Gates of Rapture (The Guardians of Ascension) (30 page)

Experiencing both at the same time brought desire rushing, but she didn’t want to rush. So she worked at blocking his experiences, which helped her to settle down a little.

But an idea slipped through her mind, one she couldn’t resist. “Leto, there’s something I want to do to you.”

That got his attention, and he popped off her breast, looking up at her. He didn’t smile, though. Instead, a beautiful dark glitter filled his blue eyes. “Anything,” he said, his voice as low as she’d ever heard it.

She smiled and pinched his wing-lock. His body writhed beneath hers. Wing-locks were extremely sensitive, and the act of mounting wings was very close to sexual release.

“On your stomach,” she said.

He groaned as he shifted to lie down beside her. He pushed the pillows out of the way.

“And now, I need your beast.” She kissed his shoulder. “Will you give me your beast?”

“You want my beast? As in, you want me to change into the larger version of myself.”

She sighed deeply. “Yes.” The word left her with a soft rush of air. “I mean, if you want to. Do you want to?”

He groaned. “If you want me to, God, yes.”

She felt him take a couple of deep breaths. She could feel the vibration slide down one of his legs, then the other.

When his muscles began to enlarge everywhere, she sat back on her heels and watched the transformation. Her lips parted. Her breaths grew uneven. She realized that this was pure sex to her, that he grew, got bigger, became more of what he already was. Only instead of just his cock growing, his entire body grew, becoming more heavily muscled and gaining a couple of inches in height.

Meadow, Grace. Does this turn you on?

More than you will ever know.

I don’t know if that’s true, because I can feel all your responses.
He groaned again.

She put her lips on his shoulder, kissing him softly, moving back and forth over his skin. She could feel the muscles swelling. A soft vibration passed through her.

He hissed softly. “Your scent.”

“Your skin, your muscles.” She slid her hand from the inside of his elbow up his arm slowly.

Chuffs left his throat, and she shivered. Her fingers touched more swelling flesh. She overlaid his bicep with her hand and licked his shoulder as everything beneath her continued to grow, shift, change, become larger.

She loved it. The feel of all this movement and energy beneath her hands and her mouth. His skin was hot. She licked. All that warmth and flavor, of Leto tasting like the forest, sent ripples down her body, little waves lapping at the shore, teasing her, tempting her.

He trembled.

“What’s wrong?” She licked again.

I want—

She cut him off. “Use your words, Leto. I need to hear your voice in this state. It’s much deeper, sexier. It gives me a thrill.”

“I want to flip you over, throw you on your back.”

She massaged the growing bicep. “I know. Don’t care. You have to do as I say, at least for now.”

A small piece of laughter, like it had broken off from the rest, barked from his throat. He sighed.

His shoulder pushed at her lips, dragging away from her. She opened her eyes. Leto was getting taller. She licked down his arm and nursed on his bicep. He grunted. She knew this was torture. Again, she didn’t care.

This was her turn.

She left his bicep, then, using both hands, she began at the top of his back and slowly descended, stroking each weeping wing-lock, taking all that moisture with her, down and down to his waist until her hands were sopping.

He gave a shout and whirled to face her. But she moved with her newly acquired speed and was fifteen feet away, at the door of the bedroom. He was off the bed before she could blink, but she held up one hand and he stopped.

“What are you doing to me?” His voice was so low, so resonant, she found it hard to remain where she was. “Let me come to you.”

She wept from between her legs. She wanted to run to him, throw her arms around him, and sink herself on what was very hard and very big.

Her hands were dripping with the moisture from his wing-locks. The scent tempted her. With one hand held out to him to keep him away, she lifted the other to her lips. She settled her gaze on him and licked her palm.

The flavor seemed to reach inside her and give a hard tug. “Oh, Leto, you taste of heaven to me.”

He palmed his erection and slowly stroked himself. She could feel what his hand felt like touching his cock, and her body clenched with need.

Her gaze fell to what belonged only to her, and her lips parted as she dragged air into her lungs. She put her moist hands on her breasts. Her nipples drew into hard beads. She drifted her hands lower over her sensitive navel, and lower still.

