Beast of Fire -- a Demon Hunting Sexy Romance (22 page)

Lucan moaned with the sweet bliss of the wet heat of her mouth, and Kresley’s head jerked upward, looking at him in surprise. “You know you are driving me insane, right?” he demanded.

A slow smile slid onto her lips. “Am I?”
 
That seemed to please her. She lapped at him again, watching him this time, teasing him with the sight of her little, red tongue touching his cock, swirling around the head.
 

Slowly, she slid onto her stomach, her mouth closing around him, taking him, inch by inch, until she had him fully impaled. She suckled on him and then started a slow slide, up and down, up and down. Had he ever experienced anything as erotic as this woman’s mouth on his body? No. No, he had not. His hands went to her hair, his hips pumping with the wet heat surrounding him. Pumping. Pumping. He squeezed his eyes shut. Stop, he whispered in his mind. Stop now. He was getting to the point of no return, and he didn’t want that. Not now. Not like this.
 

With supreme effort, Lucan marshaled the fire in his veins, his hands going to her shoulders, pushing away from her. She leaned up, her breasts displayed in lush perfection, nipples brushing the mattress.
 

“Why did you make me stop?” she asked, sounding a bit insecure for the first time since they'd started this.
 

Lucan answered by moving swiftly to the mattress before she could move off of her stomach. He covered her body with his, framing her from behind. He slid between her thighs, his erection pressed to the perfect curve of her heart-shaped backside. There was no need for birth control for an immortal, not need for barriers. Nothing to keep them apart.
 

His lips went to her ear. “Because I have every intention of being inside you when I come.”

Chapter Sixteen

Kresley moaned at the feel of Lucan’s muscular body framing hers. She loved his body. She wanted to explore every inch of him. She found every little detail fascinating. From the curly hair sprinkled across his nicely defined chest, to his flat, dark nipples and defined, rippling abdominals. Her fingers traced the lines of his broad shoulders, muscles flexing beneath her touch. Her lashes fluttered, her limbs warm with excitement, her chest heavy with emotion.
 

She belonged in this moment. Belonged here in a way she couldn’t put into words even if she had to. It was one of the few times in her life that she had felt this way – perhaps the only time. And that sense of belonging was exactly why she felt none of the inhibitions, none of the limitations, her life usually made her feel. Never before had she felt so lost in another human being as she was with Lucan this night. Never before had she felt so completely connected. She couldn’t explain it. Didn’t want to analyze it. She didn’t want to find a way to reason away what she felt. She simply wanted Lucan.
 

His lips traveled her body with seductive caresses that had her head spinning, her hips lifting, seeking completion, seeking him. But he wasn’t done teasing her, not yet. Proven when he rolled her over and spread her legs, his hot gaze raking over her with the heaviness of an arousing caressh a second before his long, hard body slid up hers. She arched into his touch as his hands closed around her breasts. He swallowed her gasp with a sizzling kiss, too soon ended. His mouth began a tortuously delicious path down her neck and further south, until he found her nipples. A combination of nipping, suckling, and licking had her squirming. Her thighs ached. Her body burned.
 

Her hands went to his hair. “Oh God, Lucan. I need you. I need you now.”

His eyes lifted to hers. “You aren’t ready.”

Was he crazy? “Oh, I assure you,” she insisted. “I am very ready.”

He chuckled, a soft sensual sound that teased her nerve endings and made her want to scream for more. “Not yet,” he said, and that was a promise. A painful promise that she had to wait for satisfaction. A pain he quickly kissed all better as his lips trailed over her stomach, beneath her navel, dipped, lingered. Her stomach quivered beyond her control.
 

The lower he kissed, the more she burned for him to go even lower. When finally his warm breath trickled over her clit, her hands clutched at the sheets, her body taut with anticipation. She needed his mouth on her. She might die right here and now if he did not do it soon, if he did not take her in his mouth. Yes. That was very, very possible. Die if he did not have her right where she wanted him.
 

“Lucan!”

