Mere Temptation (14 page)

“Okay, sweetie, we can try.” He hedged his statement, not wanting to push her.

“Try?” Her voice was a nervous squeak.

“Hmmmnnn.” He continued his licking, caressing down along the crease of her labia until her muscles calmed. Then he stroked her honey down further, over the entrance of her anus, where he pressed with one slow finger.

She relaxed into his touch. His digit eased back and forth, and after only a few strokes, he felt the first edge of her orgasm rise in pulses on his hand. Sidon rolled over to the bedside table to furrow in the drawer, and when he turned back to Isa, her face was red as a beet and she hid it behind her hands.

He rose to her face, and pulled her hands away, kissing her with everything he had in him. Then he trailed his fingers lower, and pressed into her bottom again while trailing his tongue along her teeth.

He lowered his mouth to her clitoris, and she relaxed into the pleasure before gasping when he tunneled another slick finger into her back opening. He fingered her in long, firm strokes, sinking to his knuckles. Isa’s breath whooshed out. Her orgasm drew her knees up off the bed as she convulsed.

Sidon petted her gently while she finished undulating. He smiled up at her flushed and sweaty face and hoped she felt every bit of his adoration. “You think you can handle more?”

She swallowed, and then nodded.

“Yes.”

Sidon added a third digit and watched her eyes for any sign of pain. She looked back, frightened but bold.

“You’ll need to relax, okay?” Despite his lust, Sidon considered backing out of this experiment.

She nodded.

He screwed up his courage. After all, he could stop at any time. “You let me know right away if it hurts.”

She nodded again.

“After you come you’re may need me to stop. But that’s okay, all right?” He didn’t want her to feel like a failure if he didn’t finish.

“What do you mean?” Her voice came in pants, so sexy his cock wept into the sheets.

“After you orgasm you’ll become more sensitive. I don’t want to hurt you.” He’d only been told that once, but Sidon wanted to be cautious.

“But what about you?” The earnest way she considered his pleasure made Sidon’s heart melt.

“We can do other things later. I don’t want you to worry about me.”

He brought his body up over hers and placed his bulging head at her anal star. He pressed inward gently, and her entire body clenched in fright.

“Take me in your hand,” he whispered, and guided her fingers around the base of his slicked girth. Sidon held still, neither pushing forward nor releasing his pressure as Isa breathed deeply, closed her eyes, and in tiny increments softened onto his cock. With a downward press of her hips, she allowed the thick knob inside her. Her eyes pressed tight and her mouth opened as she panted. He felt her pulse like kisses on his erection.

Sidon kept his eyes open, watching her every response. “You okay?”

She bobbed her head once, her mouth pressed closed. He released her fingers from his root and pressed them into her clitoris. “You do what feels good, okay?” He observed her closely and penetrated further, expanding her passage inch by inch. When Isa grazed her nub she let out a series of high-pitched keens poised between pleasure and pain.

Deep enough for Isa to squeak a protest, Sidon stopped and studied her expression anew. The tortured rapture in her eyes took his breath away, and he kissed her hard, his tongue plunging in, filling her mouth. She moaned, her breath filling his senses.

He pulled out a little and pushed back in. Isa spoke a long series of curses and sighs, but didn’t give any indication he should stop. So by tiny increments, Sidon sped up his thrusts, making sure to stay shallow enough not to cause her pain.

Isa’s hand sped up on her clit and Sidon pushed more roughly. His own orgasm climbed up behind his balls. “Please…” she whispered, and Sidon hoped he’d understood her meaning correctly as he drilled into her. Her walls clamped down on his cock, tight as a fist. He turned to iron inside her. White-hot spasms rose from the base of his body. Again and again he shouted his release.

Isa screamed as she came. Her eyes clenched tight, her jaw hung low, and Sidon watched her ride her own searing crest of spasms. She squeezed her legs together at his hips as she climaxed. Amidst her cries, she said, “Ouch,” and Sidon’s pleasure mixed with pain as he desperately fought the urge to buck harder, and pulled out even as he kept coming. He rolled her into a spoon position and shot the last of his seed against the curve of her back.

When her second orgasm hit, he reached down her front to palm her through it, rasping words of encouragement into the shell of her ear. A third round of spasms rocked Isa’s body. Sidon rubbed her through it. Pride and pleasure coursed through him, and when she’d finished shaking, he craned his neck around to meet her lips.

Isa let out a small laugh, whispering, “Wow, that was...”

“A little intense?” he asked hopefully.

“Ya think?” Her joking tone reassured him.

Sidon pulled her flush against him and nipped his way up to her earlobe. “You were so brave.”

She turned her head and kissed him, and Sidon knew they both grinned like little kids who’d gotten away with something.

“You,” Sidon nuzzled her neck on more time, “are the sexiest woman on the planet. But we should get cleaned up.” He shuffled to the bathroom and returned with a damp towel which he passed along the backs of her legs and his front before tossing it aside. Then he kissed her again and headed to the bathroom, with a promise to fill the tub.

