Ash to Embers (Courting Shadows) (32 page)

This is not real. This is a fantasy.

But every inch of her crushing response to him bore down like a secret confession. She could practically taste the arousal beneath her own skin. Sio gazed down at her as the table shrieked under the pressure he exerted to restrain himself. His eyes were wild. They made her want the kinds of things she couldn't have, which was cruel, but he didn't know it.

"I won't touch you unless you ask." His voice was gritty with lust. It sent chills weaving through her vertebrae. His expression was dark, but earnest, and the sincerity in his tone made her burn like a newborn star. She licked her bottom lip and fixated on his mouth.

"I'm not going to beg," she said, knowing that it was a lie as soon as it hit her tongue.

Sio closed his eyes and clenched his jaw. When he looked at her again she got the distinct impression that she'd surprised him.

"I don't want you to beg. I want your permission. And I told you, I need you to admit that it means something."

The muscles in her stomach contracted to the point of pain. "I want you to touch me."

"Tell me what it means, Tian."

It was fitting, really, that he would answer her command with one of his own. It sure as hell didn't make things easy, but it was a trait that she could respect. With a mortifying level of recklessness Tian tilted her head back and leaned toward his mouth.

"Show me."

Sio let go of the table behind her, eyes glowing with erotic fury, blazing like halogen beams as the feather light caress of his thumbs trailed from the insides of her wrists to the sensitive skin at the juncture of her elbows working in tiny circles. He was barely touching her and already she was shaken. Her body didn't have the kind of programming to cope with this gentle onslaught and was sprinting in response.

The rough pads of his fingertips made tenuous contact with the outside edges of her arms as he worked his way upward. He clutched her biceps, large hands wrapping all the way around and gripping almost hard enough to bruise. An involuntary moan issued from her lips as he held on and began to drag her tighter against his body, claiming her mouth.

He took his time, exploring her with a maddening level of control. Every cell in her body was in a dangerous frenzy as she kissed him back, nicking his lower lip with her teeth in a half crazed attempt to get more of him into her mouth, on her tongue, down her throat.
She was out of control by the time he lifted her off the ground. Sio insinuated himself between her thighs as she placed her ass on the hall table behind her. Fucking figured that the thing would be the perfect height to accommodate his size.

Tian tried to be rational. She wasn't feeling the electric spark that usually followed his touch, and yet the lack of genetic compulsion only served to make what they were doing more intimate. She started to balk.

"Stop it." Sio spoke against her mouth as if he could hear what she was thinking. The deep timber of his voice reverberated through her body soothing the shadows in her skull, bringing her right back to where she'd started.

Tian kissed him. She wrapped her legs around his hips, balling up the inconvenient mass of his T-shirt, and seeking the chiseled planes of lean muscle and velvet skin underneath. She'd started to work on the zipper when Sio broke the kiss. He leaned back to stare at her with the sort of burning, unwavering focus that proclaimed nothing else of consequence existed in his universe. The expression on his face made her wonder how much he saw as she held his gaze.

"God, you're beautiful," he said, releasing her left arm. He slid his hand up the column of her throat to tangle it in a thick fistful of the wild strands at the back of her skull. He was still asserting a steady pressure against the lace between her thighs with the hard length of his erection. He withdrew the death grip on her right arm, raising a trail of electricity down her spine as his hand slid toward her ass, pulling her in tighter against his body. At the same time Sio tugged her hair with his other hand, as if ensuring he had control of her head. They both groaned at the sensation generated by the adjustment. It set her over the edge, on fire, barreling full speed toward an unexpected climax.

Sio grunted, grabbing the table and jerking his hips backward in the cradle of her thighs. His eyes were wide, frantic, half drugged. The tremor in his body was a screaming indicator of how close to his own release he'd come. His emotions were on display and so undiluted they were inconceivable. They meant too much and she had to turn her head away because she couldn't bear it.

"I promise," he said.

