Deadly Is the Kiss (9 page)

She should have been slapping his face and telling him to shove his manipulative “deal” up his ass. But she couldn’t, because she needed this as badly as he’d claimed to need it. Even though she knew her heart and her pride were going to pay for the pleasure later, she had to have it. Had to have at least this much of him, an insatiable craving twisting through her body with so much force she couldn’t focus or latch onto a thought.

Then she couldn’t think at all as he used his thumbs to spread her open, a thick, hungry sound slipping from his lips as he leaned forward and put his mouth on her.

Ohmygod…

She could feel the liquid rush of pleasure pooling between her thighs as he licked her, the rough, primal sounds he made telling her just how much he enjoyed what he was doing. Hunger speared through her body with such explosive force she jerked open, arms and legs sprawled wide in sexual abandon, her body given over completely to her senses as the breathtaking sensations pulsed and swelled within her.

Her mind spun, shock warring with a need that was too powerful to control. He’d only just started and already she was losing it, writhing and arching beneath him, acting like someone she didn’t even recognize.

“Just do it!
Please,
” she begged, her head tossing from side to side as she planted her feet against the mattress and pushed up, pumping against his greedy, devastating mouth. She felt as if she were going to shatter into a million pieces if he didn’t hurry up and push her over the edge.
“Go faster! Please!”

“No way in hell,” he muttered, doing something insanely wicked with his tongue. “I want this to last.”

Pushing her trembling hands into his short, dark hair, Juliana realized that she’d never expected it to be like this. Never expected he would pleasure her this way as a part of their deal, instead of simply seeking his own relief as quickly as he could.

Obviously, she’d been wrong. As he flicked a smoldering look up at her face from beneath his lashes, his gorgeous features stamped with raw, brutal hunger, it was clear he didn’t plan on rushing any part of the experience. Apparently determined to prove his point, the intoxicating strokes of his tongue became slower…deeper, forcing her to accept the stunning fact that he was savoring every part of her, getting off on the intimate act as strongly as she was.

And, God, was she getting off.

She could have come within seconds, and he knew it. But he deliberately kept the blinding, shattering release just out of her reach, gentling her whenever she got too close, which made the sensations grow and swell, until she was crying and gasping, her nails digging into his broad, muscular shoulders hard enough to draw blood.

In a low, silken whisper, he asked her, “You ready to come now, Jules?”

“Damn you, you’re being such a bastard,” she snapped, her voice cracking, shaking with emotion. “Just do it!”

His low laugh rumbled against her flesh, and she could feel his slow, wicked smile.

“I love it when you get bossy,” he told her, closing his mouth over her clit and softly sucking, just as he shoved two thick fingers back inside her, twisting them hard and deep. She arched as if she’d been electrocuted, her plush sex clamping down around him in a deliciously warm, wet hold. He pulled his fingers back, thrusting them in again, and she broke, screaming and pulsing as the mother of all orgasms stormed through her.

“That’s so perfect,” he growled, nearly following her over that blinding, crashing edge.

Minutes later, when he finally lifted his head, another harsh growl vibrated in Ashe’s throat as he stared up at her, the feral part of his nature recognizing her for exactly what she was: the most stunning, mouthwatering, addictive woman he’d ever known. Her face was dewy and pink, soft tendrils of silky hair stuck to her temples and her cheeks, her mouth puffy and red from the bite of her teeth. Her gray eyes were heavy and lambent, hazy with satisfaction—but he could see the shock simmering in their stormy depths. The pink tip of her tongue darted across her lower lip, a kind of shy half smile curving her beautiful mouth as she stared back at him.

“Wow. I’m, um, normally not that…out of control,” Juliana panted, still struggling to catch her breath.

A sin-tipped smile touched his mouth, making him too gorgeous to be real. “You don’t hear me complaining, do you?”

Shaking her head, she thought he looked like some kind of breathtaking, ancient virility god as he braced his arms on either side of her hips and lowered his head again, giving a playful lick to her navel.

