Hidden Embers (31 page)

She was made for him, Quinn reminded himself, draping his arm around her waist and pulling her even more closely against him. The last thing he remembered before falling into a deep, dreamless sleep was his mate stroking his hair and whispering soft, sweet words of comfort. Nothing had ever felt so good.

Quinn woke up in a maelstrom of need, his body on fire, aching, burning with the need to be inside Jasmine. His cock was so hard it felt like it would explode, and every muscle in his body was tense to the point of pain.

She was stretched out beside him and her shirt had risen up to the middle of her stomach, leaving the entire lower half of her glorious body bare. His mouth watered with the need to taste her.

Rolling over on top of her, he settled himself between her legs and trailed soft, warm kisses down her jaw, over her forehead, across her cheek. She tasted delicious—like sweet honey and blackberries and sexy, willing woman.

Memories from the day before bombarded his mind, but he shoved them away as he concentrated on Jasmine. He would have to deal with the impact of yesterday soon enough. For now he was going to steal a few moments for himself. For Jasmine.

He let his lips drift over her mouth and Jasmine’s eyes slowly blinked open. He wasn’t sure what he expected to see there—bewilderment, caution, heat. But he saw none of that, only an open, honest warmth that arrowed straight to his heart—and cock—as well as enough concern for him to drown out all the months and years and decades of loneliness that came before her. No one had ever gotten inside him like she did. No friend or lover or family member had been able to thaw the frigidity that had been growing in him for centuries.

“Good morning,” she whispered, reaching a hand out and trailing it over the two days’ worth of stubble that decorated his chin.

“I know how to make it a better morning,” he answered with a small smile.

“I just bet you do.” Her legs slid open wider, making a cradle for him between her thighs even as her eyes drifted shut and she turned her head to the left.

He froze for long seconds, incapable of movement, barely capable of thought as he tried to absorb what she’d done. He told himself it didn’t matter, that she didn’t know, that humans didn’t follow the same rules that shifters did. But those arguments hardly mattered—not to his human side or to the dragon that was even now trying to get out.

Jazz trusted him not to hurt her so completely that she had exposed her jugular to him—something no dragon would ever do unless she felt very, very confident with her mate. And she had closed her eyes while she’d done it. The trust implicit in the action shot right through him, overwhelmed him, made him want to love her and cuddle her and cherish her all at the same time. That it didn’t have the same significance to her didn’t matter. All that mattered was that she was his.

“Quinn?” Her sleepy, sexy voice rumbled its way through him. “Are you okay?”

He didn’t know how to answer. On one hand, he felt better than he had ever imagined he could. On the other, he was on wild, uncharted ground. He didn’t know what to say, how to act, what to do to show her just how much she meant to him.

But when her eyes opened and he could see her need for him—a need combined with affection that somehow exactly mirrored his own feelings—it melted him completely.

Leaning forward, he took her mouth with his own, using his lips and tongue to arouse her—to soothe her—in a way he never had before, not even with Jasmine. He wanted her, God did he want her, but even more overwhelming than the desire was the tenderness he felt for her. The softness she brought to him when he was used to being the strong one, the tough one.

He nipped at her lower lip, reveling in the sexy moan she didn’t try to stop. Sucked it into his mouth in an effort to ease the confusing rush of feelings tearing at his insides.

She went wild, her strong warrior’s body bucking against him. She wrenched her mouth from his, skimmed her mouth down his neck and over his shoulder, and he shuddered with the effort it took to restrain himself. To hold the beast back when it wanted nothing more than to lose itself in her.

But this moment, this morning after one of the worst days of his professional life, meant more to him than a desperate drive for satisfaction. Jasmine was his, and he wanted to show her that being with him didn’t always have to be flash and fire, didn’t always have to be a struggle for control.

Reaching up, he cupped her face in one of his hands and just looked at her. From the little lines just starting at the corners of her glorious eyes to the small scar that ran along the edge of her jaw to the random scattering of freckles that decorated her nose, he memorized her. Pulled her face, pulled
her
, deep inside of himself, where he could hold on to her whenever his fucked-up life started crashing in on him. And she let him. Instead of struggling against him or trying to move things along faster, Jasmine just lay there and let him look. Lay there and watched him as intently as he was watching her.

