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Yet all it was was kisses. Unending, fierce, and slowly frustrating kisses. Mind-blowing kisses. Breathtaking kisses. Until her lips were bruised and her face on fire from the shadow of whiskers he scored against her sensitive skin. It nearly drove her out of her mind until she wanted to scream at him to just do something! Do anything!

And that was when she realized this had been her problem for so long. She had constantly let life happen to her. Let
it
make the first move. Waited for
it
to take the next step. And because of that … she had waited too long. Had just about missed it all. Missed everything. And why? Because she was afraid someone might say no? She might be rejected? She might fail in some way? And because she had feared the failing, she had become utterly stagnant and had ended up failing gloriously just the same.

She pulled away, gasping for breath, panting hard as she looked up into his glittering gold eyes. She narrowed her gaze on him in suspicion because she knew he was not the type to sit back and let things just happen to him. She knew he was a taker. A mover and a shaker. A freaking heartbreaker. Because he wasn’t afraid of anything. So why? Why was he standing still? Doing nothing? Waiting?

“Screw you,” she gasped, shoving at him with all she had until he deigned to take a step back. Then she launched herself at him, leaping off the floor, ringing her arms around his neck and her legs around his waist. He staggered back a second before grabbing her under her ass and hauling her in tight to his body, her dress ripping under both their efforts. He grinned as she slammed her lips over his and kissed him as hard and mean as she could. Then she broke off and glared at
him. “You think I don’t have it in me? You think I’m not tough enough for this? Not hot enough? Not gutsy enough?”

“Did I say that?” he asked, every word a tease, every move of his mouth on hers a taunt.

“I’m sick of it,” she ground out. “I’m sick of life or death just happening to me!” She sat back in his hands and tangled with the top of her dress for a moment, pulling it back and down until her breasts were just about to spill out of it.

“Good!” he said, his gold eyes devouring her every movement. There was no condescension there, just raging agreement. Fierce need for it to be true.

“And this bitch inside me won’t dictate life to me, either. You won’t and she won’t and some decrepit pharaoh who isn’t even here won’t! You got that?”

“Understood,” he said with a growl of appreciation. “And Ram can go fuck himself!”

“Ram would much rather fuck you,” Vincent confessed to her. “He’s thought of little else, no matter what he’d like to pretend otherwise. Not since the moment he first touched you. Since
we
first touched you. Screw it. Like you said.
I
want you.
I’m
having you. And as long as you agree, nothing else matters. Nothing else will make the difference, and nothing is going to stop me.”

He threw her to the floor, slamming her back onto the mattress so hard that all four corners poofed out tightly, full of air, then hissed slowly in release as he rose on his knees, a hand bracing at her shoulders so his whole body shadowed over her.

“Wrong,” she said breathlessly, her hands reaching below his waist, one gripping at his belt, the other stroking boldly along the length of his zipper. “
I’m
having
you
.
We’re
having you. It’s going to be a freaking ménage á everybody.”

And then she took a hard breath in, held it, and let the
surprising feel of him radiate into her fingers and palm, the message ticking up like a lightning telegraph into her brain.

“Jesus, you have no idea how good that really feels,” he ejected on a hot gust of breath, his hips moving into her touch. “Everything about you, even the simplest things … like that ridiculously adorable mole. On your foot. I’m going to lick and fondle that thing at some point because it turns me on … just like everything else about you. And I wish I could explain how painful this is.…”

He put his hand over hers so she wouldn’t pull away from him.

“In a good way,” he breathed against her ear in assurance. “Painful in a good way. Both physically and mentally, because even the lightest touches of Ram being present makes him fight what he feels is a disloyal act, and it translates inside of me in the most unbelievable haze of pain and passion, need and dread. But in no way does the lying bastard want to leave you. No more than I do.”

