Shifter's Claim (The Shadow Shifters) (25 page)

Jacques paused at the door, his hand on the handle. The look he gave her over his shoulder was new, a different expression that she couldn’t quite explain, and she gasped.

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” was his parting retort before he opened the door, stepped through, and closed it with a resounding click behind him.

*   *   *

It was morning, well past, Bas thought as he lay on his stomach, still in bed. He opened his eyes, felt the annoying itch that said he could probably sleep another hour or so, then closed them again. Next, he inhaled deeply and confirmed the lump of dread that had formed in the center of his chest.

Priya was still here.

Priya knew who and what he was.

Damn.

With a resigned sigh he was about to roll over, to reach for her but then he felt her touch. The soft inside of her thighs brushed over his buttocks as she straddled him. Shaking fingers traced the lines of his tattoo and Bas waited. She would have more questions, she always did. No matter that he’d told her too damned much last night, he knew he would answer her, no matter how much he didn’t want to.

“I can see it now,” she said softly. “I didn’t really see it clearly that first night and then last night, well, I wasn’t really paying that much attention to it. But now I see it clearly.”

Bas continued to take steady, slow breaths. The warmth of her center resting against his skin was a huge distraction from the sound of her voice. She was wet and hot and he craved her once more. Always, it seemed.

“It’s a cat,” she continued. “Your cat.”

He neither confirmed nor denied. It was weak, he knew. At some point Bas was going to have to make a decision about this new situation he found himself in. He was going to have to decide what to do with Priya now that she knew. But for the moment all he could think about was the sweet scent of her arousal, the soft feel of her body against his.

“It’s the shield of the
Topètenia
tribe.”

“All of you have it?” she continued. “It’s beautiful.”

She leaned forward, her fingers moving across the blades of his shoulders, down to the center of his spine were he knew the face of his cat began.

“Yes,” he murmured just before her lips touched his skin.

Then it was her tongue as she traced an outline around the center of the tattoo. The eyes of the cat. Heat spread from that spot throughout the entire upper portion of his body like spilled water.

“You’re beautiful,” she whispered, her breath draping over him in warm waves. “Absolutely beautiful.”

Bas’s teeth clenched, his entire body tightening with her words. He turned easily beneath her, reaching out his hands to hold her in place atop him as he now lay on his back. She was gorgeous, hair sleep-tousled, eyes already dulled with desire, lips still slightly swollen from his hungry kisses only hours before. Her blessedly naked body was before him and Bas didn’t hesitate to reach out to touch her. Pert breasts fit perfectly in the palms of his hands as he cupped them, squeezed, and purred.

Her eyes shot up to him at the sound and he licked his lips in response. “Come to me, Priya. Come to me,” he whispered.

With slightly parted lips she leaned forward into him, lifting her chest so that they would be more aligned with his mouth. He took her immediately, one hard nipple and soft curve into his mouth, sucking deeply as if he were a babe at feeding. His other hand held firm to its twin, squeezing even as his tongue flicked over the hard nipple. She sucked in a breath and bowed her body over him. His cat roared inside, pressed closer to the surface, hunger clawing at it.

Giving her other breast the same attention as the first, Bas sucked and licked and groaned as his erection grew harder still, a drop of pre-release dampening its tip. He wanted to be inside her more than he wanted his next breath and by the sound of her whimpers she was in the exact same place. And yet, he couldn’t resist another urge tapping against him persistently.

Since the first day he’d been intrigued by Priya’s scent, sucked into her endless questions and infinite suspicions from the first second they’d made eye contact. And every time thereafter it was her scent that he always recognized first. It seemed to call to him and try as he might, Bas had never been able to ignore it. Now, he wanted to taste it, to have all of her, claim all of her as his own.

He moved again, this time placing his hands at her hips, looking up into her half-closed eyes. “Come to me. Bring all that sweetness to me,” he whispered hoarsely.

With the words he lifted her until her knees were now planted on either side of his face.

“Hold on,” he instructed her as he tightened his hold on her hips, pulling her center down until it was like a desired dessert only inches away from being devoured.