The mermaid walked into the bathroom, blushing furiously, and slipped into the warm water. He wrapped his arms around her golden, freckled shoulders, nuzzling her neck. They wouldn’t be able to bathe for long without switching to their water forms, so he grabbed a thick sponge and scrubbed it across her back while he could. She moaned into the touch. God, he loved her. His wandering fingers rolled over the tracker still on her arm, and he realized it was time for him to start trusting her, too.

“Let’s take this off before bed, okay?” He pressed the words into her neck with little kisses.

Instead of a smile, her lips twisted to the side as she chewed her lip.

“You don’t want to keep track of me anymore?”

Damn, this woman would be the death of him.

“Of course I do. I just thought. I don’t know, I guess I thought we were past the point where you might run off in the night.”

“Oh, well, okay.” Something in her tone was still not-quite-happy.

“If you want to keep wearing it—”

“Do you have one of these on anyone else?” Yes, she would definitely be the death of him.

“No. It has never occurred to me to tag anyone besides you, sweetheart.” He tried to sound reassuring, but worried it might have come off as sarcastic.

“Well,” her voice was small now, grabbing at his heart as well as his cock and dragging both across a bed of hot coals. “I kinda like it. It makes me feel like I’m yours.” The last part was only a whisper, but he felt it reverberate to his bones.

“You are mine, Isa, you always have been.” Rising from the tub in a mighty splash, he lifted her into a thick towel. “And you always will be.”

* * * *

Gracie stroked her fingers through the bristly curls of Karon’s chest. His body in her bed was so warm, and he made her sheets smell of Old Spice and man. It had been a while since she’d thought about her choice to become a succubus, since she regretted the human life she could have lived instead. But of course, then she wouldn’t have ever met Karon. She would have died a hundred years ago, in the same Chicago slum where she was born.

“Good morning,” she said when he finally opened his eyes.

His heavy-lidded gaze panned over her.

“Morning.” He rolled onto her, breathing the word into her neck.

“John,” she started, not sure how to approach what she’d been thinking about for hours, “Do you ever think about leaving Dendric?”

“Yeah, sometimes. Like any job, right?”

“Yes, but still. Do you ever feel like maybe what they’re doing isn’t right? Like maybe you don’t want to be a part of it?”

“Sometimes, Gracie. But they do good work.”

“I don’t see how you could think that.”

He’d allowed his body to slide to her side now, and he drew little circles with his index finger on her belly.

“Do you know what my first job ever was, Gracie?”

“No, John, I don’t.” The strange timbre in his voice made her think maybe she didn’t want to know.

“Well, I grew up in a coven. Did you know that?”

“No. Why would you?”

“My parents were vampires. My twin sister was too. The doctors explained it to me later, something about recessive genes.”

“Oh.” Gracie tried to snuggle closer to him then, to wrap her arm around him. But he was unyielding as marble as he continued to stroke her belly.

“Yeah, they didn’t have much use for me, since I couldn’t hunt, and being that I was basically human, I was considered just a food source.”

“That’s disgusting, John. Your parents didn’t feed from you, did they?”

“No. They protected me as best they could. But my sister fed on me every chance she got. I think she thought of me as her own private blood bank. But once I was grown, I had to serve a purpose in the coven, and since they didn’t want me out in the world where I might tell people about vampires, they locked me away.”

Gracie looked closer at him, at the strapping man she’d only ever known at sea. An explorer. She couldn’t imagine him in one place for very long.

“There was a holding area where they kept humans, people they were going to eat. That same room served as a dining room.” He laughed then, his face grim. “Caring for the prisoners was considered too high a role for me. After all, I might set them free. So my job was to clean up after their meals.

“The floors would be covered in blood and the urine and feces of the terrified humans. Sometimes I’d find small body parts that got left behind when the corpses had been removed.

“The coven ate as a group several times a week, and every time they were done, I’d grab my mop and get to work cleaning their plate.”

His eyes were ice cold, and Gracie could see the vampire lurking behind them. “Eventually I ran. They chased me at first, but I hopped the first boat I could, a trawler heading north to Alaska for the fishing season. As a general rule, vampires hate water.”

“I’m so sorry, John.”

“You didn’t have anything to do with it!” The words flew from his mouth like a slap.

Gracie sat up. She pulled her emotions back into herself. This was the real John Karon. Now that she knew, she wished she didn’t.

All at once, she couldn’t do it anymore. The half-lies and half-truths, the sneaking, even the draining of his life force.

“John, I can’t—”

He placed him finger over her lips to still them. “I know.”

“Are you sure you won’t…”

“No, Gracie, I won’t, I’m sorry.”

A warm rush of tears welled up in her eyes. She stood, not looking in his direction, and donned her clothes. Seconds later she slid his door closed behind her, without saying goodbye.

Chapter 9