Unmasked (8 page)

She smiled at him, and he knew her. The one he’d described earlier to Dink—the perfect woman. Mac’s ultimate fantasy.

His cock actually jerked within his grasp. He was leaking pre-cum now, almost faster than the shower could rinse it away. He tugged harder on his balls, rolling the solid orbs between his fingers, squeezing his fist tighter around the base of his dick, finding a rhythm he knew couldn’t last.

His balls sucked up close between his legs. He tightened his grasp and squeezed them almost painfully as his fantasy woman floated just inside his field of vision. He concentrated on her face, on the deep violet eyes and cascade of coal-black hair curling around her shoulders.

She was too real, too perfect for him to have invented her, but Mac had no idea where he’d seen her. She was beyond gorgeous, miles beyond any woman he could recall. The scent of honey and vanilla filled his senses and raised his temperature. She gazed up at him with the water cascading over her shoulders, across the fullness of her perfect breasts. Her nipples were a deep rose against porcelain skin, their tips drawn tight.

She smiled and then slowly dropped to her knees and nuzzled his groin as the spray slicked long dark hair back from her face and steam filled the shower stall. The tip of her tongue slipped between full lips and she licked the side of his shaft, nipping daintily just at the juncture where his cock rooted to his groin. His entire body tensed.

The room spun. Too much beer, too much sensation, but her mouth on his dick anchored him. Deep crimson lips encircled the broad head. He groaned, thrust his hips forward, and she took him deep. His hands dropped to his sides as she worked more of his cock into her sweet mouth.

“Fuck.” The curse slipped out on a whisper. He slapped his palms flat against the wet tile to stop the walls from spinning when the muscles of her throat tightened around his sensitive glans.

“Shit. Holy, holy shit.” Mac squeezed his eyes shut. His knees went weak, his head spun. Cursing steadily, he leaned his head against the tile as his hips rocked forward into the hot, wet clasp of her mouth. Her teeth scraped the sides of his shaft and the muscles in his buttocks clenched. He struggled for control, but she hummed deep in her throat and the vibration was a shock of pure fire running the full length of his shaft.

“Fuck. Oh . . . fuck.” His hips jerked and his climax boiled up and out. He tried to open his eyes, to watch her, to prove she truly existed, but it was impossible to fight the pulsing throb of orgasm. Just as the woman was impossible. There was no one kneeling at his feet. That wasn’t the flick of her tongue licking away the last drops of his seed. No, it was merely the most vivid sexual fantasy he’d ever had in his life.

What else could it be?

Legs trembling, breath heaving in and out of his lungs, Mac opened his eyes. He was alone. His cock lay soft and flaccid over his throbbing balls. He’d come without touching himself. Shot his load into an imaginary mouth and felt every lick of her tongue, every deep, sucking draw of her lips and cheeks.

Still too damned drunk, definitely spaced, Mac stared at the empty shower in front of him. At the spot where the woman had knelt. Slowly shaking his head and seriously doubting his sanity, he scrubbed the stink of the long day off his body. Then he turned off the water and toweled dry with trembling hands.

The scent of vanilla and honey teased his nostrils, but he refused to consider the connection. Half asleep, physically drained, he crawled into bed and turned out the light. He’d barely pulled the covers over his bare shoulders before sleep claimed him.

Chapter 2

There it was again, that sweet scent that made him think of warm vanilla wafers. Crawling out of a sublimely sexual dream featuring his latest fantasy female—a dream that faded away as consciousness returned—Mac sniffed the air. Had the smell of cookies awakened him?

He really wanted to get back to that dream.

The room was still dark, but the same tantalizing sweetness he’d noticed earlier filled his nostrils. Stronger now. Closer.

He reached for the lamp on the bedside table. A soft hand stroked his chest. Mac sucked in a gasp of air.

Scrabbling for the switch, he flicked on the light and shoved himself back against the headboard.

Blinking beneath the bright light, he stared into the face of a woman too perfect to be real—eyes so purple they sparkled like amethysts beneath thick, sooty lashes, and hair as black as night. Her skin was fair, her lips full and lush. If he’d dreamed her into existence, she couldn’t have been more perfect, and that was the only way she could have gotten here, because he sure as hell hadn’t invited anyone in tonight.

