The way she looked at him, all breathless appreciation, nervous anticipation and wonder, made him want to throw back his head and howl.
“I am glad you approve, Adara. But if you do not stop staring at me like that, I am going to explode.”
“That would be a shame, now wouldn't it?”
She came to him then, temptation itself wearing a knowing smile. His breath stilled in his lungs as he felt the cool, exquisite brush of her fingers against his cock.
“So, maybe you'd better put this somewhere before you lose it,” she said.
The familiar lightness rose up in his chest, and he almost laughed. Then her fingers closed around him, and he tumbled headlong into the fire.
“Adara.”
He swept her into his arms and lowered her to the edge of the bed. Shoving her knees apart, he ripped the crotch of her panties with a muttered curse and pushed aside the tattered lace. He looked down at her, spread before him like a sumptuous pink and cream feast, and thought he would lose his mind. He wanted to kiss and lick her all over, from the blush-colored tips of her lovely breasts to the deep rosy flesh between her legs. She had ruined him for other women. No thrall could satisfy the raw hunger he felt for her. Once with her would not be enough, could not assuage this burning need. He would crave her again and again. He would never get his fill of her.
“Ril ak ilgan straalf,”
he said in Gorthian. My heart's undoing, he called her.
He positioned himself above her and hesitated. She would be exquisitely tight, fit him like a glove. Being inside her would drive him wild with pleasure, but what about her? She was so small. What if he hurt her? He was a brute to think of coupling with her.
“Do it, Brand. Do it now, please.” Her expression was fierce. “I need you inside me.”
“No, I'm too big. Iâ”
His breath expelled in a sharp hiss as she wrapped her hand around him. She lifted her hips and rubbed against him. The sweet torment made him shudder, and he clenched his teeth to keep from shouting.
She looked up at him and tangled her fingers in his hair. “I want this, Brand. I think I've wanted it forever. Please don't make me wait any longer.”
His skin was on fire. The blood pounded through his body. “Adara, little one, I did not dream it could be so . . . I've got toâ”
He thrust inside her. She was wet and warm and oh-sotight that he thought he might die from the pleasureâfrom the
rightness
âof it. He moved again and again, unable to stop himself. Each desperate plunge drove him deeper, closer to something wonderful just beyond his reach. She pulled him down on top of her. Wrapping her legs around him, she matched him stroke for stroke.
“Adara.” Her name was like a prayer on his lips. “Adara, Iâ”
“Don't stop.” She panted beneath him, her skin damp and flushed with passion and her pale hair spread in a glorious tangle on the bed. “Please. Don't. Stoâ”
She arched her back and went still, her beautiful mouth slack with surprise. She pulsed around him. The sweet pull of her flesh catapulted him into space. A thousand stars exploded around him, white hot shards of rapture unlike anything he had imagined. With a roar, he spilled himself into her. He lay over her, exhausted by the most shattering sexual experience of his very long existence. He waited for the familiar emptiness to take him.
The numbness did not come. His chest ached and his eyes burned, and he shook like a green sapling in a high wind, but the numbness eluded him. Something cool tickled his cheeks. He reached up and touched his face. Bemused, he stared at his tear-damp fingers.
He wept.
Chapter Nineteen
A
ddy drifted back to awareness, two hundred plus pounds of solid, muscular, unbelievably spectacular sex-spent male resting on top of her and
in
her. She blushed when she thought of how she'd acted. She stripped for him, bold as you pleaseâ
so
unlike herâtouched him, caressed him, begged him to take her, driven by a raw, frenzied need unlike anything she'd felt before. When he thrust inside her, she knew a moment of doubt. The Big Guy was
big.
But then he began to move, and she forgot to be nervous and moved with him. Each delicious stroke sent her higher and higher until she'd reached the top and shattered into a million fragments. She'd fallen back to herself, her cheeks wet with tears of joy and gratitude that she'd met this amazing, maddening, infuriating man and had the most splendid sex of her, admittedly, limited-in-experience, sex-starved life. She'd suspected all along that it would be like this, sensed at some primal level that having sex with Brand would change her.
She was ruined. She was worse than ruined. She was rurnt, as Pauline would say, destroyed beyond recognition. She would never be the same. How on earth would she bear it when he left? Where did a girl go after she'd had perfection?
Something wet splashed against her skin, and she opened her eyes. Brand posed above her, weight braced on his elbows, his head lowered. His face was hidden by his long, black hair. Something about his rigid stillness alarmed her. Gently, she smoothed his hair back. There were tears on his cheeks, and the strained expression on his beautiful face startled her. Something had happened to her stoic, implacable warrior. She wanted Mr. Freeze to thaw out, but this . . . He looked so vulnerable . . . so
bewildered.
It made her heart ache.
“Hey, you all right?” she whispered.
