out of here and going as soon as we can,” Gabe said. “I’ll leave you to it.”
28
I didn’t usually think of bathing as a lonely experience, yet here I was, in the bath, feeling like I didn’t have a friend in the world. I looked out the long window that showed a beautiful view of the golden afternoon, the vast gardens of the citadel visible even from where I lay in the lavender-scented water. I had no reason to feel uncomfortable. The water temperature was perfect, the feeling of being clean a relief after sleeping in hay last night, yet I could not seem to relax. I scrubbed at my arms, again, though there wasn’t a mark on my skin.
You know you’ve done the wrong thing, the voice in my head said. But Tess is in danger, I replied. I knew I wasn’t overreacting when one of the organised crime bosses of this world was spelling out what was going to happen to her while chomping down on the well-basted corpse of a distant relative. The prince was a danger. Tess was obsessed with the Beast when we were kids. The way she’d fallen head over heels for Merlin when he’d come . . . My fingers went limp, dropping the soap into the watery depths. I knew Tess had been crushing on Merlin, but love? Had she fallen in love with him, only for him to disappear back to wherever he was from? A rapid succession of memories of the shifting looks of anger and horror on her face from our last argument, the argument at the shop before she left, played in full Technicolour in my head. I couldn’t leave, no matter what she said, but I also had no idea how to help my sister, not without being exactly the kind of overly involved dickhead she accused me of.
Which somehow, once I’d gotten dressed, had Natty sniffing at my crotch.
“It’s faint,” he said, pulling away and standing up again. “The lavender works. Your lady garden mostly smells of well . . . flowers. I t
hink you’ll be fine; I can’t see why any of his men would need to get this close to you anyway. I’d strongly suggest sleeping separately though, and . . . avoiding mating until this whole thing is over.” I looked over at Gabe and his grimly blank stare and saw that was on the cards irrespective of the olfactory abilities of the furry officers here. The heart tattoo he’d gotten was still covered by a piece of white gauze that peeked out through the collar of his shirt and I sighed.
“So,” Natty said, “is that the way all hoo-man families interact?”
“Um . . .” I thought about our family, the argument at the shop the other night, Jerry Springer . . . “Yeah, pretty much.”