“To be honest, I loved it,” he murmured in a dark, husky rumble, crawling over her a little higher, lapping his clever tongue against the tender underside of her breast. “There’s nothing in the world better than having a woman melt all over you.”

Oh…damn.

That easily, the warm, mellow glow slipping through her veins started to cool. She shivered, the chilled air in the room suddenly brushing over her skin like icy prickles of disappointment. She felt the ridiculous sting of tears burning at the backs of her eyes and wanted to die, the idea of crying in front of this man even more humiliating than the exceptional way he’d just handled her body. “So, um, any woman would do, huh?”

He went still, as if just realizing what he’d said. Then he slowly lifted his head and looked her in the eye, his stare deep and searching. “I wish it were that simple,” he finally said in a low voice that was rough around the edges. “Fucking has always felt good. I’ll be the first to admit it. But being like this with you…I don’t—” He gave a hard, frustrated shake of his head. “I don’t have a frame of reference for this kind of thing.”

“What kind of thing?”

Several heavy seconds of silence passed before he blew out a sharp breath and rolled to his back beside her, his dark gaze focused on the ceiling. “Never mind,” he muttered.

“Never mind?” She made a choked sound of disgust as she sat up, scrambling to cover as much of her body as she could with the soft green throw draped over a corner of the bed. “That’s so like a man. God forbid one of you ever actually talked about his emotions!”

CHAPTER FIVE

A
SHE
TURNED
HIS
HEAD
toward her, staring at the elegant line of her spine, wondering what the hell it was that she wanted from him. “What do you want me to say, Jules?”

“I don’t know.” Looking back at him over her shoulder, she brushed away the tears that were tracking down her cheeks. “I just…I can’t separate emotions from sex. I thought that I could, but I’m not…I’m not like you.”

“I don’t mind if you get emotional and cry,” he told her, his voice thick as he stared at the moisture glistening on her long lashes, her gray eyes luminous and bright. “A few tears aren’t going to scare me away.”

“Well, good for you!” she snapped, and he knew he was in deep shit when even that waspish tone of hers turned him on. He might not trust her, but their physical chemistry was as explosive as he’d always suspected it would be. Hell, it was even stronger.

His gaze traveled down the thick, shiny fall of her hair, over the pale curve of her hip, then the smooth length of her thigh. She was so delicate, but strong. Deliciously soft, but with a backbone of steel. A dangerous, potentially lethal combination, seeing as how it appealed to the predatory warrior in him on every level.

Reaching down to rearrange his aching shaft, Ashe felt the hunger moving through his body like a sinuous living thing, the beast prowling for a way to get what it wanted. So clearly, he could see himself grabbing hold of Juliana, rolling her beneath him and shoving himself inside her. Working his way in deeper…and deeper, until he’d made her take every inch of him. Then he’d fuck her until neither one of them could remember their damn names. Until he couldn’t even remember why he couldn’t just take what he wanted and bite—
No! Don’t even go there.

He gave his head a hard shake, clearing his thoughts. Christ, what the hell was he doing? Her bloody life was in danger, and here he was thinking with his dick again, same as he’d been doing for the past hour.

He was an idiot.

Sitting up beside her, he started to get off the bed, only to find himself leaning toward her instead, his mouth suddenly buried in the sensual curve of her neck and shoulder, his tongue seeking out the throbbing rhythm of her pulse. Her skin was exquisitely soft beneath his lips, his fangs burning with the need to sink into her tender flesh again…and again, until he’d marked the hell out of her.

Her breath caught, but she didn’t push him away. “Are we…are we going to have sex now?” she asked, sounding adorably belligerent, but aroused.

Forcing himself to draw back, Ashe ran a hand over his tingling mouth, trying to figure out what had just happened…to put his chaotic thoughts in order. Even if it weren’t for the danger bearing down on her, he knew this wasn’t the time. There was too much at stake to push things too far before he could handle them, his control as shaky as a wet dog that’d been left out in the cold.