“No.”
He rolled over, taking her with him. He settled against the head of the bed with her on top, somehow without disengaging theâuhâcrucial parts that connected them. She rested quietly against his broad chest. Not much of a chore, when you got right down to it. It was wonderful to lie next to him, skin to skin, heartbeat to heartbeat, her legs draped over his, the scent of hot, sex-damp male teasing her senses. He made her feel feminine, Woman to his Much-a-Man.
She gasped as he moved inside her. His palms slid down her back and grasped her bottom.
“See what you do to me?” Lazily, he stroked her backside. “Already, I would couple with you again, without a care for your tender body. My rod has no conscience, it would seem.”
She wrinkled her nose. “Eww, don't say ârod.' That's Dinky's's name.”
“What would you prefer I call it?”
“I don't know. All the slang terms for theâuhâmale and female parts are either vulgar or gross or just plain silly, if you ask me. And, âpenis' is such a wimpy, whiny little word.”
She sat up and moved her legs to either side of his waist so that she rested on her knees.
“Adara,” he said through his teeth, “I am trying to do the right thing. That is not helping.”
“I'm not trying to help.” She rocked tentatively against him and heard his breath catch. Joy surged through her. Tomorrow was uncertain, but he was hers for the moment. She vowed to enjoy their time together. Emboldened, she lifted her hips. “You won't hurt me, I promise. I'm a big girl and Iâ” Slowly, she slid back down. Being with him like this was drugging, addictive. Her breasts tightened, and the now-familiar giddy fluttering began in her stomach and spread to her womb. She shuddered and lifted her hips again. “I'm tired of doing the right thing.”
With a muttered curse, he grasped her by the waist and began to move, urging her on with rough words of entreaty. The dark, passion-drunk sound of his voice added to her delirious pleasure and sent her whirling closer to oblivion. He made her feel reckless and sensuous, awakened somethingâ
someone
âinside her, the wild, red-hot sex goddess she had not known existed. She wanted to give him pleasure and take it in return. She threw her head back and took him deeper.
“Oh, Adara, my love, that is soâ”
He groaned and said something guttural. Then in English,
“Mine,”
he growled. His warm palms slid up to cup her aching breasts possessively. “Only mine.”
Moving his hands from her breasts to her hips, he withdrew and plunged back inside her, burying himself to the hilt. Jagged streaks of pleasure pulsed through her.
“Brand,”
she said.
“Say it. I want to hear you say it.”
“Yours,” she gasped. “Only yours.”
Somehow, she was on her back and he was driving into her. The delicious tension built to a crescendo of sweet release as he took her with him once more into that heady place of aching, soul-shattering joy.
She floated back to consciousness in his arms. Her head rested on his chest. The steady sound of his heartbeat drummed in her ears. She felt limp, weak as a kitten.
Kitten?
“Mr. Fluffy!”
Brand opened one eye. “Adara, I cannot allow you to refer to any part of my anatomy as âfluffy.' It is not manly.”
“Not you, silly, the cat! I forgot all about him. He's probably scared and lonely and
hungry
in Never Never Land or wherever it is you put him.”
“In truth, I had forgotten about the creature.” He sighed and opened the other eye. “But clearly, you have not. You will not be still until you see him, will you?”
She shook her head.
“Very well.”
The kitten appeared on Brand's chest. Addy picked him up and cuddled him.
“He is
so
cute, isn't he, Brand?”
Brand eyed the orange and white fluff ball with a sour expression. “Adorable. Have you considered how the other animal might react?”
“Dooley has a few unresolved cat issues, but she'll be fine. If not, there's always doggie therapy.”
She plopped the kitten on a pillow and jumped off the bed. Bending over, she retrieved Brand's discarded shirt. She heard a muffled groan behind her and straightened, the shirt dangling from one hand. She looked over her shoulder. Brand sprawled across her bed. His black hair swirled about his shoulders and his heavily muscled body was laid out for her perusal. God, he was beautiful, like something out of a dream with his big, powerful body and lazy grace. She saw the look on his face, and her eyes widened. Oh, my damn. He watched her with the same ravenous, intent expression a starving lion might give a tender, young gazelle. Surely, he couldn't be thinking ofâ
Her gaze drifted lower. Yeah. Oh, hell yeah, he could.
“Put the shirt on, Adara,” he said softly. “Or you will find yourself flat on your back with me inside you again. There is only so much temptation a warrior can withstand.”
She slipped on his shirt and buttoned it. The garment hung to her knees, the sleeves six inches too long. It smelled deliciously of Brand, spicy, intoxicating.
Male
.
“You need to eat.” Rising from the bed, he swept her into his arms and carried her into the kitchen. “You are weak.”
“Me? What about you? You did the whole man-on-fire thing. And you didn't eat the sandwiches I made.”