Again he chuckled, but he complied. He suckled her nub with gentle insistence, his fingers aiding his efforts. Her mind floated into blackness, a rainbow of sensations fluttering in the midst of what was once coherent thought. One finger slid inside her and she found herself arching into it. Another finger, and she stiffened slightly, feeling him stretch her, knowing he was trying to ensure she had no pain, but she was aware of the discmfort – she didn’t want to be aware – she wanted more pleasure.
 

He seemed to know this, seemed to know what to do. His tongue did something very special at the exact right moment. She didn’t know what, but it was amazing. It was magic. She forgot the fingers. Well. Not exactly forgot. She simply decided she liked them. Her hips were rocking with the movement, his fingers stroking her inner wall, his tongue sliding in all the right places. She ached in a way that promised satisfaction, in a way that made her pant. Made her breasts heavy, achy. Lucan was too busy to attend them so she did herself. Her hands covered her breasts, touched her nipples.
 

Her hips lifted as a tingling started in her core. Oh. “I… " She shattered without any further warning, pleasure rushing through her body with such intensity, she shuddered uncontrollably, her breath lodged in her throat. Slowly, slowly, it eased, and Lucan’s touch eased with it.
 

She gasped as the last spasm ripped through her, as the breath lodged in her throat released. Good grief, what had just happened? She’d had orgasms, of course. She was human. She’d learned about her own body. But nothing like this. Nothing so completely overwhelming.
 

While she reeled over what he’d done to her, Lucan slid up her body, settling between her legs. She blushed at the extremeness of her reaction but didn’t let that stop her from speaking. Two weeks, she thought. She wasn’t wasting one minute. “That was really, really good,” she gushed. “I feel like I should say thank you or something.”
 

He shook his head and laughed, his eyes alight with a mixture of amusement and satisfaction. “You are saying thank you,” he said, sliding his erection along her slick core. His eyes heated, laughter faded. “Because now you are ready.”

She swallowed hard as he reached between them and gently nudged her open, the tip of his erection easing inside her. “Okay?” he asked, gentleness and concern in his eyes. She blinked into his eyes. She loved his eyes. Loved the tiny lines that added character, that told of a history she had yet to discover, but wanted to.
 

“Kresley, sweetheart,” he urged. “Are you okay?”
 

She nodded. “Okay,” she murmured. “Yes.” He slid a little deeper and she bit her bottom lip, panted a little, started to panic. “Maybe not.” He eased back and looked at her. “Maybe—" she started to say. She never finished. He sunk deep to her core, his width stretching her as he buried himself to the hilt. She cried out with the sudden width of him inside her. So much for gentle and concerned.
 

“Damn it!” She screamed and pounded his shoulder. “How about some warning?” But even as she yelled, her anger was beginning to fade, warmth sweeping through her limbs, the intimacy of having him inside her washing over her with breathtaking results.
 

Gently Lucan returned to her, gazing down at her with a combination of apology and pure red-hot lust in his stare. “We had to get past that,” he explained, maneuvering his hips and doing an erotic slide inside her as he added, “So we could get to this.” He stroked her with a gentle rotation of his hips.
   

“I . ..” He moved a bit more, the long, hard length of him rubbing a sensitive spot she wanted him to keep touching. Little darts of pleasure were forming in her core. She nodded. “This is good.”

He smiled, but the tenderness there began to shift, change, become laden with desire. But still he held her gaze, as if he could not look away. As if in that moment, he felt what she did, as if his chest filled with the same emotion that hers did. Intimately connected. They were mates that faced impossible odds – but in that moment, none of that mattered. There was only the two of them, only shared passion and perhaps more, something neither seemed to dare speak of.
   

His lips were close to hers, their breath mingling. He whispered her name. She whispered his. His cheek brushed hers, lingered. She hardly knew when he began to move, when the sensual rhythm of back and forth began. It was all one big haze of pleasure. All one warm blanket she nuzzled into and never wanted to leave. It was perfect, right. And so was the rapid shift from sensual to hot, from tender to wild.
 

