Free Fall (7 page)

“I’m not your type, Khunbish.” She didn’t move though. Interesting.

“The point, Fensic, is who
I
think is my type.”

She narrowed one eye at him. “Really?”

“You never once thought about doing it with me?” Right out there in the open. God, he hoped she said yes.

He got a glimpse of her smile, and it was really hot, seeing her smile that way. “You’re awfully sure of yourself.”

“In a house this big, the neighbors won’t hear a thing.”

She pushed herself straighter, and he leaned back a little. Not much. “I can’t have sex with you. Jesus.” She held her head in her hands. “Not now. Not when I’m having so much trouble with my control.”

“Did I ever tell you about my name?” When she was looking at him again, he said, “My Mongolian name.”

“Telos?”

“Khunbish. It’s the kind of name parents give their kid if they want to keep the gods from noticing him. To avoid bad luck. My name’s like that, but for a different reason.”

“Yeah?”

He liked the way her eyes stayed on him. “Khunbish translates to ‘not a human being.’ Roughly speaking.”

Her chest rose and fell while she processed that. “That’s a good name for you.”

“It’s accurate.” He brushed a fingertip over the soft skin along the side of her throat. Silky. Smooth human skin. She tilted her chin to get a better look at him. He moved his hands to her waist, thumbs in front, fingers around her sides. “Here’s the thing, Fensic. You don’t need to worry about control with me. Because I am not a human. I can keep your magic locked up tight while I do you any way you like it.” He smiled. “I like it dirty. How about you?”

What little Lys had heard about demons had to be considered of dubious reliability. She knew that. Nevertheless, given what facts she did have, if they were even partially accurate, she ought to be terrified of Khunbish. Except he wasn’t attacking her or taking over her will or doing any of the other horrific things demons supposedly couldn’t help doing to humans. She was afraid of Michael, and that said something. Afraid of the human. Not afraid of the demon.

He was watching her. “What?”

“I can’t decide if I don’t care what you are or if I’m just too stressed out to worry about it.”

“Either way is good for me.” He laughed, low and sexy. The sound sent a shiver of arousal down to settle in her belly. Out of habit, she immediately shut herself off from the reaction. Not safe. She wasn’t safe with Telos Khunbish. But what if he wasn’t safe with her?

She wasn’t in a good place right now. She stared anywhere but at Khunbish. The room they were in had a fireplace at one end and a large television mounted on one wall. Most of the furniture was dark, like the sofa they were on. She closed her eyes, but that didn’t help at all. Eyes closed or open, he pressed in on her senses so thoroughly it hardly mattered if she could see him.

He was close enough that she could touch him if she wanted to. If she dared. She didn’t. Physically, he was large and all muscle. His stomach was flat, obvious even with his loose and untucked T-shirt. His arms bracketed her, closing her in, though she didn’t feel claustrophobic.

“Confession?” she said.

“That depends. Will it turn me on?”

“Jesus. What is with you? Stop it.”

“No.” He leaned over her. “Tell me all your kinky sex secrets, and I will make them come true.”

She eyed his chest and allowed herself the fantasy that it would be safe for her to touch him more than accidentally. What if she could? “I’ve always had a thing for a man who looks like he loves the gym more than he does people.”

“Sorry. I love women way more than the gym. Also, I never go to those places. Not necessary for me.”

She huffed a laugh. “I do like to look at you.” She lifted her gaze to his face. “I know that’s shallow of me.”

“Be as shallow as you want.” He moved in closer. “Touch me. I won’t bite.”

She wanted to. God, she wanted to. Experience said she and Khunbish shouldn’t be this close. She ought to get away from him and keep herself in the familiar isolation that kept everyone safe. But she wasn’t reacting to him the way she did around normal people or around Michael, and there were all these feelings she was having that she wasn’t good at dealing with. At all. “I think that would be dangerous.”

“I live for danger.”

“I mean it.” She fisted her hands. “It’s not safe. Something physical between us.”

“Fensic, what
am
I going to do with you?” His voice was pure honey, and she felt the effect all the way to all the parts of her that wanted to be penetrated.

