HeroRising (13 page)

She tasted so good. Sweet and peppery, like a fine liquor
that shot straight to both heads. Though her lips looked petal soft, the
strength with which she kissed him back was so fierce, for the first time since
he landed on Earth he felt weak.

With a strangled cry, she latched on to his shoulders and
climbed up his body as if he were a tree. Her skirt rose over her ass as she
wrapped her legs around his waist.
Jesu
, she tested his control as the
hot press of her sex against his stomach tempted his inner animal to claim what
was his. Somehow he found the strength to resist and wrapped his hands around
the handrail of the elevator, the metal bending in his grip as if it were made
out of aluminum cans.

“Woo-hoo!”

“Holy shit, man. They’re fucking!”

They wrenched away from each other with startled gasps. The
elevator door was held open on the parking level for The Cavern. A half-dozen
club goers watched them, some with smirks, some with wide eyes and others
giving them a round of applause.

One man turned to his friend. “See, I told you this place
was wild. Don’t stop, dude. You’re doing great.”

Bale roared out a battle cry and pressed the button for her
floor. As the doors slid shut, the expressions on their faces fell, and he
thought he might have detected a hint of urine as one boy began to cry.

Ari giggled as she caught her breath. “Well, that was
interesting.”

Fuck. What in the seven hells was he doing?

Not more than thirty minutes prior he was ready to draw
blood because a man dared to disrespect her, and here he was doing far worse as
he rutted against her like a beast. In public of all places. He should be
hanged for such crimes.

“I am deeply sorry, Ari.” He set her on her feet and did his
best to smooth out the wrinkles in her skirt. Damn, feeling her curves against
his palm was not helping his control. He pulled away as far as the car allowed.
“I did not mean to hurt you, or compromise you in any way.”

“You didn’t.” She tilted her head and regarded him with
watchful eyes. A smile flirted on her kiss-stung lips and he felt her amusement
tickle his skin like tiny bubbles. “I liked it.”

“I was too rough.”

“That’s what I liked about it.” She took a step forward just
as the elevator doors opened.

Ah, room to escape.

He dashed into the hall and drew up short. Lust, need and
self-recrimination tore him in different directions. The result made his feet
stay planted as if his body knew where it wanted to be.

What was he running from? Happiness? The past? Guilt?

Yes. Yes and yes.

He ran a shaky hand over his face. “Ah, Ari, you are driving
me to madness.”

Delight touched her smile as she stalked closer. “How so?”

“You make me forget.”

“Is that bad?”

To forget was liberating and terrifying all at once. Ari
made him forget that he was dead inside. She reminded him what it was to be a
man with needs and wants.

But he wasn’t a man. He was something else altogether. A
creature who was a hundred times stronger than she. A creature who had a past.
A history. A wife.

A wife.

Bale closed his eyes on a ragged breath and tried not to
think of the delicate, dark-haired female who had agreed to be his wife. It
wasn’t Natalia’s fault she died, just as it wasn’t Ari’s fault she had come
into his life second. The two women were different in so many ways, yet he
cared for both as one would a lover, a confidante, someone to share his
innermost self with. Yet his insecurity had prevented him from letting Natalia
see who he truly was, and here was another woman silently asking to be let in.

If he joined with Ari, she would steal into his soul, for
Ari was not an instrument of pleasure. Even he with his stunted emotional
capacity understood that. And while Natalia might have been content with only
the parts of himself he allowed her to share, Ari was going to demand more. She
already was. Could he give her what she needed?

“I don’t want to hurt you.” He fingered a lock of her hair.
Somehow, some way, he’d find a way to fuck this up.

She took his hand, kissing his knuckles. “Why do I think you
couldn’t, even if you wanted to?”

“I’m starting to question your sanity. You should be running
as far away from me as possible,” he said, helpless to resist brushing his lips
across her forehead.

“I know.” She laughed. “I shouldn’t be thinking about men at
this time of my life. But I do. I think about you. All the time. I want you,
Bale.” She pressed her belly against his erection. “I need you.”

There were the words. Combined with her desire pooling in his
loins and the fire building between them, he felt his resolve crumble. Could he
be what Ari needed? Dare he take the risk?

