Into the Flame (25 page)
Her gaze fell again on the yellow rose floating in the cereal bowl beside the bed.
‘‘I found out a thousand details about you, and missed the one I’d sought you out to discover—who your father was, and where your family lived—all because I was fascinated by this so-charming face.’’ His fingertips hovered just above her cheek. ‘‘When you smiled at me, your whole face lit up, and I fell . . . so hard.’’
Maybe she did believe he had loved her. After all, why would he lie? ‘‘When I left, you took it badly?’’
‘‘Yes.’’
‘‘Good.’’ She felt as if a weight had been lifted off her chest, and she took her first free breath since she’d seen him change from a cougar into a man. ‘‘Because I was devastated.’’
‘‘Yes, but you didn’t . . .’’
‘‘Didn’t what?’’
His fingertips finally touched her face, and with that single touch, he held her in place for his kiss. He opened her lips with his, slid his tongue in her mouth, swirled, and feinted.
Her eyes slid closed. She gave herself up to the sensation, glad now that she’d told him about his newfound family. Glad that he’d explained, and so eloquently, why he had sought her out at Brown, and why he had seduced her.
He had loved her. Did he love her now?
No, he hadn’t said that, but perhaps he could once again learn.
And if he didn’t . . . well. She’d been alone for a long time. For now, she would enjoy this.
Chapter Twenty-two
Lifting her arms, Firebird wrapped them around Doug’s shoulders and pulled him close, and when his chest rested against hers and his heart beat with the same rhythm, he relaxed for the first time in his life.
‘‘Are you hungry?’’ He strove to sound casual.
She shook her head.
‘‘Thirsty? Tired? Do you need to use the facilities?’’
She continued to shake her head.
‘‘Then I would very much like to make love to you.’’ He held his breath, waiting for the most important confirmation of his life.
She smiled that grand and glorious smile, the one that spread to her eyes into the depths of her soul . . . the one that had first seduced him. ‘‘I’d very much like that, myself.’’
Blood left his brain and rushed straight for his dick, and he suspected—he feared—he had enough to run only one of them at a time.
Reaching over, he touched the switches on the bedside table.
The fireplace sprang to life. Low, sexy, jazzy music began to play.
‘‘Is that supposed to impress me?’’ she asked.
‘‘Did it?’’
Taking his outstretched hand, she brought it back to her face and kissed the fingers while saying, ‘‘Clever planning. Hand steady as a rock. Smooth move. Suave. All in all, a good job.’’
Did she know that with each kiss, he grew less suave and more savage?
He stroked her face, spread her hair across her pillow, touched the shorn side, murmured, ‘‘I’m sorry.’’
She smiled at him. ‘‘We’ll fix it.’’
Every night since she’d fled, he’d dreamed of holding her beneath him, and every night he had subjected her to wild debaucheries of the kind he would never have tried with the sweet, shy virgin Firebird had been. Every time he had imagined finding her, she was alone and just happened to be clothed in a lace teddy with a garter belt, or a leather bustier, or, best of all, a simple housedress with nothing underneath. But no matter what he did to her—and in his dreams he had been violently, gloriously sexual—she always cried out and climaxed and held him afterward and wept, and begged his forgiveness and gone down on him. . . .
‘‘Shit.’’
Desire slammed him like a million volts of electricity.
Desire slammed him like a million volts of electricity.
She lifted her head off the pillow. ‘‘What’s wrong?’’
‘‘Nothing,’’ he croaked.
He couldn’t do any of the things he’d dreamed and imagined, because it was his fault she’d run away. Yet those scenarios crowded his mind, challenging his control, making him want to take her swiftly, take her again, taste her between the legs, and take her again. No matter that she was innocent of wrongdoing; the demon of desire whispered in his mind to keep her prisoner and sate himself.
Even dressed in Mrs. Burchett’s flannel nightgown, she tried his control.
‘‘Are you shy?’’ She pushed him over onto his back and sprawled across his chest, a warm, squirming armful of fantasy. ‘‘Has it been so long that you’ve forgotten the basics? Here, let me start things off.’’ She unfastened the first four buttons of her nightgown.
He didn’t move, transfixed by the hollow of her throat, by the smooth skin of her chest.
She laughed at him and accused, ‘‘You want me to do all the work!’’
‘‘No. That’s not it.’’ He was afraid that if he caught a glimpse of her breast, he would unzip and—
Shit.
He shouldn’t have even thought about her breast. Now his dick tried to claw its way out of his jeans.
Shit.
He shouldn’t have even thought about her breast. Now his dick tried to claw its way out of his jeans.
‘‘Here. Let me show you the basics. First you take off your shirt.’’ She urged him to sit up, and stripped it away.
His tattoo glowed like a fifties Technicolor movie. The reds were true, the blues were cold, the yellows were hot, and all arranged from his shoulder to his belt like the claw marks of a cougar.
He didn’t care about that.
What made him cringe was the small black burn at the base of his throat. The burn that was shaped like a cross.
She saw it all. She didn’t seem to care, or even particularly notice. ‘‘Then I take off my nightgown.’’ She got up on her knees and stripped
it
away.
it
away.
She had on panties.
Thank God.
Thank God.
But the very breasts he had feared were there, small and perfect, with nipples that pointed at his mouth and begged to be suckled. He shut his eyes and blindly reached for her, tugging her forward, and without ever looking, he wrapped his mouth around her breast.
She tasted like whipped cream and cinnamon and sex, and he was starving to death. That nipple poked at his tongue, and as he sucked, it grew more rigid. Inspired, he cupped her other breast, caught that nipple between his thumb and forefinger, and tugged softly.