His hand moved faster as she descended.

“Please, let me come to you,” he said, his gaze almost frantic.

She didn’t answer him. She couldn’t. She was enjoying this too much, having this kind of control over him. She felt heady as her fingers slid into her pubic hair and pushed. The sensation was delightful.

He closed his eyes and groaned. “I can feel what that’s like for you, the pressure of your fingers, the pleasure it gives you.” He was close.

She had an idea. With a burst of speed, she was on her knees in front of him and her lips closed around the crown of his cock.

He gave a strangled cry. His hands suddenly on her head, he pushed his cock into her mouth. She took him as deep as she could. Using both her hands, she sucked and stroked him at the same time.

Leto, how wonderful my mouth feels to you.

“I can’t wait.”

Let it all go, Leto. Give me what you’ve got.

His body jerked forward as he began to pulse. She kept stroking and stroking. His cock released into her, and she drank what tasted of the forest and of Leto. She drank and drank.

But she knew him and she knew that he wasn’t done, even when his movements slowed and he pulled out of her mouth.

“You’re glowing,” he said.

She smiled up at him. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“I mean your skin. You’re glowing. You have a blue aura.”

She rose slowly to her feet and looked at her arm. She laughed. “So I am. It’s almost iridescent.”

He dipped down and kissed her, driving his tongue deep. Her hands found a pair of biceps that were huge.
I taste myself in you.

It’s so beautiful, making love like this.

And I’m not repulsive to you in this state?

Sexy, Leto. You’re sexy.
She pushed her tongue into his mouth and his heavy arms embraced her, pulling her off her feet and against him.

She worked her arms to slide them around his neck and held him fast.
Your hair is moving over my arms.
Even his hair was different.

He pulled back and met her gaze. His eyes were so blue, so intense, his black lashes thick. His cheeks were more prominent in this state, and as he held her dangling above the floor, she pressed her forearms into his shoulders to give herself a little leverage. She lifted up just enough to run her tongue across the increased line of his cheek. “You’re bigger everywhere.”

She dropped down that couple of inches and saw that he was smiling, a crooked smile. “Everywhere?”

She nodded. “Oh, yes.” She let her arms fall away and arched her head back so that he was holding her without her help.

He chuckled and swung her in a circle, then another and another. Here was all this man, all this sex, all this enormous body, and she felt light and feminine, all six feet of her in his arms as he continued to swing her.

He stopped and drew her in close once more, pressing her head into his shoulder, still holding her off the floor. “You have made me so happy,” he said. “I didn’t think I could be this happy in this beast-state. I thought it was a curse, but how can it be a curse when you seem to like me like this?”

“Leto, here’s the truth that I know about who you are: You could turn into a raving ghoul, and you would still be the finest man I have ever known.”

He grew very still suddenly, so she continued, “I can remember the first day I met you. Of course, this was so long ago, but I was fighting with Thorne, begging him to be more careful. He had just joined the Warriors of the Blood, and I feared for him every day because he was reckless. He had come home, and just as I punched his arm, you folded into the room, into my home in Rome Two, so many years ago. Do you remember?”

“I do,” he said. “You were so angry and you glared at me.”

“I blamed you for introducing him to Endelle, for making him a Warrior of the Blood.”

“‘So you must be Warrior Leto.’ I’ll never forget your icy tone,” he said.

“But you merely smiled and looked at me, and I looked back. I … I’ve never told anyone this, but I had the worst crush on you.”

“You did not.” His eyes were wide, disbelieving.

“I did, and it lasted decades,” Grace said. “I made excuses to be near you. Did you ever think of me—back then, I mean?”

“Yes, I admit I did. Don’t you remember that I would always talk to you? Always ask how you were doing?”

“I thought you were being polite,” she said, smiling.

“I was smitten. You were so beautiful and so compassionate even then. But you were young, so very young. It wasn’t right. By then I was twelve hundred years old.”

And there was another truth of his character as he held her a foot off the floor, his body altered into the beast-state. He hadn’t pursued her because she was young.