That made her smile, a quick, sly little expression that touched her eyes so wickedly that Vincent felt the other soul inside of him shudder in apprehension and delight. He let Docia push him over onto his back, watched as she threw her leg astride him and unzipped her dress. How amazingly beautiful she was in that moment. More so because of the lack of symmetry of her hair and such. It was nothing for a woman to portray beauty when she was simply beautiful. It was breathtaking to see an imperfect woman become stunning just because she willed it into being from the inside out. Over time she would heal, her hair would grow, and the Bodywalker within her would resonate until she was blindingly beautiful; but he didn’t think it would ever compare with what he was seeing right then.

She pulled the gown, which had become lank throughout their ordeals, over her head and threw it a little too close to the nearby fire. That left her in a lacy pair of boy shorts and matching bra, both in midnight blue. The bra was clearly bust enhancing, not that she needed any enhancements. She reached behind herself and popped the clasp, then, with an almost shy little wriggle, she let it slide forward down her arms.

And that wrote the end to Ram’s attempts to gainsay the situation. Vincent felt it in a chasing rush of heat and blood, blood trying to fill flesh already pretty heavily engorged. She was sitting directly on him, so she felt it almost the same instant he did. It was no wonder. He could have broken bricks with the thing at that point. The smile of delight, the sense of triumph that lit her face, was like nothing he’d ever seen before. And she should be delighted, he thought. She should feel her victory down to her very core. She deserved it. And they both knew … they
all
knew … it was a victory a long time coming in her life.

“Oh my!” She giggled, leaning forward over him so her hair curtained off his vision on one side and her breasts radiated warmth against him but did not yet come into contact with him. “So sorry, Ram,” she said, exaggerating a pout with absolutely no remorse in it. “It seems you’ve lost.”

“Oh, I think there’s victory enough to placate all involved,” Vincent assured her with a chuckle. He lifted a hand to the bare expanse of her breastbone, turning his knuckles against her and running them down the length of it. “But you’re right, aren’t you? This is rather a ménage á everybody. It feels very naughty, doesn’t it?”

“Kinky,” she agreed, licking her lips as though the idea appealed to her very, very much.

“It’s always the shy ones.” He chuckled, turning his hand to slide over her left breast, feeling the fantastic
weight of it, the softness of it, against the contrasting hardness of his calloused fingers. “Now move up, sweetness. I’m going to taste you.”

She did as requested, scooting just far enough forward to help him bring the tip of her breast against his lips. More a forward rolling of her hips and a lengthening of her spine, he noted. She wasn’t eager to leave her seat now that she had him, and her little shifts against him were blindingly arousing … no doubt for both of them.

He kissed her first, a sweet sort of homage rather than just devouring her with lust, and it threw her off a little. She was still trying to redefine things, and she didn’t know how to settle into a gray area between all-out sexual vixen and quirky shy girl. But as she watched him take a deep breath against her, watched him nuzzle her with what could be defined only as affection, she realized that she had to stop making definitions and just start living in the moment. This whole experience had been nothing but a long act of redefinition, and it wasn’t likely to end anytime soon. Who knew how long it would truly take before the Blending finished successfully? Who knew what the outcome would be? But she knew one thing with utter determination, and that was that she wasn’t going to let this slip away from her. She wasn’t going to let
him
slip away from her.

By the time he finally touched his tongue to her and drew the rigid point of her nipple between his lips, she was squirming with impatience and need. His hands were running slowly down the length of her back, the warmth and strength of them seeping into her, making her feel, for the first time in days, as though she were utterly safe and secure. Not that she doubted his skills after all this time he had spent saving her life, but this was something far more essential than that, something that reached into a primal place inside of her that reas
sured her on levels she might never truly understand. If she stopped for a moment to think, she would realize that on many conscious levels she
didn’t
understand. But there was a soul-assuring energy to her connection with him that outvoted the conscious questions just about every time as far as he was concerned. As far as this physicality was concerned.