She shuddered. She wrapped her fingers in his hair and held him in place, and shuddered again.
He lifted his knee between her legs and rubbed, once, twice, and when she sought that pressure, he gave up her breast and flipped her onto her back. He knelt over her, and once again he slid his knee between her legs. But this time he applied a steady pressure and kissed her mouth. Her mouth, her cheeks, her eyes, her ears . . . She was trying to meet his kiss, moving her head to follow him, but he didn’t let her catch up.
Because right now, his discipline was holding.
Yet if he kissed her as he wished to, if he thrust his tongue into her mouth, he’d remember his dream of kissing and fucking her at the same time, the fantasy of his hard-driving, thrusting motion that would imprint him on her—
He had to think of something else.
He nuzzled her neck, skimming the soft skin at her throat, then moving across her collarbone, first one side, then the other.
And all the time, the beast in him urged,
Take her. Take her now. Take her hard. Make her yours.
Take her. Take her now. Take her hard. Make her yours.
‘‘You’re trembling.’’ She stroked his forehead. ‘‘I forgot—you were in the water, too. You had hypothermia. Are you able to—’’
He brought his head up so fast, his neck cracked. ‘‘I can’t stop.’’
She couldn’t ask that of him.
‘‘But will you be hurt if you . . .’’
Lowering his head almost to her breastbone right over her heart, he breathed on her like a man clearing a frozen window. He put all the heat of his soul in that breath, pushing oxygen, lust, and desperation through her skin, her tissues, and into her beating heart.
She stilled. Her eyes half closed. She seemed to be listening, absorbing his essence and his desires.
Then, without realizing what she was doing, she fulfilled one of his wicked dreams.
Stretching her arms above her head, she grasped the corners of her pillow. ‘‘If I remain very still and let you do whatever you want, do you promise to care for yourself?’’
He heard the words, but he couldn’t understand through the roaring in his ears. His gaze swept her body, laid out like a bacchanalian feast. He smelled the scent of arousal that rose like an aphrodisiac from her skin. He heard the rush of air through her lungs, the hurried sound that made him realize that she anticipated pleasure.
His tongue flicked out and sampled the unique flavor of Firebird, and then he tasted an edge of fear, too.
Their previous relationship had been brief and intense. They had never shared the easiness of long-time lovers.
And now . . . she didn’t know him well, but she did know he had been angry with her. She worried he was still angry with her.
That took the edge off, calmed the desperation.
‘‘
Douglas
?’’
Douglas
?’’
He met her troubled gaze. ‘‘I promise nothing, except that when I am done with you, you’re going to be very’’—he kissed her belly—‘‘very’’—he spread her legs and kissed her there—‘‘happy.’’
Chapter Twenty-three
Firebird finished her last relentless, fabulous or-gasm, and relaxed back against the bed.
She could hardly move. Every bone and muscle had been exercised, kissed, massaged, pleasured.
Douglas
had fed her satisfaction—satisfaction tailored especially to her and her fantasies. Now, exhausted, she rolled her head on the pillow and looked at
Douglas
.
Douglas
had fed her satisfaction—satisfaction tailored especially to her and her fantasies. Now, exhausted, she rolled her head on the pillow and looked at
Douglas
.
He looked . . . pleased.
She felt . . . incredible.
And he looked . . . pleased.
When they’d made love before, it had been the clash of two fiercely alive beings who felt and saw and smelled and touched with all the glorious emotions of their souls. She’d burned for him, and she had known he burned for her.
Now, sex with her
pleased
him.
pleased
him.
She narrowed her eyes until she was looking at him through nothing more than a slit, trying to X-RAY him, to see under his skin, into his thoughts.
No.
Controlling
sex with her
pleased
him.
Controlling
sex with her
pleased
him.
His voice startled her out of her fury. In that calm, exceptionally civilized manner of his, he said, ‘‘I need to tell you why I didn’t stay with Mrs. Fuller.’’
‘‘Sure.’’ Those were the words every woman wanted to hear from her lover after great sex.
‘‘Most guys get to be around twelve, and they have this erection pop up, and they’re amazed and horrified and proud.’’ He still sounded calm and civilized, but he rubbed his forehead as if the mere act of talking hurt him. ‘‘And so was I, except . . . I knew it wasn’t the usual thing to turn into a cougar, too. Even at twelve I had a little bit of logic.’’
Firebird began to stop thinking about herself. Began to see why
Douglas
was discussing his puberty when she was still enjoying afterglow. ‘‘How did she find out?’’
Douglas
was discussing his puberty when she was still enjoying afterglow. ‘‘How did she find out?’’
‘‘In addition to everything else—the erection, the pubic hair, the wildcat thing—I developed this tattoo across my chest.’’
‘‘It’s one of those things that identifies you as a Varinski.’’ Firebird knew this stuff for sure.
‘‘So I gathered. But at the time, all I knew was that my body was betraying me in every way possible. My dick was whipping around like a needle on a compass. When I looked in the mirror, sometimes I looked like . . .’’ He shook his head. ‘‘Like a cougar. A golden cougar. And overnight, I had this tattoo branded across my chest. It was big, it was bold, it was colorful. I kept myself covered, but Mrs. Fuller had only two bathrooms, and the one we boys used wasn’t exactly the most private of places. The lock was broken; we were always playing tricks on each other with ice water. . . . The little shit who slept in the bunk bed above me saw the tattoo and told Mrs. Fuller.’’
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