Black Gold (29 page)

She did what he’d done. Reached up and framed his face with her hands, and shivered at the texture of his beard against her palms. “I will never be afraid of you, Andrew Callaghan.” His chest heaved with shaking breaths, and he groaned as he grabbed her wrists. “It’s dangerous, Kat.

I’m
dangerous.”

“So am I.” She swiped her thumbs over his cheeks and willed him to believe the same words he’d told her the day before. “Andrew, I’m still mostly burned out, and you’ve got strong shields for someone who’s not a psychic. But I couldn’t just hurt you—I could destroy you. I could drive you to your knees and make you crawl for me. I could take away everything you are.”

He closed his eyes, but he didn’t release her. “Then that makes this a doubly bad idea.” Andrew was going to walk away from her again, and the tense parts of her that had started to unwind over the last few days would shatter. The only way to save anything was to let him go before he came up with a polite, stilted reason. “I understand.”

“No. No, you really don’t.”

He bent his head and kissed her.

The world stopped.

His lips were warm. Firm. As firm as the fingers locked around her wrists, holding her hands to his face. She’d played out this moment in a thousand girlish daydreams and more than one guilty adult fantasy, and imagination hadn’t provided the little details. The heat of his body, the strength of his grip, the way she melted, like chocolate left in the July sun, and from nothing but that innocent contact.

His lips, on hers. Parting, and oh
God
, he knew how to kiss, like he was hungry, like he loved the taste of her, and Kat became mortally certain that her knees were going to give out if he got his tongue in on the action. Her body throbbed with the rhythm of his mouth moving on hers, until she was one exposed nerve, and she would have begged him to touch her anywhere—everywhere—if she wouldn’t have had to stop kissing him.

When he released her wrists, it was only to grip her hips and lift her, mold her to his body, and she moaned her gratitude. He was harder than he looked, an unforgiving wall of muscle and smooth skin, so distracting and arousing that she didn’t realize they were moving until he stepped over the threshold.

Into the bedroom.

“Open,” he rasped, and lowered her to the bed.

Her back touched the mattress—gentle, so damn gentle—and Andrew stretched out over her, shirtless and beautiful, and her brain fritzed out like a fried circuit board as she obeyed and parted her lips.

He touched them with his tongue, a soft sweep of one lip and then the other, and kissed her again, deeper, one hand winding in her hair. That stirred old memories, brought to life every unacceptable fantasy she’d had of their anger and hurt and longing all coalescing into a dark passion that would satisfy her body even as it cut her heart to pieces.

But there was no darkness in the grip of his hand, just a gentle control, a sweet hint of dominance that barely deserved the description, but thrilled her anyway. The throbbing was back, magnified into an ache that pulsed in time with the stroke of his tongue. Every time she tried to catch a breath it escaped in tiny, helpless noises that would have embarrassed her if she hadn’t been burning alive.

He dragged his mouth to her chin and then her throat, nipping lightly when she tilted back her head.

The scrape of his teeth curled her toes, and the sheer insanity of the way her body reacted splintered fear through her.

She fisted both hands in his hair and dragged his head back, panting for breath. “What are we doing?

Are we—”

He panted too, his eyes glazed with pleasure and need. “Are we what?” If she let him keep touching her, she’d fly apart before she got her pants off. “We can’t do this without talking about it. Sex with an empath as strong as I am—it’s not that simple. I could hurt you. Hurt
both
of us.”

Andrew’s chest rumbled, as if a growl formed that he didn’t quite voice. Then he rolled away. “I didn’t think.”

Disappointment made her voice shake. “You shouldn’t have to. It wouldn’t be that bad if you were anyone else…but with you I’m—I’ve got—” She covered her face with her hands, and now she was disappointed and embarrassed. “My empathy might as well be hardwired into my sexual responses. Is there a girl version of premature ejaculation?”

He choked on a snort. “I don’t think anyone minds it, usually.” Maybe her violent reactions had nothing to do with magic and everything to do with chemistry.

Maybe wanting Andrew so long had built a tension that would make even innocent touches feel fantastic.

Maybe she was in denial.

Maybe she didn’t care.

The room seemed too warm as she rolled to her knees. Andrew had his hand over his face, which made asking the question a lot easier. “If it gets too overwhelming…can we stop?” He rolled to his side, propped on one elbow, and studied her, his expression intense. “We can stop whenever you want. Whenever you need to.”

Christ, she was a teenager, making rules about where her prom date could touch her while they groped in the back of his car. Except she’d never gone to prom. She’d been sixteen her senior year, struggling with the violent surges in power that made puberty a worse nightmare for a psychic than for the average hormone-riddled teen.

And Andrew—Andrew was
not
a teenage boy. He was six-foot-something of shapeshifter alpha bastard who had to have his share of instinctive needs. “That’s not going to drive you crazy?”

