CONCEPTION (The Others) (20 page)

He caught her hand before she clasped his cock. With a shake
of his head, he dragged her into the stall.

“What? Now you’re going to tell me mates don’t touch?”

His big body blocked the jets from hitting her front, but
three of the showerheads had a free-for-all on her back. He reached over her
head. “That would be a lie.”

“Then why can’t I touch you?”

He looked down at her, his black eyes swirling red flames
and emotions she couldn’t name. “You have not earned the pleasure.”

“Earned the pleasure?”

“Yes.” He stepped forward, crowding her back. Warm water
poured over her head. She held her breath until he allowed her out of the flow.

“I’m supposed to be grateful to you for the pleasure of touching
you?” There was a clunk of plastic against plastic.

“Yes.” He rubbed his hands together. Foam appeared and then
he was working it into her hair. Though she could feel the violence swirling
through him, his touch was nothing more than efficient.

“I’m not some little plaything for you to amuse yourself
with.”

He crowded her back into the spray, massaging water through
her hair as he said, “If you were, it would be much more convenient.”

“Go to hell!” She even halfway meant it.

He tipped her chin up. She knew she looked like a drowned
rat with her hair plastered to her head and her too skinny body. “Only if you
go with me.”

“You take this togetherness thing too seriously.”

He turned her around. This time when he reached over her
head, he retrieved the shower gel. A scent reminiscent of the ocean filled the
stall. “The choice was yours.”

“So maybe I’m having trouble with some aspects of it.”

“Then this should be discussed.”

Like she didn’t already know how that would go. “You’ll just
tell me that’s how it is between mates.”

He turned off the upper shower jet. “Brace your hands
against the wall.”

“Why?”

“Because I have told you to.” His fingers traced a random
series of lines down her back. Her scars. He was retracing her scars from her
grandfather’s whipping.

“And that’s enough?”

“Yes.”

She did, but not because he told her to. She did it because
when he started the gentle massage on her shoulders, she needed the support. He
had wonderful hands. “Why are you being so nice to me?”

“You are my mate.”

“Whom you are very angry with.”

His hands paused in their soothing motion. “Yes.”

“So?”

“It is my duty to care for you.”

“Even when you’re angry?”

He worked the tight knot of muscles between her shoulder
blades. “At all times.”

She couldn’t conceive of that. “Are you trying to tell me
that even if I get you screaming at the moon angry, you won’t do anything about
it?”

“Something will be done.”

“But you won’t fight with me?”

“Mates do not fight, any more than the Chosen get ‘screaming
at the moon angry’.”

“What do they get?”

“Displeased.”

She had to see his face. She turned. His expression left her
no doubt. He was completely serious. He really thought he could have a
relationship with anyone, her even, and never get angry. “Dusan?”

His brow rose, while his hands rested heavily on her
shoulders. His eyes stayed on her face. She had his full attention. “What?”

“You are so setting yourself up for a fall.”

He blinked the water away from his eyes. “I do not think
so.”

She brushed his hair off his shoulder, feeling his anger and
his determination to control it. He flinched. She pulled her hand back, curling
it into a fist against her hip. She shouldn’t be hurt that he didn’t want her
touch anymore. She had tricked him and betrayed his trust. But she was. Which
just went to prove that everything about her having a relationship with him was
irrational. “Holding all that emotion inside is bad for you.”

He reached up and squeezed more soap into his hands. “The
Chosen do not get emotional.”

It was her turn to blink, and not because water was getting
into her eyes. He was a very intense man and intense men had intense emotions.
“You’re sure about that?”

“Positive. Turn around.”

When she didn’t immediately respond, he turned her, his
hands sliding pleasantly on her upper arms.

“Aren’t we done yet?”

“No.”

“We’re going to run out of hot water.”

“It heats on demand. Now, stay.”

“Why?’”

“I can still smell him on you.”

“And that upsets you?”

“Yes.”

“But you aren’t emotional.”

“No.”

She
reached up and took the gel from the shelf. What a crock. “It will go faster if
I do it myself.”

He
took the bottle out of her hands. “I will finish what I started.”

