Charming (Exiled Book 3) (18 page)

“Don’t you dare come in here!”

“Why not?”

“Because I look like a drowned rat with smeared lipstick. Give me a minute.”

“One minute. No more.”

The area around her mouth still looked a little pink, wherever the lipstick had been. “Must have had dye in it,” she mumbled to herself. She decided she looked like Punch Mouth, the master vampire in the first season of Buffy. “Try explaining
that
to Charming. Ha!” she continued to mumble.

“Ana,” she could hear his voice clearly beyond the door. “Just a reminder. I can hear you even when you’re on the other side of the door and lower your voice. Just so you know.”

“Shit.”

“I heard that.”

“Okay. I get it. You have really, really, really good ears and it’s really, really, really annoying. If you keep talking to me, this is going to take longer.”

“Shutting up now.”

She managed to refrain from saying “Good,” because she knew that would just instigate a whole new exchange. Instead, she towel dried her hair, ran a brush through it a few times, and put it up in a French braid, which she’d been told was a talent because not every woman can French braid her own hair. Satisfied that the hair was presentable, she scrambled out of her wet lingerie, which was the pretty stuff Rosie had picked out, and unceremoniously threw it on the floor. After wrapping one of the fluffy bath sheets around her like a sarong, she opened the door.

“Tada,” she sang.

He was leaning against the wall opposite the door, arms folded across his chest, eyes trained on the door. His gaze flicked from the top of her head to her feet and back again quickly, but she knew he’d taken it all in by the way his eyes heated with lust.

“No,” he said. “I’m Charming.”

Her smile faded. “No. Tada means… never mind.” She stepped back into the bath and held up a dry towel. “Come to mama.”

He thought that letting Ana finish undressing him was torture.

When his engorged cock sprang free of clothing, he said, “I like your hair that way,” to distract himself from the appeal of dragging her to the bed straight away.

When she paused and stared at his erection like she’d never seen one before, it was all he could do to keep from bending her over the bathroom counter.

“Thank you,” she said absent-mindedly, still staring at the enormity of his erection.

“Don’t be thinking it’s too big for you.” Her eyes flew up to meet his. “It will fit. Trust me.”

On the street Ana had learned that when someone said, “Trust me,” it meant that she should run as far and as fast as she could. She thought she’d be a fool to trust the beautiful and otherworldly creature in front of her. But Charming wasn’t like anyone she’d ever known and, if he wanted her trust, she was inclined to give it.

Lowering her eyes she went back to the task at hand. He didn’t know what torture was until he’d experienced Ana intent on slowly drying every square inch of his body.

“I like it even better when it’s down and mussed up. Your hair I mean.” he said, trying desperately to stave off a premature ejaculation.

“When have you ever seen it mussed up?”

“When you come in out of the wind. I have an imagination.”

She stopped. “You imagined me in bed.”

He barked out a laugh. “Only a million times.”

“Then why didn’t you…?”

“Because I didn’t think that’s what Rosie had in mind for me to do with you when she left you here for safekeeping. And, I thought it wouldn’t be good politically for me to…”

“For you to what?” She stopped drying and stood up straight, looking him in the eyes with such sincerity and open vulnerability, he couldn’t see his way clear to lying.

“I thought choosing a human might not be well-received by Exiled. Or humans for that matter.”

She searched his eyes. “Is that a worry?”

“Ana, do we really need to have this conversation
now
?”

“Now is the
only
time to have this conversation. Before it’s too late to take things back. I don’t want to cause problems for you. But while we’re on the subject, how is your family going to feel about us? Me being human and all.”

“My brother was going to marry Rosie and…” He paused, searching for the right thing to say. “She’s not like us.”

Ana laughed. “She’s even more not like you than I’m not like you.”

“If you said what I think you said, then that is true.”

“So you think they’ll be okay with it.”

“Ana, don’t worry about my family. Or anybody else. My choice of mate is exactly that.
My
choice.”

She smiled. “So…. you want to eat?”

“That’s the last thing I want right now.” He pulled her into a kiss that was so hot it took kissing to a level she hadn’t known existed before. He dragged it out, making it slow, sweet, and addicting.

When he pulled back, she said, “I like you a lot. Have I mentioned that?”

“You’d better.”

Not being able to wait any longer, he turned her around so that she was looking at herself in the mirror with her back to him. Since he was easily a full head taller, both their faces were in full view.

“Look at us together, Ana,” he said.

Her breath had started to slow a little, but quickened again at his words. She felt his erection prodding her back and moaned in response. He reached for the tuck that held her towel in place, slowly removed it and let it fall to the floor.

She’d never felt so exposed as she did standing in front of the mirror watching Charming’s eyes devour her. Forcing herself to keep her hands at her sides, trying not to reach up to cover herself reflexively, she closed her eyes instead.

“Open your eyes, Ana. Look at us together,” he said again. “We were made for each other.”

