Free Fall (10 page)

He lifted his mouth from her arm, and already he was deeper in her head, closer to that twisted up magic she had. “Dirty and hard, Fensic. That’s how I like it.”

The smile she gave him came with a big dose of her emotional state. She was turned on almost as much as he was. Still holding her arm, he grabbed the back of her head and hardly had to bear down at all because she got that he wanted her mouth. She blew his mind, too. Didn’t take her but two minutes to make him come, and while he did, he got deeper into her.

He kept his fingers tangled in her hair when she sat up. “I want you in my head. Now.” He captured her chin in his hand and swept his thumb across her lips. “For that we need the blood bond I told you about. That takes some magic. You ready?”

“Yes.” Her eyes were big and nearly all pupil.

He told her the words she needed to say. She said them, and he opened a cut at the side of his throat, just above his collar bone. “Hell yeah,” he whispered when she put her mouth there. The pull went directly to his cock.

As soon his blood hit her tongue, the two-way connection jumped to life. He wished she’d bite a little harder. She went still when she realized she was getting his thoughts and feelings. He waited for her to adjust to how they were now. She bit him again. Harder. The way he wanted her to.

Desire flashed hot. Sexual desire, sure, but more than that. His species had evolved to reproduce with humans, and that instinct flooded him, drove him. Practically drowned him. He let her see and feel what he wanted them to do to each other. She lifted her head.

“Jesus, Telos,” she whispered.

“You have to say yes.” He was frantic for a yes. She wanted to know. He wanted her to know. “You have to say you’re okay with me doing you in my other form or it can’t happen.”

“Yes. I am okay with that.”

“It might get rough. And since I’m here”—her sense of him in her head increased—“that means I could make you do things you don’t want to.”

“Could or will?”

“Could.” He rubbed his chin. “Could. Not will.”

She sat up enough to kiss him on the mouth. A quick pressure.

“You sure? You have to answer yes or no, or I can’t.” He could, of course. That was the crux of the troubles between demons, humans, and the magekind. A demon could always take a human against her will. It’s why, centuries ago, the magekind had started killing demons. It’s why the warlord was enforcing the rules against that. While he hadn’t formally aligned himself with Nikodemus, he wasn’t keen on running afoul of him. Word was he had assassins to make sure everyone played fair.

“Yes.”

He stood, bringing her with him. “I want a bed for this.”

He almost didn’t turn on lights in his bedroom since he was halfway to a transformation that made his vision preternaturally acute, but he clicked on the lamp by the bed and turned it to face the wall. He fell back on his mattress. She came with him, and he set his hands around her waist and lifted her up. She was so gorgeously naked, and he was going to do things with her he hadn’t done with anyone in years. Decades.

She knew what he was going for. She bent down and braced herself on his shoulders while he pushed inside her, and the friction felt so good, she was so soft inside that he vibrated with the need for more. He let her take in what it was he wanted them to do.

Her hair fell around her face as she bent closer. “Show me.”

He withdrew from her body before he let the transformation happen. His senses became sharper, his body bigger. The texture of his skin changed to something more like soft hide. His body turned color; bronze, gold and black. He took on more mass, larger torso, longer limbs, and his skin, his hide, burned hotter. He was the monster he’d promised her.

Quiet covered them. Deep and wide and while she kept the silence, Telos didn’t move but for the expansion of his chest as he breathed. They remained touching, hide to skin. In the quiet, her mind stayed unrestrained. It would be so easy to take control of her. Make her his so he could do whatever he wanted to.

Slowly, she raised a knee, let it fall to one side while she arched toward him.

A low growl came from his throat. He got them missionary, and he fucked her hard, and she answered the need in him. Sex like this was better than he remembered. All that twisted-around and convoluted magic of hers aroused him beyond belief. Her humanness intensified all his reactions. He went harder, giving into his need, and once he understood she was okay with him getting rough, he used his size and weight, too.