And he did, starting at her shoulders and working down,
massaging the soap into her skin, his touch sure and soothing, lingering in
those areas where the most sensitive of nerves hid, bringing them to vivid
life.

She braced back against the wall. “How do you do this to
me?”

He palmed her buttocks, his big hands easily encompassing
each globe. “We are mates.” His thumbs slipped between, riding the soap
bubbles, skating the tight bud of her anus before coming back to rest against
it. “It is right that we enjoy each other.”

She twisted away from the wall and his touch. “Not like
this. Not when you’re angry.” Not with her as some sort of helpless puppet to
which he held the strings.

As if her denial flipped a hidden switch, his calm
disappeared. His “Yes, now” was a primitive growl. Almost as primitive as the
hunger that narrowed his eyes and thinned his mouth. He yanked her against his
chest. His lips met hers. Hot and demanding, calling forth her own hunger.
Equally primitive. Equally demanding. She wrapped her hand in his hair, pulling
him closer, arching into his chest, rubbing her nipples into the delightful
abrasion of his hair, moaning when he caught her ribs and took up the motion.

“Yes.” He pulled his mouth from hers to kiss her eyes, her
cheeks. “Moan for me, Edie mine. Let me hear your desire.”

As if she had any choice when he cupped her buttocks in his hands
and ran his lips down her neck, nipping at the skin as he went, pressing his
lips hard against the pulse at the base of her throat, summoning everything
feminine and needy in her to screaming attention. He arched her farther over
his arm. The pain in her abdomen blended with the wave of pleasure. One hand
supported her head as he took the hard aching point of her nipple into his
mouth. The tiny culmination pulled the moan he listened for from her lips.
Water ran off his shoulders and slashed her face. The pounding of the shower
was lost in the pounding of her heart. She needed him. So much.

She yanked on his hair. His laugh buffeted her breast. She
fought his hold, his restraint. He merely gave her more, torturing her with his
calm in the face of her desire. She let go of his hair and wedged her hand
between them as he tortured her breasts. His cock bumped her fingers. She
twisted her wrist. He felt so good in her hand. Hard, strong pulsing with life.
Promise. She milked him slowly, the catch in his breathing music to her ears.
Pre-come spilled over her hand. He was as affected by her as she was by him.

“Do you hunger, my heart?” Deuce asked in a voice that
breathed through her mind, her body, caressing her nerves with the ache of a
touch.

She did. She needed him like she needed the other half of
her soul. It didn’t make sense and it wasn’t comfortable, but it was true.
However, she wasn’t a helpless puppet he was going to control by the strength
of her desire. She tossed her wet hair out of her eyes, asking in a voice she
wouldn’t have recognized as hers, so husky was it with want. “How about you? Do
you want me, Dusan?”

His teeth grazed the upper curve of her breast. His cock
throbbed against her thigh. “Always.”

“Show me how much.”

He froze. She tucked her chin and looked. He was looking
back up at her. His eyes flared with something wild. His lips drew back from
his teeth, exposing the fangs she’d never before seen clearly. Her heart leapt.
She wanted to be fucked, not sucked. She cupped his face in her hands. “Or
better yet, let me show you.”

He didn’t let her go, or otherwise move. He seemed quite
content to keep her as she was, bent backward with her breasts thrust up for
his delectation. Or bite, she realized as he scraped those scary fangs over her
breasts.

“Deuce, let me up.”

“I like you like this.”

She had no doubt he did. And so did she on one level, but
she also believed in starting as she meant to go on. And she did not intend to
be any vamp’s sex toy. “You said it was your duty to give me whatever I need.”

He very slowly, very deliberately licked a drop of water
from the slope of her chest. “It is.”

“I need to touch you,” she squeezed his cock as best she
could, “taste you.”

He shuddered and closed those wild eyes. “You hunger.” When
he opened them, some of his control was back.

“Yes.” And it was true. Every cell in her tired, battered
body ached for him. His scent, his touch, it all seemed to fuel the need for
more. Part of it was desire, but part of it was so much more, as if her very
cells needed the touch of his. That bonding he’d spoken of.

