Anya Bast - Witch Heart

"I can't." She shook her head. "I need to learn how to control it."

"Yeah, but not at this high a price. It's making you sick."

She drew another deep breath and her body trembled. He couldn't let her power free of the cradle he was holding it in until she'd completely backed away from the elium. "It feels like it's sucking my life away."

"Let it go." He growled the words. "Wow, Claire."

He felt her release the light hold she had on the elium. Immediately, her eyes fluttered closed and she collapsed backward onto the bed. Adam's thread of power snapped back into him like a rubber band and he was over her in a flash, holding her in his arms.

She lay, shaking and cold. Her shallow breath made his heart beat fast in his chest. "Claire, can you hear me?"

After a moment she nodded, licked her dry, white lips. "Give me a moment."

He stroked her hair. It tickled his nose and he breathed in the scent of her gratefully. "You're scaring me, baby."

She gave a shallow laugh. "I'm scaring myself." She swallowed hard. "It's taking little chunks of my life from me."

"It's not," Adam said in a fierce voice. If it was, he'd kick its ass.

He lay down beside her, spooning against her — her back to his chest — and wrapped his arms around her, trying to get her warmed up. He pulled a thread of power and wrapped her in it, but all the heat he poured into her seemed to just evaporate.

She shivered. "I feel so cold, so dead."

Her words made fingers of dread crawl slowly up his spine. He held her closer and increased the amount of heat in his embrace. She shivered once and then went still.

"Claire?" He sat up, trying to look at her face.

In answer, she rolled to her back, lifted up, and kissed him. But it wasn't just any kiss. This was a full-on fuck-me kiss with all the trimmings.

Her tongue meshed to his, mouth slanted and aggressively pressed to his lips. His body responded like a shot. What had been fear for her only moments ago melted easily into passion.

"Damn it, Claire. You're going to make me crazy with a kiss like that," he whispered against her mouth. "Stop it. You're playing with fire."

"I know I am. I'm trying to make a spark." She studied his face for a moment. "Make me feel alive again, Adam."

Whoa.

"Baby, as much as I want you, now is not the time. We have no idea when the Atrika might show up and—"

She kissed him again, cutting off the rest of his sentence. Finally, she set her forehead to his. "Exactly."

Claire nipped at his lower lip and slipped her hand between their bodies to fondle his already hard cock.

There really was only so much one man could take. Especially, Adam was chagrined to admit, when it came to Claire. She was already like some dark, magickical addiction. When she went after him like this, so aggressively, kissing him this way…

The demons could fucking wait.

He came down over her body, kissing her back with even more heat and pressing her against the mattress.

If she wanted him, he was hers.

With his free hand he undid the button and snap of her jeans, pulled them down and off her legs, along with her underwear. Her flesh was pale and cold everywhere.

Pushing the hem of her shirt up, he kissed along her breasts and stomach, then urged her to roll over on her stomach so he could run his lips and hands over the chilled skin of her back. She moved restlessly beneath him, pressing the curve of her perfect ass into the cup of his groin.

He dragged his hand down between the cheeks of her rear and found an area of her body that was a far cry from cold. Hot and slick, Claire's sex was eager for the touch of his hand. He found her clit and rubbed it, making her moan.

Her fingers clutched the blankets as he slipped one, then two, fingers deep inside her velvety tight sex. Her muscles rippled around his fingers as he thrust in and out. Her hips moved, too, as she met his movements as though he fucked her with his cock.

The last remnants of the control Adam possessed shredded.

He unbuttoned his jeans and forced them, along with his briefs, to his ankles. Claire pushed up again, fitting her ass to his groin in invitation. He grabbed her hips and met her there, pushing the head of his cock into her entrance and feeling the stretch of those satiny muscles, the hot fist of her sex around his shaft.

"Hell Claire, you feel so fucking good. I'm not going to last long."

She glanced back at him, breathing heavy. "Make my blood pump again, Adam."

Pulling out of her, he held her hips and thrust back in. Harder. Faster. He set up a rhythm that would drive them both to climax in minutes.

Claire dug her knees into the mattress and met him thrust for thrust. Together they fell into a physical harmony that made his magick pulse in the center of his chest, made fire tingle along his skin in hot little bursts. No other woman he'd ever been with made his power flare like that during sex.

Claire's magick answered and it wasn't the elium, it was her power — a clear beautiful pulse of element that momentarily took his breath away.

Knowing he wasn't going to take long to come, he threaded his hand between her body and the mattress, pushed between her soft thighs. Finding her clit, swollen and aroused, he stroked it over and over.

She shuddered, the first clue that he was touching her the way she liked. He kept it up — steady, firm, relentless pressure driven by his thrusts. It made her body shiver, then go taut.

Beneath him, she orgasmed. The muscles of her sex tightened and released in pleasurable spasms, milking his cock. Her cries, soft and heady to his ears, filled the air. Her body relaxed as the climax took her over, her magick flaring in an arc around them.

It wasn't long until he followed her. Pleasure rocketed up from his balls and overtook him, mind and body. He came inside her, her name falling over and over from his lips.

Afterward, they lay on the bed together, tangled and sated. Claire was breathing heavily now, deeply. A healthy flush tinged her cheeks and her body was warm to the touch.

Sex had done the trick. Sex as a reaffirmation of life to counter the taste of death on Claire's tongue.

"You feel better?" he asked, rolling her once again in a position to spoon.

She snuggled against his chest and sighed. "So much better."

"There are strange things about you, Claire. The dreams for one thing." He paused, thinking, his fingers trailing over her skin. "And when we make love, you trigger my magick."

"Make love?"

He opened his mouth and closed it. "Doesn't seem right to say fuck, even though I like to fuck you."

"You think there's a difference between fucking and making love?"

He stroked her upper arm. "Yeah, I do. I've done a lot of fucking in my life and it's been good. I've spent a lot less time making love, but making love is better. Deeper."

"What happened to your wife, Adam?"

He stiffened at the question, his fingers halting the stroke of her soft skin. It was like a punch to his gut when he least expected it.

She rolled to her back. "I mean, how did she die?"

Adam sat up, yanked his jeans on, buttoned them, and pulled a hand through his hair. "She died during a burglary."

"I'm sorry."

He gave a harsh laugh. "Twenty-five brownstones on the block and the guy had to walk into ours."

Adam still remembered it vividly. He always would. He'd just arrived home after his shift. It had been late, around midnight. He'd gone upstairs where Eliza had already been in bed. She'd woken and wanted a bottle of water for her night table. He'd offered to get her one— Gods, he'd offered to go instead of her —but she'd told him to take a shower, go to sleep.