Tall, Dark & Apocalyptic (13 page)

Flame caught with a sputter and then flared, grabbing hold of the dry timber and kicking out immediate warmth.

He turned to find Yeira staring at him, her sexy gaze mirroring the flame from his fire. She’d stopped shivering and seemed transfixed by his nakedness. Audie stood tall, letting her look her fill. Her gaze slid upward, caught on his, and awareness spiked between them. For a long moment, only the sharp crack and sizzle of the fire filled the air. Finally, Audie held out his hand, showing her the poivron flower he’d gathered while searching for kindling. “Will you spread gel on my wounds?”

They both knew he could tend his wounds himself. But it was the excuse she would need to touch him. And once she touched him—

Audie’s cock jerked at the thought.

Yeira’s mind screamed, “No!”

Unfortunately, her body was already rising off the ground to go to him. The soft, peppery aroma of poivron wood scented the air and Yeira worried she was under its influence.

The hunter seemed unaffected by the pheromone-like smoke. He stood between her and the fire, the snapping flames a perfect backdrop for his sizzling physique. His dark-blue gaze held hers as she approached, unwavering.

Yeira couldn’t read his expression. Would he welcome her touch? Was he interested in making love? The thick appendage at his groin didn’t count as evidence of his mood. He’d been sporting that for hours.

Moving toward him as if transfixed, Yeira stopped mere inches away. She dug her feet into the soft earth and swayed toward him, unabashedly wanton. Her head swam. Her pussy tightened under a wave of sheer lust. Her vision locked on his sexy mouth.

The hunter consumed her with his gaze, watching her from beneath a thick arc of lashes. The flames of the fire flickered in his dark eyes. Audie Kord looked like a man who knew exactly what he wanted and was certain of getting it.

In that moment, when Yeira’s pussy convulsed with raging need, her nipples jutted against her soaked shirt, and lust tightened into a painful knot in her belly, she thought he might just be right.

It would take a monumental effort of will for her to resist his charms.

He lifted the flower and she looked at it, blinking. She’d already forgotten why she’d moved closer. In a desperate attempt to save herself, Yeira frowned. “You don’t need me to do that, hunter.”

“But it feels so much better coming from you.”

She shook her head, trying to clear it.

“Yeira?”

She looked up, catching his smoldering gaze. Big mistake. She sucked in a gasp and closed her eyes, her body swaying closer.

Heat enveloped her, filled with his distinctive scent, and Yeira imagined that he’d stepped closer. Something soft slipped across her cheek and her eyes snapped open. He held a large, velvety petal of the poivron flower between two, thick fingers and was sliding it over her skin. When she looked at him he was smiling.

Heated liquid slipped down her thigh at the sight. She was so hot…so needy…that even the slow curve of his mouth had her licking her lips in anticipation of tasting him.

The hunter tilted his head, dragging the petal down her throat and over the soaked and nearly transparent fabric of her shirt. She gulped as he slid the peppery petal over her nipple. It didn’t seem possible but somehow the hard little nub tightened and grew.

Her chest hurt and she realized she’d been holding her breath.

“You’re not wearing anything under that shirt.” His voice deepened a few octaves and caught on the last word, filled with wonder.

Yeira shook her head. “I don’t wear anything that might impede my movements.”

His gaze widened slightly and then did a slow perusal down her body, stopping where her thighs met in a throbbing, heated vee.

She swallowed hard, easily reading his thoughts. He was speculating about whether she wore panties. Terrified he would ask, she opened her mouth and spoke without thinking. “Give me that flower.” She immediately regretted the words but couldn’t take them back without embarrassing herself further.

His big hand lifted and opened. The slightly crushed flower lay in his palm.

Yeira grabbed it up, her fingertips scraping across the slightly roughened skin of his palm. The touch jolted through her like lightning and she tightened her thighs on a wave of lust.