Amaryllis had once told him that he had been given the gifts
of today and the possibility of tomorrow. Natalia was never coming back. Ari
was here. Now. His present and potentially his tomorrow. If he dared.

“Damn you, woman.” He took her upturned mouth and ravaged
her lips again until the sound of the elevator bought him two seconds of
sanity. “Your place. Now. Before I take you right here.”

The excited flare in her eyes toyed with his control until
she gasped. “Oh, wait. I don’t have any supplies. I don’t suppose you do?”
There was a hopeful yet jealous color in her query.

“Supplies?” What did
that
mean? Was there some
unusual ritual or requirement for sex here on Earth? From what he’d seen from
his employers, it looked very similar to intercourse on Skandavia.

“You know. Condoms. Until my insurance kicks in, I can’t get
on birth control, and condoms weren’t on my shopping list this week.”

Ah. Yes. She must be speaking of the rubber-looking balloons
he’d seen down at the club.

Stupid man. His hearts beat an irregular tempo as the
implication of just how mixed-up his thoughts were sank in. Thank the Gods one
of them had been thinking. A woman in his life now was a complication of its
own. To add a child to that mix? A nightmare of epic proportion.

“Go to your home and I’ll go retrieve some. I won’t be but a
minute.”

“Okay.” Her flirty smile and goodbye kiss almost made him
say fuck it all, but he remained strong and raced down the stairs the second
she turned her back to go to her apartment.

The word condom was a constant litany in his mind as he
brushed past the doorman and strode down the darkened hall toward the
playrooms. Without bothering to knock, he burst into the first doorway,
startling the occupants inside.

“What the fuck?” a petite woman he recognized as Mistress
Jasmina shouted with her hand raised mid-swing. At her feet a man kneeled with
his bare ass raised to the sky. The globes of his cheeks were pink from where
she had been striking him with the paddle in her hand.

“Condoms. Now,” Bale growled.

“Seriously? A knock would have been polite. As you can see,
I’m working here.” She tossed her dark hair over her shoulder and rested her
hand at her hip. Her nails tapped a rhythm against her stiff corset as she
raised her brow in expectation.

“What?” he bit out.

She looked pointedly at the door.

Grrrr. “Fine.” He knocked on the wood. “Condom.”

“Please.”

“Woman.”

“Then leave.”

“Fine!” Damn Dominatrix. “Please, Mistress Jasmina. I need
condoms.”

“Was that so difficult?” She sashayed to a chest of drawers,
pulling one open to reveal a rainbow of thin packets. Her gaze alighted on the
erection threatening the fabric of his jeans and she smirked. Handing him a
couple oversized packets, she said, “Looks like you’re an extra large. Lucky
girl.”

He didn’t bother with a thank-you and left the woman to
continue with her work, cursing the tiny wench for wasting precious seconds he
could have been in Ari’s arms.

Outside Ari’s apartment he raised his fist to pound on the
wood, then pulled back at the last second. Judging by the way his muscles
twitched, he was going to tear her apart. He had to get his shit together or
leave her be.

As if he were out in the field, preparing for battle, he
focused on slowing his breathing and stemming the effects of the adrenaline
overstimulating his senses. Very gently he raised his fist and knocked, but
even with the conscious effort to curb his strength, the walls rattled under
the demand of his knuckles against the oak.

Ari opened the door, all smiles and softness. “That was
fast. I barely had time to take my shoes off.”

With one deliberate step, then another, he entered her home,
closing the door behind them until they were the only people who existed on the
planet.

His voice rumbled like a cement mixer. “Take off your dress.
I don’t want to tear it.”

A siren’s smile flirted with her lips and her eyes sparkled
like gemstones as she slowly reached for the tab under her arm and dragged the
zipper down catch by catch. Without dropping her gaze, she slipped the garment
off her shoulders with a little shimmy and let it pool at her tiny feet.

Jesu.
He fell back against the door. Not in his most
illicit fantasies did he imagine a sight as sinful as Ari dressed in nothing
but scraps of white lace cupping her curves. So sexy, so alluring…

And so Gods-damned human.

