Eileen Wilks - Death Magic

She tilted her face up. His brows were drawn. His fingers clenched on her arm just below the wounded place, where muscle might grow back. Or not.

He needed something from her. Words? She hoped not. She didn’t want words tonight. Words would open a gate to thinking and worry and fear, to the precipice gaping before them, a stony-toothed hole big enough to swallow a world, and her mind would skitter off to find means for a bridge, some way across or around or away from. And she’d do that, she had to, but not now. Now she slid her hands onto his shoulders, where cashmere slinked between his skin and hers. She went up on tiptoe.

She didn’t kiss him. She bit his lower lip. Not hard, but hard enough. “Mine.” She nipped again. “Secrets and all, you’re mine. Don’t do it again.”

He lifted both hands to her face and ran his thumbs along the underside of her jaw. “Yours,” he agreed, and touched the necklace he’d put around her throat earlier. “This. I want to see you in just this.” He cocked a brow. “Upstairs?”

Yes.

Halfway up, a stair creaked beneath her foot. Otherwise the house was silent. To her, anyway. What did he hear? Three steps from the top he put his hand on the small of her back. Her heart stuttered.

“I’ll get the lights,” he said at the top of the stairs. Three were on, one in each bedroom. And the two downstairs, of course—parlor and kitchen—but they left those on all night. Security again. If anyone made it inside despite José and Craig, they’d show up great in the well-lit interior. Plus this gave them the option of suddenly shutting off the lights, blinding the intruder or intruders more thoroughly than it would Rule or the guards. If the guards had survived, that is.

And she was sick to death of thinking about security and survival. While Rule turned off lights, Lily went straight to their room at the back of the house. She left that light on.

“Catch up,” she said when he joined her, and popped the button on her jeans. The wooden floor was decorated with her shoes, sweater, and bra.

He smiled and caught up—at lupi speed. Damn competitive man. She still wore her panties but he was entirely naked when he knelt in front of her, pressed his face to her belly . . . and blew raspberries.

She looked down at him, astonished. He looked up, grinning.

Oh, he wanted to play. She lifted her eyebrows. “Don’t get full of yourself. I know your weak spots.”

His hands slid up her thighs to her butt, clamped, and lifted—and sent her sailing onto the bed.

She landed in a whomp of tangled limbs and laughter, rolled onto hands and knees, and beckoned him. Come on, big boy, I can take you . . .

He dived onto the bed in a tackle that would have been far more effective if she’d been standing. And the tickle fight was on.

She was horribly ticklish on her sides at the waist. He knew it, damn him. He had two main points of vulnerability: his belly and his underarms. The belly was an iffy target because he could banish tickles by tightening his abs. Armpits, though—they worked every time, if she could get to them.

There was only one rule: no pinning. Otherwise the battle would be over too quickly; he could pin her about nine times oftener than she could him. She was agile, she was ruthless, but she was not lupus. So Lily was indignant when, with most of the covers on the floor and both of them breathless from involuntary laughter, he flipped her onto her back and held her down with the length of his body. “Hey!”

“I submit.” His breath came fast. He was grinning in the way that melted her, open and happy. She didn’t see it often enough. “I submit, I submit. You won.”

“You’re throwing the match.”

“Oh, yes,” he breathed, and lowered his face to her shoulder. This time he just inhaled, deep and luxurious. The inhale was to fill up on her scent, she knew. The exhale was her name, just that, warm and moist against her skin. “Lily.”

Something in that soft exhale . . . she sifted a hand through his shaggy, too-long hair. “I’m here.”

He pushed up on one elbow, raising his upper body, looking in her eyes. His were dark with need. “And here.” He touched his chest.

She knew then, knew what his need was—not sex, or not just sex. He was only a man. He could take her scent inside him, but he couldn’t take her body in, couldn’t open to her as she did him. He had no portal, no cradle made to receive. Only skin, surfaces. And breath.

So she breathed on him. “And here,” she whispered, letting her breath warm his shoulder before she licked it. “Here,” she said, and blew on his throat, licked and nibbled, then blew again on the damp skin. He shivered. “And here.” She drew her leg up along his, a slow slide of flesh, and ran her hand along his arm. He had long arms, tightly knit, smooth and firm with muscle. She kissed him in the hinge of his arm, the bent place, the tender skin in the crook of his elbow. There is no place on you I can’t love, and love grants me entry . . .

She was following a familiar trail along his belly, heading for the part of him that bobbed, waving in its ever-friendly way, when he shuddered, seized her arms, and pulled her up. He kissed her thoroughly, tongues joining in a slippery duel, teeth nipping. He was breathing hard when he paused the kiss to say, “I mean to go slow tonight.”

She smiled.

“Slow for now,” he amended, and began showing her what he meant.

He wreaked shivers on her skin with his mouth, and he wouldn’t let her rush him, rush them, so together they built the blaze one burn at a time . . . a touch here, on the smooth roundness of his butt, or here, where the skin of her inner thigh jumped at the flick of his tongue. She didn’t notice when she lost the world of words and ideas, constructs too diverse for the need piled up in her.

So she didn’t tell him “enough” or “now,” but reached for his friendliest part, gripped firmly, and drew her hand up, knowing exactly how much to squeeze. His breath was a growl this time, long and guttural as he threw his head back, the clean line of his throat open, open to her.

She opened to him, and they made a new hinge, a place where the two of them bent, where we joined and bent and swung joyously up and up on the flat, level ground of their bed, flesh slapping flesh. Until she cracked at that hinge, cracked and broke open, calling his name as white fire rushed in.

After they caught their breaths, after they stroked and touched and smiled, he left to shut off the light. She almost dozed off. Darkness fell, then covers did—he’d tossed them over her before slipping back in bed. She told him, “Mmm,” and snuggled close and put a hand on his chest, where his heart beat slow and strong.

Mine , she told the world outside their room, the top half of her mind muzzy with sleep, still mostly sundered from words. It made perfect sense, floating there in the dark, sated and sleepy and clean as a garden after it rains. Mine.

RUBEN’Seyes jerked open on darkness. His heart pounded out a sick, runaway rhythm. A heart attack. Another heart attack. He reached for his chest . . .

And realized that he didn’t hurt. His mouth was gummy and sour with fear, his heart raced, but there was no monster crouched on his chest, cutting off air and life and possibilities.

There had been pain, though, huge and monstrous. Overwhelming. He remembered that, and the glimpse he’d had of his own familiar kitchen seen from the floor—the legs of the table, a shiny puddle next to a smashed coffee cup. But already the images and content of the dream were tattering under the focus of his waking mind, like dew evaporates under the regard of the rising sun.