His mind went out ahead of where he was at this moment, and it was like catching a wave, there was no stopping the momentum. He’d spent so long passing for human, so much time in his human form, that he hit peaks he’d forgotten existed. He reached for that core of magic in her, and he could touch it. Bathe in it. He pried open his eyes, and she was looking at him, cupping a hand to a face that couldn’t possibly look right to her, and her eyes were a well, deep and intimate. Her belly pressed against him, her breasts were soft and there just wasn’t much about her that wasn’t exactly what he craved.

And the magic. How the hell had she managed to survive with any part of her sanity intact? She ought to have died coming into that kind of power with no one to help her learn how to control it. He worked one hand underneath her shoulder, careful not to hurt her with a talon, and her magic was there for him. Right here, and even if he wanted to he might not be able to take it all in. She knew what he wanted, and turned her head, exposing her throat to him. He fit his mouth there and bit down hard enough for his teeth to draw blood and give him a deeper taste of her.

Her sharp intake of breath was sweet in his ears. She fell deeper into his head as the tang of her blood spread over his tongue, and, for a moment, he couldn’t see a thing. Then there was this weird moment when he thought about how he could bind her to him permanently, and, in his head, in their shared mental space, he could see it happening like he was watching a movie, except he was immersed in it. Living it. She was his, and he was fucking her in this form, coming in her.

And then he was back in the present, the now, and he was hard inside her, thrusting with his emotions closer to the edge because, for him, this was starting to be mostly about the imperative to procreate. He withdrew because he was too close, and she turned onto her side, breathing hard. She ran her palm over him, over his face, his back, his torso, and then she gave him head, which he already knew she was really good at. He wanted his dick inside her so bad, he didn’t let her go for long.

With the blood-enhanced link they had going, they couldn’t tell whether words or thoughts were uttered or merely accessible through their connection. Didn’t care much, either. He sat her on the edge of the mattress, slid to the floor on his knees, between her legs, and he used his mouth on her, sliding, sucking, touching until she was shaking. His ice-queen was hot. Unbelievably hot. He was enveloped by her reactions, and it was natural for him to ramp it up for them both. The sex turned raw and his magic hooked deeper into her because his very nature when he was like this was to kickstart her reproductive physiology.

What he needed was to be pounding into her, making her scream while he had a mind-blowing climax. He wouldn’t be remotely human when it happened, either. He forced himself to push away from her and wait for the edge to fade. He was jumpy with the need to nail her.

“Stop it.” She grabbed his arm and pulled him toward her. “Stop holding back.”

“Lys—”

“I know what you told me.” She took his face between her hands, and, hell, she was naked, and he was all wrapped up in her head, and she was in his. She knew what he saw and how he felt about it; her sleek body, her hair down around her shoulders, pale skin slick with sweat, the scent of her. She knew what he felt, what he was thinking, that he wanted her hard and rough and under his control. “You were very clear about the risks.”

With a growl, he flipped her onto her back again, and she shouted when he slammed into her. She held him while he pumped hard and fast, and she didn’t have any trouble keeping up. She even knew when to turn her head to the side to expose her throat for him again. More blood from the nick he’d made there the first time. Hot and sweet, tangy.

They did it hard, fast, and dirty, and she was just amazingly good. They were amazingly good together. They were so tightly linked psychically he could hardly tell whose reactions belonged to whom. One of them screamed when she came, and it rolled through him, too. His talons sliced into the bed covers and she was in his head, connected with him, and her magic pulled at him because she wasn’t blocking anything.

He dropped into that weird mental space where he wasn’t in the present any more. He was in some kind of free fall that felt damn close to bliss.

His magic spreads through her, changes something in her, changes him. When he comes, it’s overwhelming for her. She calls out. His name. His name and when she finishes shuddering with her climax, he’s still in his other form
.

Back in his head, hers? He had to work at controlling himself, and making sure he was aware enough to change back before it was too late. Not yet, though. Not yet. She wrapped her long legs around him, up high around his hips, meeting him thrust for thrust, and the release that had been building hit them both, blew them away in a gut-wrenching, breath-stealing orgasm that turned them inside out. He went deep into her magic and let the storm roll over them.