He sat her down in one of the high-backed chairs that lined one side of the center island and looked into the living room.
“No, but judging from the scattered remains, someone or something ate them.”
Addy whirled around. The plate of sandwiches was gone, the mug overturned. Splashes of congealed tomato soup stained the wooden tray.
“Dooley Anne Corwin!”
Dooley jumped up from her place by the couch and wagged her tail.
“Addy, Addy!”
Addy pointed to the coffee table. “Did you eat Brand's sandwiches?”
Dooley's ears drooped.
“Dooley like cheese.”
“You know better than to eat food off the table, young lady. Bad dog.”
Dooley hung her head.
“Dooley like cheese.”
“That is no excuse. There's somebody I want you to meet, and I want you to promise to behave yourself.”
Dooley's ears perked.
“Dooley promise. Dooley love Addy. Love, love loâ”
The kitten wobbled out of the bedroom and into the kitchen.
Dooley charged the tiny animal.
“Cat! Cat!
CAT.
”
Addy shrieked in alarm. “Dooley Anne, you promised!”
Dooley screeched to a halt and sniffed the startled kitten.
“Dooley hate cats.”
“His name is Mr. Fluffy Fauntleroy,” Addy said. “You don't have to like him, but you can't eat him.”
Dooley gave her a look full of reproach.
“No like cat. Bad Addy.”
“Meow.” The kitten rubbed against Dooley's legs.
“See, Dooley, he wants to be friends.”
Dooley stalked out of the kitchen, stiff legged. The kitten wobbled drunkenly after her.
“Adara, where do you keep your comestibles?”
Addy swiveled around in the chair. Brand padded around her kitchen in the altogether. He seemed comfortable with his nakedness, but she found it . . . distracting to say the least. Like having a Greek statue come to life in front of you, she thought, admiring his broad shoulders and the corded muscles of his back and arms. His long, powerful legs made her mouth water, and you could eat off his butt.
There
was an all-day buffet she'd like to try. Or would it be butt-fet? A muncheon? A smorg-ass-borg?
She giggled, and he turned and caught her staring. “Adara, if you do not stop looking at me like that, I will not be responsible for what happens.”
“Dude, put some clothes on, or
I
won't be responsible for what happens.”
His grin nearly melted her in the chair. “You like my body?”
“Like it? I'm contemplating using that perfect butt of yours as a dining table, what do you think?”
He took a step toward her and stopped. “No. You are temptation itself, but I
will
resist you, if only for your own good.” He vanished and reappeared a second later wearing his trousers. “There, perhaps you can control your carnal urges long enough for us to eat. Where do I find food?”
She jumped down from the chair. “Here, let me do it.”
Going to the refrigerator, she took out lettuce, cheese, turkey, ham, sliced chicken, mayonnaise, and mustard, then quickly constructed four thick sandwiches, one for her and the other three for Brand. She poured two glasses of milk and set a bowl of fruit on the island.
She motioned for Brand to sit down. “Soup's on.”
He picked up a sandwich and examined it. “I do not understand. Soup is a liquid food, is it not?”
“Dude, it's an expression.”
“So, this is not soup?”
“No.”
“Then it is a stupid expression. To say âsoup's on' in reference to a concoction of bread and meatâ”
“It's called a sandwich.”
“âdoes not make the slightest sense. Nor does the term âsandwich,' for that matter. Why would you name a foodstuff after a female being with malefic powers fashioned from sedimentary material?”
Sand Witch. Oh, brother. Talk about your communication gaps. “Look, go with the flow. If you try and make âsense' out of the English language, you'll drive both of us crazy.”
She ate her sandwich and drank her milk under his watchful eye. He made short work of his three sandwiches and helped himself to a pear and a bunch of grapes out of the bowl.
Addy rinsed their plates and glasses and put them in the dishwasher and then went in search of a litter box and something to eat for Mr. Fluffy. She found the things she needed in the pantry. A can of chicken and an unused litter box, a bag of kitty litter and cat bowls that Muddy had saved after her cat died. Since the kitten was new to the household, she decided to put him in the laundry room for the night and arranged things there, including a pillow and blanket in one corner for the kitten to sleep on. She fetched fresh water in one of the cat bowls and scooped a generous spoonful of the chicken into the other. She stepped back and waited for the kitten to pounce on the treat. To her surprise, Mr. Fluffy sniffed the bowl and walked away, tail twitching.
“Huh. What kind of cat doesn't like chicken?”
The Lab came into the laundry room to investigate. Nose quivering, Dooley did the doggie “feed me” dance, her nails clicking on the tile floor.
“Dooley like chicken.”
“Dooley like everything, except cats. How can you eat Mr. Fluffy's food, when you say you hate cats?”