Authors: Christine Warren
He laid her on the cotton sheets as if laying her on an altar, all tenderness and reverence and warm, gentle hands. With infinite care, he opened the jar of arnica-and-comfrey salve she had given him earlier and began to smooth it onto her injuries. He kept his touch light, murmuring soothing nonsense when she winced at even his careful pressure on her abused shoulder and thigh. Still he spread the balm thoroughly to allow the herbs to work their magic. When he finished, he began to massage her unwounded muscles, making them go limp and heavy with pleasure. His warm, slick hands held magic of their own—powerful magic—as they kneaded every last bit of tension from her back, arms, and legs.
By the time he flipped her over and began to smooth his palms over her chest and stomach, she couldn’t decide if she wanted to fall asleep or yank him down to her and indulge in some vigorous exercise. Judging by the expression he wore, he knew perfectly well what she was thinking, and he had his own answer to her conundrum.
His eyes glinted in the darkness while his hands skimmed her flesh, not so much touching her as waking her up to his touch. Where his hands went, they left her skin aching and sensitive.
“Keep still,” he purred. “You need to be careful of your injuries. I never want you to feel pain while you are in my arms,
gatita.
”
Tess shivered when he moved away, the loss of his radiant heat chilling her. Right now she could barely remember her injuries. All she could feel was him.
She stayed where he had placed her while he moved to either side of the bed, adjusting the lamps that sat there to dim golden glows. The light made his skin glow almost copper in places, and shadowed it in deep, aged bronze in others. All planes and angles, he was gorgeous in her eyes, the perfect figure of a man. She shivered again, this time in anticipation.
“If you don’t hurry, I’ll be really still.” Her voiced sounded husky in her own ears. “As in asleep.”
He chuckled and rounded the end of the bed, climbing onto it and prowling toward her on all fours, looking a lot like he had the other day, when he’d sported three-inch fangs and a thick, plush layer of fur. “Oh, I don’t think so, sweet Tess. I think you’ll be wide awake for as long as I want.”
She wondered if her own eyes could flare as brightly as his, or if that was just a Feline thing. “Really? I guess that’s up to you, then. If you give me a reason to stay awake…”
“I’ll give you plenty.”
That’s when he set his tongue to the skin inside the arch of her foot and licked.
Tess moaned.
She’d heard of foot fetishes, of course, but she’d never really taken them seriously. After all, how sexy could a foot possibly be? For heaven’s sake, she spent most of her time walking on them. Aside from providing a means of locomotion to get her to a chosen partner, what the heck could they possibly have to do with sex?
Under the stroke of Rafe’s tongue, they had everything to do with it. They felt like satellite sex organs, each flick and rub and nibble sending pleasure shooting from her feet directly to her core. He bit delicately in the middle of the arch, and she got wet. He scraped his teeth across her sole, and she quivered. He licked the base of her toes and she could feel her clit throbbing in response. The man had more magic in the tip of his tongue than she had in her entire, aroused, aching, needy body.
“Reason number one, sweet Tess.” His growl had the same rough-smooth texture as his tongue and drove her almost as crazy. “Shall we move on to number two?”
She whimpered in reply, then stuffed her fist into her mouth to stifle any more embarrassing and revealing sounds. Luckily even in her aroused state, she’d known better than to move her right arm. She had to settle for the left.
“Ah-ah,” he chided, dragging her hand slowly back to the mattress. “I said stay still. And I want to hear those noises. They’re part of the fun.”
“I’ll give you more than noise in just a minute if you don’t—”
Her useless threat strangled in her throat when he closed his teeth around the back of her ankle and began nibbling his way north. “Ah!”
He chuckled and massaged her calf with long, thorough strokes of his tongue.
Tess lay back on the bed and tried to think of England, or muggings, or quantum physics, but all she could really think about was the shift and slide of his mouth up toward her knees. His teeth and lips and tongue all conspired to cause her downfall.
What else could she think when he found a particularly sensitive spot at the back of her right knee and proceeded to exploit it with nibbles and scrapes and sweet hot suction until she actually cried out. From having her knees nibbled!
“Rafe! Stop it! Just stop!” Her breath was coming fast now, and she sounded panting and eager. Probably because she was both. “Stop teasing me and get up here.”
