hidden talents (12 page)

Without turning to her, he grasped her hand and squeezed. “Oh, only until the next full moon forces me to turn. Or until we do something about it. That"ll make us feel better for a bit.”

A bit was better than nothing. Grateful for his hold, even if in some ways it made things worse, Ari returned the grip of his fingers. The next time she glanced at his profile, he was smiling a little.

She realized she wouldn"t have wanted to feel this sex-crazed with anyone but him.

∞

The fifteen minute cab ride to Adam"s house gave them both a chance to

calm down. Once there, Adam went up to the roof to meet the gargoyle, to show him around and help him do whatever gargoyles did to set up housekeeping.

Seeing how excited he"d been to live here made Ari regret screaming like a banshee the previous night.

She returned to her room. Well, not
her
room, but certainly the nicest she"d ever stayed in. It was just right, she thought, with its granny chair and its hand-stitched quilt. Flea market-type paintings hung on the walls in cheap frames. She saw street scenes of city life in Resurrection, three wolves who might have been Adam"s relatives, and one picture of a big blue moon reflected in a lake. None of the paintings were sophisticated, but all stirred her emotions. Ari felt like she was peering into the window of a house she wished she were invited to.

“Maria paints those,” Adam said. “They make Ethan feel more at home when he sleeps over.”

Ari turned and found him leaning in the doorway, his hands in the pockets of his gray slacks. The top two buttons of his shirt were undone, and the pose made his shoulders appear incredibly broad. His slightly shaggy hair fell over one eyebrow. Ari struggled not to focus too hard on how good he looked.

“Is the gargoyle settled?” she asked.

“For now. He asked us to call him Grant, by the way. He said he chose the name to be easy to remember.”

Adam"s grin called up one from her. “Grant the gargoyle?”

“Yes. From his mother"s reaction, I gather he"s considered eccentric.”

Ari knew how that was. “Were you ever?”

He rubbed one foot on the threshold. “Was I ever what?”

“Eccentric.”

“Ah. Not so much. Because my parents were, I think being normal was my

way of rebelling.”

She realized her hands were twisted together with nervousness.

As she drew breath to speak Adam moved, shoving his hair back from his

forehead. “Look, Ari. Maybe this is presumptuous, but I stopped in the corner store after I talked to Grant.”

He pulled something from his pocket: a small embroidered bag that was

folded into a flat roll and then tied with red satin cord. The bundle looked pretty but inexpensive, like a mini-gift from an import store. When he held it out, she took it. Chinese characters she couldn"t read mostly covered its ornate label. The English letters at their center spelled out
Tiger!

“I"m afraid I don"t know what this is,” she said.

Adam"s cheeks went pink. “They"re enchanted condoms.”

Ari burst out laughing, which caused him to turn redder. “I"m sorry!” she said through her snorts. “I"m sure it"s a cultural thing. That just sounds so funny to me.

And the brand is Tiger! Don"t they have any Wolf!?”

“Tiger! is the best,” he said grumpily. “They come in more sizes, and they"re 99 percent effective - even for alphas.”

Ari pressed her hand over her giggles.

“You wouldn"t think it was funny if you"d spent two weeks" salary on six rubbers.”

“Sorry,” she said, her amusement receding. “Really? Two weeks? That"s very flattering.”

“I thought -” He dropped his gaze to his feet, which were clad in black dress socks. His toes bunched and straightened on the floor. When he looked up again, his soft green eyes glowed from the inside. “I thought it would make things easier if we had actual sex before we laid ourselves out as bait. Once we"re undercover, we"re bound to be watched closely. You do want to have actual sex, don"t you?”

Oh, she could fall for a man like him.

“I want to,” she said.

His eyes darkened and then flared brighter. “Good.” His gaze slid to her breasts and he wet his lips. “Good.”

Taking the hint, she began undoing the front of the flowered dress, which had buttons all the way down. “I do have a condition.”

“What?” he asked hoarsely, his gaze now glued to her hands.

“You get naked for this too.”

She"d never seen a man undress so quickly. Of course, Adam wasn"t just any man. He was a werewolf with supernatural strength and speed. She dropped the simple dress to her ankles as his last sock went flying behind him into the hall.