The hunter extended his arm and she examined it. The long, angry lacerations ran from his wrist to just under his elbow, jagged and painful looking. The slashes were no longer bleeding, but the skin around them was purple and swollen. “You need the Healer.”

His handsome face blanched and he shook his head. “No thank you. I think that little jerk likes hurting me a little too much.”

Her lips curved upward. “He does enjoy his work.”

Audie snorted and then tensed as her fingers, coated in the cool gel, slid over the first gash. His skin was still impossibly hot under her touch and the flesh felt slightly spongy. She frowned. “If you don’t see him you could lose the arm.”

He didn’t respond, his gaze was fixed on her fingers as she spread the healing balm over the other lacerations.

A moment later he lowered his head and spoke softly, huskily, beside her ear. “You can’t imagine how good that feels.”

Heat flooded her cheeks and she averted her gaze, embarrassed. Unfortunately the shift centered her gaze on the column of flesh jutting between them.

She gulped and chickened out, stuffing the flower back into his hand. “I’m done.”

She started to turn away, just as an errant breeze slipped over them, bringing cool, smoky air into their sphere. The hunter grabbed her arm and Yeira gasped, pulling some of the magic-laced smoke into her lungs. He tugged her close and she slammed up against him, the massive shaft pressing into her belly as his head lowered.

“You’d leave me high and dry? Poison working its way through my leg?”

Her thoughts roiled. Yeira felt dizzy and hot. So hot. Hot enough to begin desperately tugging on her clothing. “I need…” Her eyes grew wild, sliding frantically around the space where they stood. Velvet dark embraced the area beyond the flickering firelight and silence throbbed through the wood.

The silence felt unnatural, menacing.

She jerked away from him and stumbled toward the creek, tugging desperately on her shirt. He caught up to her as she stepped into the creek, the heat of his arms enfolding her a stark contrast to the delicious coolness running over her feet.

“You don’t need to run from this, Yeira,” he told her. “In fact, you can’t run. You’re scared and confused because you want me, beyond thought, past caring.”

Yeira shook her head. “You can’t know…”

His lips found her shoulder—pressed a lingering kiss there—and she shivered under its power. “I know, because I feel exactly the same. I’ve been trying to deny it since first laying eyes on you. But it’s impossible. You and I aren’t just a man and a woman. Our bodies are tuned to each other in an almost magical way. When we’re apart I can barely think of anything else. I haven’t looked at another woman since I met you. My mind has tried to explain to me that you and I are at cross purposes…that we aren’t suited in any way…but my body doesn’t care about reason. It only cares that your skin is impossibly soft.” He ran a hot, lightly calloused hand up her belly, skimming the swollen curve of her breast. “—that your scent turns my brain to mush and stiffens my cock. I know now that I won’t be able to shove you out of my mind until I’ve tasted you…”

Hope flared in her breast. “Do you think that will work? That we can push these feelings aside if we just give in and have sex?”

His lips trailed up the side of her throat and he nibbled her jawline. One hand encompassed her breast and the other slipped downward, to skim beneath the waistband of her battle leather. “What you and I will share won’t be just sex, Yeira. It will be an exorcism…a purging.”

He easily stretched the leather away from her lower belly, sliding his hand past it to cup her sex. Yeira gasped, fire coiling in her belly. She knew he was right. She’d known it for some time.

In that moment it seemed impossible to resist what he was offering. Worse, it seemed utterly stupid.

She turned in his arms and arched into him, her hands lifting to twine through his midnight hair. “Then so be it. Let this be the start of our healing…and the end of our obsession.” She rose onto her toes and claimed his mouth, her hands dragging him closer even as he groaned against her lips and deepened the kiss.

A sense of rightness flooded Yeira. All doubts slid away. And as mindless lust razored through her, she pushed the outside world away, and embraced the tsunami of sensations she discovered in the hunter’s strong, capable arms.

His lips were heat and fire and delicious exploration. His taste spicy, infused with his own unique scent. He wrapped his arms tightly around her, enclosing her within his much larger body and she went into awareness overload from the full-body feel of him.