She was warm to the touch, hot plump vulva lips drenched in her nectar. The sweetest taste to ever touch his tongue, he licked her once again, loving the soft dampness moving over his tongue. Deep in his chest something pulled and swirled like a brewing storm but Bas ignored it and licked her again. Her legs were spread wide as she bucked above him, breath hissing out of her. He licked inside her lips this time, noting the even softer contrast, the warmer center. All the while inhaling deeply, exhaling slowly. It was all over him now, her scent that is, like a heavy blanket covering him, coddling him. Another lick, a suckle that pulled one plump fold into his mouth and Bas dug his fingers into her hips. A growl rumbled in his chest as he released her, licked again, sucked some more. She bucked over him, rocking her hips in encouragement. He speared his tongue into her center, moving in and out as his hips mimicked that same motion. He couldn’t get enough of her and hungrily angled his head to take more.

Above him Priya held onto the top of the bed frame, riding his mouth as she’d previously ridden his dick. Bas’s hands slid back to cup her buttocks, spreading her wider. He touched her rim, couldn’t resist the urge his cat had to join into this moment. Pressing inside the tight warmth made his mouth water and move quicker over her juncture, her sweetness coating his tongue and slipping in hot rivulets down his throat.

As she came she yelled his name, her thighs clenched, holding his head tightly, assuring he did not stop what he knew had to be a sweet kind of torture. And as Bas’s tongue speared inside her, his own release broke free, hips tightening and lifting from the bed, spurts going up then dripping down onto him. He couldn’t whisper her name, couldn’t thank her for a momentary end to the agony of desiring her. All Bas could do was hold her as her body continued to spasm, lick every drop of her essence as her body released, and he loved every goddamned second of it.

*   *   *

The hot water was a blessing, the big fluffy bubbles that smelled of honey and musk a luscious treat, the man sitting behind her using a loofa sponge to send rivulets of water cascading down her shoulders an unexpected, yet desperately needed distraction.

Priya sighed, letting her head loll back and rest on Bas’s shoulder. Closing her eyes, she tried not to think about the cat he’d become, the one he wore on his back and carried deep inside him. She tried not to think about the fact that the cat was a deadly creature and that she should have run like hell to get away from it and this place. But what Priya really tried not to think about was how good the night had actually turned out to be.

Each time Bas touched her, licked her, caressed her, Priya felt inches of herself giving over to him, to this power that he had over women. On one level it was degrading as hell. Bas was an overconfident, too-slick womanizer, or at least that was what he appeared to be at first glance. Upon a little deeper reflection—and on a purely physical level—he was downright mesmerizing in bed. She couldn’t deny that even if she wanted to.

On yet another level Priya felt like something else was going on between her and Bas, something just a little more serious than she figured either of them could have ever imagined. As they lay in the darkness of his room last night each of them had drifted into their own thoughts. She knew full well what her thoughts had entailed but really had no idea about his. Stunningly enough, she wanted to know. If she were being drawn to this man—not the story of his other half or their species and not simply the best sex she’d ever had in her life—but if this man were somehow pulling her closer to him, she wanted to know if her feelings were at least reciprocated.

“Tell me what you’re thinking,” she whispered without thinking twice about broaching this subject with him.

He remained quiet at first. Priya expected nothing less. In the time she’d known him she’d noticed how he contemplated all of his responses before giving them. Whereas she was the exact opposite, saying what she wanted the moment she wanted, sometimes to her own detriment.

“You don’t really want to know what I’m thinking,” he replied finally, moving so that the thick rigid length of his erection now rested beneath her buttocks.

“That’s the obvious, Bas. I know you can do better than that.” He was also damned good at attempting to deflect her attention away from what she really wanted to discuss. He’d tried this each time she’d asked about the cat people and for the most part it had worked, up until she’d come face to face with his cat. This time she wasn’t going to be swayed, couldn’t be because there was still too much at stake.

“So it’s not more sex that you want,” he continued with a lightness to his tone.

