I smiled at him wickedly. “Tell me what happened to Bella, or I’ll pull you apart and suck the marrow from your bones.”
His eyes widened, and he stumbled up. I’d been in fights like this before. He’d fight erratically now, too panicked to defend. All of them ended in only one delicious way.
But instead of coming for me – he turned tail and ran. Not toward his bike or my car, but out into the desert. I lunged after him – and felt things grind inside, bone on bone – and my hunger that’d been kept in abeyance by Paco’s blood and sex exploded, now that I was several quarts low. I could use that energy to chase after him – but I couldn’t guarantee what condition I’d be in when I caught up. If it took over -- the hunger was savage, and I wanted answers, not to just cover myself in blood and make his corpse look like it’d been dropped from 500 feet up.
Goddammit!
I stumbled back to my car, popped the trunk, grabbed a trash bag, and threw it over the driver’s seat like someone who’d had to do this more than once before, and got in.
Chapter 6
“I’m glad you have a driver,” I told Mark. We’d almost reached the bottle’s end. Neither one of us had brought up the elephant in the room – what’d happened this morning, and what Mark was presumably going to do about it. Maybe had already set in motion. I sent my finger swirling along the rim of my wine glass, wondering if I wanted to ask.
He finished off his glass and set it back down. “Did you do what I told you to do?”
I looked up at him and then down again, flushing, not just from the wine. I’d thought about it, twice, when the panic had started to rise – picturing myself in his office again, my thighs pressed against the sharp edge of his desk as he took my ass, something we hadn’t yet done, imagining feeling myself filled by him someplace new. “Yes,” I answered, a truthful whisper.
“Did it help?”
I nodded faintly.
“Good.”
I’d had enough wine to feel a little spinny, but not so much as to make bad decisions, and I knew that as I looked over at him. “Would you like to spend the night?”
A knowing smile spread across his face. “I would.”
At that, I put one finger to my lips for quiet, and stood and took his hand.
* * *
Halfway up the stairs, his hands were on my ass. I slapped them away, then finished pulling him to my room, past Rabbit’s and the bathroom’s door. My bedroom was not set up for company, I had dresses all over a decorating screen, a vanity full of potions, and my queen didn’t look big enough for the both of us. He walked in and looked around, naturally gravitating toward the bed.
“I feel like I’m in high school.”
“Me too.” I felt like I’d just snuck a boy in. “I’ve never brought anyone home before. So, uh, welcome to me.” I spun around, indicating my four walls.
He made a show of pacing the room, stopping in front of a framed 12 x 12 painting of a curled and sleeping rabbit, so perfect that only brush strokes proved it wasn’t a photo. “That’s lovely – is it your work?”
“Jack made it for me,” I said. “A long time ago.”
“Ahhh.” He surveyed everything else in silence, stopping only to close the blinds on my windows. I knew what he meant by it – he didn’t want anyone to see us fuck – but I still didn’t know what I was hoping for. I got the sex. I’d always gotten the sex. But him, here, really knowing me? Except for the werewolf part….
The wine made me do it. “Mark -- why me?”
He turned back from his inspection of my belongings, looking over a shelf of clay animals that Rabbit’d crafted and I’d kept. “What?”
“I mean – I’m a hassle.”
He smiled. “A sexy hassle.”
“This is Vegas. It’s pretty easy to find hassle-free sex here.”
His head tilted as he considered me. “I want to help you.”
“I know you do. But before all that, and before this morning. I know why I want to be with you – you’re smart and handsome, you make me laugh, and we are epic in bed. But -- why would someone like you want to be with me?”
He sat down on my bed in front of me. “I’ve been here for a while, ever since my uncle told me to come out here and go to law school.” He put his hands behind him, leaning back into my unmade bed. “I spent a long time doing things I shouldn’t have. Things I thought would make me happy. I had a really fierce coke habit. Not because I even really liked it, but because of who I was and who I hung with, it was expected of me. After I flunked out of school though – I don’t know, I realized I wasn’t happy. I stopped the coke, switched schools and started studying. It took me awhile longer to get over my showgirl habit, but I kicked them too.” His lips curved into a gentle smile. “All day long I talk to people who have something to prove, guys who want to chest bump me, and women who live plastic lives. And you? You’re like this whirlwind of reality. You get what’s important in life. I love that your kid matters to you, more than anything – more than me. That you care about, and take care of, your mom. I don’t want to take you away from all this – I just want to add to it.”
