Page 35 of Dragon Kissed

“You do not hide from me.”

“I’m not hiding.”

“You are.” He kissed the corner of her mouth. Her cheek. The small scar above her eyebrow, the one she touched when she lied. “Beautiful when you fight me.” His fingers slipped beneath the lace, skin on skin now, and rolled her bare nipple, and her back bowed off the bed. “Beautiful when you want.” He caught the tight peak and pinched, just short of pain, and a broken sound tore out of her. “Beautiful when you let me see it.”

“Demetri —”

“Yes.” She pulled his mouth back to hers.

He undressed her without hurry — sweater, bra, jeans, each piece gone over the side of the bed — until she lay beneath him in nothing but a scrap of black lace. Then he sat back on his heels and looked at her. Really looked. And Nica fought the urge to cover herself as his gaze moved from her face to her breasts to the flat of her stomach to the damp lace between her thighs, slow and possessive and reverent and starving all at once, until her core clenched on nothing and her thighs pressed together against the ache.

“You’re wearing too much,” she said, unsteady.

He stood. The belt opened. His trousers followed. No underwear — of course not — and Nica’s mouth went dry.

He was hard. Thick. Longer than she’d expected, jutting heavy and flushed from a nest of dark hair, and the sight of him sent a hot pull straight through her center. Demetri saw her looking, and his body flexed under the attention, his cock jerking against his stomach, and a low sound of pure male satisfaction rolled out of him. She pushed herself upright and reached for him.

He caught her hand. “Not yet.”

“Bossy.”

“Yes.” He lowered her back onto the mattress and spread her thighs wide with his hands, baring her to him, and Nica felt thecool air and then the heat of his gaze. The lace had gone damp, soaked through, and his eyes flashed brighter, and a growl vibrated through him — not a rough breath, an actual growl, a sound that started deep in his chest and raised the hair on her arms.

She should have been afraid. Instead she lifted her hips as he hooked two fingers beneath the lace and dragged it slowly down her legs and off, and then he knelt between her open thighs and looked at her, bare and wet and flushed, and his nostrils flared as he dragged in the scent of her.

“Tell me if you want me to stop.”

“I don’t.”

“Good.” Smoke ghosted across the word. “Because I have wanted my mouth on you since you fell into my arms, and I am going to take my time.”

His mouth covered her, and Nica cried out.

The first stroke of his tongue was slow, flat, deliberate, a man with all night and no intention of hurrying. The second drove every coherent thought out of her skull. She fisted both hands in the sheets. Demetri held her hips pinned with his forearm and traced her clit with the tip of his tongue, unbearably light, and then closed his lips around it andsucked,and pleasure tightened low and hard and merciless.

“God —”

He made that inhuman sound again, right against her, and the vibration rolled up through her core and pulled a sob out of her. His tongue pressed inside her, tasting her deep, and her thighs closed around his head, and he did not stop, did not slow. He learned her — every jerk of her hips, every catch in her breath, every helpless sound — with a merciless, ancient attention, cataloging her the way she catalogued the things she loved. When he slid one thick finger inside her she was alreadyclimbing, and he curled it, and added a second, stretching her, working her open while his mouth returned to her clit.

“Demetri —” She was shaking, right on the edge, her whole body strung tight.

He looked up — ruby eyes burning at her from between her thighs, his mouth wet and glistening with her — and the sight of him there, the ancient dangerous creature on his knees devoting all of that focus to her pleasure, shattered her.

Her orgasm hit with brutal force. She cried his name and came apart around his fingers, her body clenching, her heels digging into the mattress, her spine arching off the bed. Demetri kept his mouth on her, gentling her, drawing it out, until the final pulse left her trembling and boneless.

Then he rose over her, and his control was gone. Not entirely. Enough. Red scales flashed across his shoulders and vanished, his teeth were sharper when he bared them, and a shudder of pure effort rolled through him. He turned his face away from her, jaw clenched.

Nica caught his arm. “Where are you going?”

“To regain control.” The words came out through his teeth, half a growl. “If I do not, I will frighten you.”

“No.” His whole body went rigid. She pulled him back down, and his cock pressed hot and hard and insistent against her stomach, and the size of it, the heat of it, made her ache all over again. “Condom,” she whispered.

Demetri reached into the bedside drawer without looking, and the fact that he had them there irritated her for reasons she refused to examine. He tore the packet open, and his hands shook — the same helpless tremor she’d seen when he caught her off the ladder, a man two and a half centuries old undone by the woman beneath him. Nica took the condom out of his unsteady fingers and rolled it down his length herself, and arough, wrecked sound tore out of him at the touch. She stroked once, root to tip, and his hips jerked.

“Careful,” he warned, ragged.

“You told me to stop deciding for you.”