Captive Spirit (22 page)

She was halfway to the mat.

If Duncan’s eyes had been warm before, they were flaming now. He kept his arms crossed, but his muscles bulged like he was holding himself in place. Through the chilled stone tickling her toes and soles and heels, the rage of his desire licked across Bela’s senses. The steel of his self-control gripped her mind. He tasted like molten metal to her Sibyl perceptions, unbearably hot and smooth, and completely basic and natural.

She took off her bra, and the basement’s cool air stung her nipples. The sensitive flesh tightened until it hurt in just the right way, and Duncan’s eyes fixed on the hard tips. Bela let him look, and she kept walking.

Soon enough, he’d touch her, before she burned up from wanting him to do it.

Her panties were thin lace, and wet, and they tore in her earth-powerful fingers when she slid them to her hips. The delicate fabric tumbled to the stone floor, leaving her bare. The basement’s chill touched her again, lower and deeper, this time making her gasp—and she let him look, let his breath leave him in a whistle, and she kept walking.

Earthquakes were nothing but a push and a pull, a change in motion that forever shifted a planet, from its core to its surface. Duncan Sharp was her earthquake. When she put her hands on him this time, her life, from its core to its surface, would never look the same again.

Bela stopped, inches away from him. “You don’t need a condom,” she said. Blunt and honest seemed like the best way to talk to him now. “I decide when I get pregnant, and my elemental energy takes care of any other problems.”

The temperature rising from Duncan’s taut muscles was a tangible thing. Fire Sibyls smoked and burned from less heat than he was throwing off. His eyes traced a path from her face to her neck, from her breasts to her belly, from her dark curls to her toes, then all the way up again.

She broke out in tiny shivers, delicious and maddening. Her breasts felt heavy and ready for his hands, and she ached for him to take possession of the rest of her curves and secret places. His fingers, his mouth, his passion—she wanted everything. A fine mist of sweat broke all over her exposed skin, doubling the shivers.

Through the earth connecting them, Bela listened to the rhythm of their hearts. Fast. Steady. Not matching, but synchronized, a beat for each silence and a silence for each beat.

Duncan lowered his arms and stared at her, all of her, taking his time like she’d taken hers. His consuming gaze showed his gentleness and strength, his desire, but something else, too: a possessiveness she’d never expected. It caught her off guard. It thrilled her. She was glad she was standing naked in front of him, stripped down to nothing on the outside and the inside, too. She wanted him to take her, to own her. She had never felt anything like that before.

More surprises.

The ache between her legs was almost more than she could stand.

“Now I’m telling you this, and you better listen.” He reached out and slid his thumbs over both of her nipples. She shuddered, and the ache to have him inside her doubled. “Don’t kiss me. And whatever you do, don’t make love to me until you scream. Until you can’t move. Until you forget everyone and everything in the world except what I’m doing to you, and how hard, and how deep.”

His words rumbled, shifting the earth inside Bela like an unstoppable force as he rubbed her nipples again. She moaned, pulling away, then pushing herself right back into his touch. His gorgeous eyes surrendered to her, then claimed her as he pinched where he’d been rubbing.

She was lost.

That fast.

Spiraling into an existence of pure sensation.

Her palms rested on his chest, and his rough male skin felt like heaven under her fingertips. His scars were a landscape, private, personal, and each dent and ridge spoke to her. Duncan let her explore every crease and turn, every flaw and every perfection, his eyes locked on hers as he kept up his massage, moving the responsive tips of her breasts in slow circles between his thumb and forefinger. She leaned forward and flicked her tongue across his smaller nipples, and he groaned.

Bela pushed up on her toes and kissed him as his hands slid to her waist, and oh, yes, he tasted like water, natural and fresh and sweet. His tongue was hot in her mouth, moving with her each time she breathed, each time she pressed herself closer, wishing she could get all the way inside his skin. His dinar buzzed and hummed between her breasts, but it didn’t shock her, not when it was touching him, too. Her bare thighs scrubbed against his jeans, his erection. She moved herself up and down, feeling all of him that she could as he caressed her cheeks, her neck, then gripped her shoulders, keeping her close. He let her catch her breath, but never quite let her pull away. His hands were so big. Barely controlled power. She wanted them on her. She wanted them everywhere, and when they really started moving, she was helpless.