He beat the back of his head against the door and closed his
eyes. How in the hell was he going to keep from harming her?

“Bale, what’s wrong?”

He opened his eyes to see her earlier confidence had
vanished. Her hands fluttered across her chest as if to shield the sight of her
cleavage.

“Don’t, Ari.” He raised his hand. It wasn’t her fault he was
fucked in the head. “You’ve done nothing wrong. You are so beautiful, and I am
so not. I’m afraid I will crush you.”

“And I’m afraid I’m going to faint right here unless you
touch me.”

Didn’t he know it. Her arousal reached out with an invisible
hand and grabbed him by the base of his cock and twisted in agonizing delight.

Man up,
brotkja
. Take what is yours.

He clenched his teeth and sucked a breath in through his
nose. He could do this. He had to do this. He’d die if he didn’t.

Resolve strengthened his spine as he stalked toward her.
Control was all in his mind. He’d have to remind himself that he was fully
capable of restraining his depraved hungers as he had in the past. To touch
her, taste her, even with the tightest leash on his control, would be well
worth the effort to be gentle.

“Take off the lace,” he ordered. He’d do it himself, but he
hadn’t a clue as to how to work the complicated-looking contraption binding her
breasts.

Her hand trembled as she reached for the left strap. “I want
to see you naked too.”

And reveal his scarred body? No. “That will take too long.”

The bra hit the floor, followed quickly by her panties. “I
can wait.”

But he couldn’t. The site of her rosy nipples and the pink
flush of arousal painting her creamy flesh made him want to fall to his knees
and bury his face against the soft pillow of her belly.

“Ariel. You’re beautiful,” he rasped.

The pure joy in her smile made his throat tighten. “Take off
your clothes. Please.”

As a concession, he pulled off his boots and jacket and
sweatshirt then removed his belt before sweeping her up in his arms. He drank
from her lips as he strode into the bedroom and sat upon the mattress, settling
her across his lap. Without the barrier of her clothing, her wet heat burned
through the denim stretched across his erection and the tips of her breasts
prodded his chest in teasing glances. Under his palms the muscles of her back
flexed as he smoothed his hands up and down. Curling his fingers around the
fleshiest part of her ass, his fingertips discovered the moisture seeping
readily from her slit.

“Bale, please.” She panted into his mouth. “I need you.”

She was wet for him. Ready for him. Aching.

For him.

Next time… Next time he’d spend hours learning her body, but
his need was just as great. Reaching into his pocket with one hand, he
retrieved the crinkly packets while wrestling with his zipper with the other.
Ari trailed kisses down the column of his neck, teasing the beast within him.
He ripped the pouch open with his teeth and promptly sputtered as the foul taste
touched his tongue.

Ari laughed. “You’re supposed to use your fingers, silly.”

Gods, that was horrible. He licked along her shoulder to
replace the unpleasantness, then did it again because he loved the sigh she
made when he did so.

Behind her back he withdrew the rubber disk from its package
and eyed the foreign object over her shoulder. How the hell did this work?

“Let me.” Thank the Gods Ari interrupted his confusion by
taking the condom from his hand with a sultry smile and looked at his lap. Her smile
fell and her eyes boggled. “Oh my God.”

“What?” He looked as well. Nothing unusual, just his turgid,
pulsating cock pointing to the sky.

She began to giggle and slapped her hand over her mouth.
“Sorry. Sorry.” She giggled again. “I just…never… Oh my God.”

“Ari,” he grated out in a strangled moan as she wrapped her
hand around his length and gave him a firm squeeze.

“I’m sorry.” She stared transfixed as she rubbed up and down
the shaft. “I’ve never seen anything like this in my life.”

His hips bucked. “Woman,” he growled.

“You’re right.” She jerked up and rolled the balloon down
his shaft with a deft hand. “Screw foreplay.”

Fore what? The thought was obliterated as Ari pushed him
back and straddled his hips. They both gasped as she notched the crown at her opening
and began a slow descent.

Sweet heaven. She was tight. And hot. And glorious with her
red hair flowing over her shoulders and her breasts shimmying ever so slightly
as she worked to impale herself on his thick pole.