“I don’t know.” She was back to eying his chest and the curve of his thighs and having more and more trouble remembering why this was a bad idea. He seemed so certain it wasn’t. “What are you going to with me?”

“Suppose, just for a moment, that we could do it safely. Don’t give me that look. Suppose, Fensic. Does it matter to you what I am?”

“No. No, it really doesn’t.” She lifted a hand to punctuate her statement, only she misjudged the distance between them. The backs of her fingers brushed his chest. Her breath caught and for a precious instant she was absolutely floored by the potential for sex. With Telos Khunbish. Jesus. What if they could?

He glanced between them, casual, like there was no big deal with how close they were or that they were alone or that he wasn’t human. The back of her hand thrummed with the physical echo of the unintended contact. She shoved away that profoundly agonizing reaction. “That feels good. When you touch me, and you react like that.”

She made herself look at his face. His eyes were not normal. Orange and bronze flecks swirled in the deep black of his eyes. “Maybe it’s different for you, but for me, hypothetical sex isn’t satisfying. It’s frustrating as hell.”

He leaned closer. With more of his weight on his arms, the muscles of his upper arms bulged and flexed. “What do you say we get naked and see how much real world fun we can have?”

It was the way he said the words that rocked her, the way he was so sure this could happen. Instinctively, she kept herself blocked off. All those disturbing reactions of hers got put into ice; observed but no longer felt. “I bet you say that to all the girls.”

“Only the ones I bring home.”

“Amusing.”

“Not really.” He stopped smiling. Just like that he was a thousand times more intense, and her blocks didn’t seem so invulnerable. “That’s not necessary, you doing that.” He touched her head. The contact turned into a caress she didn’t have the will to avoid. The reaction burned through her, melting the ice that kept her separate. Her arousal felt foreign at the same time every erogenous nerve she possessed went on overload. He drew a finger down her temple to her jaw. “You don’t have to live like this.”

“Yes, I do.”

“I hear Nikodemus has magekind who work with people like you. Street witches and mages who have problems with their magic.”

She forced herself not to react to anything. She spread her fingers flat on the sofa and concentrated on the fabric against her skin. Feeling nothing was familiar and safe, and right now she wasn’t safe. His finger reached her chin, only it wasn’t his fingertip that touched her but the back of his hand, and she fell further into disastrous arousal.

“We’ll call him and find out. After.”

“After what?” The moment the words left her mouth she got what he meant. What a stupid, boneheaded thing to say. She didn’t have much time to feel like an idiot, though.

He kissed her, hard and fast. After a stunned moment during which her brain was less useful than mush, she understood one thing: she wasn’t spinning out of control. Not even a glimmer of free fall. And she felt wonderful and frightened and terrifyingly good.

She tilted her chin toward him and let it happen. Tongues got involved. The immediacy of her physical reaction threatened to overwhelm her. She savored the feel of his mouth, the taste of him, the sandy scent, her sense of how much bigger he was than her. Reactions she barely recognized flowed through her. A river of desire that unsettled her at the same time she wanted more. More and more.

When he leaned back from that, his smile remained smug, and she didn’t care. She really didn’t. “After I fuck your brains out.”

She brushed a finger over the stubble of his goatee, then filled her free hand with his black, black hair, and he dipped his head to make that easier for her. A little too late, she realized she’d obliterated what was left of the physical barrier between them. Verbal banter she could pretend was no big deal. Touching someone the way she was touching Khunbish changed everything.

Then again, she wasn’t getting even a flicker from him.

He moved his lower body closer to her, all that hard male flesh. He focused on her chest, and she had two opposite reactions: that his stare was both crude and unbearably arousing. He dragged his attention to her face, and the look was pure heat. She lifted her hand from the couch and set her palm on his upper chest. Nothing happened except between her legs. She ached for him there. She left her hand where it was. His smug grin broadened.

“I know you’re keeping me out of your head, but that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t get through. Or that I wouldn’t lose control.”

“God, I hope so.”

She pushed against his chest. Not very hard, though. “We have to be sure. Bad things happen when I lose control.”

His grin was pure evil. “Lucky me.”