“Touch me,” she whispered to him over and over, barely aware that she was talking at all.

Duncan formed her body to his, crushing her sensitive nipples against his chest as his lips kept hers captive. Each brush of his scars sent a shock of a different texture from her toes all the way to her lips. She sighed into his mouth as he rubbed the small of her back. Rough, yet gentle. Strong, but so tender when he cupped her ass and squeezed her tighter.

“I never dreamed I’d meet a woman like you.” His deep, husky voice made her throb all over. “Now I can’t stop dreaming about you.”

He kissed her.

“Every night.”

He kissed her again.

“This isn’t casual for me. I don’t have time left for games, and I’m not playing with you.”

He lowered his head to her neck and bit her, and she moaned.

“Tell me yes this time.” His teeth scraped across the skin between her neck and shoulder. “I need to hear you say it, Angel.”

She was getting dizzy from the sound and feel of him. “Yes.” Her fingers found the button of his jeans, struggled with it, and got it loose. “Yes.” Goddess, he was biting her again, and it felt so good she couldn’t take it. Denim scraped her wrists as she shoved his pants down and left him as bare as she was.

“Damn, Duncan. Yes, I want you. I want you right now!”

He kept his mouth at her throat, biting her soft and biting her rough, walking them forward and stepping out of his jeans. He settled himself against her belly, and Bela felt the damp tip, felt him pulsing. He was ready for her.

Was she
ever
ready for him.

She pushed his face away from her neck and kissed him as she wrapped one hand around his erection and stroked. “I’m not an angel.” Her lips danced over his as she spoke. She stroked him again. “You need to know that.”

His cock bucked into her palm and she squeezed, loving the firm weight of him, and his feral growl. His jaw tightened, and his gray eyes hazed from arousal. She knew he had to be hurting for release. She was about to die from her own want. Her heart pounded so hard she didn’t know how to keep it from exploding.

“You’re everything angels are made of.” Duncan took her hand and forced it down, rubbing her sensitive folds with his length and her own fingers.

Bela cried out from the sudden, excruciating pleasure, and he swallowed the sound with his mouth. He used his free hand to hold her upright as he made her pump her own knuckles against her tender center, then dipped his head and caught her nipple in his teeth. Biting. Biting hard.

Taking her, yes.

Possessing her, yes.

This time, Bela’s moan came from somewhere deep in her depths. She couldn’t stop the sound as he sucked the nub and used his tongue to tease it. Her moan went on and on and on, like the thrust of his wrist as he moved himself and her fingers at the same time, sliding, pushing until she couldn’t stand it, and then he bit her other nipple.

Ecstasy swelled in Bela’s depths, rising, too hot to be contained. Was she hitting him? Yes. Pounding his shoulder with her fist, but not to make him stop, and he knew it. He was reading every groan and gasp, slowing down and speeding up at exactly the right moments to drive her completely, totally past any sane thought.

Duncan let go of her hand and gripped her ass again, this time lifting her and laying her down in the same motion. Bela felt the soft mat under her shoulders as Duncan spread her legs wide and settled himself between her thighs. He braced his arms on either side of her head, his eyes locked on her eyes, and his face so close to hers that she could nip at his bottom lip.

He let her catch him a couple of times, then moved his belly against her folds as he murmured, “You’re so damned beautiful. When I look at you, I can’t even breathe.”

All Bela could do was groan and fight to gulp air herself. She was trembling and still dizzy, more dizzy. Everything spun in slow, grand circles, like she’d taken some ritual drug that slowed time and enhanced the tiniest sensations.

Words left her, but Duncan didn’t give her a chance to talk, anyway. He slid himself down, lower, lower, rubbing her wet center with his abs, his chest, his chin with no mercy at all. His breath was warm and soft. “I want to taste you, Angel.”

Bela tried to say
Yes, please, right now
, but the best she could do was a long, ragged sigh of delight. She managed to slip her fingers into his hair, but her hands were shaking too much to get a good grip. Her eyes clamped shut as he forced her thighs farther apart with his big hands, exposing her completely, letting his breath wash over her until the ache made her mind whirl faster.