“Well?” she pressed.

His voice was little more than a croak, his throat tight and hot. “Not yet.”

She pulled at the throw, trying to conceal the damp, sweet-smelling curls between her thighs, her tone almost hopeful as she said, “You’ve changed your mind?”

“Hardly,” he snorted, making himself roll off the mattress and back to his feet. Watching her from the corner of his eye, he headed around to the other side of the bed. With a grimace, he reached down and rearranged his cock again, the thick shaft pulsing with pain, his blood running hot not only from the Burning, but from the sight of Juliana sitting there on the rumpled bedding, so tempting he could feel the serum throbbing in his fangs.

A serum that if injected into her bloodstream would bind them together forever, like a preternatural marriage that could never be undone.

Insane, how badly half of him wanted to push that serum into her veins, while the other half violently recoiled at the thought of permanently bonding with a woman who, for all he knew, could be a scheming little liar. Just because he wanted to believe her didn’t mean that what she’d told him was the truth. Sex was one thing…but he couldn’t afford to give her more than that.

“I haven’t changed my mind.” He snagged his sweater off the floor and pulled it on. “But I know my own limits. Once I get inside you, I’m going to be focused on nothing but how good it feels. Before that happens, I need you someplace where I don’t have to worry about someone tracking us down. Someplace that’s completely safe.”

“Completely safe?” Her laugh was brittle. “Do places like that actually exist?”

He flicked her a shuttered look from beneath his lashes. “I’ll keep you protected while we get to the bottom of this. I won’t turn my back on you.”

“But you won’t trust me, either, will you? Which is why you called off our—” she flushed, gesturing toward the bed “—whatever you want to call this.”

“I’m pleading the Fifth,” he muttered, knowing that Gideon would call him a chickenshit coward for still holding out on her, but this wasn’t cowardice. This was pure goddamn self-preservation. If he was going to bed her, he needed to know he was in complete, absolute control of himself.

A quick glance down at his trembling hand told Ashe that, at the moment, he wasn’t even close.

Closing his unsteady hand into a hard fist, he shoved his other hand through his hair. “Come on. Get cleaned up and let’s get out of here.”

“Where are we going?” she asked, sliding to the edge of the bed. When she stood up, she took the throw with her, the soft fabric draping over the feminine curves of her body as she clutched it against her chest.

She looked impossibly young at that moment, reminding him of that glaring gap in their ages. Feeling like a lecherous old man, Ashe forced his gaze away from all that rosy skin and tumbling hair, and walked into the other room as he answered her question. “We’re heading someplace they won’t expect to find us.”

She followed after him, lingering in the doorway. “Can I have a little more than that?”

“You’ve heard of the Pinero Dominguez?” he asked, opening the small safe that sat on the top shelf of a coat closet.

“Of course.” She’d answered with a slight hesitation, sounding as if she was wondering if he could actually be serious. “It’s a kind of underground information and hideout network for criminals that runs through France and Northern Italy. It was named after its founder, a famous Spanish vampire who made a fortune sailing as a pirate several hundred years ago.”

“That’s right,” he murmured, focused on emptying the safe and putting what he needed in his pockets. The rest he would put in a bag and store in a locker at the St. Pancras train station. Grabbing the worn leather backpack he’d left at the bottom of the closet, he said, “We’re going to use some of their establishments to hide out in while getting to the bottom of those assassination orders.”

He could feel her gaze against the side of his face as he set the pack on the small coffee table and started gathering his things from around the room, but he didn’t dare look at her. Not yet. His control was already too thin as it was. One more glimpse of her clutching that throw against the front of her naked body and he’d have her on the floor, his cock buried a mile inside her, before she even realized he’d crossed the room.

“I told you that a passport had been left in the pack for me,” she said. “But won’t it be dangerous to use public transportation right now?”