He shook his head, his thick, dark hair caressing her thighs as he laved his way around her knee to her inner thigh, taking care to avoid her livid bruise. “Can’t. Busy.”
“Argh! Busy my ass!”
He lifted his head, grinned at her, and shook his head again. “Not yet. I’ve got other things to do first.”
Then he lowered his head, and she felt his tongue glide in one, long drag from her knee across her thigh to her waiting core.
He might as well have killed her.
She cried out like a murder victim, a long, high wail that begged for mercy. He showed her none. His tongue slid between her swollen folds, seeking out her very center and drinking from her like she was a fountain of cream. She could feel the vibrations of his rough purr traveling from her sex to her thundering heart. She groaned in response and whimpered when he dipped inside, tongue penetrating and thrusting into her in a breathtakingly intimate kiss.
Orders be damned. She buried her hands in his hair, desperate to have something to hold on to while her world spun dangerously out of control. She could barely feel the tight strain of her bruised shoulder muscles. She couldn’t even feel the mattress beneath her. All she could feel was Rafe’s mouth and teeth and tongue and hands and breath and purr wreaking havoc inside her.
“Please! Rafe, please. I need—” She arched into a bow as his tongue curled around her most sensitive nub and tugged with agile precision. “God, I need you! Please—”
“I am pleasing you,” he murmured, shifting a hand between her thighs. “And you’re going to come for me. Now.”
He thrust two fingers high and deep inside her and she had no choice but to obey. “More,” he growled.
* * *
She rained down on him like April, flooding his hand with cream and his ears with a torrent of gasping cries. She screamed his name. She screamed to God. She screamed for mercy. But mostly she screamed for more. He gave it to her.
More.
Eyes feasting on her, Rafe gave her another finger and watched a new wave of convulsions seize her. He could feel her inner muscles clench around his fingers like a fist, then the tensing and release of her climax. Her moisture slicked his palm. He bent his head to lap it up, thick as cream, sweet as honey, and rich as her scent. He couldn’t get enough.
More.
He ignored the cries for mercy, the way her ragged breath soughed in and out of her lungs. He could hear her exhaustion, and he didn’t care. He wanted more, wanted to claim her, to erase the nightmare of her attack, the pain of her poor, battered muscles. Leaning down, he drew her tiny bud into his mouth and suckled it like a nipple. Her muscles clenched around his fingers again, a new wave driving her back into climax before she’d barely begun to descend.
More.
Her fingers knotted in his hair and jerked painfully. Rafe ignored them. He ignored the burning in his scalp and the ringing cries in his ears. He ignored the bite of her nails into his shoulder when one hand clutched at him, frantic and grasping. He just bit down on her sensitive flesh and drove her over another peak.
More.
She began to cry, gasping sobs shaking her as tears tracked down her cheeks to the sheets beneath her head. He saw it and he knew he should ease off on her, but he couldn’t. His instincts rode him hard, ignoring the reason of the man in favor of the hunger of the beast. The beast wanted him to mark her, mark her and keep her forever, permanently hot and wet and aching for him. He flexed his fingers and touched her deeper.
More.
Her hands curled into fists and beat at his shoulders, and still he pressed her. Up and up and up until she stopped coming down. Her climax had become one huge, unending orgasm from which she couldn’t break free, because he was constantly there to drag her back. Her voice went hoarse from begging, but it seemed to make no difference. He had no mercy. He growled at her pleas and pushed her higher.
More.
Then, abruptly, she stopped struggling. The fight went out of her and she lay still on the sweaty, tangled sheets. Her thighs fell open, leaving her totally exposed. Her hands dropped to her sides and her eyelids fluttered closed. Her dry lips parted, and it was her whisper that brought him back to reason.
“I love you, Rafe.”
He froze, fingers buried between her smooth, bruised thighs, tongue dancing across her creamy center. Her words flashed a lightning bolt of pride and fierce satisfaction inside him, and they brought him a new and unexpected peace.