My heart swelled to bursting. And he pushed himself forward, I thought to stand, but instead he went down on his knees.
“Come here,” he said, and I did, stepping forward.
He knelt, his hands starting at my calves, running down them to unlace my sandals, helping me to kick them off, one by one, and then he began to touch me. His hands trailed slowly, like he was a sculptor, molding me, stroking my calves one by one, then tracing the backs of my knees, before coming around to push up my thighs, his thumbs coming dangerously close, before he pushed back to palm curve of my ass and reach up up up to finger the waistband of my underwear and tug.
He pulled the cotton down with just as much care as he’d stroked up, deliberately, like he was unwrapping a present the old fashioned way, saving the wrapping paper. I wanted to help him, to shuck it off and skip to what I hoped was coming – but I loved how he was taking his time. I shifted from foot to foot, helping him free myself from the thin cotton chain, then he looked up.
“Pull your skirt up for me, Angie.”
I whispered the word,
Okay
, and I held my skirt up like a peasant girl stepping over a puddle, as he leaned forward to kiss the insides of my thighs.
I gasped lightly – I’d known this was coming, and yet – I spread my legs to make more room, to show him more of me. He took one of my thighs in both of his hands and started kissing, nuzzling me up from my knee. I could feel the roughness of his beard’s shadow chasing after the heat of his breath from each kiss as his hands crawled up, moving now to push my thighs apart. I arched toward him, and he murmured his assent into my thigh, creeping ever higher until he was looking up at me, his amber eyes dark, and my pussy aching. One hand reached up to press up my stomach and stretch me up, the other held a thigh. Pinned between his hands, his mouth came up and kissed.
Mark slid the flat of his tongue across my clit, forward and back, rolling it out from under its hood. If he could just keep doing that, stay there like some delicious machine made for my pleasure – I went weak in the knees and moaned softly.
He rose up and came closer, to kiss more of me, to move his tongue more roughly as his lips sucked and pulled me open. His chin ground up and in and I was not ladylike in the way I pressed down to give him more. I couldn’t help but watch him – my strong and dangerous giant, tamed enough to kneel to take me. No, not tamed, but confident. To know that he knew what I wanted, and how best to give it to me. I shuddered with a sudden release of power, feeling safe, feeling – possessed – and – I dropped my skirt and wound both my hands into his hair and started to ride. He grabbed hold of my ass, the strength of his grip betraying his urgency.
I – I started to use his mouth like I might a toy, thinking only of myself. I closed my eyes and pulled him harder onto me, grinding my clit against his tongue, listening to him purr as my wetness flowed down around his chin, his stubble pressing perfectly against me, with making him struggle to hold on. One of his hands pulled down and set a thumb into my pussy, giving me both more and less leverage as I rocked.
I was using him shamelessly – and he liked it. Every throb, every rock, every lick that pushed me closer to the cliff – his mouth and hands worked in synchrony, me and my body just holding on. He knew exactly what he was doing and was going to keep on doing it until -- I rose up on my toes again, this time my ass clenched and wouldn’t stop tensing and everything in me narrowed to one shining spot that he claimed with his tongue and -- my hands clenched in his hair. “Mark,” I hissed low, bucking my clit against his tongue as I came. “Mark –“ I said, even louder, then bit my lips to stay quiet, as my orgasm made me reel. I shuddered over him, hips twitching, me trying to stifle small sounds as my body tensed and released over and over again. When the last of it was wrung out of me, he leaned back looking smug, and I sagged, slumping down as he caught me, my skirt billowing innocently out.
He held me against his chest, in his lap, me breathless. His face was half-wet, and I knew that sensitive parts of me would have beard-burn tomorrow. I leaned up to kiss him, and he kissed me back, true and deep, before I fell back again in exhaustion, and he moved to lean us both against my bed.
“I like it when you taste like me,” I murmured into his chest, dreamily.
“Since I like tasting you, that works out nicely.”
“I’m not sure what I did to deserve you.”
