A Touch of Crimson

With my fingers. My tongue. My cock.”

Her eyes squeezed shut and her head hung limply. She struggled to regulate her breathing, to regain some control over her own body. Even shrouded in darkness, Lindsay felt raw and exposed, seared by his blistering emotional turmoil. “T-technically, yes,” she managed between deep gulps of air. “But you stopped. You restrained yourself once. You can do it again.”

“Technically, you say.” His hands cupped the cheeks of her ass and squeezed roughly. His teeth nipped at the upper swell of her breast, over her heart, hard enough to hurt. The tightly leashed control she associated with him was gone. He was ruthless, predatory, single-minded in his need to dominate her from the outside in. “Neither of us came, so it doesn’t count?”

He hefted her up and yanked her legs around his hips. A heartbeat later he was penetrating her with his brutally hard erection. She shuddered and strained to accommodate him, but he took a swift step forward and drove himself in to the root.

Pinned to the door, she whimpered in exquisite agony. Although primed by a half dozen nights of tender, erotic dreams, she still needed time to adjust to his size.

“Please,” she whispered, although she didn’t know what she was asking for. To stop? To start? To never give up, even though she begged him to? She couldn’t say yes-not when she knew what he was risking. But she couldn’t stem the selfish longing that wanted him to refuse to accept no for an answer. There was nowhere else she’d rather be than right where she was, but her refusal wasn’t about her. It was about him and what was best for him.

She heard the rustle of Adrian’s wings, felt the soft breeze they created as they unfurled and moved. That telltale kiss of air betrayed the emotions he fought to hide.

“No,” she moaned, a final, futile effort to save him.

One of his hands went to her hair, lifting her head so he could take her mouth. His lips slanted across hers, his lungs inhaling her every gasping exhalation. He rolled his hips and screwed deep into her, grinding with just enough pressure to stimulate her swollen, sensitized clitoris. Lindsay’s body tensed in heated expectation, her greedy sex rippling along the length of his throbbing penis.

His breath caught. His irises flared bright enough to delineate the sclera of his eyes and the thickness of his lashes in the darkness. He exhaled into her lungs. “No more technicalities.”

Adrian came so hard she felt it like a deep, hard thrust inside her. The violent jerking of his spending cock… the wash of molten liquid that caused sweat to slide between her breasts…

Her orgasm took her by surprise.

She shook with the unexpected surge of pleasure, her blood roaring through her ears so that she barely heard him moan her name.

The need to sob and cry out welled inside her. Lindsay caught his neck in her teeth, biting down to stem the sounds she wanted no one else to hear.

“Yes,” he hissed, thrusting mindlessly. “Fuck yes.”

Her wrists were freed. Her arms fell to his shoulders, her muscles twitching and tingling from the strain of pulling for freedom.

He pivoted away from the door, carrying her unerringly in the dark-still joined, still coming. He sat, and Lindsay felt cushions beneath her knees. A love seat, maybe. Or an armless chair. Her jaw unclenched, releasing his throat, and her head lifted. Behind her, a soft glow built like a light on a dimmer switch-a barrister’s desk lamp illuminating gradually until she could see everything in the room.

She looked upon his face, her heart thudding with joy at the sight of him. He was flushed, his eyes feverishly bright, his lips swollen from the ferocity of his kisses. But what ruined her was the moisture glistening on his lashes.

Tears. From her indomitable, implacable angel.

“It’s already too late,” he said hoarsely, wiping her own tears from her cheeks with soothing strokes of his thumbs. “Do you understand?”

She nodded.

He kissed the marks on her wrists left by the bonds he’d restrained her with. “I know you wanted to protect me from this. I tried to let you, but I can’t.”

“I’m sorry. I’m so damn sorry I-”

“Don’t.” His head fell back. Upholstered in black suede, the love seat they occupied framed Adrian’s dark splendor and offset his rich olive-toned skin. “Don’t apologize for caring enough to be strong when I’m weak. Don’t be sorry for being the one thing that makes me happy.”

“For how long?” she challenged.

“As long as we can beg, borrow, and steal. Don’t deny me. I need you. I need this- your touch, your pleasure, your love. I can’t think without you, can’t feel anything. And I need to do both of those things to get through the shit I’m wading through right now. If you want to save me, you have to be with me.”

“What about the other Sentinels?”

“What about them? There’s not a one of them out there who doesn’t know I just nailed you to my office door.”

“Oh god…” Embarrassment flushed her skin.

“I wanted them to hear,” he said vehemently. “I could have taken you miles away, but you and me… it needs to be out in the open. I’m not ashamed of how I feel about you. I’m not ashamed that I can’t stop wanting you. It is what it is.”

“They already hated me.” She dreaded leaving the room and facing all those accusing cerulean eyes. “Now-”

“They heard you say no. They can’t hold this against you.”

Lindsay cupped his face in her hands. “I’m not worth all this. I’m not. I’m just a crazy mortal who has no self- preservation instincts.”

“And I’m an angel who’d die for you. See? We’re a perfect match.”

Her heart fell into her stomach. “Adrian.”

He caught her wrists, his face revealing so much emotion she wept at the beauty of it. “Stay with me, Lindsay. Be with me.”

“How can I say yes, knowing what it’ll do to you?”

“Just say it.”

They were too stubborn, both of them. She’d gotten what she wished for. And again, she regretted it. She couldn’t say yes, and he wouldn’t hear no. “I don’t belong anywhere else, you know. I’ve never fit in with ‘normal’ people. I don’t fit in with your people. But I fit with you. I know it. I feel it. None of that matters, though, because it’s forbidden. I’ll be damned if I’m the reason you fall and lose your wings. I’d rather die than see you turned into a soulless, bloodsucking vampire.”

He nuzzled his nose against hers. “Ani ohev otach, Lindsay.”

Oh god… Now that she knew what that meant…

“Make love to me,” he whispered, pulling her mouth down to his and teasing the seam of her lips with the tip of his tongue. “Show me you want this as much as I do.”

Her hands gripped the back of the love seat.

“Take me, neshama sheli,” he coaxed, flexing his still hard cock inside her. Sprawled beneath her in all his gorgeous magnificence and purring an erotic invitation, he looked every inch the sinful, decadent, unabashedly wicked fallen angel. “I’m yours.”

Lindsay shook her head. “No.”

Adrian’s features lit with a glorious smile. He twisted swiftly and she found herself beneath him, filled with him.

“I know what it means when you say that,” he murmured, hooking his arm beneath her leg and drawing it up, opening her so completely he hit the end of her.

Panting in exquisite torture, she managed, “It means run. Save yourself.”

“All of which says, ‘I’m falling for you, Adrian.’ ”

His tongue traced leisurely along his lower lip before he caught the firm curve in his teeth. He watched her with heavy-lidded eyes, gauging her reaction as he gave a practiced roll of his hips. The thick crown of his penis rubbed