Gently, he eased his hand away from her, sliding up the mattress until their bodies were aligned and he could take her into his arms, cradling her close. Grasping her uninjured thigh in his hand, he lifted it over his and pulled her hips against his until he could slip inside gently and easily. Her hands came up to push him away, but he refused her. He shushed her with soothing whispers and soft promises and rocked slowly against her, not thrusting, but reveling in the connection between their two bodies. When the climax came this time, it was the gentle ripple of a pond, no more violent than a heartbeat and just as comforting.
He hugged her to him and tried not to panic.
Then he tried not to love her and panic became inevitable.
“Rafe,” she breathed.
“Shhh.” He brushed her hair away from her forehead, smoothing the tousled curls and pressing a soft kiss to the damp skin beneath. “I’m right here, my sweet Tess. Right exactly here.”
She slipped breathlessly into sleep, and he followed soon after, still joined, body-to-body, skin-to-skin, heart-to-heart.
Nineteen
Rafe woke with a purr, a deep, reverberating sound of contentment that started somewhere down around his toes and ended several inches above what he could only assume to be a cat-and-canary smile. Today everything felt right with his world. Including the warm, soft bundle that currently rested against his chest. That felt the rightest of all.
His eyes drifted open and went immediately to Tess. With her face buried in the pillow and her body half turned away from him, all he could really see was her tousled curls and the pale skin of her neck rising free of the rumpled sheets. The sight still made him purr even louder. She looked right lying beside him, as if she belonged there. As if she should never sleep anywhere else.
And wasn’t that a kick in the pants, as others might say? Who would have thought that Rafael De Santos, tomcat, Romeo, and all-around bachelor would ever fall in love, especially with a witch of a woman who seemed to enjoy arguing with him as much as she enjoyed making love with him? He certainly had never seen her coming.
But then, what man ever saw his future until it appeared before him as the present moment? Premonition wasn’t a gift common to his kind—wasn’t a common gift at all, really—and even if he had known that Fate was sneaking up on him, he couldn’t honestly say he would have done anything different.
Although, speaking of premonitions …
His purr rumbled to a stop in his chest as he drew the sheet farther down Tess’s back and saw the evidence of the attack she’d survived the night before. The back of her right shoulder bore a nasty bruise the color of rotting meat—black and purple with traces of red and yellowish green around the edges. Just the sight of it made him want to rip someone’s throat out, preferably whoever had dared to lay a hand on her, but honestly at the moment he didn’t feel all that picky.
Tess had said she never saw the face of her attacker, but she had also said that she’d seen the first blow coming before it hit. Now, looking at the damage the pipe had done to her shoulder and back, Rafe offered up a silent prayer of thanks that the blow hadn’t landed on her skull. If it had, she would have died almost immediately. And then something inside Rafe would have died as well.
“I can feel you staring,” she grumbled, not bothering to lift her face out of the pillow. It muffled her voice, but his Feline hearing had no trouble picking out her words. “I’d say it’s not as bad as it looks, but since I can’t see it and it still aches like a sore tooth, I can’t seem to muster up the energy to lie.”
Rafe felt his mouth quirk. It amazed him the way she could make him want to smile even while he continued to contemplate ways to find her attacker and rend him limb from limb.
He leaned down and feathered a kiss over the tender skin. “You never need to lie to me, sweet Tess. If you are in pain, I wish to know. Should I apply more of your salve?”
She turned her head and pushed a tumble of curls out of her eyes so she could blink up at him from beneath sleep-heavy eyelids. “It can’t hurt, and it might help with the aching. You remember which jar?”
Rafe lifted it from the bedside table where he’d placed it the night before. “I have it here. Shoulder first.”
A small hiss escaped her when he first spread the thick unguent over her bruised muscle, but he murmured something soothing and kept his touch as careful as he could. He hated the idea of causing her more pain in the healing process almost as much as he hated the idea that she’d been injured in the first place. He had meant his words of the previous night: He should have been there to protect her.
She was his to protect.
He felt her begin to relax under his hands and smoothed on the last bit of salve, rubbing gently to ensure it penetrated into the muscle. It impressed him that the medicinal balm absorbed into the skin more like a lotion than a greasy ointment, and he found the crisp, herbal fragrance both refreshing and unobtrusive. No wonder his
gatita
’s store appeared so successful, if she had the talent to produce products like this one. Pride warmed his chest and he had to remind himself to focus on the task at hand.