The guards melted away as I crossed the room toward him. It was my problem now. Oh, hell, it had always been my problem. Because of Asher’s jealousy, no one else but me was dating Dev, so it was just him and me. I said a quick prayer for wisdom because I didn’t know what to say, but I’d learned that it’s not really what you say sometimes, it’s that you’re willing to say something, anything, that you’re just there.
I walked over to him and touched the silk of his hair. He took in a ragged breath, loud and painful, and raised his face. I had a moment to see that handsome face tear streaked, his eyes with their amber brown circle around the pupil and the outer edge of rich, pale blue, blinking up at me, and then he grabbed me around the thighs, those strong arms pulling me in against his body, knees opening up so he wrapped as much of himself around me as he could. When he was sitting down, his face still came above my belly button, almost to my sternum. I suddenly felt small.
I stroked his hair and murmured, “It’s all right, Dev. It’s all right.”
He shook his head, rubbing his face against my shirt. He managed to gasp in a breathy voice, thick with tears, “It’s not all right. It can’t be. It won’t be.”
“Asher’s only going away for a month, then he’ll be back.”
He pressed his cheek against my stomach. “I love him, Anita, I really do.”
“That’s great, Dev.”
“I’ve never been in love before.”
I bent over him and hugged him back, because the first time can hurt like hell. “It’s wonderful and awful, isn’t it?” I said.
He turned his head, and I stood back up so we could look at each other. “Yes, because he’s wonderful and awful.”
I nodded. “Yeah, that’s about right-wonderful and awful is very Asher.”
“If he heard you say that, he’d assume you meant the scars.”
I petted the side of Dev’s face, tracing the edge of his profile. “I’ve offered to try to fix the scars. He won’t let me.”
“He’s afraid.”
“I know, I’d have to cut enough flesh away to make a new wound and see if I can heal it with sexual energy. If it doesn’t work, then we don’t do anything else.”
“I think he’s afraid to be perfect again.”
“Why?” I asked.
He shrugged those big shoulders, arms tightening around my legs, so that my knees had to bend into his chest, so that I would have fallen except he was there to catch me. I wrapped my arms around his neck and shoulders, and his face was suddenly peering at me through my breasts. He snuggled his face so that I could see his whole face framed by my breasts.
I laughed. “I’m here to comfort you.”
He rubbed his face against my breasts. “This is comforting.”
I gave him narrow eyes. “Is this your way of saying you don’t want to talk about this?”
He nuzzled his face against one breast until he found the nipple, then rubbed his lips over it until he felt my body react to his touch. “No, it’s me saying that I haven’t gotten to touch breasts in a long time, and I miss girls. I do love him, Anita, I really do, but if he wants me to give up everyone but him, loving him isn’t enough.” He went back to that light caress of lips across my nipple.
The pulse in my neck was jumping, my body beginning to react to him. “Love doesn’t conquer all,” I said.
“Was it stupid to think it would?” he asked.
“No, not stupid; for some people one person is enough,” I said, “but you…” He rubbed his face harder against my breast. “… You are the most truly bisexual person I’ve ever met.” He licked my nipple through the thin T-shirt material, one long swipe of tongue. My voice was breathy as I said, “You really don’t have a preference for boy or girl, you just like the person.” He opened his mouth wide and put as much of my breast into his mouth as would fit. My pulse was making it hard to talk. “Someone like you isn’t going to be happy without both.” His teeth pressed down, slowly, more pressure than anything. “I take it you don’t want to talk anymore.” My voice sounded strained.
He shook his head with my breast still in his mouth.
“Bedroom?” I asked.
He shook his head again, shaking my breast a little more firmly. It made me have to close my eyes for a minute.
“Here?”
He nodded, biting down on my breast, and letting a slow growl trickle out from between his lips. The growl vibrated across my breast.
“God, Dev,” I breathed.
He grinned with my breast still in his mouth. His eyes filled with a mix of mischief, sex, and just him. Dev was short for Devil, and in that moment he earned his nickname. I shivered and he worried my breast with his teeth until I cried out his name.
42
DEV HADN’T TOUCHED a woman in two months. He wanted to touch, fondle, lick, and nibble all the parts that he’d been missing. Who was I to argue? He brought me with his mouth, with me sitting above him, so that I was staring into his eyes when he brought me screaming, my hands searching the air for something to hold on to. He put me on my back and used his fingers between my legs until I screamed his name and sank nails into the one arm I could reach. I was lying on the carpeted floor boneless, breathless, eye-fluttering happy, when I felt the tip of him begin to touch me.
“No,” I said.
He stopped, his body pulling back enough so he wasn’t touching me. “What’s wrong?”
I fought to roll over on my side and fish for a condom in the pile of clothes and weapons. I hadn’t had one when I was with Nicky, but I’d started trying to carry some in one of my ammo carriers. I finally rolled back with one of the little foil-wrapped packets in my hand.
He made a pouty face at me, still on his knees. I held the condom in my fingers, and smiled. “Sorry, we aren’t fluid bonded.”
“Do you use a condom when you’re with Asher without me?”
“Yes,” I said, and I realized that Jean-Claude had insisted on that. I wondered how long he’d been thinking Asher might have to leave.
“Then that’s fair,” he said. He got up on his knees and held his hand out for the foil-wrapped condom.
I grinned at him. “If you haven’t been with anyone but Asher in two months, then there’s something else you’ve been missing, unless you changed your mind about enjoying pain with your oral sex.”
“Asher can open his mouth wide enough to avoid the fangs; just the sucking doesn’t work.”
I handed him the condom. “Well, if you don’t want oral.”
He grinned, sudden and wide. “I didn’t say that.”
He lay back on the floor, and he was already hard and ready. I began to lick the skin around the edges of his groin. “Please, just go down on me. Please, God, just suck me.”
“Some of the men in my life complain that I don’t do enough preliminaries.”
“I won’t complain,” he said. He gazed down his body at me. I wrapped my hand around the base of him, and licked the tip of him. “Anita, please!” I sealed my mouth over the end of him and began to push my way down slowly, not because I had to, but because I could, and I liked the almost desperate look on his face as I inched my way down him. “Please,” he said, again. I plunged my mouth down until my lips met my hand, and then slid back up the long, thick shaft of him. A look of both pleasure and pain crossed his face. It wasn’t a good pain, but more as if the way I was doing it were more like teasing than action. I gave up trying to prolong things and rose up on my knees, bending my body forward over his so that I could get a better angle, kept my hand around the base of him, and let myself spill my mouth down and over him in one long, fast movement, until I met my own hand, and then up