When he couldn’t take it any longer, when his need to be inside her was nearly overwhelming, he moved so that he covered her. So that every part of her body was covered by every part of his. Not domination, but protection. Not control, but adoration. Bending forward, he kissed the softness of her lips, the corners of her mouth. Traced his tongue along her full bottom lip, lingering at the cute little indention in the center of her lopsided upper lip. She was like the richest, smoothest velvet, so much softer than she looked on the outside. So much hotter than he had dreamed his mate could be.

He wanted to be gentle this time, to give her the tenderness she deserved. But the second her tongue tangled with his, he was lost. Lust rose, sharp and terrible and all-consuming. He ignored it, beat it down, kissed her some more. He was unwilling to give up her lips, unable to break the connection when everything inside of him clamored to be a part of her. To make her a part of him.

He didn’t lift his mouth until she whimpered, gasped for air. Only then did he relinquish her lips, skimming his own down her cheek and over the long, graceful curve of her neck to the delicate bones of her shoulders. How could she be so fragile and yet so strong?

Using his free hand, he pushed her shirt up, baring her beautiful breasts. Then he slowly pulled it over her head, fully exposing her round breasts and beautiful, dusky rose nipples. She was amazing, glorious, and as he ran his tongue around her areola, he had only one thought: to worship her, to pleasure her, to make her his, once and for all.

Then he forgot everything but the ecstasy of being with her as he licked and kissed his way over every inch of her body. He explored the curve of her shoulder, the bend in her elbow, the back of her knee. Then tickled her ribs with his tongue before moving between her legs and tasting her. Feasting on her. Claiming her.

He slid his tongue over her labia, once, twice, loving the spicy scent and taste of her. Slipped inside of her and stroked her from the inside as her hands clutched at his hair, his shoulders.

Ran his tongue over and around the hard button of her clit as she sighed and moaned.

And then, with a quick flick of his tongue and a stroke of his fingers, he brought her to climax. Pulling back, desperate to see her, he stroked his thumb over her, intensifying Jasmine’s orgasm even as he watched her take her pleasure. Her back bowed, her hips moved languorously against his thumb, and her skin flushed a pretty pink that called to him, urging him to take her. To take all of her.

His cock twitched, but he wasn’t ready to give up the view quite yet. Not when she was spread before him like a feast, like a banquet. Not when she was so completely open and vulnerable to him, and he felt like he was the same to her.

When she finally stopped coming, he spread her legs a little wider, then simply looked at her soft, pink pussy.

He trailed a finger over the warm, slick folds, reveling in the feel of her desire for him. Slid a finger between her labia and deep inside her.

“Quinn!” It was a plea and they both knew it. “I want you.”

“You have me,” he murmured, sliding first one finger and then another into her, nearly losing it at the unbelievable perfection of her body. She was tight, hot, her muscles clenching in a rhythm he could feel resonating all the way to his dick.

Suddenly, he couldn’t take it anymore. Rolling onto his back, he reached into the nightstand by his bed and pulled out a condom. After rolling it quickly down his cock, he pulled Jasmine over him and, with his hands on her hips, gently guided her onto him.

She cried out as he sank into her, arched her back and clutched at his hands until he twined his fingers with hers. Something about that connection, that joining of Jasmine’s hands with his own as she rode him, sent him right up to the edge of his control.

Fighting to hang on, never wanting the feelings to end—never wanting the closeness between them to dissipate—he clung to sanity even as her breath grew quicker and her movements more frantic. He reveled in the feel of her pussy around him, rejoiced in the slight pressure of her warm weight on his stomach as she slowly moved herself up and down his cock.

“Quinn,” she moaned breathlessly, another plea. He knew she was close to shattering again. And he loved it. How could he not when he was the one benefiting from her glorious, unselfish passion?

