Laurell Hamilton - Hit List

He rolled his tongue in small circles at the base of my spine until I shivered for him, and then he plunged his tongue downward, tracing between my cheeks. It brought a surprised sound from me. He bit me, gently, on one cheek.

I whispered, “God.”

“I take it you liked that,” he said, voice already growing deeper.

What was I supposed to do, lie? “Yes,” I said my voice a little shaky.

He bit me again, a little harder, but still not hard. I half-rolled, half-fell onto my side. He bit farther down my cheek, harder yet. It made me shiver again, my breath catching in my throat. He touched my thigh, lifted, and I opened my legs for him. He set his teeth in the last bit of cheek, before he got to other things. He bit me this time, hard enough that it made me gasp and try to sit up, but his hands were on my thighs, and ass, and sitting up wasn’t happening. I was suddenly staring down my body to find his face between my thighs, looking up at me.

“Too hard?” he asked. The side of his face rested on my thigh, his other hand wrapped around my other thigh, holding my leg wide and up.

“A little,” I said, and my voice was breathy.

“Do you like teeth everywhere?” He was strangely serious with his face on my thigh. But considering what his face was so close to, it was a serious question.

“No, not everywhere.”

He smiled, a quick flex of his mouth, making the dimples even deeper. “Then no more teeth.”

Honestly, a little biting along the inner thighs was nice, and if it was done right a little teeth in more intimate places could work for me, but I didn’t know Ethan that well. Erring on the side of caution seemed like a good idea for the first time.

“No more teeth down there,” I said.

“Anything else you don’t want me to do?”

I thought about it. He stretched my leg out and let part of it rest lower down on his side, while he used my other thigh as a pillow. It was all strangely casual.

“Let’s try not to mark me where I’ll have to explain it to the other cops.”

“But I can mark you where they can’t see?”

“Depends on the mark, but if I’m in the right head space I like to come away with marks.”

“What can I do to get you in the right head space?”

“You like to leave marks?” I asked.

“Only if you enjoy it.”

“What do you enjoy?” I asked. The mood of sex and seduction was easing into something more normal.

He smiled and it was almost shy. That seemed the wrong word when a man had his head resting on my thigh and was looking at the most intimate parts of my body, but it was still the truth.

“Tell me,” I said.

He frowned up at me, and said, “You really want to know.”

“Of course I do.”

He rubbed his hand over the outside of my thigh, more petting it than anything. “Why ‘of course’?”

“I want you to enjoy yourself, too.”

He grinned, wide and sudden, his gray eyes filling with something close to laughter. “Oh, I’ll enjoy myself. I want to make sure you enjoy yourself.”

“Why?” I said.

“If you enjoy yourself, then there’s a better chance you’ll want to be with me again.”

It was perfect boy logic. “But I still want to know what you enjoy, Ethan.”

He looked perplexed. “I like sex with girls.”

That made me smile. “I think we have that covered.”

He grinned again, and then again that shy look came over his face. “I want to touch as much of you as you’ll let me. I want as much of you on as much of me as I can get. I want to do as much as you’ll let me do.” The shy look gave way to something much sadder.

“Once I feed the ardeur we’ll lose a lot of control.”

“I don’t want to lose control too soon,” he said. “I want it to last.”

I nodded. “I do need to feed and get back to crime solving, but . . . How long has it been for you?”

He shook his head, rubbing his cheek against my thigh. “I don’t want to say, it makes me sound like mercy sex.”

I rubbed my foot along his hip, and let him see in my face how amazing he looked cuddled down there. I still hadn’t seen all of him bare of the covers, but if everything else was half as nice as what I had seen, it would be worth seeing. I let him see that I saw him. I saw him as beautiful. I saw him as desirable, and I realized that the ardeur wasn’t just about sex anymore. It was more and more about giving people their heart’s desire. Ethan wanted what a lot of people wanted: to be wanted. We all want to be desired. I did my best to let him see that I did.

His face showed a soft wonder, as if no one had looked at him like that in a very long time. I held my hand out to him.

“I thought I was doing this first,” he said.

“Trust me, I want you to go down on me, but first I want to kiss and cuddle. Once you do me orally I’m just going to want you to fuck me.”

His eyes went wide, and he shivered.

“What?” I asked.

“The way you talk.”

“Something wrong with the way I talk?”

“No,” he said, “it’s great. It’s just . . . perfect.” He went up on all fours to crawl up toward my head, and I was able to see him completely nude for the very first time. All the talk had made him soft again, so that that flat, ridged stomach was edged by the soft, dangling bits of him. It made me, as it usually did, want to go down on him while he was still soft and I could fit all of him in my mouth without working at it.

His face was over mine when he said, “You watch my bits the way some men watch breasts.”

I blushed, I couldn’t help it. I glared up at him with his knees between my spread thighs, a hand on either side of my shoulders, both of us buck naked. I tried for dignity and promptly failed. He was smiling that big dimpled smile of his that I already knew was his really pleased smile.

“I didn’t expect you to blush.”

I kept glaring at him while the blush faded. I tried to fold my arms across my chest but with bare breasts my cup size, it just didn’t work.

He lay down beside me, propped on his side, and watched my face. “I expected a lot of things from you, Anita, but not this.”

“What? That I’d blush?”

“That, and you’re so . . .” He touched my hair where it lay on the bed, gently, as if he weren’t sure I’d let him do it. When I didn’t protest he touched my cheek. “Sweet,” he said.

“I am not sweet,” I said.

He smiled. “Endearing?”

I frowned at him.

He laughed.

“You haven’t known me long enough to be that amused.” But I was smiling slightly as I said it.

“You’re just not what I expected.”

“What did you expect?”

“Someone harder, harsher.” He looked down my body. “You are beautiful.”

I shrugged.

“You are,” he said.

“Thanks, you’re not so bad yourself.”

He grinned. “You are not your reputation.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means that rumors say you’re this great seductress. That you eat little weretigers for breakfast and possess their bodies first and then their hearts.”

“I told you that feeding the ardeur could make me own you lock, stock, and heart.”

“You did.”

“I wasn’t lying, Ethan,” I said, and I searched his face, tried to see if he really understood what could happen to him. He was so lonely. He so wanted to be wanted and to belong to someone. The ardeur would give him what he wanted, but the price of belonging to someone was that you belonged to them.

“I have almost a dozen lovers at home, Ethan. If the ardeur binds you to me then you get in line, and Jean-Claude, Nathaniel, Micah, some of the others are always at the head of the line.”