Duncan pressed his face into the heat between her legs.

She made fists in his hair and pulled, lifting her hips to his mouth. His tongue—ah, damn. Right on the sweet spot. Right in the center. Tasting, just like he promised. Tasting, and tasting, and tasting, then licking, then sending lightning hits of pleasure in every direction as he pulled her softly across his teeth and moved his mouth back and forth.

Bela moaned and bucked, and the basement rippled and moved with her. Sweat coursed down her back now, and her muscles burned from waiting and wanting and needing.

“Not yet,” he whispered against her swollen center as he slowed his kisses.

She yanked at his hair as the walls trembled. “Don’t tease me much more, Duncan. I’ll bring down the house.”

“You’re not scaring me, even a little bit.” Duncan shifted Bela forward and rose to his knees before she could rip out his hair for frustrating her so completely. He pulled her ass onto his thighs, and carefully lifted her legs to his shoulders.

Bela’s breath stilled in her chest, and she couldn’t make her throat work. She was so wide open to him, so absolutely exposed. When she did start breathing, it came in ragged jerks, and she couldn’t stop staring into the magic of his eyes. The coin around his neck gleamed as it swayed on top of his scars.

“That’s it, Angel.” He rubbed his cock against her ass and ran his fingers down her legs until he caught hold of her hands. “Look at me. Look at us.”

He eased her hands up her belly, to her breasts, then made her pinch her own swollen nipples. The shock of touching herself while he watched turned her heartbeat to thunder. Her back arched, and he rocked her shoulders into the mat, releasing her hands. She kept squeezing her breasts, loving the way he stared at her fingers, her nipples, then her face and her mouth.

She felt wanted. Completely appreciated.

He gripped her hips and slid himself slowly, slowly upward, toward where Bela wanted him to be.

“Look at your breasts,” he told her, and doing it made the pulsing in her folds a hundred times worse. “Pinch yourself.”

She pinched and moaned.

The tip of his erection teased her opening, and she looked at that, too. Her hips were moving under own power now, lifting to meet him.

Duncan’s muscles flexed as he slid his length in an inch, then drew himself out.

Bela bared her teeth at him, wishing she could bite a hole in his shoulder.

He did it again, and she bit her own lip and yelled into her closed mouth. Her face was so hot she wondered if she was glowing. Her hands gripped her breasts, covering them and squeezing at the same time, crushing herself down to stand the ache as he tortured her.

With a satisfied growl, Duncan drove himself inside her, deep, yes, way deep, as far as she could take, and she pinched her own nipples so hard tears rose to her eyes. The scream that left her was pure relief. He held her waist up, trapping her right where he wanted her, her legs on his shoulders, and he waited, waited, letting her savor the stretch, the sweet burn, gazing at her like he’d never stop, and she never wanted him to.

“Watch.” His command made her walls clench, and her back arched even tighter as she let out another helpless cry from the intensity.

Duncan moved his hips, unhurried, sliding back and forth inside her so slowly it became a new, perfect torment. Bela stared at the point where they connected, where he moved, and each thrust seemed to open her wider.

Gray fire snapped in his eyes as he plumbed her deeper, pulling her hips against his thighs with each slow, sensual plunge.

He was rocking her, taking her, yes, owning her, and she couldn’t stop watching.

The coin on his chest bounced as she rocked. Her back moved on the mat and she pinched her nipples, staring as he pumped deeper, faster, spreading her, pushing her. She clenched and released. Couldn’t stop. Didn’t want to stop. This couldn’t end. Never. Ever.

“Don’t scream, Angel.”

She tore her gaze away from their sex, and she found his untamed grin—and those eyes.

“You heard me.” His thrusts got harder, faster. He pounded her, driving her past what she thought she could take. “I said don’t scream.”

Everything was throbbing. Everything was clenching.

Bela was nothing but molten heat, core heat. Fault lines opened through her essence as the pleasure claimed her. Her eyes closed and her hands fell away from her breasts. She shook as she reached the top and stumbled over the edge, pulling at the earth, feeling its power rise to meet her when she screamed and screamed and screamed again.