bedeviled & beyond 04 - bedeviled & belittled (9 page)

A heavy leather divan and two oversized chairs covered in the same rich, chocolate-brown leather were clustered together in the center of the space, facing a wood burning stove with a thick pipe that carried smoke up through the rock ceiling high above our heads and out, presumably, into the sky beyond the cave.

On the far side of the cavern was a small food preparation area, and another human sized door leading in the opposite direction from whence we’d come. “Is that your back door?”

He glanced in the direction I’d jerked my head and nodded. “As well as my personal hygiene area. Come, I’ll show you where you can get cleaned up.

I followed him down a short, low-ceilinged passageway, toward the sound of rushing water. We emerged into a fairly large cavern with a small waterfall and a pool on one end. The cavern felt like a sauna and steam danced above the small pool.

I nearly had an orgasm on the spot thinking about immersing myself in the hot, clean water.

“Since you left your bag back at the caverns, I think I have some clothes that might fit you. There’s soap and shampoo beside the pool, towels stacked there.” He pointed toward a small table stacked with neatly folded cloth in bright colors. It was like an old-fashioned bathroom. I liked it.

I turned to him with a smile. “Thanks, this is great.”

Nodding, he turned away and left. I wasted no time stripping off my ruined clothes and stepping into the pool with them.

The water was hot enough to sting the center of my low back when I stepped into it, but I quickly got used to it and it felt wonderful. The pool was hip deep, and there was a wide, flat rock on one side I could sit on.

I groaned with pleasure and lay on my back for a long moment, just floating on the surface. My hair floated lazily around my head in the hot, mineralized water.

My muscles started to loosen and my mind wandered, considering the problems facing Glynus. Unfortunately, those thoughts quickly morphed to the Slayer. I realized with a jolt that I didn’t even know his name. I needed a name if I was gonna fantasize about throwing him to the floor and ravishing him.

Or did I?

My mind formed a picture of him and then set about stripping him naked, imagining the finely sculpted muscles and nicely packaged sexuality of a perfect male creature.

There was little chance he’d fit my mental description, but it didn’t matter, since it was purely an academic exercise. I had no intention of finding out what he looked like naked for real.

I floated happily, a grin on my face, and pictured him bending over me, his full, soft lips touching mine, pulling my breath away and sending spirals of delight to tighten at my sexual core. I played his face through my mind, savoring the hard angles of his jaw and the soft outline of his full lips. My traitorous psyche filled in the outlines with hot, knee-melting detail and went farther, drawing the silhouette of his broad shoulders, narrow hips, and long, muscular legs.

When my mind got to the shoulder length, silky black hair and long-lashed blue eyes I realized, with a start, that I was picturing Dialle. He’d nudged into my subconscious and shoved the other guy right out when I wasn’t looking.

I embraced the change, feeling the guilt I’d been ignoring at the back of my subconscious sliding away to leave only delight as my hands slipped lazily over my belly. I thought about Dialle’s scent, his heated touch, how his hard flesh felt sliding deep within me.

The sound of the waterfall was thunderous. It gave me the sensation of being in a cocoon, alone, free to do only as I wished.

So when I heard the clearing of a throat it was a shock. Beyond a shock. My eyes flew open and I shrieked, losing my balance on the top of the water. I sank to the bottom like a rock, sucking a mouthful of water down my throat in the process.

I came up spitting and spraying water, embarrassed, humiliated, and angrier than I’d ever been. Forgetting for a moment that I was naked I surged to my feet and faced him, fists clenched at my sides.

The Slayer’s face was completely without expression, and he held a bundle of clothing in his hands. “Sorry, I did call out several times but you didn’t respond. I thought maybe you’d drowned.” Something flashed quickly through his eyes as his gaze slid down my dripping form. Something hot and...hungry.

I pointed angrily to the table. “Just put the clothes down there and leave.” I knew I was being rude. I was okay with that.

The Slayer stared at me for a beat longer, his gaze fixed politely on my eyes, and then he let it slide slowly down my body. The heat that skimmed through his gaze was unmistakable. “Do you need help with your back, I’m pretty sure some asshole wiped a whole lot of dragon spit on that area between your shoulder blades...it might have soaked through your sweater.”