Priya turned then. It was perhaps not the smartest move since water and bubbles sloshed over the lip of the tub, landing with a messy splatter on the marble floor. She didn’t care, she wanted Bas to look her right in her eye and deny what was really happening between them. Or at least, she wanted him to try.

“I want to know how you plan to save my brother. I have no idea who they are or why they’re holding him, or why they chose me. Lolo, that’s my friend from work, the one you saw that day on the street. He’s been trying to track the IP address but hasn’t been able to do it and—”

He touched two fingers lightly to her mouth. Priya closed her lips after her tongue had swiped quickly over his skin. A jolt of heat speared straight through to her center and she swallowed hard.

“I have equipment here that I’m positive is years beyond what your friend Lolo has. I ran the IP addresses through a thorough search last night before I came up here. As soon as you discontinue the Q-and-A and let me out of this tub I’ll go to my office and find out where the e-mails originated.”

His fingers had traced a heated path around her lips, over the line of her jaw, down to caress her neck. Tiny pricks of heat covered the surface of her skin. Priya wanted to shiver even though she wasn’t cold. She wanted to lift slightly, adjusting herself so that she was aimed directly over his thick length. She wanted him again. It was crazy and it was intense, like an addiction, she thought with an inner sigh.

“Malik hasn’t always made the right decisions,” she told him. “He’s always been controlled by the drugs. No matter how many rehab programs I convinced him to join. It’s always been his crutch. I don’t know how to fix that.” It was the first time she’d said that aloud, the first time she’d admitted that she could not fix everything that was wrong with her family.

“We are not responsible for our family or the decisions they make,” he told her. “It took me years to figure out that my parents’ divorce was their own doing, their own decision. We can only hold ourselves responsible for our own actions and decisions. Malik’s addiction is not your fault, neither is it your job to cure.”

“But if he dies…”

Bas shook his head, reaching up to cup her face with both hands. “I’m not going to let him die. I don’t think I could watch you endure that amount of hurt.”

She didn’t know what to say to that, didn’t know how to respond. As it turned out she didn’t have to because he was kissing her by then, his mouth working slowly and most assuredly over hers.

His hands moved down to rub over her shoulders, down her bare back to cup her cheeks. Priya let herself drift into the kiss, loving the stroke of his tongue over hers. As his tub was much wider and longer and more sumptuous than the one in her apartment she was able to spread her legs wider, her hands gripping his shoulders as she moved into his touch.

His touch that slowly slipped between her crease, the pad of one finger resting against her tight sphincter.

“You have a great ass,” he whispered when he’d moved to kissing her jaw and then her ear. “I watched you that night at the fund-raiser. Every time you got up and walked around I watched you. I wanted you in this position from the first time I saw you.”

Sex talk had never been high on Priya’s list, then again, foreplay had been condensed to kissing, minimal touching, and then the actual act. In these last few days with Bas she’d learned just how much her sex life had been lacking, before the self-imposed celibacy.

“I was celibate,” she said without thought.

He pulled back to look at her quizzically. “Celibate?”

“Yeah, long story short, it just wasn’t worth the headache.”

Bas nodded as if he understood, gripping one cheek with one hand, pressing that other finger inside to breach her. Priya gasped with the pressure and the flow of new sensations.

“Never pain, Priya,” he whispered as they locked gazes. “Nothing I do to you will ever hurt you.”

She wanted to believe that, desperately needed to have a silver lining to all that had gone wrong in her life, but he was just a man and his reputation …

Bas’s other hand slipped between her legs, finding her clit and massaging until she moaned.

“Never pain,” she heard herself say, dropping her forehead to his and biting her lip. The pressure of his finger sinking deeper into her rear while he expertly titillated her clit was intense and overwhelming and deliciously naughty all at once. She lifted her hips, felt her thighs shake, and she moaned.

“Only pleasure, pretty girl,” he said and then nipped her chin. “Only pleasure.”

“Yes,” was Priya’s reply, the only one she could manage.

The first orgasm came with a rush as she tightened like a bow above him. The moment she assumed she might manage a coherent thought Bas removed both hands, replacing the pleasure they’d evoked with the thick fullness of his dick, stretching her, filling her until she mumbled his name.