The only thing he wore then was his saint medal.

Ari was trembling in all the right places.

“God,” he said. “Ari.”

He came toward her like a man with a serious do-or-die mission, his cock bouncing thick and red before him.

“Wait,” she said, her breath gone short and her pulse pattering in her throat.

“Give a girl a chance to admire the view.”

He groaned, but he stopped a full stride away from her.

“Half a minute,” she promised, moving to circle him. Oh, he was pretty. He had a swim trunk tan, his legs brown from the sun, his butt white and high and narrow as its strong cheeks clenched with tension.

“Ari ...”

“Sh.” She touched the plane between his shoulders to keep him from turning.

“Those rubbers aren"t the only things I"m finding enchanting.”

His fingertips dug into his palms, his nails slightly longer than normal. “I need you.”

“And you"ll have me. I only want a few seconds.” She trailed around to his front, where she took in his strong pie-wedge chest. Its cloud of hair narrowed to dive down his belly, then spread around his groin. His six pack was so shredded it had a few extra cans. His erection was just flat out phenomenal. When she stopped to stroke both thumbs around his navel, the heat of his swollen tip beat back at her like a candle flame.

“You,” she said, “are a very good-looking man.”

“I can"t even describe how beautiful you are. Now could you please take off those damn panties?”

She"d forgotten them in her distraction at seeing him naked. She backed up and sprawled on the bed with her hips at its edge. “You take them off,” she taunted.

He moved to her so fast she gasped. His fingers curled into the waistband above each of her hipbones. Some primitive part of her wanted him to rip them free. Instead, he pulled them slo-owly down her dangling legs. He went to one knee to finish, his eyes burning straight up her reclined body. Ari wasn"t the shyest girl on the planet, but more than her usual was displayed. When she blushed for him, his grin was 100 percent Grade A male.

Gaze still on hers, he took her knees in his hands and pushed them apart.

“You smell hot,” he said.

He went down on her like he had at his kitchen table, only this time it was better. He knew her sweet spots: where they were, how hard to rub or tongue them. He also knew the signs that she was about to come. Twice his talented mouth took her to the brink, and twice he stopped right there.

“Shit,” she gasped the second time he did it, a bit too tempted to yank out his nice thick hair.

He kissed the inside of her thigh, then rose to loom over her on his elbows.

He was furnace hot, especially at his groin, which might have been a were thing.

He ran his tongue around fully erect canines. “Want me?”

His voice rasped like sandpaper, making her shiver. “You know I do.”

“I want to hear it.”

She ran her hands up his hard torso, fingernails scratching lightly through his hair. “I want you, Adam. I want that big cock of yours shoved up in me to my throat.”

A shudder rolled through his frame. “Do you want it now?”

“Yes, Adam. Please.”

He liked her pleading. His heavy eyelids narrowed his gaze. “Touch yourself first. Rub your juice on me and then roll on the condom.”

She jerked, because she"d forgotten the blinking thing. She"d have ridden him bareback without a second thought.

Adam smiled knowingly. “Touch yourself,” he said again.

For him, she did it, though she was reluctant to put the private act on show.

He must have liked shy girls, because her hesitation only aroused him more.

“That"s it,” he rumbled, pushing up on his hands to watch. Maybe it was her imagination, but the gargoyles" tattoos seemed to grow brighter. “Work two fingers all the way in.”

This felt good in spite of her self-consciousness. “I"d rather this were you.”

“It will be. Oh yeah.” He fought against his eyes closing. “Deeper. Do it again. Ari, your fingers are so shiny.”

She drew them out to rub the shine on him. He made swallowed noises as she caressed his impressive length. Up his shaft she went, around his flare, back and forth across his sensitive tip. His slit was leaking excitement almost as freely as she was. As long as the moisture was there, she rubbed it around him too.

“Mmm,” he said, his spine wriggling with pleasure. “You petting me is

magic.”

She wanted him so much she was starting to vibrate. “Ready for the

condom?”

He looked at her and let out a breathy laugh. He must have noticed how

hopeful she sounded. “More than. You felt too good rubbing me to stop.”