With a rueful smile, he added, “And you know Thorne would have taken me apart if I’d courted you.”

She chuckled against his shoulder. “Yes, he would have. He was always very protective of me. Of both Patience and me.”

He held her tight, his arms compressing some of her wing-locks in the nicest way. She felt secure, even safe. Now, there was a novelty—that she felt safe, if for just this moment, in a world at war.

He drew back and let her slide to plant her feet on the floor. He smiled. He was so beautiful. He kissed her, then said, “I want to feel the backs of your knees over my shoulders. How does that sound?”

She blinked very slowly, and as soon as she understood his meaning, she squeezed her eyes shut and shuddered, a full-body shudder that went all the way down into her heels. She opened her eyes. “I would like that, Leto, very much.”

He kissed her again, and his tongue pierced her mouth. He moved in and out seductively. He sent,
Can you feel that even my tongue is bigger
?

She didn’t have time to answer him because suddenly she was airborne as he lifted her over his shoulder. He thumped across the floor to the bed and tossed her on her back. She bounced and laughed, but he didn’t so much as smile. He caught her ankles, and as he pulled her toward him, he dropped to his knees beside the bed and split her legs wide.

Her laughter drifted away because suddenly the room was full once more of forest scent and his head was easing down in the right direction until he was chuffing, making that resonant growling, huffing sound that somehow relaxed her pelvis. He brought her legs across the new breadth of each shoulder, and the fit was perfect.

She threw her arms back and closed her eyes, drowning in his scent.

Then he went to work on her.

*   *   *

Leto was being educated right now. When his beast-state had begun to rise five months ago, he would never have believed that it would have led him here, to a point that he felt comfortable in his skin. He was relaxed in his beast-state as his tongue plowed his woman, his
breh
.

He was getting used to the feel of his body, and, yes, parts were bigger. His tongue felt thicker, which made talking a challenge, but there was definitely an advantage as he licked in a wide slow path over Grace’s flesh, pressing his tongue into her folds, drawing away, then pressing and licking some more.

He used one arm to keep her hips seated because she was enjoying his attentions and kept moving around, her hips arching into him. It also stunned him just how sensitive she was, more than he had thought possible, but with each lap he could feel what she was experiencing. Add to that her sweet meadow scent, and his cock was a missile again. But what he wanted still involved his tongue.

He dipped low, and as he entered her, driving deep, Grace let out a cry and a whimper all in one. He plunged now, and used the muscles of his tongue to change the position. He could feel her tight walls dragging over him, and he could feel what it was like to be invaded in that way. Her hips rocked steadily now, that motion as familiar as time, explaining the exact way he could please her.

Her gasps and cries grew steady and rhythmic. He wanted her to come. He slid his free hand beneath her waist and caught her lowest left wing-lock. Her cries turned low and guttural. “Yes” came out as a hoarse plea.

He rubbed first, then reached the sensitive aperture and flicked back and forth with the tip of his finger as he continued to drive his tongue ruthlessly.

He felt her come, the quick pulses deep within, the sudden jerks of her body, and the way she screamed from deep within her throat, as though his movements had set her on fire. Her body began to glow again so he drove deeper and harder. This time he pinched her wing-lock until she was thrashing on the bed, her heels pounding into his back. Her hands were now on the back of his head pushing as he thrust so that his tongue and chin slammed into her.

He loved it and only stopped when she stopped, when her body grew slack and her legs grew quiet.

“Oh, that was good,” she whispered, breathing hard.

“It’s amazing to feel what all this feels like to you.” He was breathing hard as well but for a different reason. He was ready for her again. He wanted to take her, to thrust into her with his hips pistoning fast. But he wanted something else, he just didn’t know what.

He rose up so that her legs fell to the sides, now draped over the bed. He stood in front of her looking down. The two inches of added height gave him a different perspective. She looked a little farther away, which made her appear more fragile. He loved how different they were, that she was woman, and in a physical sense more vulnerable than he would ever be. He leaned over her and planted his broad hand on her chest, his fingers spanning her, reaching easily from nipple to nipple.