“I have two hands, Kat,” he reminded her. “I can take care of things myself.” It was not remotely okay to pause and savor that image, but she couldn’t stop herself. Andrew, stretched out, his face slack with pleasure, the muscles in his arm flexing as he curled his fingers around—

She slapped her hands over her face and actually whimpered. “That was mean.”

“Was it?”

Anything else she said would reveal her newly formed and overwhelming need to watch him and his two hands take care of things. So she leaned down and kissed him again.

He held the back of her head and fit his mouth to hers, slow this time. Easy. A gentle kiss from a controlled man trying to make her feel safe, with no clue that his tender protectiveness turned her inside out.

If her empathy had been at full power, she would have come when he stroked his hand from her hair to her collarbone, and then down to her breast. She moaned, imagining how much hotter his callused fingertips would be against her suddenly tight nipples.

Not that the silly butterfly tank top offered much protection. Kat shuddered and tore her mouth free of

his, then shoved at his shoulders until he rolled onto his back. Sliding one leg over his body was reckless, and straddling his stomach was
insane
. “You’re too hot. My brain is going to overheat.” Muscle flexed under her as he shifted slightly and gripped her hips. “Isn’t that the point?” The fine hair on his arms tickled her palms as she touched him, sliding both hands up until they passed his shoulders and she was stretched over him, clutching the blankets on either side of his head. A position of power—if you were fool enough to think an alpha shapeshifter couldn’t dominate a lover from flat on his back.

She might be on top, but the need pulsing through her answered to him. Her body answered to him, held captive by empathy and her growing suspicion that some of the arousal turning her inside-out was coming from him, in spite of her shields.

He held her gaze and thrust up, and suspicions and shields were the last thing on her mind as the hard ridge of his erection rubbed against her. Instinct had her moving before she could stop, grinding down to chase the too-perfect pleasure that couldn’t possibly be twisting inside her already.

But it was. Her elbows gave out, and she sprawled across his bare chest, open mouth pressed to his shoulder. Moaning, she clenched her eyes shut, afraid to move. “I can’t come before you’ve barely touched me.”

He flipped her onto her back and stretched out over her, one knee between her legs. “You can come whenever you damn well please.”

• Black Gold
  
• Vivian Arend
  
• Dedication
  
• Part One
  
• There�s a race of men that don�t fit in,
  
• A race that can�t stay still;
  
• So they break the hearts of kith and kin,
  
• And they roam the world at will.
  
• They range the field and they roam the flood,
  
• And they climb the mountain�s crest;
  
• Theirs is the curse of the gypsy blood,
  
• And they don�t know how to rest.
  
• �The Men That Don�t Fit In��Robert Service
  
• Chapter One
  
• Chapter Two
  
• Chapter Three
  
• Chapter Four
  
• Chapter Five
  
• Chapter Six
  
• Chapter Seven
  
• Part Two
  
• There�s nothing gained by whining, and you�re not that kind of stuff;
  
• You�re a fighter from way back when, and you won�t take a rebuff;
  
• Your trouble is that you don�t know when you have had enough�
  
• Don�t give in.
  
• If Fate should down you, just get up and take another cuff;
  
• You may bank on it that there is no philosophy like bluff,
  
• And grin.
  
• �Grin��Robert Service
  
• Chapter Eight
  
• Chapter Nine
  
• Chapter Ten
  
• Part Three
  
• I wanted the gold, and I sought it,
  
• I scrabbled and mucked like a slave.
  
• Was it famine or scurvy�I fought it;
  
• I hurled my youth into a grave.
  
• I wanted the gold, and I got it�
  
• Came out with a fortune last fall,�
  
• Yet somehow life�s not what I thought it,
  
• And somehow the gold isn�t all.
  
• �The Spell of the Yukon��Robert Service
  
• Chapter Eleven
  
• Chapter Twelve
  
• Chapter Thirteen
  
• Chapter Fourteen
  
• Chapter Fifteen
  
• Chapter Sixteen
  
• About the Author
  
• Look for these titles by Vivian Arend
  
• Now Available:
  
• Granite Lake Wolves
  
• Wolf Signs
  
• Wolf Flight
  
• Wolf Games
  
• Wolf Tracks
  
• Forces of Nature
  
• Tidal Wave
  
• Whirlpool
  
• Turner Twins
  
• Turn It On
  
• Turn It Up
  
• Pacific Passion
  
• Stormchild
  
• Stormy Seduction
  
• Silent Storm
  
• Xtreme Adventures
  
• Falling, Freestyle
  
• Rising, Freestyle
  
• Paradise Found
  
• Coming Soon:
  
• Rocky Mountain Heat
  
• Rocky Mountain Haven
  
• Rocky Mountain Hope
  
• Score one for the underdog�er�wolf.
  
• Wolf Tracks
  
• � 2010 Vivian Arend
  
• After this much foreplay, something�s bound to combust.
  
• The Seven Year Witch
  
• � 2011 Jodi Redford
  
• Their desire could be their destruction...or their greatest strength.
  
• Cipher
  
• � 2011 Moira Rogers