in her profession must be skilled at making her clients feel wanted.
Her eyes laughed at him. “Unless you are not willing to offer your services after all.”
She must know. She must see. Beneath his breeches, he was hard as a rifle barrel and as ready to go off.
“I believe,” Jack said gravely, “I am up for the task.”
She sank onto the low rope bed, bare feet flat on the floor, naked knees parted. Still smiling, she reached for him, hooking her fingers into his breeches flap to draw him close between her smooth, pale thighs. His heart pounded.
In a kind of fever dream, he stared down at the top of her head. Her lower lip pouted in concentration as she worked the buttons from their holes, the brush of her knuckles sweet agony. A bar of sunlight slid between the shutters, firing her white blond hair to gold.
A little hum—triumph or approval—escaped her throat as she freed her prize. The contrast between her slim white fingers and his dark, thick cock seared his brain. His erection jerked in her hands.
Jack closed his eyes, absorbing her feather touch as she cupped and explored him. His hands rested lightly on her head. How long since a woman had held and caressed him? He could not think. Like this? Never.
Liquid fire swirled. His eyes shot open. She wasn’t . . . She couldn’t. . . .
She licked her lips, tasting him. Apparently she had. With her tongue.
His collar and boots felt suddenly too tight. His mouth went dry. Of course she wouldn’t . . . No woman had ever . . .
His knees nearly buckled as she fit her slick, hot mouth over the head of his cock. She was doing it, sucking him, swallowing him, sliding her full lips up and down his shaft, taking him deep in her throat. His mind blanked. His hips arched instinctively.
He was going to explode. He had to stop her. He would stop her. In a minute.
Or not.
His hands clenched convulsively in her hair. The strands slid cool and smooth as water between his fingers, against his belly. His gaze fell on the arch of her brow, the line of her back, the delicate bumps of her spine. He couldn’t see her face. But, oh God, he could feel her. Her tongue . . .
She was naked, submissive, bending before him, totally focused on his pleasure and yet utterly in control.
It was unbearably erotic.
And oddly unsettling.
He slid his hands to her shoulders and pushed her firmly onto the mattress. Levering himself over her, he settled his weight against her, absorbing the damp heat of her flesh, the womanly softness of her body. His erection lodged against her stomach.
She lay back, her hair fanning over the pillow, watching him with half-lidded eyes, a faint smile on her lips. He wanted . . . He didn’t know what he wanted. Only her.
Spreading her thighs wide, he mounted her with one strong, deep thrust.
Her sharp inhale echoed his own.
She felt so good, hot and wet and welcoming beneath him. Around him. Lowering his face to the side of her head, he inhaled the clean, salt tang of her hair. She smelled of sunshine and woman, of sex and the sea. For the first time in weeks, he felt he could breathe.
He hunched his back, stroking slowly in and out, feeling her inner muscles clench and quiver in response. But his right knee would not bear his weight for long. With a grunt, he reversed their positions, pulling and lifting her to lie over him while she laughed and rubbed against him like a cat.
He saw the red imprint of a button on her breast and frowned. He should take off his jacket. His boots. Any woman, even a whore, deserved that much courtesy.
But she required no preliminaries. Desired none. Quick as a fish, she straddled him, hot and gloriously wet. Taking him in hand, she impaled herself on his cock. Sensation bolted in a white hot arc from his balls to his brain.
Her name ripped from his throat.
In the plain, dim room, she burned above him, her hair a wild halo around her head, her white breasts tipped with coral or with flame. Her smooth thighs squeezed his sides. She set a shallow rhythm, rocking herself, pleasuring herself. Riding him. Her head was flung back, her eyes closed as she ground her wet sex against him. He was buried in her as deep as a man could be, intimately connected and yet apart.
He wanted her
Grasping her buttocks, he pulled her down hard as he thrust up.
Her startled eyes met his. Her rhythm faltered.
“With me,” he said harshly. He pressed up, gripping hard enough to bruise. She gasped and tightened around him.
The connection shot him to the edge.
Grimly, he held on, his blood roaring in his ears, as he drove into her, hammered into her, forging links of loneliness, heat, and need. The wet slap of their coupling filled the room. His lungs labored like a bellows. Her lips parted. Her eyes glazed, golden eyes burning to the back of his brain. Hot. Close. The pressure built in his balls and the base of his skull.
So close. The intimacy nearly shattered him. But he did not want to go alone.
He had never knowingly left a man behind. Or a woman, for that matter.
Teeth clenched, he plunged inside her, clinging to consciousness like a dying soldier on the battlefield, until he felt her swell and surge, until he felt her spasm and shake, until she shuddered and came apart in his arms.
Relief swept through him. A single thought spun with him into the abyss.
Relaxing his grip, he let the dark sweep over him and carry him away.
That had not gone at all as she had planned.
Morwenna sprawled over the man’s hard chest like seaweed on the rocks, the ripples of her release receding like the tide. Her body floated in delicious languor. Inside, she felt pleasantly tender. Relaxed.
Uneasy.
She raised herself on one elbow. The buttons of his coat were imprinted on her breasts, round red marks like love bites. Morwenna frowned. She was accustomed to wresting satisfaction from her human lovers. She did not tussle with them for control. But this one . . .
She propped above him, studying him in the slatted light from the shutters. He had a pleasing face, she decided, strong and composed even in sleep. His brow was broad and faintly creased, his long jaw shadowed with stubble. A few strands of silver threaded among the brown, reminders of his mortality. With one finger, she traced the air above his face, following the etchings of pain beside his mouth, the lines of laughter lurking at the corners of his eyes.
Not that she actually touched him. Her kind did not. Only to fight or to mate, to demonstrate power or possession.
Yet as she hovered over him, absorbing his strength, breathing his breath, something in her stirred and swayed like kelp below the surface of the water.
His body was broad and solid between her spread thighs. He was still half hard inside her. With very little effort, she could take him again. Warmth bloomed deep inside her at the thought.
No. He had already served her pleasure. She was not a fish wriggling on the hook of sexual desire. Her body was her own. Her life, her own. She would not cede control of either to any male.
Which was why she had sex with humans.
The memory of the man’s face as he pushed hard inside her flashed across her brain, his dark, dark eyes, his hoarse command.
She shivered. Definitely not what she had planned.
She slipped from the bed. Scooping the white dress from the floor, she pulled it over her head.
“If you are cold,” his voice said, husky with humor or sleep, “I would be happy to warm you.”
