My Dangerous Pleasure (21 page)

“You too,” he said, and her smile made him feel strange. Like he’d do anything to make sure she always wanted to smile like that around him. He kissed her again. A real kiss this time. Softly at first and then not, and he still felt strange, because Paisley mattered to him in a way no one had since Fen.

They ended up stretched out on the couch with his body over hers, and while he was French-kissing her for all he was worth, he thought dirty thoughts about Paisley and sex, but he kept coming back to thinking up ways to make her want to stay with him.

C
HAPTER 18

H
ow long had it been since the last time she’d had sex? Too long. She hadn’t slept with anyone since Urban, and that meant three years. Even she knew the sex had been bad in the last year of their relationship. Iskander kept kissing her, and Lord, he was good at kissing. All she could think was this was
Iskander
and he was beyond hot and he was kissing her right out of her mind.

To be fair, she was kissing him back. Her body had different ideas about what was good for her, and right now she felt very selfish. She arched up, one hand on his shoulder while she swept her tongue into his mouth, and he made this soft groan in the back of his throat, and she could feel his erection against her belly. His hand slid underneath her shirt, spreading out over her bare belly and slipping upward, and she wanted more, even though this was a terrible idea because she wasn’t in any kind of control of herself.

She held his head between her hands, and she could swear her skin tingled where her flesh touched his tattoos. His hair fell forward, and in the uncertain light she could see blue highlights, as if his hair was tattooed like his body. He drew back and she whimpered because she didn’t want him to stop touching her. He put his fingers on the top button of her jeans and thumbed it open. He had one hand propped on the sofa just above her shoulder, and he was pulling down her zipper with the other. Was she going to let him do that? Just unzip her jeans like it was no big deal?

“This okay with you?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Because there’s things I want to do to you.” He dropped his head and kissed the side of her throat. “Dirty things. Wicked things.”

She grabbed his head and whispered in his ear, “You are a very dangerous man.”

He laughed softly and slid his fingers down her belly. “As dangerous as they come.” A shiver slid down her spine, and then the light just went away. She blinked. The room stayed dark.

“What did you just do?”

“Mmm.” Iskander kissed her collarbone. “I took away the light.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s safer for you.” He drew a circle on her stomach. “So. Can I keep touching you? Getting you hot?”

She threaded her fingers through his hair. The thing was, she wasn’t so out of control she didn’t know exactly what she was doing. She wanted to get laid, and she wanted Iskander to be the one she had sex with. “I will shoot you dead if you stop.”

“Then I won’t unless you tell me to.”

“Good.”

His hand slid around her to her shoulder blades, and without much effort, they ended up so that he was sitting with his back against an arm of the couch and she was facing him, straddling his lap, with her jeans gaping open. She gripped the back of the couch with one hand because it kept her oriented in the blackness. She could see only the barest shadow of him. He took her right wrist in his hand, which didn’t hurt anywhere near as much as it had before, and traced a finger along her forearm. He was careful not to touch the scar.

A shiver followed in the wake of his finger moving along her arm. He reached for her blouse and started unbuttoning it from the bottom up. Her breath caught in her throat.

“Is it better than chocolate yet?”

“You’ll have to try a little harder.”

“Anything you want, cupcake. Want to maybe play a little? Here in the dark?”

She ached for him to touch her. She wanted his hands and his mouth on her and to listen to his breathing change, to hear that soft croon from low in his throat. The backs of his fingers brushed against her bare skin as he continued to push buttons through buttonholes, and for a while she thought she might just melt right here. She did want to play. A lot. He stopped unbuttoning her shirt and brushed his fingers along her bared skin. “Paisley? Tell me yes so I know you’re okay with this.”

“Don’t make me get up and find that gun.”

He laughed and undid another button. “After Fen,” he said softly, “I found out I like having sex with humans.” From the sounds and the way he shifted his body, she figured he’d just taken off his shirt. She reached out and discovered she was right. His skin was warm and smooth, and touching him made her long for more. He sucked in a breath when her fingers slid over his nipples. “You have a beautiful body, Paisley, and I want to see you naked and touch you all over and have dirty, kinky sex with you.”

He shifted around again, unzipping his fly and taking off his jeans. She helped him with that. For a few seconds, when his clothes had been dumped on the floor and she was back to straddling his lap, she listened to the sound of them breathing. A chill slid down her back and sent her heart beating hard in her chest. He’d used magic—she’d learned enough to recognize that reaction—but she had no idea what he’d done with that magic.

“I’d love to have sex with you right now,” he said in a rougher voice than she was used to hearing from him. “Like this.”

“Like what?”

He whispered, “Not human.”

She leaned over him, moving her hand forward to the arm of the couch near Iskander’s head. The shape of his body had changed. He was larger; that was certain. She rested her palm on his chest, and his skin wasn’t smooth the way it had been before. She slid her hand the length of his torso, over the ridged muscles of his chest. The texture of his skin was leathery but warm, so warm and supple. Her fingertips brushed over one of his nipples, and that elicited a soft inhale from him.

She bent closer. Her ponytail slid over her shoulder, and he pulled out the band that held back her hair. “I want to see you.”

“Not a good idea.” He pushed his fingers into her hair.

