Ever Tempted (13 page)

With the blinds all pulled and the curtains drawn, the cottage was midnight black. Allie didn’t bother to turn on the lights as she led me to the bedroom.

I pulled away from her and fumbled for the light switch. Where was it? Dammit. “We need lights. You have no idea where my mind goes when I’m alone with you in the dark.”

She flipped the light on from the other side of the door and turned her back to me. Over her shoulder, she gave me an innocent glance. She batted her eyelashes once and bit her lip. “Unlace me?”

My breath got caught.

Oh. My. God.

How would I ever make it through this?

Shaking, I pulled the beginning of the lace and continued downward. As the dress peeled off her, a white lacey bra and garter contrasted against her tanned skin.

I lifted my head to the ceiling and took a few cleansing, steadying breaths. With a final deep breath, I gazed on her.

The dress slipped to the floor. Allie reached for my hand and used me to give her balance. She stepped out of the circle of silk. After letting go, she took her heels off and tossed them toward the closet.

Her look of trepidation found mine. She bit her lip.

I had to have looked like a spotlighted deer. I’d never seen her more beautiful.

“I’m sorry.” She shook her head. “I’ll get dressed.”

I reached for Allie and lifted her against me. “You’ll do no such thing.”

With a whimper, she jerked me down and her mouth opened to me like a rose bud to the summer sun. Pure bliss exploded in every cell of my body.

Not sure from where the will came, I pulled back. It was time to show her what I’d been doing during all that time away.

She gave me a confused, fearful look, but I quelled it.

“Undress me.” I stared down into Allie’s surprised eyes. “If I begin to shake, and you see the line of my body flicker, step away and get as far away as you can. Is that clear?”

Nibbling the inside of her lip, Allie nodded. With silk fingertips, she traced my jawline and found the knot on my tie. The sensual way she took her time sliding my tie out of my collar and taking buttons out of each hole sent my insides to even deeper turmoil, but it also gave me a chance to react if anything went wrong.

At the head of the bed, my shirt landed on the floor beside my tie. Before I could stop her, Allie’s lips began a hungry descent over my chest.
He tastes like salted caramel. And his heartbeat slamming against my lips is the most exciting thing I’ve ever felt. I’m going for his belt. I can’t wait.

I jerked.

Not because of the touch, but because she must’ve forgotten her thoughts weren’t only her own. I shared them with her.

She closed her eyes and wilted, backing up. “I’m moving too fast.”

I tilted her chin. “I know you can’t help it, but try to keep your thoughts to a minimum.”

Allie gasped and turned from me. “This is one of those times I wish you could turn that off.”

“It’s okay. I love hearing you, knowing what you want, but your touch and the thoughts are a little too much to take at one time.” Pulling her back to me, I pressed my lips to her forehead and rested there for a second. After the shuddering dissipated, I brought her hand back to my belt. “Go ahead.”

After she had the belt unbuckled, Allie unbuttoned my pants and slid them down enough to bare my hips. Then she just stared at me. Her simmering gaze traveled down the length of me; then she reached out.

“Stop.” I grabbed her hand. Through clenched teeth and a taut jaw, I spoke. “My God…”

The fact that I can’t touch him without him having an uncontrollable urge to change to something more than human is probably even hotter than it would be if he were standing here completely undressed. But being undressed is nice too. Him standing there with no shirt, his pants draped over his hips and hanging open. I don’t think I can wait—

“Allie! You are not cooperating.” I turned from the only woman I had ever seen that could have set the Victoria’s Secret Runway on fire and burned it to the ground.

“Oh, it’s okay for you to have an animalistic reaction to me, but I can’t appreciate the fact that you have a sculpted, chiseled physique? That sounds like our first double standard.” Allie turned me back around with a surprisingly strong tug at my belt.

“You think it’s funny, but it feels like I’m being shot full of morphine every time you touch me.” I pulled her to me. “And If I don’t kiss you, I will rip right down the middle.”