Sensation exploded, from Yeira’s lips to her toes, her whole body igniting with awareness and fire. She covered his pecs with her hands, the hard peaks of his nipples pressing against her palms. Hungry to feel more of him, she slipped her hands down his sides to caress his hips, and around, encompassing the rock-hard globes of his fine ass.

He moaned softly against her lips as she compressed his cock between them.

Yeira longed to feel the rigid length against her skin. She broke the kiss long enough to whisper a husky demand, “My clothes…”

He grabbed the hem of her shirt and pulled it upward, over her head, sucking in a breath as her breasts were uncovered. The hunter stared at the swollen mounds with a reverence that turned her knees to water and made her pussy convulse. His dark gaze locked on a pert nipple and one of his hands came up to cover it. She watched, transfixed as he rubbed a wide thumb over her aching nipple, feeling the delicious sting of his touch at her sexual core.

But when he lowered his head and took a hungry bud into his mouth…overwhelming it with moist, delicious heat…slivers of pleasure became overwhelming jolts to her system…violent in their repercussions.

Her entire system on sensual overload, Yeira closed her eyes and groaned. Her hands slipped through the dense silk of his hair. “Yes. Oh god, Hunter, suck it harder.”

He happily obliged, his hand tweaking the other nipple as he sucked the first one. His cock jumped with pleasure and he pressed closer. It was hard and heavy against her belly. Reaching between them, she found the delicious appendage with her hand and encircled it, caressing it in firm, slow strokes.

His head came up and he moaned. “Devil woman. I won’t last long if you keep that up.”

Her response was to drag her palm along his entire length once more, running her thumb over the silvery drop perched on its crown.

He captured her other nipple and sucked hard, his hands dropping to cover her ass.

The fever-like warmth of his hands branded her through her leather battle pants and she realized she needed to be closer…to feel him against her skin. She let go of his cock and tugged on her pants, struggling to peel the wet, sticky fabric from her body.

Audie stepped back. “Let me help.”

She opened her mouth to object as he wrapped one big hand into the waistband of her pants and dragged it open, tugging them down her legs the until cool night air sifted over her skin.

Once past her knees, the heavy material hit the ground at her feet.

“Good god in heaven,” Audie muttered, his dark, blue gaze fixed unwaveringly on her cleanly shaven mons. One hand drifted toward her as if he didn’t believe it was real. “I could empty my balls just from looking at you.”

Yeira held her breath as his hand closed in on her pussy, fearing the first touch would send her to the stars and she’d never find land beneath her feet again. Her pussy quivered with expectation as his fingers curved in anticipation of touching her. Lust condensed in a hard knot in her belly, tightening further with every second of anticipation, until her need for him was nothing less than delicious pain.

His fingers touched the smooth skin of her mons and slipped downward, cupping her. His cock jumped. The hunter wrapped a hand around his rigid shaft, seemingly without thought, and slowly stroked it. “Smooth as a babe’s behind.” His voice was filled with awe and husky with need.

Yeira had an almost overwhelming need to explain that she shaved so the leather didn’t tug painfully on her hair…but she didn’t want to break the spell so she bit her tongue. His fingers dipped into the crevice between her legs and found the nub of her clit. Yeira cried out as he touched it, bracing herself against his shoulders. “Hunter!”

He lowered his head and covered her lips in a kiss, catching her cries of ecstasy as he rubbed the tiny nub and slipped past, into the moist center of her sexuality.

Yeira was on fire. The lust she’d been trying to ignore for weeks rose up and threatened to consume her. Waves of it rolled over her as Audie assaulted her senses on dual fronts.

The knot in her belly tightened in painful response to his attentions, her nipples tingled and her breasts swelled against his chest. Yeira was tender, engorged. Every inch of her was hypersensitive…her need a near-painful pulse in her brain and groin.