She was running her hands up and over his chest, feeling the topography of muscles with excited fascination. She let her fingers crawl over pecs and abdominals, dragging the edges of her nails through the dampness of sweat his arousal and the nearness of the fire had wrought. His hands burrowed into her panties in the back, grabbing hold of her by both cheeks and encouraging her to ride harder against him, making her suddenly aware that she had already been doing so.

As his mouth swarmed over her chest, throat, and lips, she struggled to understand the depth of what she was feeling, because nothing in her life had even come close to it. Every touch was like a dance of fire moving fluidly between them. She knew it wasn’t one-sided because she tested him a little, touched him complexly and simply, and watched how both types of contact stoked his need to a point where she suspected it was becoming an effort on his part to rein himself in.

It was perhaps the most beautiful thing anyone had ever done for her. She looked into the gold of his eyes, saw the molten wash of lust, saw how primal and male he could truly be if he let himself go … and perhaps she would want that one day. But he knew on an inexplicable level that she was still too fragile in some ways and that there were still too many unknown variables. He was afraid of frightening her or hurting her. Scaring her off. He desperately didn’t want to scare her off.

Who knew such a strong, confident creature would be so capable of so much self-sacrifice just to protect an
other? Or that he could have such vulnerabilities? As he rolled with her, pushed her under his body after stripping her of her underwear, he made a fierce sound that echoed the fury of restraint he was using. For her. Just for her.

“Look at you. Just look at you,” he ground out as he did exactly that, lifting himself enough so he could stare at the landscape of her body. The intensity of his appraisal triggered something both shy and arousing inside of her, her hands flitting in a weak attempt to divert his attention or protect herself from the starkness of his inspection, she wasn’t sure which. He grabbed them and pinned them to the mattress at the level of her shoulders. By not holding them over her head, he deprived her of being able to hide her face within the shelter of her arms. And therefore she felt even more exposed than ever. She had no doubt that he was aware of this. Aware of all of it.

“You have nothing to hide. Nothing to feel inadequate about,” he whispered against her ear before lifting to look at her yet again. “There is nothing here that is less than perfect to me. Your left breast is slightly larger than the right, no doubt to try and win my attention.… I suspect she’s jealous of her twin. I find that precocious of her, don’t you? Your navel tips a little, the coy thing, tempting me to do this.…” He moved down and dipped his tongue inside her sensitive belly button, the stroke of it long and lazy. “And the soft rounding of your belly is quite fortunate, because you are going to need the cushioning to protect you from the power of my thrusts. And I am going to take great delight in watching the impact shimmer through you. And here … oh, here …” His mouth drifted over the trim hair framing her nether regions. The hair she had needed to wax before her accident and hadn’t had the chance to manage since. Still, it wasn’t as though it were a wild Ama
zonian forest or anything. Just … more than she preferred. Especially when being intimate. “Pretty to see, warm to touch …” He stroked thick fingers over her, then down between waiting lips. “Wet. The smell of ambrosia, the whole of it like an oasis. My oasis, Docia. Where I will rest, and drink and dine on the fruits available to me.”

“Holy smokes!” she gasped as his mouth fell on her most intimate flesh and his tongue worked an insane kind of magic against her. And that touch, his tongue to her most intimate places, was no different from any other touch they had ever shared. It was fiery and fierce, an instant resonating burn that burrowed deep and fast and left ferocious echoes of itself everywhere at once. He danced attendance all around her clit, his perfect avoidance of it telling her he knew exactly where it was and exactly how to let the nuanced nerves around it bleed flushed arousal into it until she was ready to scream.

“You’re killing me,” she growled at him impatiently, her knees squeezing at his shoulders where they framed him on either side. “You just wait till it’s your turn. See how mean I am to you!”

He chuckled, the vibration of it dancing across her hypersensitive flesh.

“Why are you in such a rush?” he asked her, the expression in his eyes so smug and confident that she wanted to kick him in the head. How was it that men never had any doubts about themselves? Or perhaps they did but had learned to make it appear otherwise. And why was that so damn sexy?

“See how
you
feel when
you
haven’t had sex with another human being in three years,” she muttered.