driven by his internal whip, grew a little thoughtful about his lack of control.
Aryal growled, a husky wild note that shuddered over his skin and went straight for his cock, and she kissed him back savagely. They ate at each other as if they were still fighting.
Their surroundings could hardly be any worse. It was chill, damp, and they were sprawled on the hard pavement and out in the open. Anyone could come along and see them at any time.
None of it mattered. Images ran through his mind like molten lava. He wanted to flip her over, get her in a head-lock and hold her there, strip down her jeans and take her in the ass.
Hard and rough, baby. No holds barred, no ritualized courtesy and no safe word, just pure animal rut. He wanted to dominate the shit out of her and make her scream while she lost everything to her own climax.
She shifted the hand from his throat to grip the back of his head.
He knocked her hand away and snarled against her lips, “Don’t touch me.”
Her eyes flashed. She bit his lip hard, and he reared his head back. A thin, warm trickle tickled his skin. She’d drawn blood.
“What’s the matter with me touching you?” she asked. Her gaze turned challenging. “Do you like it too much?”
She was too accurate. She saw too much.
She was a demon, Lucy Ricardo on crack.
“Hate sex,” he said. He didn’t recognize the sound of his own voice.
Get it out of his system. Exorcise her from his mind and body.
Fuck yeah.
“You want it,” she said.
He became aware of what they were doing. She had wrapped those long legs of hers around his waist so that their pelvises aligned through the layers of their clothing. She had wrapped her Power around him too, and it felt hot and keen like a slicing, summer wind. They were rocking together in a pagan rhythm that echoed the coursing in his blood. He had palmed one of her breasts, gripping the slight, high mound through her sweater.
His eyes narrowed. “You want it too.”
Her expression mocked him. “Don’t let it go to your head. Just your penis.”
He almost laughed, but the verbal sparring had brought his thinking back online and he remembered his rage instead. He thrust away from her with a muttered curse. Her legs loosened from around his waist, and he rolled to his feet.
Aryal stood too, shaking off the snow from her back and stamping her boots. He watched as she walked over to a clean patch of snow and scooped a little into her hands. She gritted her teeth as she washed the blood from her fingers. The cuts were already closed, but they looked angry and red, and she moved her hands like they pained her.
Served her right. Driving her talons
Then he anchored his hands on his hips. Instead of murdering her, he had determined to actually try to have things out with her once and for all, but by gods, she didn’t make anything easy.
“I’m back to my original question,” he growled.
“Are you?” The glance she gave him was full of indifference. “That’s probably not very pleasant.”
“What the fuck? Seriously, just answer me.
“Not at all,” she said. She finished cleaning her hands, shook off the snow and turned to face him, mirroring his stance. The thing was, when he looked into her eyes, the whack-job harpy appeared to be quite lucid. At the moment she looked amused again. “You being a criminal—that was important, because that was how I was going to trap you. I don’t actually care that you broke the law, Quentin. I don’t actually care much about the law, period.”
He raised his eyebrows skeptically. “You have a funny way of showing it.”
She twitched her shoulders, as if shaking off an irritating fly. “What I care about is whether or not you have endangered the Wyr demesne. Smuggling some high-dollar luxury items? So we didn’t get some tax revenue we should have gotten. Big fucking deal. If you go after Dragos—if you do anything to actively try to hurt any of the people I care about—that’s when I will come after you, and I won’t stop until I hurt you bad, or you end up dead, or maybe even both of those things. That’s my bottom line. It’s really quite simple.”
He spun away from her sharply to stare out over the abandoned area without really seeing it, his explosive rage easing back down to a simmer. One way or another, it always came back to Dragos. She would hate to know what he had done last year, and he had no intention of telling her.
“Why Dragos?” he murmured, almost to himself. “He and the Wyr demesne are two different things. Dragos could die and the demesne would go on.” He looked over his shoulder at her. “I’m speaking theoretically.”
“Some form of the demesne would go on,” she said. She shook her head. “It wouldn’t be the same. And it wouldn’t be as strong. I will never forget what Dragos did when he united the Wyr. No one else could have done it. I’m well aware that you don’t like him, but whatever else you may say, no one else can do the job he does. He’s got the strength, the ambition and ruthlessness, and he’s got the financial acumen. Forcefulness and prosperity. That’s a hell of a combination. Hell, you were there this morning too. We’re two of the best Wyr fighters in the world, and he stomped our asses.”
That he had.
Somehow they had managed to move away from the craziness, the violence and the sex, and they were almost having a rational conversation. Quentin wasn’t sure what to make of it, except he was a long way from trusting it, or her. He rubbed his aching jaw where she had punched him and laughed under his breath.
He had to give it to her, she’d made some moves he hadn’t seen coming. He wasn’t about to underestimate her again. He tilted his head as he turned back to her, and he gave her a catlike smile. “Listen to us,” he said. “If someone didn’t know any better, they might think we were almost close to making a truce.”
An evil gleam crept into her narrowed gaze. “A truce?” she said. “Just because we smacked each other around, did a little bump and grind and exchanged more than three words at a time? Fuck, no.”
That internal whip that drove him?
Sometimes it felt good.
He purred, “There we go.”
She still refused to let him drive, even though he knew she didn’t care about the rental policy. There was nothing more infuriating than someone who was being pedantic about something you know they don’t give a damn about.
She drove back to the highway entrance, and in a matter of moments they were moving southwest toward the Bohemian Forest. He made a mistake once. He didn’t make it twice. He wasn’t about to ride shotgun without a seat belt on while she was in the driver’s seat.
Prague and the immediate surrounding area were densely urban, but once they traveled beyond a certain point they were surrounded by scenes of almost desolate beauty, the countryside washed of all its colors in the wintry day. It was as if a giant, unseen hand had taken all the smog from the industrialized area and smeared it over the landscape.
Quentin knew better. He had traveled through the Czech Republic in finer weather and remembered the blue skies, green fields and richly hued lakes.
They traveled in silence for a while. Neither one of them reached to turn on the radio. The heat from their earlier passion lingered, like half-seen coals in a banked fireplace. Images of what happened kept flashing in his mind’s eye. The way she had tricked him and pinned him against the metal door, her lean body pressed against his. The way he had slammed her into the ground and held her, hands around her throat.
His hand on her breast. Her thighs clamped on his. Her body undulating underneath him.