She opened her eyes. “An hour hasn’t passed since you asked me to disappear so you could fuck another woman.”

“I’ve already admitted to being an idiot. It should mean something that I
didn’t
fuck another woman. I haven’t touched a female since you were dropped in the middle of my living room like a bomb. That should count for something. Now shut up and pay attention. I’m busy trying to make love to you.”

He reached around from behind and cupped her breasts with both hands, raising and lowering their weight in the most arousing way before lazily running his thumbs over hard and sensitive nipples. It was tantalizingly erotic, both the feel of it and the look of it. Her breasts weren’t abnormally big, but they’d been big enough to draw male attention since she’d turned fourteen. Still, they looked small in his big hands.

Her lips parted and her head fell back against his chest. He continued to play with one breast while his other hand skimmed her abdomen, going lower until his fingers danced over her clit and the surrounding nerve endings. She had no choice but to move her hips back and forth, silently begging for more.

He released her breasts and urged her to bend and place her hands on the counter, but when she tried to hang her head and look down, he grabbed her braid and gently pulled her head back up, “Don’t look away. Watch,” he commanded. “You need to know you’ve been claimed. I want you to have a picture of it in your head so you never forget. Ever.”

He let one hand rest at the side of her waist while the other hand casually explored her derriere. When he slipped a long finger between her folds and into her channel she gasped and then whimpered.

“You’re going too slow,” she protested.

He chuckled then withdrew his finger and put it in his mouth, sucking back the juices with a wicked gleam in his eye she’d never seen before. When she felt the tip of his cock aligning with her entrance, she pushed back involuntarily. He chuckled again. “My mate is greedy. I like that.”

Charming’s voice was so deep and gruff that it sounded like it was part growl and it excited her even more. She looked up into the mirror. Her face was flushed with arousal and exertion. Charming’s appearance was also altered slightly. His skin tone appeared to be a shade or two darker and light seemed to reflect from his eyes in an extra-human way.

The sound of skin slapping together coupled with the sight of Charming rocking into her with steady rhythm was mesmerizing. Just when she thought he’d created a visual event that couldn’t be beat, he reset the bar by letting his fangs descend. It elicited a rush like no other from her. It was beautiful. It was hypnotic. It was dangerous. And she knew she’d
never
forget their first time, just as he’d said.

When Charming couldn’t wait any longer, he braced one hand on the bath counter, bent over Ana’s back, and slid his free hand around to tap lightly on her clit. She immediately exploded into a screaming orgasm that clenched down on him so hard it was almost painful. He joined her screams of pleasure with a decidedly non-human roar, so loud it temporarily stunned the eardrum closest to the sound.

When their breathing and heart rates leveled out, he looked up into the mirror, smiled, and said, “Now we can take a break for dinner.”

She grinned in return, pushing a tendril of hair that had broken loose from the braid behind her ear. When she reached for her silk bathrobe, he stopped her.

“No clothes.”

“You sure have gotten pushy all of a sudden.”

He shrugged. “I guess I’m sexually dominant.”

“I guess you are. And that’s okay with me, up to a point.”

“I’m be more open to discussion after you feed me.”

Nude dinner with a man was a new experience for Ana. In a way it was strange, but it was also erotic and exquisitely intimate.

Ana had wanted to reheat dinner, but Charming insisted he was too hungry to wait.

“Your Shepherd’s Pie is as good as Abel’s. Maybe better.”

“Well, it should be. He taught me. I just added a little more garlic than usual because I know you like it.”

“Yeah. That’s what’s different. I
do
like it,” he smiled and licked his lips.

“Now about the discussion you mentioned.”

“Yeah?” he said, taking another large bite.

“Couple of things. First, you didn’t use protection.”

“Protection?”

“Don’t act like you don’t understand protection. What had you planned to do with Snow tonight?”

“I planned to wrap it up, but Snow’s not my mate. You are.”

“So you’re saying that being your mate means baby factory? Don’t you think we ought to talk about some things first? Like whether or not we both want children? And when?”

He stopped and stared. “You want children. Right?”

“Maybe, but not right this minute. I don’t even know you yet.” He cocked his head, took another bite, and seemed to be thinking that over. Meanwhile, she continued. “I also want to be clear about what this mating thing means to you. Does it mean we’re exclusive?”

“Exclusive? No. We include everybody in group events.”

“No. No. I mean I’m not doing this,” she moved her hand back and forth between them, “with any other guy and you’re not doing this with any other woman or Amazon princess.”

“You’re going to have to tell me what an Amazon princess is.”

“Does that mean there are conditions?”

“No! Of course not. You’re it for me. I’m it for you. If I catch you eating naked with another male, I will tear his head from his body and throw it off the balcony.”

“Charming! Ew! Having dinner here.”

“But I’m curious about what an Amazon princess is.”

After spending the next quarter hour trying to describe what she meant, she finally gave up with a loud and decidedly unfeminine squawk of frustration. “Forget it.”