Spider-Touched (13 page)

She’d hungered for touch all her life.

A moan escaped. It was followed by a gasp when his palm covered the demon mark.

“If it was possible for me to die at the hands of a human, it would already be done,” he said, the words nearly lost when his palm glided downward over her hardened nipple.

Araña shuddered. She fought to think, to question, to choose—though deep inside she knew she wouldn’t turn away from the lust she read in his eyes, from the needs of her own body to know a man, to have, for a little while, what others could have for a lifetime—a lover.

He wasn’t human. His words confirmed her suspicions.

He wasn’t Were. That much Levi had right.

She didn’t think he was vampire.

“What are you?” Araña asked, her voice barely audible.

His eyes became instantly hooded. “Does it matter?”

He shifted their positions abruptly, rolling so she lay underneath him, caged in the shallow pool, her upper body held out of the water by her elbows.

“Does it matter?” he asked again, his cock rubbing against her swollen folds and stiffened clit, making her tremble with need and the desire to cant her hips and have him pierce her.

Did it matter?

A small voice said yes. She might hunger for touch, but her soul longed for true intimacy—the joining of spirit and flesh as Matthew and Erik had.

A more insistent voice said no. Tir could touch her where others couldn’t. And at least for a little while, she wanted to lose herself in passion, to forget what she’d lost.

“It doesn’t matter,” she whispered, putting more weight on one elbow in order to free an arm. She mimicked his earlier touch, tracing his collarbone, though her touch was more tentative than his had been. “I was dying and you healed me.”

He brought his face closer to hers, the movement causing the long, silky strands of his hair to become a curtain enclosing them in a private world. “It was a fair trade. You freed me.”

Araña gave a small nod of acknowledgment, reading in to his words that they were even now—a debt had been incurred and paid. There was no longer any obligation between them.

She ducked her head, feeling suddenly shy with the stranger who lay so intimately on top of her. She wanted this. She wanted him. But her normal confidence seemed to have deserted her.

Another shiver of need went through her, accompanied by a small sound of longing. Her fingers tangled in the black silk of Tir’s hair as her hips lifted, pressing the unprotected head of her clit against the hot steel of his erection.

“Please,” she whispered, a small word holding so many different meanings for her.

Raw need twisted in Tir’s gut, urging him to possess her even as it was tempered by an unfamiliar, inexplicable desire to protect her. She was beguiling him, drawing him into a web with her at its center.

He didn’t understand her, couldn’t guess at what motivated her. Her emotions were quicksilver he couldn’t grasp, her thoughts hidden in dark eyes.

Only her body was easy for him to read. And it sang to his, a siren’s song of temptation he had no will to resist.

“You’re beautiful,” Tir said, brushing his lips against her cheek, the touch gentle despite the savage ache in his cock as she ground her bare mound and clit against it.

Her soft laugh made him smile. “You’re the beautiful one,” she said, and he caught the words with the press of his mouth to hers.

Deep inside him, in the hidden recesses of lost memory, a warning sounded against sharing breath with her—but it came too late. He moaned against the satin of her lips, the sweet yielding of feminine to masculine as she opened for him, welcomed his tongue with hers in a slow, sensual slide.

He was sorry now he’d brought her to the water. The first taste made him hungry for more.

Later, he promised himself. Later he would kiss down her body and press his mouth to her swollen cunt lips. He’d lap the honeyed arousal he found there.

He shouldn’t care that no other man had ever touched her this way. But a savage, primal satisfaction surged through him at the thought of having her as only he could.

Liquid hunger poured into his bloodstream as one kiss melded into another, then another. He settled more heavily on her, changed their position, his arms sliding underneath her shoulders and his hands cupping the back of her head, his elbows supporting them both in the shallow pool.

His strength made it easy. His reward was the feel of her arms wrapped around him, her fingers tangling in his hair, holding him to her as if she were afraid he’d leave.

Soft, desperate sounds spilled from her mouth to his, enflaming him further. The head of his cock found her opening, sending a jolt of unparalleled ecstasy through him.

He rubbed back and forth, tormenting them both, swallowing her gasps and soft cries. She retaliated by lightly raking her fingernails down his back, by grabbing his hips and trying to hold him steady so she could impale herself on him.

Tir resisted with a husky laugh, with the rub of his chest over the tight points of her nipples. Fiery need arrowed straight to his cock each time his nipples struck hers.

He wanted to lift up, to press his nipple to her mouth and feel the lash of her tongue, the grasp of teeth and pull of lips as she laved and bit and sucked. He wanted to kiss downward to her breasts and do the same to her.

Later, he promised himself. Later he would explore more of her, conquer every inch of her.

A shock of pleasure made him gasp. Lost in his fantasies, he’d forgotten about resisting, about drawing out the moment when his length would be held deep in her body.

She’d captured his cock head in the hungry mouth of her opening. And it wept, cried in ecstasy, his arousal joining hers in a heated wash as she clenched him.

Twin urges assailed him. The desire to swallow her virgin cries warred with the desire to watch her face as he forged inside her for the first time.

The latter won, though his lips clung to hers and his tongue was loath to leave the wet heaven of her mouth. When he was finally able to draw away, her sound of protest added to his pleasure.

The sight of her midnight eyes clouded with desire filled him with a satisfaction he wouldn’t have believed himself capable of, not when it came to a human. But she wasn’t just any human. She was the one who’d freed him.

She cried out when he pressed deeper. She was so tight, so hot he nearly came from the exquisite pleasure of having the muscles of her sheath tighten and spasm on him.