The corners of his sexy mouth tipped up in a devilish smile, but his voice was husky with longing. I let my gaze slide down his body and there was no mistaking the long, hard line of a ridge under his pants. When my gaze lifted upward again, I caught him licking his perfectly sculpted lips, as if he could taste me from where he stood.

Forcibly deepening my glare, I shook my head, not trusting myself to speak.

After another long, tension-filled moment he nodded, settled the pile of clothing on the table, and turned away. He probably felt my hungry gaze on his delectable backside as he strode away. I didn’t even try to control myself. He owed me at least that much.

When he was gone I sank back into the water with a groan.

Me and my red face were never going to be able to show ourselves to him again.

I grabbed the soap and used it to quickly lather up my hair and body. I’d finish up, get dressed, and then sneak out to get Glynus. She and I could be out of there, heading back toward Black territory to deal with her mess before he even knew I was gone.

Having forged a plan that would save me at least a modicum of future embarrassment, I felt a little better.

Though my body still hummed with sexual starvation.

I’d just have to live with that for the time being.

CHAPTER SIX

Dealing with the Afterglow

Alas young miss doth find herself, in a lair without a ride,

Who will send much needed help, when her scruples start to slide?

Glynus was gone.

I couldn’t believe it. I stood there looking at the empty nest and tried calling to her with my mind.

She didn’t respond.

Worry slammed through me and I realized, besides worrying about my dragon, I also needed to worry that I was trapped in the Slayer’s cave with no ride home.

I walked to the entrance of the cave, emerging into the bright dregs of a fading sun, and looked out over the brown, craggy mountain ranges that comprised the Red’s queendom. Aside from an enormous gray and black bird with a beak as long as my leg, nothing else stirred outside. No reds, no blacks. No Glynus.

“She’s gone to speak with the queen.”

I jerked around, the sudden motion nearly toppling me off the narrow ledge at the mouth of the cave.

The Slayer reached out and grabbed a flailing arm before I went over, pulling me up hard against a broad, warm chest.

I looked up into wide, gold eyes framed in inky black lashes. His breath was soft on my face, filled with sensual musk. “It seems I’m destined to always and forever save your cute ass from dropping into the abyss.”

He didn’t step back away from the edge so I couldn’t jerk my arm from his grip. As if I wasn’t already prisoner enough, he slid his other arm around my waist, dropping a heated hand over the place where my butt rounded away from my back.

My Settling kicked in with a vengeance, causing expectant clenching in my traitorous nether regions. He dropped his lips to touch my cheek, just under one eye. “It’s a good thing I don’t mind. It’s such a sexy...delicious...ass.” His heated breath danced across my face and my eyes closed as I inhaled his essence, my knees weakening from the effects.

Like the touch of a feather, his lips pressed gently against mine.

I gasped, pulling his scent deep within my lungs. The effect was dangerously disconcerting. He paused, locked in the gentle touch of his soft lips against mine, and then gently pressed the hand in the small of my back to bring my hungry body close to his.

The long, hard ridge of his shaft pressed against my belly. My body wept at the feel of him, the taste and smell of him. My mind screamed at me to run as far and as fast as I could, but my slut monkey side purred with delicious anticipation.

He increased the gentle pressure of his mouth and I groaned, my hands sliding up his back to glide through the short, silky strands of his hair. I pulled him more deeply into the kiss, opening my lips to accept the tender assault of his talented tongue.

He breeched my lips with a swipe of his heated tongue, and then dived inside to taste and tangle with my tongue.

His groan of desire rumbled against my chest and my body throbbed in response. His hands slipped along my sides and across my back, holding me in the fever hot embrace.

His lips left mine and I sighed.

“Do you have any idea what it did to me to watch you pleasuring yourself in the heated pool?”

My eyes flew open and heat infused my face. “I...I wasn’t...” My denial died in my throat, ignored and unnecessary. He was a man and men filled in the empty spaces in any event to suit themselves. It only made me uncomfortable because I’d been oh so tempted to do what he accused me of.