“Who the hell are you?”

She frowned. Her dark brows knotted, and two tiny lines appeared between them. “I’m Zianne,” she said, as if he should know. “Don’t you remember? And you are Mac.”

She spoke with a soft accent he didn’t recognize, in a voice that was low and sort of raspy. Hinting of sex and secrets, it raised shivers along his spine.

He shook his head. He’d been so damned drunk when he left Dinkemann’s place—had he met her somewhere tonight? He’d never had an alcoholic blackout in his life, but if this was the result, he’d definitely been wasting his time.

He flashed on the fantasy he’d had in the shower. The same woman beside him in bed? No. That wasn’t real. She wasn’t real. He’d imagined that. Hadn’t he? Was he imagining her here, now?

Impossible to imagine her scent, the weight of her warm body against his. Her touch. He inhaled a deep, shuddering breath. “Where’d you come from?”

She shrugged as if he were a complete fool for asking, and for a minute he thought he must be, because there was no way in hell he’d ever forget bringing someone like Zianne home to his apartment. There wasn’t enough alcohol in the world to make him forget a woman like her.

A memory flashed through his mind, of Zianne kneeling before him in the shower, her mouth . . .
dear God. Her mouth!

She smiled with those perfect lush lips and stroked his cheek with her fingertips. Her touch was soft and warm. Perfect.

“You brought me here.” Her scent enveloped him, stealing his thoughts from the question.

Fresh-baked cookies. Vanilla and honey . . . why does she smell so familiar?
And then it came to him, the memory so subtle it held a dreamlike quality. Comforting smells from a childhood he’d long forgotten. A time when his parents still lived, when he’d had a real home, a real family.

A time before he was four years old and the world as he knew it ended. No matter. He couldn’t go back, couldn’t change the car accident that took his mom and dad’s lives, the accident that left him unharmed and alone. Quickly Mac blocked the actual pain he experienced whenever that time intruded.

He couldn’t change what was, though he could enjoy the spark of memory from before. Could enjoy the warm scent of Zianne in his arms. Mac took a deep breath and stared into those unbelievable violet eyes. Who in the hell was she?

Zianne smiled, leaned close and kissed him, enveloping Mac in more of that subtle, sweet perfume. Her lips moved slowly, warm and soft, over his mouth. Sex personified.

Need blossomed. Need on so many levels, so many different wants and desires. Love. Sex. Companionship. Friendship. Other than Dink, he’d been alone for so long he’d forgotten what it felt like to have someone close, someone who mattered. Zianne’s kiss promised to fill needs Mac had forgotten he ever had.

Her taste was even sweeter than her scent. Zianne’s mouth moved over his, tasting, nipping, licking. She slid closer until she lay atop him, until her lips covered his and her tongue probed the sensitive flesh above his teeth, inside his mouth. Her hands were in his hair, her fingers separating the strands and sending shivers of pure fire along his spine. She held him and kissed him deep, explored his mouth with her mobile tongue.

He remembered the way her lips had felt around his cock. It had to have been her, but how? He couldn’t have imagined something as real as her mouth on him then. On him now. She’d sucked him deep, taken his seed and swallowed every drop. Now she made love to his mouth. The intensity of her kiss pulling all he was, all he had to give—just as she’d done before.

Mac’s body grew hard beneath her long, supple length. His cock rose between her thighs, his muscles rippled beneath his skin. The weight of her breasts on his chest made him strangely angry. He wanted to see them. Wanted to nuzzle his lips and face against their softness, but she’d taken control and he didn’t fight her for dominance. He had no will of his own. None.

He couldn’t fight her. Could only lie here beneath her perfect body as she made love to him. As she took him, raising up on her knees, grabbing his turgid length in her fist, placing the broad head between her thighs.

There was the briefest awareness of soft, damp curls, of even softer, wetter lips. Then she arched her back and came down on him, all in one smooth, flowing motion that drove him deep inside. He felt heat and the ripple of flexing muscles, then a smooth, wet channel gripping him in an unforgivable vise, pure sensual pleasure personified in this perfect woman.