Slipping his hands around her hips, he cupped her gorgeous, round ass in his hands. He kneaded it for a moment, before slipping a finger into the seam of her ass and pressing against her anus.

She gasped, arched, but she didn’t deny him, and as he slid his finger inside of her, he whispered, “Let it take you, my sweet Jazz. Let it have you.”

And she did, her back arching above him like a bow as the waves exploded through her. Her sex clenched around his cock again and again, pulling him deeper. Taking him home.

At the last minute she leaned down and brushed her lips over his as her crazy violet eyes looked deep into his own. That was all it took, those moments of connection so deep and profound that he couldn’t help feeling like they would be tangled together forever.

With a moan, he let himself go, and the release that swept through him was so strong, so powerful, that for a moment it was like death itself.

“I love you, Jasmine,” he said, as the orgasm swamped him. “I love you.”

She didn’t answer him, didn’t proclaim her love back to him. But that was okay. Until she was ready to embrace what was between them, he would love her enough for both of them.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

M
inutes later—or maybe it was hours, she couldn’t be sure—Jasmine felt Quinn stir against her. How he could be moving she didn’t know, not when her body and emotions were so used up she was contemplating staying in this bed forever. There was nothing outside of it that she wanted more than she wanted Quinn.

That thought—on top of the words he’d whispered at the end of their lovemaking—suddenly rang alarm bells deep inside of her. She’d never wanted a man to love her, had never wanted to love a man. With her parents’ marriage, she’d seen firsthand how destructive love could be. And yet here she was, in the arms of a man she cared deeply for, reimagining the life she’d had mapped out for herself since she’d gotten into college with a GED.

Since when was she the kind of woman who fell for a few sweet words? she wondered frantically as she struggled to get her heartbeat under control. Since when did she fancy herself caring deeply for a man, so deeply that he could wound her with a stray word or a careless flick of his hand?

Since Quinn, she realized, feeling a little sick, as she pushed against his chest. She was suddenly having trouble breathing, the walls—and Quinn—closing around her until she felt claustrophobic for the first time since she’d walked out of her father’s house more than a decade and a half before.

“Hey. Are you okay?” Quinn lifted his head to look at her.

“Yeah, fine.” She pushed him off of her and slid out of bed, searching frantically for the T-shirt he’d discarded a little while before. “But it occurs to me that I should probably get going. I need to stop at Phoebe’s house before heading into the lab. I’ve been wearing the same pants for two days now. Any longer and they’ll be able to stand up on their own. But I’ll see you later at the lab.”

She thought she’d managed to cover the panic in her voice pretty well, but Quinn must have picked up on something because he rolled over until he was sitting on the side of the bed. Catching her hand in one of his huge ones, he pulled her between the V of his legs.

“Come on, Jazz. Talk to me.”

“I am talking to you.” She slipped his T-shirt back over her head and did everything in her power not to make eye contact with him. “But I need to get going. I have some ideas about the virus that I want to check out, and I need to get to the lab to do that.”

“The virus can wait.”

“I never thought I’d hear you say that.”

“Well, you did. You’re my mate, Jasmine. Nothing’s more important to me than making sure that you are safe and happy.”

She reared back, stumbling away from him as his words burned a path through her brain. Had he just called her his mate?
Like, partner? Like, wife?
Surely that wasn’t what he was talking about. Surely he wasn’t—

“Damn. I didn’t mean to blurt it out like that.”

“Blurt what out?” Her voice was shaky and way too high, but it was the best she could do under the circumstances.

He shook his head. “We can talk about it later. I—”

“Don’t do that to me! Don’t spring words like
mate
on me and then pat me on the head and send me on my way. What are you talking about?”

“Look, it’s complicated.”

“Try me. I’m pretty sure I can keep up.” She narrowed her eyes at his very guilty-looking face.

“I know you don’t know much about shifters…”

“I can guess that when they use the word
mate
it’s pretty serious.”

“Yes.” He nodded.

“Then why are you throwing words like that around? We barely know each other.”