Aside from their packaging, the Tiger! rubbers had the same construction she was used to. They were big enough for him and appeared to have a generous receptacle tip. He moaned some more while she rolled them down, a process she might have dragged out a bit.

“Bitch,” he laughed when she finished.

“Is that an insult to a werewolf?”

He sank down to rub her nose with his. “Nuh-uh.” He moved one hand

between them, his finger searching her furrow before setting his rounded crest in place for entry. Just that felt so incredible her back arched uncontrollably off the bed.

He stretched the arm that had reached between them to the side and got a firm grip on the mattress. “Ready, sweetheart?”

God, he got to her with his endearments. About to combust, she pulled her knees up and set her heels. “Whenever you are,” she panted.

The first long push seemed to last forever. This was a claiming with a capital

„C."

“Mmm,” he hummed, going in and in and
in
. “Oh my God, Ari.”

She gripped his back hard and tried to help. He was huge, but her body

wasn"t stopping him. It creamed for him and twitched and tried to suck him farther by tightening. When he was all the way in, he switched the mattress-holding to his left hand and shoved his right underneath her butt. That held her pelvis nice and tight to his. He looked at her, just for a second, the fire in him blazing like the sun.

He had to have felt how ready for this she was. He let go of his control, just rocketed from zero to sixty - as if his cock were a jackhammer.

Ari came the first time in under a minute.

He grunted at her contractions and shoved them both higher on the bed,

though his feet were still on the floor. “"gain,” he demanded.

She didn"t quite come on cue, but within the next dozen thrusts. This orgasm was harder than the first. She threw back her head and arched.

“Shit,” he said, going faster and pumping in at a new angle. The bedsprings squeaked like frenetic mice, but she barely noticed. He was pummeling a spot so incredibly sensitive it made her eyes want to cross. The feelings were almost too good to bear. Little helpless wails began breaking in her throat. To judge by the way his face suddenly got darker, her excitement excited him.

“Sorry,” he gasped. “God.”

He crammed into her and held, so obviously ejaculating that it sent her into a bliss of spasms for a third time. Surely this was a record. She was a girl, but usually she needed some recovery time. Still shooting, Adam groaned, pulling his pulsing shaft halfway out and then jamming it in again. Six more times he did this, as if he couldn"t decide whether he wanted to stay as deep as possible inside her or savor the friction. Her pussy certainly was very tight around him, though it didn"t hurt anywhere. Truthfully, she didn"t think its nerves had ever registered so much pure ecstasy.

“Man,” he groaned, pulling out one last time.

He rolled off her onto his back. His hairy calves dangled off the mattress, his eyes covered by one arm. Ari went up on her elbow to enjoy what their energetic screwfest had done to him. Though his cock was still thick enough for the rubber to be secure, the receptacle tip drooped from the weight of the seed in it. Ari was more intrigued by this than she might have been with another man.

“I"m peeling this off,” she said.

Adam grunted, which she took as a
yes
. She disposed of the condom without spilling, then brought a hot wrung-out washcloth from the bathroom.

“Don" haff do,” he mumbled, sounding like the gargoyle.

Since Ari was having fun, she cleaned his cock anyway.

“Ow,” he said as she worked the cloth - she thought - gently around his base.

“Sorry,” she said, pulling her hand guiltily away.

Adam blinked sleepy eyes open. “"s okay. You didn"t know I"m sensitive

there.”

“Okay, well, I"ll just -”

He caught her wrist before she could move off the bed. “Come back. I"ll show you the spot you hit. You"ll want to see it. It"s big kinky werewolf stuff.”

She laughed. He
was
getting to know her a bit. She sat again and he pulled his nearly limp cock up along his belly. Even relaxed, it was substantial. “You see that swollen bit at the base?”

She wanted to touch it but wasn"t quite ready to. “Where it"s redder?”

“It"s the werewolf version of a
bulbus glandis
. It"s mostly vestigial, but it swells up sometimes when we ejaculate. It adds ... an extra kick to the business, I guess. Makes everything more urgent.”

“But you can"t get stuck in me?”

He shook his head, measuring her reaction to this rather exotic sexual detail.

He was still holding up his shaft, his pinkie finger fanning back and forth on the flushed gland thing.