I breathed through the kiss, my heated breath raging against her. I traced my tongue down her jawline as I explored every curve. My pulse beat a tribal dance on my chest and sent a dizzy rush from my temple to my feet.

“Cole.” Her eyes wide, Allie shoved me back.

Muscles in my chest twitched, and my bones grated and burned. Black hair stabbed through my skin, and my knuckles crunched as claws began to form.

“Step back.” I ducked my chin to my chest.

As instructed, Allie crossed the room and stood with the bed as an obstacle between us.

Vivid images of Allie from the first moment I took in her impossible beauty until now flashed on the backdrop of my eyelids. My heart slowed and the burn simmered from feeling as if my joints had been incinerated to a stinging prickle.

I opened my eyes. The hair on my arms withdrew, thinned, and faded to its natural color.

“That was amazing.” Allie’s soft voice neared me, tickling my senses.

I held a hand up in protest. “Don’t speak or move. Not yet.”

“You won’t hurt me. I know you won’t.” Allie took my hand and pulled me toward the bed, taking me down with her.

In a panic, I grabbed her hands, pinned them above her head, interlacing our fingers in a tight grip.

In an attempt to lash me with ecstasy and agony simultaneously, she arched her body. “
Make love to me.”

Clenching her hands so tightly she winced, I searched until I found that place I had denied for so long. The animal’s need to incapacitate its prey and the male urge to dominate the woman I loved tugged on different threads of my soul. But were they so different?

Tightening every muscle and tendon in my body, I was sure my blood veins would burst. I held on, groping for sanity. I groaned under the pull to be one with the animal and the need to be one with her.

It was then that I realized the animal had a place. A place inside me.

An even deeper secret place. The place where the bad in Colby Kinsley had existed.

Where his needs mattered too.

The animal ceased thrashing when he discovered he could share dominance with me. Instead of shoving him to the back of my mind, where illicit reactions and explicit thoughts were born and cultivated, I joined him there.

We were the predator.

Allie was our prey.

Her tanned arms, the mounds of her breast barely concealed by the white negligee, the curve of her hip, and the way her leg curved around mine and pressed me deeper against her. I trembled, but not as a means to conceal my darkest nature.

At the headboard where our hands were linked, my human skin remained.

It was time.

Releasing my grip on Allie, I caressed the soft curve of her jaw.

Allie gazed on me with wonder.
“Please don’t stop touching me.”

Jolts of electric heat traveled the length of me. And my hand was only on her cheek.

“You are the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.” My chest crushed with adoration, and my body quaked not with a monster shoving its way out, but with trepidation that I would do something wrong. Normal worries. Finally.

Allie’s eyes smoldered with need. Her chest heaved faster and her subtle curves drew me deeper into a burn.

Threatening a change, the animal singed my joints. I had to fulfill his needs too. I dipped my head and inhaled the intoxicating pheromones her skin gave off as adrenaline saturated blood pumped through the pulsing artery curving down her neck. Every moist particle of that aroma sent shivers of excitement through me and heightened my awareness. My mouth watered in anticipation of the unparalleled taste of her skin on my tongue.

As my mouth made its way to her earlobe, the animal ached to tear into her, but I moved down to sample the scented curve of her neck, teasing his feral hunger.

And at times he had been known to play with his food.

A little moan caught in Allie’s throat.

An instinctive shiver seeped through me. My mouth fully enclosed on the tender skin of her throat, teeth aching to tear, but my tongue was satisfied with just a taste.

The touch of her skin awakened every molecule of my being. Shuddering under my skin caused the air around me to pulsate. I paused, closing my eyes, bargaining with the monster.
You have had the rest of my life. Let me have her if only just this once.

A wild look overtook Allie’s gaze, making me her slave. Her heated lips worked with mine, until our tongues revealed the sensation of being one.

Her hair spread across the pillow as her eyes searched and seduced simultaneously. Tension from the most basic need worked inside my stomach, but there was no need to hurry. We had the rest of our lives, and if simply kissing her would awaken such primal need, it was going to take more than one to satisfy me.

I wouldn’t give up.

I would fight.