“No. Not lucky you.” She made a fist of her hand on his chest. My God, that was solid muscle under her hand. How, when he wasn’t human? “You saw what happened to Jack. I lost it for a second, and now he’s dead. Trust me, orgasms aren’t good for me.”

He frowned. “What, did you just lie there while Michael got himself off?”

“It wasn’t like that.” Still not a flicker from him. What if he was right? What if this was safe? With her other hand, she brushed his hair over his shoulder, but most of it fell back, cool against her fingers, sliding over her skin. “As long as I have control of myself, everything’s okay. I can do the things he likes.”

He kept scowling. “Did he know you were doing that?”

“Of course.”

“Fucking bastard.”

“We can be intimate without me having an orgasm.”

He pushed back enough that her hand fell away from his chest. He gaped at her. “Are you saying he didn’t get you off? Ever?”

“You don’t understand.” She disentangled her fingers from his hair, frustrated. Irritated. “We couldn’t risk me feeling much. It wouldn’t have been safe for him otherwise.”

“You just closed your eyes, is that what you’re saying?”

She shrugged. “It was the only time someone touched me more than accidentally.”

“Jesus, Fensic. That just isn’t right. It’s criminal, that’s what it is.”

“It had to be that way. Besides, men are very visual. Once they get to see you naked…”

He stilled and some of his smugness returned. “Does that mean I get to see you naked?”

“Khunbish.”

“Fensic.” His muscles flexed some more. “Listen. We can do it without you needing to block yourself off. I won’t lie, I’m counting on you getting me off, but you can believe I’ll make it happen for you, too. You’ll feel when I touch you, I promise.” The rasp of his voice set off a whole new level of arousal. From the change in his eyes, he knew it, too. She wanted that to be true, more than anything. “Anything you want. Any way you want it.”

She brought her hands up and rested them on the curve of each bicep. Pure muscle. She got nothing from him, not even when she tried. Nothing happened. No bitter tang in her mouth, no images slamming into her head. The couch, which wasn’t small, now wasn’t nearly big enough. She whispered one of Michael’s pet phrases. “Demons deceive by their very nature.”

He gave her a decidedly dirty grin. Her stomach tightened. While she watched, he took off his flannel shirt and dropped it on the floor. His arms were cut. “He’s right in a way. And totally, entirely wrong.”

“What’s the lie, Khunbish?” This time she didn’t cut herself off from her reactions. She let them flow through her, and she found out the sizzle underneath her skin felt good. So did the heaviness in her breasts and between her legs. She wanted him to touch her again, all those soft, gentle caresses. She wanted to know what it would feel like to be touched without being removed from herself.

“Complicated things are all kinds of gray. You know that. Demons and mages? That’s complicated. Demons and witches? Even more complicated.”

Lys gazed into his face, distracted by sensations she’d not permitted herself to feel except in the most distant way. “Michael says demons have a non-human form. Is that true?”

The way his body tensed and the flicker in his eyes made her wonder if he’d prefer to avoid the truth. “You humans. So tied to one form.” He tipped his chin at her and clapped a hand to his chest. “This is real. As real as my other forms.”

“What else do you look like?”

A smile of sly invitation curved his mouth, a dark and inviting look that made her sex throb. “A fucking monster.”

“Be serious.” She curled her fingers harder around his arm. Solid. Real. Warm.

“I am. You want to do a monster, we can do that. Whatever gets you off is good with me.”

Her mind clicked back to a state of cold unfeeling, and that felt safe. She knew how to deal with him when she was like this. “What gets you off?”

“Since you ask, human women get me off every time.” He moved from his straddle and sat next to her. She forced herself not to drag him back. But he moved close. Close enough that his side pressed against hers. He leaned in, and his smile was all about sex. His attention wandered in a long, slow perusal of her body that stripped away the barriers between her and the world. One elbow on the top of the couch, with his free hand, he popped a button of her shirt. “I love sex with human women.” His gaze flicked over her again. “I think I need sex with you. I really do.”

“So you do deceive.” She put her palm where his heart ought to be. Must be there, because she felt it beating. Was that part of the illusion? Or was there really a heart there? She pushed against his chest, gently. “Do you tell your partners what else you are?”