The unbuttoned top button of his fly grazed the super-heated flesh on the inside of her thigh. He pressed his forehead against her temple as he rocked back into her, wielding his body in a way that sent her already overwhelmed pleasure receptors into apoplectic fits. Sio used the fist in her hair and his other hand on her jaw to bring them face to face. He looked straight into her eyes and whispered into her mouth.

"I promise I'll make you come, but not until you tell me the truth."

Tian slid her tongue over his thumb where it hovered near her mouth, capturing his undivided. She took him between her lips, tasting the winter spice of his skin, tonguing the near non-existent ridge of scars on his finger, and relishing the hot, hard, look on his face a few blissful seconds before biting down.

The copper sweet tang of his blood filled her mouth, flooding her senses as he hissed, eyes flaring. He ground himself into her dripping core and clenched his fist harder in her hair. Sio pulled his thumb from her lips, bringing his mouth up against hers hard. He wrapped his arm around her waist, lifting her up half an inch as the hand that had been tangled in her hair grabbed the back waistband of her panties and yanked them over her ass. He returned her to the side table, naked against the smooth finish of the wood as he dropped to his knees in front of her with more grace than anyone deserved.

"You enjoy provoking me, don't you?"

He hooked his index fingers into the burgundy scrap of lace that had kept her modest and slid his hands down her thighs. Tian grabbed onto the back of the table to steady herself.

"Yes," she answered.

"You have no self-preservation instinct."

"I know."

He discarded the ridiculous scrap of her undergarment on the floor next to her left foot, flicking it off if an index finger for emphasis. Her heart was pounding in her throat. Sio traced tiny circles into the outsides of her ankles before running his hands back up to the hem of her skirt which had already begun its shameless migration north. Tian groaned, clenching her thighs together, running hot and lush with her own arousal. She tried to remind herself that none of this was real.

Problem was, it felt real.

Hyper real.

Gritty, pulse pounding, fuck me real in a way she could have never anticipated. It was as if he could read her mind, as if he could see into her quietest recesses, as if he knew exactly how to assuage all of the latent subterranean needs she hadn't even been aware of having. And she wanted it.

"Tell me what it means, Tian." He slid her thighs apart.

Son of a bitch.

"Sio..."

His fingers crushed her hips as he looped his arms under her legs and dragged her body to the edge of the table while she held on for dear life. His lips lingered on the inside of her left knee.

"Tell me what it means."

Sweet mother I'm lost.

"It means I'm yours, Sio... Means I've been yours."

It's a fantasy, the best waking wet dream in history. It's not real.

Except not in any of his wildest dreams would he have expected Tian to make the statement that had come out of her mouth. It was too damn much to hope for. He struggled to inhale because he'd quit breathing. Sio stared up at her from his cushy spot on the floor between her thighs. Never in his life had he ever seen that kind of earnest need or devotion. On anyone else it would have been meaningless, on Tian it was worth every bad thing he'd ever endured. That he'd had to earn every iota of it made him feel...Well, there weren't words for that kind of accomplishment anywhere in the English language. The jury was still out as to whether he deserved it. He did know with unwavering certainty that there was nothing he wouldn't do for her.

What he'd already done was beside the point. Tian was exquisitely disheveled from his attention, full lips soft and bruised, amber eyes wide and raw and vulnerable. The right strap of her dress had slipped off the goddess etched contour of her shoulder taking part of the soft material attached in its descent. Gravity had provided enough encouragement to expose the delicate wine colored lace of her bra almost to the tight peak of her nipple. It was a good thing he was already on his knees because the sight of her screwed with his nervous system. His dick was so hard he could use it like a crowbar.

The full feeling in his chest grew as he drew an unsteady breath, saturating himself with the unmistakable desert rain scent of her arousal. He wanted to drown in it. He wanted to taste her and the swollen folds of her glistening perfect sex were his undoing. If he prolonged this anymore he was going to die. Sio flattened his tongue, sliding it over the entrance to her core, teasing without penetrating in a languid upward stroke until he reached the tight bud at the top of her sex. His attention coaxed a low moan from her throat. The head rush that came along with the first taste of her had him on the verge of passing out. God, even as a fantasy Tian was overwhelming.