“Araña,” he whispered, the name torment and benediction.

It strained his control to keep from thrusting all the way in a single stroke, to keep from giving in to the mindless, clawing hunger she created in him—a hunger magnified by centuries upon centuries of abstinence.

Alpha and omega. The first and the last.

He couldn’t remember anything as pleasurable, didn’t know if he’d ever lain with a woman before.

He’d never imagined how close ecstasy and torment could be.

With excruciating slowness he worked his way in. He couldn’t resist the urge to cover her mouth with his, to feel her open for him, letting his tongue slide past her lips as his cock had done through the slick, swollen folds of her labia.

He shivered when he was fully seated. Stilled.

It was beyond imagining.

Tight vaginal muscles rippled and clenched, welcomed and resisted.

Heat surrounded him, bathed him, made him want to cry out.

Araña.

Her name echoed through him. In warning? In recognition?

He didn’t know. He knew only that nothing had ever felt as good as this, as having her beneath him, her body open and his penis held deep and fast inside her.

Araña’s arms tightened around Tir’s neck. The thick length of his cock was a throbbing presence in her channel, an echoed heartbeat filling her, stretching her in a seamless blending of pain and pleasure.

His lips left hers and she cried out at the loss. When their eyes met, the intimacy was nearly too much for her. She felt exposed, stripped bare, the shields necessary to survive no longer hiding her vulnerability, her need for love and touch.

Araña lifted her head and pressed her mouth to his, wanting to hide, willing to give her body but not her soul, not to a stranger who would soon be gone from her life.

His kiss didn’t allow the escape. His tongue plundered, commanded, insisted she cling to him, surrender a part of herself she knew she would never recover.

It didn’t matter, she told herself, knowing it was a lie and forcing everything from her mind but the moment, the reality of having Tir inside her.

She felt him fighting to give her time to adjust to his size even as need pulsed between them in a fierce, rapid beat that made it impossible to remain still.

Her sheath tightened on him. Feminine pride surged through her with the catch of his breath, the sharp thrust of his hips.

“Please, Tir,” she said against his mouth, and it was as if some barrier inside him broke.

His tongue fucked against hers as the hard length of him surged in and out of her.

She clung to him, moved with him.

Ecstasy. There was no other word for it.

She understood then why fortunes and lives and honor itself were sacrificed for the promise of passion.

Hot flesh and masculine desire turned her into a primal woman, a creature caught in the endless spirals of fierce joy.

She struggled for breath.

To get closer.

To reach the pinnacle that expressed itself in a sharp cry and brought exultation when her orgasm triggered his, leaving her swamped in feelings she never thought she’d experience.

For long moments afterward he continued to lie on top of her, nuzzling, kissing, his cock still inside her, as if he were in no hurry to part from her.

He was everything she’d dreamed a lover would be.

It was foolish, she knew it was, but she closed her eyes and allowed herself to pretend she’d always have this. Tir’s touch. His body covering hers. The pleasure he’d shown her was possible between a man and a woman.

When he finally rolled away to sit in the shallow pool, she wanted to follow him, to climb onto his lap and cling to him. Instead she sat, bathing herself in the sun-warmed water, struggling in the aftermath of sex to find words, chiding herself for the fierce longing to be held, for craving true intimacy as well as touch.

Her eyes teared with memories of Matthew and Erik together. Their shared glances and casual caresses, the way it was impossible to think about one of them without thinking about the other. Her throat tightened and she forced the pain back to the place in her heart that would always contain it. She couldn’t afford the weakness.

Live in the moment, in the here and now. That’s what life had taught her.

Make the most of every opportunity. That was the lesson favored by Erik and Matthew.

Tir watched the play of Araña’s thoughts across her face. Her emotions buffeted him, sliding through mental barriers erected over centuries.

What was it about this human that affected him so strongly? Stripped away his control as though it were nonexistent?

She rose from the shallow pool, black hair and water trailing down her back, tanned skin covering sleek muscle and a beautiful feminine form. She was like the Eve of the religious—unbearable temptation capable of leading any man to his destruction.

Tir caressed her with his eyes, hunger flaming to life, filling his cock so it rose along his abdomen, filling his testicles so they hung heavy with seed. There was a fleeting thought to ask her about the scars crisscrossing her back, the brand on her hand, but when she stepped onto the mossy bank and turned toward him, dark eyes sultry, holding a knowledge he’d given her, only carnal desire remained.

“I want you again,” she whispered, meeting his gaze boldly before lowering her eyelashes, shy temptress and brazen seductress rolled into one.

Seven

TIR surged out of the water to go to her, the gentle first lover he had been giving way to something darker, more primitive, as the promises he’d made to himself roared to life with the sight of her bare mound.

“Lie down,” he ordered.

Color bloomed in her cheeks. But her nipples beaded, making him hunger for a taste of them.

She sat, drawing her knees to her chest, her movements graceful. The erotic fear he read in her and her subtle disobedience heightened his desire.

Tir crouched in front of her, a male in his prime, his thighs splayed, affording her a view of his thick erection and heavy testicles.

If he hadn’t been sure of his own ability to discern the nature of others, he’d have thought she had to be a gifted witch to affect him so profoundly, to do what no human female had ever done before, harden his cock and take away his will to resist.

He tangled his fingers in her hair, tightened them until she tilted her head backward, exposing her neck in an unconscious show of submission.

The scent of her arousal swamped him, told him she would accept a dominant lover. And his lips pulled back in silent anger at the thought of any other male having her.