biceps to hold on. She needed to hold on because he wasn’t going to be able to stop once he started. He knew this without a doubt and sighed, dropping his head so that his gaze fell solidly on the tattoo at her side.
The tattoo of her dead son’s name. She’d borne another man’s child and that child had died. She’d lost her parents and her son and she was still standing, ready and willing to take him with this darkness engulfing him inside her. The knowledge almost broke him. Almost.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” he said in a voice that didn’t sound like his own.
The next thing X felt was her hands at his cheeks, pulling upward until his gaze met hers.
“You won’t hurt me,” she told him in a strong and clear voice. “I trust you, Xavier.”
She didn’t. She couldn’t. She had no idea who or what he was, what he’d been through, how he came to be this beast that barely held on. He opened his mouth, determined to tell her, to warn her. But when he did she came up on tiptoe and covered his lips with hers, thrusting her tongue inside his mouth, rendering him totally speechless.
The kiss was like liquid fire moving through him. He gripped her tighter—if that were even possible without breaking her in two—his mouth sucking at hers hungrily. His teeth scraped along her bottom lip, clamped down and tugged until his tongue wanted to taste her once more. Her arms had gone around his neck and she pulled him closer, hugged him tighter.
Admittedly, kissing wasn’t X’s favorite pastime. The act never appeared during his sexual escapades because he didn’t allow it. Now, despite his past misgivings, X was drowning in this kiss. With his eyes wide open he watched her and she watched him. But he was falling, felt the weightlessness as their tongues touched and dueled. Inside, his cat growled and paced, wanting him to take more, take faster. He lifted her off the floor, dropping her onto the bed and breaking their kiss. She landed on her elbows, shook back her hair, and glared at him. Her cat’s eyes glowing, her teeth bared and sharp. “I’m okay,” she told him.
He hadn’t asked; in fact, the question was so far back in the recesses of his dark, addled mind, he wondered how she knew. With a shake of his head, a futile attempt to gain some clarity, X lowered himself until his face hovered just above her tattoo.
“I saw this that first night you were in Rome’s house. I wanted to lick you all over the second I knew you had been inked.”
He didn’t give her a chance to respond, but flattened his tongue over the tattoo and licked. Her hand went to the back of his head as he licked again and again, some small part of him wishing it had been his child. The thought led him to her stomach, where his tongue delved into her navel. Beneath him she spread her legs and it was like a beckoning. His hands slid down her thighs until he clasped her just behind the knees and pushed upward. The action opened her wide for his perusal and peruse he did, gladly.
With feral hunger gnawing at him, he looked down at the plump folds of her vagina, already glistening with her arousal. Her center opening creamed, and X’s cat growled. Lowering his head he caught the juices on the tip of his tongue, savored them for a moment, then licked her until he would swear she’d be bone-dry. But when he pulled back, she still glistened with wetness, her womanhood as beautiful as everything else about her. Waiting wasn’t an option … no, this time it had to be. X pushed back against the urgings, rising above her to cup her breasts. His dick hurt, the skin pulled so tightly over the bulbous head he feared a really bad result. But he didn’t care, as his palms worked over her breasts, his eyes closed, and that weightless feeling comforted him. It lulled him against the darkness like a huge pillow. He swore the scent had intensified like a pillowcase rubbing softly against his skin.
“Xavier.” She called his name and X heard her clearly. Not like before when it could have been a whisper on the wind.
This time it was loud, or at least loud to his ears. “Say it again,” he urged her.
“Xavier” was her quick reply.
He still stood over her, hands on her breasts, eyes closed.
“Again.”
“Xavier.”
His hands moved quickly from her breasts to her wrists. Opening his eyes, he watched her closely as he pulled her arms up over her head. “Don’t move,” he told her.
Cursing, he wished like hell he was at his place where his things were. As it stood he’d have to make do. Climbing off the bed he found his jeans, pulled the belt from the hoops. He went to the headboard and grabbed Caprise’s wrists, tying them tightly to the heavy wood. To her credit she didn’t even wince.
X leaned down to her then, licked over her lips, then thrust deep into her mouth, kissing her until she was breathless. “Stop,” he told her. “All you have to say is
She nodded, licking her trembling lips. “I won’t.”
“Listen to me,” he said louder. “It’s all you have to say.”
“I understand” was her next reply even though her eyes still said she planned to be defiant. X almost smiled at that. It was like a little ray of light spearing through the darkness.
His mouth covered one delectable breast, sucking the nipple in deeply as his hand grasped the other. He didn’t lay on top of her, so only his mouth and his hands touched her. She hissed loudly, her legs parting, lifting up off the bed then slamming back down as his ministrations grew stronger, harder. Her skin was such a perfectly creamy hue, he hated to bruise her, but knew that was probably going to be impossible.
She tasted like heaven, a place he’d never dreamed of, never even dared to mention. Yet here it was right in front of him. Switching to the other breast, he sucked his fill until he was intoxicated with the taste of her. When he pulled away it was because all his nerves were on end, every part of his body begging for something more. He straddled her at the shoulders then, lifting his length to guide it to her lips. She was so eager her lips were already parted, ready to accept him. Before she did X held his dick upward and she smiled. Her tongue lapped along the line of his piercings over and over until he was now saying her name through gritted teeth.
When she raised her head higher and scraped her teeth over the metal balls X roared, loud and long, with the pleasurable sensations ripping through his body. Pressing a finger on his shaft he aimed the tip at her moistened lips, watched as she took him in slowly. When he pumped his hips he wondered if she’d gag or try to turn her head. He should have known better.
Caprise sighed over his length, sucking him to the rhythm his hips moved. Moisture dripped from her lips onto his shaft until they were both glistening.
“Enough!” he finally yelled, pulling out of her mouth and reaching for her legs.
He pushed them back so far she could probably kiss her kneecaps. When he thrust his throbbing length inside her waiting pussy they both yelled. The room seemed to capture the sound so that it bounced back at them like an echo.
X didn’t care. Nothing and he meant absolutely nothing mattered at this moment but this pleasure. This woman. This shifter that had pushed her way into his space. His dick sank deeper and deeper with each stroke, her body sucking him in graciously. He wasn’t gentle and he knew he wasn’t small, but she rotated her hips, giving as well as she was receiving.
Spasms of light speared the darkness in his mind. His cat stood on hind legs, growling and hissing its pleasure. More and more was what he wanted from her. Everything and then some. Her legs trembled and shook in his hands. His name streaming from her lips over and over as her release took a strong hold.
His followed with a tightening at the base of his spine, the stiffening of his thighs and buttocks as he emptied himself completely inside of her.
When he was completely depleted, and only then, X closed his eyes once more.
The darkness was gone.
He opened them.
Caprise was still here.
Chapter 23
“Two more girls are dead,” Darel said with no more emotion than it took to announce there was a leak in one of the bathroom toilets. Even though one of the girls had been Raven, who had provided him with tremendous