He slowly eased her upright, dragging her body down his,
letting her feel every ridge and hollow of his well-honed muscle, his forearm
across her back a band of steel. Everything about him was pure, primitive male,
but not once did he hold her too hard. And she knew that it would be very easy
for him to do so. As soon as she got close enough, she leaned into his chest,
testing the resiliency of his pecs with her teeth, smiling at his muted groan.
His hands caught in her hair. “Do not. You will make me lose control.”

She liked the idea of that—of him losing control and her
being in charge of it. “We wouldn’t want that, would we?” she murmured against
his skin. She lapped at the light red mark she’d left. His fingers in her hair
twitched. The sense of urgency surrounding them increased. She didn’t know if
it was his need or her need, but as the aura built, it was as if there was a
third party in control, urging them on, fanning the flames of their desire.

She bit Deuce again, harder this time, wanting to laugh as
his head fell back and his groan swirled through her mind, expanding into the
room. She definitely liked him like this. She tried to suck more skin into her
mouth, wanting to mark him as hers, but it was stretched too tightly over the
muscle beneath. She poked experimentally. Damn, there was no give to the man.
She rested her fingertip on the ledge of his collarbone and looked up, way up
to his face. The heat and hunger in his gaze burned the pithy remark she’d been
going to make right off her tongue.

Oh God, no man had ever looked at her like that. Like he’d
die if he didn’t have her. Like she was the one thing that stood between him
and hell. His gaze followed the path of her tongue over her lips with the
intensity of a touch. Her lips tingled and her womb clenched as her pussy
unfurled and ached with a desperate entreaty. The scent of her arousal floated
on the steam. Deuce’s nostrils flared. The skin over his cheekbones tightened
as he used his grip on her head to urge her down. “Take from me what you need.”

He’d said that to her before, with that same cadence, as if
it were part of a greater ritual.

She followed the urging of his hands, knowing what he
needed, what they both wanted. She nipped her way down his chest, enjoying the
jerk of his skin under each little caress, letting her nails drag over the
ridges and valleys of his abdomen. Water sluiced off her back as she knelt. As
she slid down, the broad head of his cock slid up over her stomach, and between
her breasts. She paused with her lips just inches from the tip, letting her
breath slide over him like the rivulets of water pouring over her shoulders.
His heavy shaft pulsed, a bead of fluid appeared at the tip, centering the
hunger within her. One of his hands slid around to cup the back of her head
while the other grasped his cock, angling it for her pleasure.

“Take what you need.”

The rasp of his deep voice wrapped around her desire,
drawing her with the force of his hand toward that single pearly drop, knowing
there would be more, as much as she needed. She touched the tip of her tongue
to the tip of his penis, closing her eyes as his incredible taste hit her
system. So good. So damn good.

He pushed forward, she pulled back into his hands, teasing
them both with the tiny connection, knowing he wouldn’t allow it for long.

No sooner did she have the thought then his grip on her
skull tightened and he pulled her forward, holding her steady for the brush of
his cock over the sensitive surface of her lips. The first touch was barren of
what she craved, but as more of his come welled, his cock slid easier, painting
her mouth with the flavor of desire. He pulled his cock back until it pulsed
just out of reach, stroking it as he ordered, “Lick it off.”

She did, keeping her movements as delicate as she could,
wanting to please him, but also herself.

His cock was right before her, fat with lust, heavy with
need. “Put your hands at your sides.”

“Why?”

“Because I want it.”

He always felt that was a reason. “Maybe I don’t.”

His rhythm faltered. “Do not challenge me.”

“Why not?” She slid her hands up the inside of his thighs,
dragging her nails to see if he enjoyed that as much as the other. His whole
body shuddered and his fist clenched on his thick shaft. Oh, he definitely
liked that.

His “I cannot maintain control if you challenge me” was a
guttural testament to how tenuous his control was.

“Maybe I don’t want you controlled.” She caught the tip of
his penis with her lips and sucked delicately as she rasped her nails across
his heavy balls. Deuce swore in a language she didn’t understand. He was losing
it. To her. She cupped his balls and squeezed as she kissed the fat head.
“Maybe I want to see you wild.”