Lucan lunged hard, deep. She wrapped her legs around him, tried to grab his arms, arched into the action. He pressed his palms into the mattress, leveraging himself, the sleek, sexy muscles of his body taunt with exertion. His hair was loose, wild. His eyes wilder. His face etched with the effort, with restraint. He wanted to come. She wanted to make him come.
 

His eyes traveled along her body with a hungry, arousing inspection. She liked the way he looked at her. She liked knowing she turned him on. His thrusts became short, fast. He kissed her, took her mouth with primitive force. She wanted to be taken. She was hot. Her core, so very hot. She clenched around him. Tightened. Felt the rise of orgasm. Felt her body clamp down around him.

A low growl escaped Lucan’s lips –
 
a reaction to her spasm? He tore his mouth from hers, and she got the barely there glimpse of red. His beast. His beast was here. For a moment, she felt fear, felt terror. She shoved it aside, reminding herself this was Lucan. She shoved her hair aside, knowing he had to mark her shoulder. “Do it,” she told him hoarsely. “Please. Let me save you. That’s what I am meant to do.”
 

***

Meant to do.

Those words jolted Lucan right back into control and cold, hard reality. Lucan buried his face in her neck, inhaled, fought the raging demand of the beast that had risen unexpectedly. He reached deep and fought the beast inside him. He could not claim Kresley like this. He did not know why. Could not find reason in the midst of the battle he fought with his beast, though part of him could justify taking her. He was going to save her, after all. He was going to save himself. It was okay to take her, it was right, it was just; it was the way it was meant to be.
 

But there was a voice in his mind, his own voice, and it rumbled with warning – telling him to be strong, to wait. He shook with the effort of fighting his beast, but the strength inside him was far greater than he had known. Strength that had carried him three hundred years when others had made it far less. The beast was buried deep in the recesses of his soul. He had won. And he wanted her to know.

“No.” The word rolled off his tongue–softly at first. Then more trongly, as he gained confidence that he had fully won the battle with his dark side. “No.” He lifted up on his elbows. “Not like this.” One look at her lovely, passion-etched features, and the man returned. He trailed his knuckles down her cheek; his fingers, over her lips. “Not when everything is so uncertain.”

Tears welled in her eyes, as if she had failed in some way. “But I want to save you.”
 

“You already have,” he promised her, slanting his mouth over hers and kissing her with the passion of a man saved. Showing her what he had declared in words, with his kiss, with the way she made him feel, how alive, how ready to take on the rest of the world. And from that kiss, tender passion unfolded, drew them in, took them to a place he did not think he could go, or had ever been. Every touch, every kiss, was a divine experience that left them breathless, melting into one another.
 

She called his name right before she shattered, and he did not think he would ever hear her say it enough times. Her body spasmed around him, and he buried himself deeper inside her body – buried himself in the warm, wet heat of her core, just as she had nudged herself in his heart – and then shuddered with release, exploded in a way that reached beyond pleasure. Because wrapped in the warm, wet heat of Kresley, he felt himself healing. And when he finally stilled, he didn’t move away, resting above her, their bodies intimately joined. He didn’t want this to end.
 

It was long minutes later when Lucan finally found the will to move. He flipped off the light and pulled Kresley into his arms, smiling into the darkness as she snuggled closer to him. His hand slid down Kresley’s hair, her soft, steady breathing telling him of her slumber. He thought of all he had learned, all the things she had said and done. And he knew she was ready to quit. Ready to give up. Lord only knew, he understood that feeling. Isn’t that what he had done? Quit? He’d looked for the easy answer and taken it.
 

The truth about his decision to trade himself clawed at him far worse than his beast. Because the pathetic thing was that his decision had not been about his beast at all. He’d been afraid of failing Kresley as he had others in his life–watching them die because he couldn’t protect them. So he’d made an ultimate sacrifice to ensure her safety, or so he’d wrongly convinced himself.