When he could breathe again, her arms were tight around his shoulders, her legs wrapped tight around his hips. He had a hand on her ass, holding her against him. He was still changed. Not even remotely human. He’d come inside her. No protection, not that it would have mattered. No change back to human.

The hell of it was, he was up for doing it again, and she knew it and wanted that astonishing, doubled, mind-bending climax as much as he did. She needed what that bastard Michael had denied her all this time. She blinked a couple of times, and arched her hips against him. More. Again.

He shifted into another form and they did it again, missionary because he had wings in this form. Slower this time, sweeter even, so that when he knew he was perilously close, he wasn’t expecting to be annihilated the way they had been before. He expected that this time he would be able to change back before it was too late. He believed it to his core. But he didn’t change. Couldn’t. Didn’t want to. What they were doing answered something in her, gave her something she needed. She took just as much as he gave. Or maybe it was the other way around.

Eventually, he withdrew from her and let his body return to his human form so he could lie on his back, though their psychic connection stayed in place. He was boneless with pleasure. Sated. He took her hand and pressed it to his chest. “You need to move in here.”

After a bit, when she might still have been recovering, she said, “Not a good idea.”

“You should be here when you have my kid.”

She turned onto her side and cupped his face before she leaned in to kiss him. “I don’t think—”

Telos lifted his head, concentrating on the change in his proofing.

Lys frowned. “What’s wrong?”

“You need to get dressed. Right now.”

Apparently, Michael had a talented tracker.

Telos stood in the center of his living room with all kinds of wrong flowing through him. His skin crawled. The silence felt wrong. Too quiet in the house, way too quiet outside. Michael was out there, no question about that. He was probably still high on copa and hyped from his earlier kill. The ritual murder of a demon would have added to the mage’s power.

To one side of him, Lys fastened the last buttons of her blouse. She kicked her pumps under the couch. Smart. Great looking shoes, but a bitch for her if she had to run, and potentially in the way if she left them there. Deftly, she slicked back her hair and refastened it in her clip. She grabbed her purse, took out her ID, some bank cards and cash, and shoved her bag into one of the cubby holes in his entertainment center. She headed for him.

“Hold still.” She stuffed the items from her purse into the back pocket of his jeans and gave his ass a pat. “Keep it safe, will you?”

With a crack like ice breaking, one of the hundreds of carved wooden medallions that made up his early warning system snapped in half.

Beside him, Lys went still. “What was that?”

“Company.” He pointed at the cracked medallion. “They react to our kind, yours and mine, who don’t have permission to be in my house. When they break like that, it means my company isn’t waiting for an invitation to come in.”

“Michael.”

He grunted. Another of the medallions cracked. For about ten seconds, he considered locking Lys in the server room with a pile of blankets to keep her warm, but if he did that and Michael got to him, she wouldn’t be safe no matter where she was. If he got taken alive, she was fucked. If he got killed, they’d eventually find her, and she’d be trapped. Same result.

“Plan?”

He walked to the window and took a look outside. He didn’t see anyone out there but that didn’t mean much. Another of his wards cracked. He glanced at the line of medallions around the perimeter of his ceiling. Several of the carved faces were no longer smiling. One was frozen in a scream. His pulse sped up. Michael wasn’t playing around. With this proofing going off like this, there had to be more than just one or two magehelds. Plus the tracker good enough to have found them this fast.

“We call for help.” He pulled out his phone and brought up the contact he’d sent to Lys. He’d known for the last year or more he couldn’t stay unaffiliated much longer. This bullshit with Michael was only pushing a decision he’d already made. He was fine with that. From what he’d heard, there were worse warlords to tie himself to than Nikodemus.

“Are you calling the police?”

“Nikodemus.” Telos kept one eye on the window. “Get the lights. Leave that one on. In the corner there. Kill the rest.”

Lys found the wall switch and flicked the lights off. On the other end of the call, a woman answered the phone, and that wasn’t right. He was about to disconnect when the woman said, “I represent Nikodemus.”