He brushed my hair back and kissed my forehead. “You let the right stranger buy you a drink?”
“I didn’t even want to go out that night. But my mom told me I shouldn’t miss Jenny’s party –“
I heard his chest rumble as he chuckled, and slowly I inhabited my body again. I was curled up against him – it was easy for me to wriggle my hand down between us just right – and his breath hitched as my hand grazed the seam of his slacks.
“As much as I want to desecrate your bedroom, in all sorts of ways –“ he pushed me forward. “I can’t stay here tonight.”
I pursed my lips and gave him a challenging glare. “Is that how long you think it’d take me?”
His resolve melted, as I felt him get hard. I crawled out of his lap without moving my hand, as if breaking my connection might give him permission to go. Then I arranged myself in front of him, kneeling down, like a cross between a supplicant and a cat, and with skillful fingers, undid his belt, the latch of his slacks, and zipped everything down.
His cock came out. I’d seen it at least fifty times now, and yet every time I saw it still felt new. I loved everything about it: the way it fit in me like a key to a lock, the solid weight of it when he rammed it between my thighs, how its skin was soft, the way I could touch it and know what he was thinking. I leaned forward on elbows and breathed over it without touching, promising him more.
For his part, he was still – as still as I had been earlier, when he’d been touching me – the same disbelief I’d felt, mirrored in his eyes. We were both bad at this, at the softer things in life, at trusting. But we both wanted to. I knew I did – and I knew he did, as I kissed the smooth underbelly of his cock and he sighed and closed his eyes.
I covered it in a thousand tender kisses, feeling it bob and sway, like a snake looking for purchase up a cliff. I had all the time in the world to give it all the attention, and listening to Mark gasp and groan was music to my ears. And just when I thought he wouldn’t take anymore, when my delicacy would drive him literally wild, I brought my lips down to kiss his head.
I swirled my tongue in ever widening circles, lowering my mouth onto him, taking his head in, as he whispered, “Oh Angela,” harshly. I could see his hands winding in my sheets, as he held onto either side of my bed like a prisoner, trying to stop himself from grabbing my hair and forcing me down.
I slid down him as far as I could bear, in one long continuous suck, feeling his cock bend at the back of my throat, and then pulled off of him, just as slow, relishing the taste of precum.
“Angela,” he moaned again, staring frankly at me now. I knew what he wanted, what his eyes asked, and pulled off of his cock entirely.
“Remember, my room’s not soundproof,” I warned with a wicked grin, and kept on.
I took him in long, elaborate sucks, letting him in a little further each time, ignoring the way I was covering him in spit, feeling his ass twitch as he tried to control the destiny of his own cock, unable to stop himself from thrusting. Then I reached back and pulled my skirt up again, so he could see the heart shaped curve of my ass as I bowed low, and he groaned like he’d been defeated. I chuckled, lifted off of him, and started sucking on his balls.
“Oh God, Angie –“ he reached for his cock with one hand and started stroking fast.
“Hmmmmm?” I purred, without stopping, taking one of his balls into my mouth completely, rubbing my tongue against its soft-rough side.
His hips betrayed him again, and I heard his breathing speed up – and there was no way I was going to let him finish himself without me. I pushed his hand away and took his cock over with my mouth, bobbing and sucking, pressing my tongue up against his shaft from the very bottom to the top. His hands wound in my hair, pulling me down, and my wolf loved this – she loved being made to gag. I groaned in pleasure as he warned, “Angie – I’m gonna – “ and I felt him stiffen one last time, before gasping, as hot salty silver jetted into my mouth. I took it and kept sucking him, like I wanted more, sucking him through it. When he stopped thrusting and went soft, then and only then, did I pull back.
He looked like I’d felt thirty minutes ago, collapsed against the side of my bed. I rearranged my skirt and gave him a smug grin. “So you can go home now, if you want to.”
He blinked and grinned back. “You’re evil, you know that?”
“No, I’m good. Very, very good.” I traced a finger down his chest. “And now that you’re here, I don’t want you to go away.”
“I don’t want to go either. But we have to pace ourselves. Make things seem normal.” He set himself back inside his pants, locking himself back up with his zipper, then reached a hand out to me, which I took. “And then once things really are normal – nothing will ever keep me away.”