Beautiful Misery (Miss Misery) (2 page)

Each heavy breath I took accentuated the dull pain in my ribs, but I tried to block it out. No pain. Not fair. Not after how long we’d waited.

When Lucen pulled away I arched up to meet him again, but though his eyes burned with desire, his face was pinched. His hand landed lightly on my stomach, and he pushed up my shirt. “How bad is it?”

“Not as bad as it looks.”
Actually, my ribs didn’t look too bad, though they felt none too great. The worst bruising was on my thighs.

“Jess, I don’t want to hurt you. You need to tell me.”

“It’s sore, but I’ll live. It’s just bruises.”

He nodded
with a doubtful expression. “You promise you’ll tell me if it hurts too much. I can’t sense your physical pain.”

“I know.”

With a resigned sigh, he drew his finger around the waistband of my jeans and my muscles clenched in anticipation. Pleasure crowded out the pain, the desperate longing for him to drag that finger lower.

“Sit up
,” he whispered.

I obliged with more difficu
lty than it would normally require, and pushed my hair out of my face. I had to be such an attractive sight with my busted lip, the cast around my left wrist, and the copious bruises, most of which were still covered by my clothes but wouldn’t be for long.

How could this most hottest of men find me attractive? Even when I didn’t look like I’d had the shit kicked out of me, I was no beauty. I kept in good shape, but no one was going to mistake me for some cover model.

Lucen on the other hand—he could totally have passed for an underwear model. If ad agencies hired guys with horns, that was. I’d been blessed enough to see all of him before, and the memory of it was scorched in my brain.

As though he could sense my thoughts, he ran his thumb over my lip. “My poor, Jess.”

“You should see the other guy.”

That earned me a smile. “I did, and I hope his ass rots in prison.
I hope the other inmates return to him three times the damage he did to you.”

“And you haven’t even seen the worst of it yet.”

“We’re getting there. Slowly. So you don’t get hurt worse.”

I
nodded, watching the muscles on his perfectly sculpted forearms move as he ran his hands over my knees. Anxiety bubbled up in me. “It’s ugly.”

“Nothing about you can be ugly, little siren.”

“The bruising is hideous.”

Lucen
clasped my hands, bringing them to his face, and kissed my palms. “Those bruises are battle marks. Marks you got for running recklessly into a fight for my sake. They mark your bravery, how much you care about me, and your certain lack of regard for your own safety, but I’m willing to overlook that last one. Your bruises are the sexiest bruises in the history of people getting the shit beat out of them with a shovel. If it doesn’t hurt too much, I’m going to kiss every one of those bruises, like I did your lip there, and make sure each inch of your body understands how much I appreciate them.”

I wet my lips.
Lucen’s words seemed to wrap around me like a cord, a silken one—soft and sweet—yet one that squeezed my chest, that made my heart ache as strongly as I ached to feel him between my legs.

This was why he was dangerous. Nothing to do with his power. Everything to do with the way he could reduce me to mush.

“You could charm the habit off a nun if you wanted to, you know that.”

His serious expression broke into a smirk. “Yes, but the advantage to being me is that I wouldn’t have to talk. So I get to save my words for those who’ve earned them. Now.” He released my hands. “Let’s see these spectacular bruises
.”

Cautious fingers slipped beneath my shirt, lifting the fabric over my stomach, revealing me little by little. I let him pull and tug, easing myself free with a shrug of my shoulders, a twist of my arms, trying not to let my cast catch on the hem.
Then Lucen tossed my shirt behind him.

A breeze through his front window caressed my skin and sent hair blowing in my face. He said nothing as he pulled it away for me, letting
it fall against my shoulders, curls spilling down on my breasts. Just that delicate pressure on my scalp felt surprisingly good. I hated my unruly hair, but if he liked combing it for me, maybe I should leave it down more often.

He slid his finger through my last curl and it bounced against my chest. Leaving it be, he dragged his hands downward, over the swell of my breasts and the lace of my bra.
My nipples grew harder under his fingers.

Unable to resist touching him any longer, I grabbed his arms,
and his grip on my breasts tightened. Every part of me seemed to be squeezed with them. My inner thighs clenched in eager anticipation.

“So slow,”
Lucen said under his breath, but I couldn’t tell if it was a reminder to me or to himself. “I want to stare at you for hours, Jess. I want to memorize every inch of your body first. I’ve waited too long for anything else. Stand up.”

“What about you? Your shirt?” I didn’t want to be the only one around here baring everything. Not when
his everything was so beautiful.

“Fair enough.” His shirt came off so easily, no bruises or casts to get in the way.
Now he was all broad shoulders and chest before me, a hard, ripped stomach, a line of fine, blond hairs leading down into his jeans, teasing me with the knowledge of where they ended.

In the days since I’d last seen him shirtless, he’d had a glyph drawn on his
arm. Although it looked like an intricate tattoo, I knew it was a spell, one that would fade when he’d used up its power. Intrigued, I traced its lines with my finger, wondering what it was for but not feeling like this was the best time to ask.

Lucen
removed my hand from his arm. “Stand for me.”

I did, though mourning the extra distance this put between my naked skin and his.
Standing over him, I entwined my fingers through his wavy hair, and then over to his horns. I probed them with nothing more than my fingertips at first, wondering what they felt like. Bone maybe. Hard but smooth, or velvety like antlers? I explored them with more fingers now, wondering what I’d expected them to feel like. I had no idea, but they hardly seemed so scary in my hands.

Lucen
guessed my thoughts. “They’re really not the defining aspects of me.”

“I know that.” Now. “But I want to understand all of you.”