I woke to an empty bed and the sound of the shower pelting against the provider of a sweet angel’s voice.

Allie sang some parts of a tune and hummed others.

Propping my hands behind my head, I lay in the bed listening to her, hoping I was the reason she was as happy as she sounded.

Outside, it was dark. The only light in the room was the blue beams of the alarm clock radio beside the bed. It was late.

My stomach growled. I shook my head.

Food.

At a time like this?

I had just battled and came out victorious over the most important obstacle I had ever bounded, and food was all I could think about.

The rush of water splashing against the shower floor in the bathroom suddenly turned to a drip and cotton brushed against a metal bar. Oh, to be the towel she’d just taken and wrapped around her body. I knew what she meant when she said she could be inside of me and not be close enough.

My heart skipped.

Down boy, I chided myself. You’ve seen her before. This isn’t new.

Wrapped in a plush yellow towel, Allie strolled out of the bathroom, humming more softly as she rang her hair dry. Beads of water glistened on her long, silky legs.

I turned over and propped on my elbow to admire the view. “A woman of many talents.”

She jumped, then jerked her towel tighter. “You scared me.”

“Come here.” I moved over to make room.

With reluctant steps, she walked to the bed. She bit her lip.

I held out my hand with a grin. “Now you’re afraid of me?”

She sat on the side of the bed and faced me, her wet hair cascading down her shoulders. “I’m not afraid. But you talk in your sleep.”

Uh-oh. I flitted through scenery of vague dreams from the bout of sleep, but nothing stood out. I loosened my grip on her hand. This was not good. When had I started talking in my sleep? Or had I always talked in my sleep and just had no one to inform me of it? “What did I say?”

Allie twisted a dark chocolate tendril of hair. “Nothing I could make out. Just garbled words about Sage.”

I lay flat on the bed. I might as well get it over with. I did have her secluded on an island.

She couldn’t exactly flee the premises. The farthest she could go was five acres away and sit on the beach until she was calm enough to speak to me. Calm enough to realize this is what I’d contended with all my life.

Grace’s undying antics.

Would she go back home and try to fight Grace as soon as we pulled up to the front entrance or would she listen to me and let me handle things the way I knew would keep her safe?

When would I finally find a way to trust Allie completely? It wasn’t that I didn’t trust her enough to tell her the truth about things, it was just… She never listened to me when I told her she was in danger. I couldn’t lose her again.

“I don’t remember dreaming.” I scoffed hoping she’d drop the subject. I still hadn’t planned out the conversation. It had to be perfectly executed. I couldn’t get all tongue-tied and say something stupid like I normally did.

“You were probably worrying the way you always do. You said something about her being dangerous. Even when you’re sleeping you’re terrified of losing me.”

“The thoughts never leave my mind.” Different horrid ways Allie could end up dead strobed through my consciousness so much that they preoccupied me most days.

She took my free hand and absently spun my ring around my finger. Without looking away from the repetitive action, she tilted her head thoughtfully. “That’s what scares me so. I’m afraid you’d do something terrible to keep me safe, and I’d have to live without you.”

How had she done that? Had someone talked to her?

She stopped. “Shelby called and asked if we could come home because she needs help with a project you and she started before you left. She said it was important.”

Shelby had opened her big mouth. That was it.

I was going to throttle Shelby when I saw her.

“I thought I said no phones.” I sat up jerking the sheets with me.

Allie stood and crossed the room. She pulled a drawer and found undergarments. “I know, but it wouldn’t stop ringing. I thought something might be wrong.”

My voice was strained as it crossed tight, angry vocal cords. “And was there?”

If Shelby had spilled any sort of bad news on Allie, so help me….

“Other than needing you to call her as soon as you woke, that was it.” Allie regarded me with intensity.

That was too close a call.

I had to find a way to tell Allie the truth. I’d plan it out in the shower and then take her on a walk. Maybe if I gave a few of the hundreds of times Grace had found a way to molest me as examples, the news of her latest scheme might not get me in as much trouble. I’d decide under the hot spray which ones.