He caressed her with a couple of deft flicks before latching on, pushing her towards orgasm in a steady suckling rolling rhythm until her breath was hitching in her chest and the flat planes of her stomach were contracting involuntarily. Her desire was molten on his tongue. Addictive. Honeyed fire burning through every nerve ending in his body. It was beyond good. So much so he swooned, nearly came, had to brace himself against the table, hands locked tight to her hips as he consumed her. Need burned through his veins like lava.

Tian gasped his name. She was holding on to the back of the table so hard she was going to leave finger sized divots in the wood. He shifted tempo, raking her gently with his teeth until she jerked forward with a soft moan and bit down on her lip hard enough to break the skin. Sio abandoned the tease, yanking her forward and impaling her on his tongue. He lost himself in her until they both broke. She convulsed under his mouth and he convulsed, coming hard all over his stomach; groaning into her body. He saw her all the way through that first orgasm, watching her expression with his mouth locked against her, tonguing her until taught with need, and writhing under him again.

"Please." That hoarse well fucked feminine rasp sent fire through his internal organs.

Christ, he'd come with an intensity that made every other orgasm he'd ever had look like a polite aftershock and he was still hard, still desperate for another release that defied comprehension.

"Please, I need you."

It was too much, too perfect, a benediction. Sio was on his feet before Tian had finished the sentence. He pulled her close, claiming her mouth, tasting the blood on her lower lip, and palming her breasts. He slid the thin lace of her bra down desperate to get skin to skin. Tian grabbed the t-shirt he was wearing and jerked it hard.

"Take it off," she said.

It was all he could do to accommodate her. The thing was ghosted a second later and she was shoving his already unzipped jeans down his hips as he slid his shaft back and forth over her slick entrance. Sio gripped her neck using the rough pad of his thumb to angle her chin towards him so he could see her eyes as he entered her. Tian met his gaze, both of them shocked into silence, as he fought the hot, silken wetness of her body gaining slow millimeters. She was soaked, more than ready for him, but hung like he was he still had to work for it. The friction was mind blowing and he was way past the point of pleasure by the time he was fully sheathed. She was a tight fit. He clenched his jaw, working like a son of a bitch to tamp down the pressure building in his balls and at the base of his spine. Then he started moving.

****

Tian stared into what was left of the pale fire of his irises, unable to look away as he pushed inside of her. His eyes were feral, pupils so dilated that the stunning bleached flame was almost obscured. It was like gazing into a solar eclipse.

The sensations that were rocking her body were equally dazzling, an erotic overload of the highest order. Sio slid out as slowly as he'd thrust in. Every thick inch of him asserted itself with wicked intensity. He undulated, rolling his hips against her in a delicate wave that rocked with staggering precision against her g-spot, shooting off firecrackers followed by an all-consuming heat like a blast furnace that crashed through her body.

The hallway table was fucked. She'd already punched a few holes through the back and there was little doubt she was on the verge of ripping it to pieces if he took her any higher. By the look of him, some good old fashion furniture demolition was exactly what he had planned. Sio started out gentle, establishing a steady rhythm, working that perfect cock in and out of her body with deep, slow, even strokes. She couldn't think, couldn't breathe. He grazed all the right places at all the right times until he had her shaking, panting, rising to meet his thrusts, and begging him not to stop.

She wrapped her legs around his hips, arching into him, taking him deeper as he drove into her with consummate skill and brute strength. He whispered ragged exhalations against her skin and kept going as the telltale signs of orgasm threaten to surface. The build-up was exquisite agony. The sensual pressure grew, extending outward forever, without breaking. Need expanded to terrifying proportions as it filled her body, flowing further, stuffing her limbs and vibrating against her teeth.

She was gasping any number of curses under her breath - fucking nonsense, like I can't, and please, and shit, Goddess, Fuck, I can't. She couldn't control what she was saying as it spilled out around his kisses into the guttural animal noises that were emanating from his chest. Tian was positive that if the sensation kept building she would die...stay dead, and the irony of the little death wouldn't be just some cruel nickname.