“You will, eventually. But if you want all of me, little siren, I need all of you. That’s all I’ve wanted for a long time.”

“You have me.”

He pressed his lips against my stomach, tiny, biting kisses down to my waistband. “So you’re telling me. Show me.” He tugged on my jeans.

My fingers trembled as I worked on the button. Show me. Prove it. Own it.

Need it. Oh, God. Ten years. My body throbbed with it. How did he stay so still when I could see such hunger in his every subtle gesture? The flicker of his tongue over his lips. The hitch in his breathing as I unfastened my zipper. How his eyes widened, devouring me in a glance as my jeans dropped to the floor.

I stepped out of them,
nudged them away with my foot. “I told you the bruising was bad.”

With a concerned expression, h
e eased a hand up my thigh, which was more purple than flesh-colored. My tender skin barely registered pain. His touch, his hot breath on my abdomen was more potent than any drug.

“Does this hurt?”

“I’m fine.”

His left hand slid up my other leg, his thumbs sweeping across my inner thighs,
setting off tiny shivers as they explored higher and higher. More heat pooled between them. I gasped and squeezed his shoulders as he skimmed my underwear line.

“You are so wet,” he murmured into my skin, and I whimpered as his teeth caught the waist
band of my underwear. In one quick move, he wrapped his fingers around the straps and yanked them down.

I dug my nails into him, not sure how much longer I could keep standing. My legs quivered. Every hurt in my wrist, on my thigh, in my ribs had been reduced to
a distant memory. All I had was this ache inside, an emptiness waiting too many years to be filled, screaming to be satiated at last.

“Turn around.”
Lucen’s voice was thick, his well-honed control seemed to be slipping too. “I want to see all of you.”

I loathed releasing him, but managed to oblige, and his hands
grasped my butt, kneading my flesh, before roaming up my back. I could hear him standing, feel the scrape of his jeans, his erection pressing against me. He unclasped my bra and I peeled it off, letting it drop onto the sofa before me.

Then those s
trong arms wrapped around my waist, bringing me closer but carefully, conscious of my injuries. His right hand stretched lower, toying with my patch of trimmed hair. So close but so far from where I wanted it to be. Yet my hips rocked against him, in time to the motion, urging him lower.

“Will it hurt if I carry you? I’ve got nothing against the sofa, but you need to be
coddled. Only a bed and soft cushions for you until you’ve healed.”

“You’re going to need to carry me.
I don’t think I can make it up there on my own.” I groped at his leg with my good hand, the only part of him I could reach, but his damned jeans barred my hand from his heat. I wanted to rip them off.

He laughed once and kissed my ear lobe. “Turn around again.”

I did and wrapped my arms around his chest, high as I could raise them without risking sending waves of pain through my ribs. Lucen grabbed my backside, and my legs curled around his waist. I could feel the muscles in his abs working against me as he carried me up the steep steps to the bedroom. Finally allowed access to his body, I kissed every patch of skin I could find on the way, leaning over until I discovered his neck, sucking and pulling with my tongue, my teeth. Naked skin at last. I couldn’t get enough.

Until he laid me on the bed and put his hand over my mouth.
“Your body is mine first, Jess. You’re just going to have to deal with me being selfish about it.”

I sank into the
bedding, too languid to fight him, but undaunted. Once more he hovered over me, and I reached for the button on his jeans. I could feel the heat of him seeping through the fabric. He pushed my legs up, knees bent so he could shift closer, but that’s as far as he went to help me. My frustration increased with my one-handed struggle, the throbbing of his erection beneath my hand teasing my efforts.

The
n the button popped under my fingers, and the zipper followed. And finally, the last of Lucen burst free from the confines of his clothes. I wrapped my fingers around the length of him, so silky soft and so hard, and as thick as I remembered.

You’re a walking satyr stereotype, I wanted to tell him, but I was beyond speaking. There was only one thing my mouth was willing to do, and that was to take him in me.
Taste him fully.

I started up to do that but he eased me down again. “I told you. You’re mine first. I’ve waited too long.”

He kicked off his pants the rest of the way and slid my legs wide. With his hands on my knees, I tightened every muscle as he stared me down for what felt like forever, his gaze lingering everywhere, his face tense with concentration. I felt like I’d never been looked at before, and I watched his face as much as I soaked in the rest of him in.

Then he glided his thumb between my folds while I sucked in a breath. Upward he kept going, drawing my wetness over my stomach and swirling it around my
sorely erect nipples.

Not moving was damn near impossible. If his gaze smoldered, his touch ignited.
I writhed beneath him, my tongue dying to trace the ridges of his muscles. The sweet lines of his cock.

But he wouldn’t let me. H
e kept true to his word, draping every bruise, every cut and every scrape with sweet but passionate kisses that made me shiver. When I struggled too hard to do the same to him, he pinned me down.

“My turn, little siren,” his whispered. “When I’m done savoring every inch of you
, then it’s yours. I need to thank you for everything you’ve done.”

Damn you, I tried to say, but my voice was still missing. So I twisted his sheets in his response, clawed at his pillow, anything t
o release my desperate tension.

A half-smile played across his lips, and h
is fingers gave my nipple a gentle squeeze. Then the smile faded, his mouth trailed lower, and when his tongue ran across my wettest spot, I arched my back and cried out.

You know there’s a reason he can play your body so well
, a voice whispered in my head, and it was the voice of my fears, the ones I thought I’d left behind in the kitchen.
You know this can’t work. You know a satyr can’t survive on your lust alone. You know you can’t be the last woman in his bed.

The fear was an icicle plunging through my chest, and I willed it
to go away. A worry for tomorrow. For never. For some other time, but for God’s sake, not now.