“Why not?”

“There’s a rule about letting a human who isn’t bound to secrecy see us when we’re not human. Sometimes it happens by accident, but we’re not supposed to let that happen. Not anymore.”

Her heart stuttered but it wasn’t in fear, exactly. “Weren’t you always not human?”

He went back to unbuttoning her blouse. “I should clarify that, I guess. It’s true—I’m not human. I am also not in my human form.” His hands left her shirt as he stretched his body. “Want to break a few rules?”

“If I say yes, we wouldn’t be breaking any rules, right?”

“True. So,” he said after a heartbeat, “are you saying yes?” He went still while he waited for her to answer. He was serious about that, about needing an answer from her. “I won’t do anything you don’t say is okay.”

She slid her hands over his face, finding the shape was different, his cheeks higher, more slanted. She stroked over his chest and down to his belly to his penis.

“It’s dangerous this way,” he said. “It’s making me hot and not just because of where you have your hand.”

“I don’t feel like I’m in danger.”

“You are. I can feel your magic, and it’s working on me something fierce.” He wrapped his fingers around her left wrist, stopping her from stroking his cock, except not really. His fingers tightened around hers, squeezing and then sliding up. Down. Slowly. “Listen to me, Paisley, there’s more I need to tell you.”

“Okay.” She was more turned on than she’d ever been in her life, ready for whatever might happen.

“My kind don’t reproduce with each other. Just with humans. And we’re only fertile when we’re like this.”

“Not human, you mean?”

“Yeah. So I’m telling you now that if we do it when I’m like this, I can’t come inside you. Condoms or birth control don’t work well with us. I can’t give you diseases because we don’t get them.” He touched her cheek with this free hand, and she shivered at the contact, at the faintest touch of what felt like a talon on her skin. “I want to have sex with you when I’m like this, but I won’t tonight. I promise you that, all right? Because right now, we’re playing. So you’ll know at least something about me if it ever happens like that.”

Her belly went a little loopy, and not in a bad way at all. He undid the last buttons of her shirt and pushed it off her shoulders. She drew one arm out of the sleeve and then the other, and he yanked and her shirt was gone. “Are you turned on?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Good. That’s good. Me too.” The cushions shifted when he sat up. He reached around to unfasten her bra. Oh, God, she just could not believe this was happening. She flashed back to Urban and the way she’d always felt so inadequate with him, and for half a second she was back to her old insecure, far-too-fragile self. As if he knew what she was thinking, he hesitated. “Okay?”

Her breath hitched, and her breasts felt heavy, and she was dying for him to touch her. What came out of her throat was a kind of choked, “Yes.”

“Excellent.” He pulled her bra away from her. He let out a low breath. “Paisley,” he said in that same rough voice. “I swear if I was religious, I’d thank all the gods I can remember for giving me a life where I get to see you naked.”

“I’m not naked.”

“Not yet.” He leaned forward and then his tongue flicked over her nipple. His mouth, hot and damp, closed over her, and his hand was warm as he cupped her breast, his fingers warm on the other one. Her body was committed to being aroused.

She buried her fingers in his hair while he suckled her. So soft, his hair was, like silk in her hands. After a bit, she tilted his head toward hers, and since she was still straddling him, she had to lower her head to kiss him. His mouth under hers didn’t feel quite the way it should, but his lips parted and his tongue moved into her mouth, and she thought this kiss, so different from every other kiss she’d had in her life, was better than any of them. The heat was astonishing.

His hands curved around her rib cage, sliding over her, around to her back, sharp nails gliding down her spine, a light touch. She slid off him and as quickly as she could, she shucked her jeans and underwear.

“Thank you, Jesus.” His voice was definitely rougher.

She went back to him, and he put his arms around her and kissed her shoulder. “I want you inside me,” she said. “And I want to see you.”

“Give me a minute.”

She didn’t, though. She kissed him, and he kissed her back, and one of his hands slipped between her legs, and she nearly came apart just from that. She threw back her head and moaned.

“We shouldn’t do this,” he said. “We should stop before it’s too late.”

“Bad idea.”

“Stopping?” He laughed softly and circled his thumb in the exact right spot. Coherent thought went flying right out of her head.

She bent down and kissed him, her mouth open, her tongue between his lips, touching his tongue, touching the sharp teeth, and when she lifted her hips, he moved, too, anticipating her, and then there was a moment of profound quiet. Neither of them moved.

“Yes?” he whispered.

“Oh, yes.”

Then he was pushing inside her, and he slowed down for her because it had been too long since she’d been with anybody. Every nerve in her body seemed to be located between her legs.

And, God, this was just so good, stupefying. When he filled her, she arched her back, and he pressed in a little deeper and slid his hands around her waist and he was not human. She could see enough in the dimness to know he wasn’t. Her breath hitched, hard and in time with the first tingle of orgasm. How could she do the right thing when she was about to come and she could tell it was going to be massively good? She looked up and saw the flicker of his eyes and the blue sheen of his skin, and their gazes locked.

His hands tightened around her, and for a while they just fucked. They didn’t speak, and it felt beyond good. She ended up on her back again, and he gave her what she needed, which was this, to feel him moving inside her, to have him touch her and kiss her.