He raised his hips and thrust hard against her, reaching now for those breasts she so proudly displayed. His palms cupped their weight, his fingers found the taut nipples and he pinched them. She moaned and he twisted the sensitive tips, waiting for Zianne to beg him to stop. Instead, she moaned her pleasure and her hips moved over him until he and she caught the same rhythm.

He stopped pinching and lightly stroked and teased the rosy tips, then cupped her breasts fully in his hands as their bodies danced to an unseen orchestra, to the beat of the heavy drum of thundering hearts, to the song of blood rushing through veins, and the discordant harmony of straining lungs.

Caught in a maelstrom of unimaginable lust, he thrust into her, grabbing her by the waist, lifting her up, pulling her close. The slap of flesh against flesh echoed, of lungs gasping for air as they raced one another to the finish. Zianne’s body was hot and alive, quivering beneath his hands, her eyes hooded beneath their dark fringe of lashes, her full lips parted. She watched him. Watched him with an intensity that might have frightened him at another time.

Not now.

Now Mac was trapped in a delirium of need, his body connected at a visceral level he’d never experienced, his heart and soul held by too many emotions he couldn’t identify. Emotions he didn’t try to name, because they couldn’t be. They couldn’t exist in his world. Hadn’t existed in MacArthur Dugan’s life since that long-ago time before his parents died.

He’d not known true happiness since then. Nor had he felt real love, and he couldn’t feel it now. This could not possibly be love, not this amazing sexual experience with a woman he didn’t know, a woman he might never see again.

The thought left him bereft as it flitted through what little bit of his mind still functioned on a conscious level. Then everything fled, wiped out by the full-on experience of orgasm. By the overwhelming sensation of everything he was, everything he had to give—all of it flying out of him, leaving him entirely. Leaving Mac, and entering Zianne.

She arched her back and pressed close. Took his heart, took his soul, took his seed. She cried out as her long nails dug into his ribs, leaving red furrows behind. He welcomed the pain. Added it to the sensations ripping him in two as he practically came apart, pumping his seed deep into her welcoming body.

Mac’s heart thundered in his ears. He felt its counterpart in Zianne’s racing heart when she collapsed against him. Her tangled hair covered his mouth, her lips were pursed against his sweat-slick chest, blowing tiny puffs with each escaping breath.

It took everything he had to raise his right hand and stroke her smooth shoulder. Enervated, he was weak as a kitten, yet his mind seemed unnaturally clear. Impossible, considering how much he’d had to drink tonight, but he was more aware of this woman, more aware of his body and the way it connected to hers, than he’d ever felt with anyone before.

Her inner muscles still pulsed in a slow, rhythmic clench and release around him, and he wanted nothing more than to make love to her again. To repeat what had been a singular experience, something he’d never once felt in his twenty-six years. They’d shared more than mere sex. There’d been something else, a connection he couldn’t explain. A feeling of
knowing
, as if Zianne knew and understood him in ways no one else ever had.

Or ever could. As if he knew Zianne the same way. Except Mac knew nothing at all. Who she was. Where she came from. How he’d met her. How she’d come to be in his apartment.

In his shower?

So many questions. So much he wanted to talk to her about, but his eyelids grew heavy and his heart rate slowed. His breath no longer huffed in and out of his lungs as if he’d run a mile.

Zianne lay across him, apparently asleep with his softening penis still buried deep inside her. He knew there were things he should wonder, but her body was soft and warm over his and her perfume took him back to that childhood he barely recalled.

With the scent of honey and vanilla, and Zianne’s thick black hair tickling his nose, Mac tightened his arms around her waist and drifted closer to sleep. They’d talk in the morning. For now, though, his world felt right. As if the problems bedeviling him for so long weren’t problems at all. Not with Zianne in his arms. As long as he had her beside him, Mac imagined he could do anything. Anything at all.

About the Author

Kate Douglas is the lead author of Kensington Publishing’s Aphrodisia imprint and the author of the popular erotic paranormal romance series
Wolf Tales
, as well as the Zebra series
DemonSlayers
. She is currently working on her newest Aphrodisia series,
Dream Catchers
, as well as her online serial,
Demon Lovers
. Kate and her husband of almost forty years have two adult children and five grandchildren. They live in the beautiful mountains of Lake County, California, north of the Napa Valley wine country.