He kissed my cheeks, trailing his lips across my nose, down my jawline, and to my throat. I dropped my head back to give him better access. “Don’t be embarrassed. It was the hottest thing I’ve ever seen. All I can think about now is getting inside you, driving myself deep.”

I bit my lip, swamped in the sensation of his body against mine, his scent in my nostrils, and his hands sliding hungrily over the supercharged nerve endings of my skin. His words were creating a whirlwind of feelings in my breast. They excited me. There was no doubt about that, but I’d never indulged in dirty talk before. I usually indulged in the silent form of erotic activity. The silence broken only by the sighs and gasps of sensual delight.

Whatever my mind thought of his words, my body was a definite fan. “What would you do to me...to my body?”

He groaned. His tongue slipped out and tasted the tender skin beneath my chin. He followed the heated swipe with a tiny nibble, sending delight sizzling through my lower belly. “First I’d cover that quivering mons with my lips, sucking gently among those sexy auburn curls to bring you screaming into release.”

I shivered violently as his lips left my throat and trailed downward, toward my literally heaving bosom. “Then wh-what would you do?”

“I’d lick up the sweet cream that flowed from between your lovely, white thighs. It would be like the sweetest ambrosia on my lips, making me painfully hard.”

He nuzzled aside the oversized shirt he’d given me to wear and nipped at the rounded flesh at the top of my breast, tantalizingly close to my rigid nipple, which was begging for his attention. His hot tongue swept the skin he’d bitten, swirling in a circle around the puckered flesh of my nipple without touching it.

I grabbed his head in both hands, intending to force his mouth to my nipple. But he resisted, moving instead to the other breast, where he repeated the same tantalizing but infuriatingly evasive maneuver.

A wave of expectant heat swept my body. I envisioned my hard nipples being sucked into his mouth, savored the thrill of it, and willed him with my mind to take them. Finally, I couldn’t wait any longer. “Please!” My voice rasped with passion.

“He licked the underside of the breast he was currently torturing. “Please, what, Astra Q Phelps?”

His tongue swept toward my nipple again. And again stopped just outside the hungry circle of the brown, rigid flesh. My head dropped back. “Ahhh, God! Suck them! Suck my nipples, now!”

Just like magic he complied. He covered the entire nipple with his lips and pulled the tortured flesh into his incredibly hot mouth, sucking hard. A strange combination of relief and enhanced sexual tension jolted through my system, centering in the throbbing bud between my thighs.

He slid a hand down one hip and across my quivering belly, sliding it inexorably toward my mons. I widened my stance to give him access, my rational mind shutting down as a wave of pure, unadulterated lust swept over me, swamping my will.

He moved his lips to the other nipple and drew the aching flesh between his soft lips. But when his hand covered me, engulfing the tender mound at the vee of my legs in the heat of his thick fingers, I was suddenly nudged from my mindless lust by a jolt of another kind.

My daemon hickey sparked and sent an electrical charge through my body, making me jump away from him with a gasp. Static flashed through my mind, leaving behind the impression of Dialle’s voice, though I couldn’t actually say I’d heard him speak a single word. His scent enveloped me, covering me in guilt like a scratchy blanket. I stepped away, lifting my hands as if to ward him off. “Stop. We need to stop this.”

The Slayer cocked his gorgeous head and reached a hand toward my neck.

I flinched as he touched the tear shaped mark there. “You have been marked?”

I nodded.

He frowned. “I shouldn’t have been able to get within yards of you. There is something wrong with this man’s claim on you.”

I shook my head. Traitorous doubt, ugly and razor sharp, sliced through me. “I can’t discuss this with you. Where is Glynus?”

“I told you, she’s gone to speak with the queen.”

“By herself? That’s much too dangerous. Why did you let her go?” I knew I was just picking a fight to put as much distance as possible between me and what I’d almost done with the Slayer. I didn’t care. Something about the interaction had bothered me. Bothered me deeply. And I needed time to examine it. But that time wasn’t now. I had a dragon to protect and a mystery to solve.

“I tried to stop her but she was most insistent. Short of slaying her...” He grinned. “I couldn’t keep her here.”