“No more dangerous than it was for you to come over from Norway.”

From the edge of his vision, he caught the way her gaze slid to the floor, her lower lip caught in her teeth. “I didn’t actually use public transportation,” she admitted, flicking him a quick glance to gauge his reaction. “I hitched some rides, then hid onboard a cargo ship that was crossing the Channel. I think they were, um, some kind of black-market smugglers.”

“Christ,” he breathed out, a dark scowl settling over his face as he stopped what he was doing and stalked toward her. He was too angry now to be worried about falling on her like a sex-starved maniac. He wanted to wring her bloody neck! “Are you out of your goddamn mind? What do you think would have happened to you if you’d been found?”

She shrugged. “The crew were all human. I could have handled myself.”

“One female vampire against how many men?” A cold sweat slipped along his spine, his insides twisting with a nauseating burst of fear at the thought of her in such a dangerous situation. “They would have been armed, Juliana. You’d have been raped before you could down five of them!”

“But I wasn’t,” she pointed out, her reasonable tone only making him angrier, “because I’m not stupid. I stayed hidden until it was safe to make my way off the boat.”

Telling himself to calm the hell down, Ashe stalked away from her, heading toward the window. He took a deep breath and scrubbed his hands down his face, then shoved them into his pockets. He was having a hard enough time trying not to think about how much danger she was in, and the Lycan attack they’d been through that night, knowing it could push him into some seriously risky territory. One where he stopped fighting and simply acted on his more primal, visceral instincts—instincts that would have him marking her, bonding with her, before he even knew what hit him…his male ego fooling him into believing she would be so much safer if she were
his.
But knowing she’d taken such a ridiculous risk with her safety just pushed him that much closer to the edge.

Did the foolish woman have a death wish? Didn’t she know it would destroy him if anything happened to her? Didn’t she know that—
Whoa! Wait a minute…

What the hell was he thinking? Of course she didn’t know. How could she, when he’d never given her a clue about how he felt before tonight? And even now, he was putting it all down to simple animal lust, refusing to tell her about the Burning. Refusing to let her know that even though he didn’t trust her, he still thought she was the most beautiful, alluring, fascinating woman he’d ever known.

Completely oblivious to the intimate direction of his thoughts, she asked him another question about their coming trip. “Instead of the Pinero Dominguez, why can’t we simply stay at one of your family’s nesting grounds?”

Nesting grounds were sprawling castlelike communities where Deschanel families often lived for protection, the compounds protected by spells that made them invisible to the outside world. Most families had only one, but the Grangers were wealthy enough to have several smaller grounds, in addition to the main compound where he and Gideon had been raised, before their parents had passed away.

“If they discover I’m helping you, the nesting grounds will be the first place they look,” he told her, turning away from the window. “But the P.D. won’t even make their list. The last thing anyone in the Pinero Dominquez would do is harbor an escaped convict. They wouldn’t risk drawing any Förmyndares onto their territory.”

“But will it be safe?”

“Let me worry about that.” He picked up the pack that held all her belongings from the sofa and tossed it to her, jerking his chin toward the bathroom behind her. The sooner her delectable little body was covered in clothes, the sooner he could start thinking straight again. “Do whatever you need to get ready,” he told her, forcing himself to turn his attention back to his bag. “But hurry. If we’re lucky, we can make all the necessary arrangements and be on the late train to Paris tonight.”

* * *

B
Y
ELEVEN
,
THEY
WERE
on the Eurostar, heading through an underground tunnel beneath the English Channel on a high-speed train that would take them to the Gare du Nord in Paris. Ashe had surprised her with a forged passport of his own when they’d cleared customs, explaining that everyone on his Specs team carried several forged passports with them in the event of an emergency. He’d used one tonight because he didn’t want his name showing up on any government records. He obviously knew how far Raphe Delacourt’s reach could extend, and wasn’t taking any chances.