Remedy Maker (44 page)

So why did the empty space inside him grown larger?

“Hey.” He stopped outside the bathroom and tucked loose strands of hair behind her ear, his fingers tracing the delicate whorl. “I’m okay from here. Just going to wash up first, brush my teeth.”

Her simple smile rocked his world. No harsh judgment of his drunken state, no railing at his clumsy hooves. Her glowing robin’s egg eyes were filled with warmth, and all of it directed at him—the fuck-up, the healer who couldn’t heal the woman he loved. The drunk Centaur. The hermit. 

He didn’t deserve her good nature. His heart stuttered, then pumped steady and strong, growing with the feelings he held inside for her. It expanded through his chest and constricted his world. To center on her.

Just her.

Patience
.

“I’ll run a check on Serenity once more, then we’ll rendezvous that-a-way.” She tilted her head toward the stallroom.

Patience didn’t know it, but she had him by the balls in a really good way. If he could live without his heart, he’d cut it out and hand it over.
She’s the only one who’ll ever have it, so why not?

“I—” He cleared his throat. Cottonmouth bloomed and he wished he had a glass of water.

Now’s the time, Rhycious. Tell her.

 Words rushed out. “I . . . can hardly wait.”

Gamóto!
He was such a waste of Centaur hide. Where did the liquid courage go when he needed it most? Granted, the hallway wasn’t romance central but when the time was right, he’d gone and blown it again.

He turned, wanting to shut the bathroom door so she wouldn’t be near someone who disgusted even himself. The
whistle
didn’t help deal with his pain. It only ripped the scab off all over again.

Patience stopped and pulled his face closer for a kiss. Her tender fingers stroked hair off his forehead. She massaged his scalp and he moaned, closing his eyes in pleasure.

“Don’t be too long.” She whispered.

I can’t help it, I’m hung like a
. . . .

“I’m two hoofsteps behind you.”

Thirty-Three

Rhycious rolled over onto his back, pulling Patience to lie on top of him. Flushed from their morning romp in the sack, she smiled and made him tingle in all the in-between places. He stuffed a pillow under his head and gazed into her beautiful eyes, drowning with a willingness to go under.

Her inquisitive fingers played with the dark curls on his chest. “You don’t have to treat me like I’m
fragible
. For ten years this damn
woozly
has taken to me like a BFF I can’t shake loose. But I’m feeling
donk
this morning.”

He thought a moment on Dendron’s suggested cure. Hangover or not, his head was clear enough to know the importance of upholding his title of Remedy Maker. It wasn’t even a consideration—Patience had to be cured.

Before melancholy bombed their bedtime sport, he changed the subject without speaking a word.
Mr. Happy
obligingly translated, Rhy helping with a hip bump and big grin.

Her turquoise eyes grew voluminous, and she wiggled in mock protest. “You can’t be serious. We just . . . how can you . . . . ”

“Oh, baby. I am serious.”
With you doing the shake and shimmy on top of me, how can I not want you again?
”

Rhycious growled and pretended to feast on her tender throat, holding her securely and rubbing himself against her. Sweet matriarch of the gods—heated flesh teased him without mercy.

Nicely rounded and plump as a peach, he curved his palm over her bare bottom, tempted by the shape. Her soft skin drove him out of his mind.

He gave her butt a small pinch.

“Hey! What’s that for?” she scolded with a grin, beating a limp fist against his chest.

“Your ass is too perfect and needs to be punished.”

She giggled and shook her head. “Not hardly. You’re just being mean and spiteful.” She teased, “How long have you been the punisher, oh dark overlord?”

“How long have I had a hard-on?” he countered.

She gasped and flushed fiery red, nearly matching the dried cranberries he’d brought her to eat.

“
Maybably
you are a punisher after all,” she retorted when he chuckled at her distress. “I swear you like to shock me.”

“It’s so much fun.” He caught her hand tickling his ribs. “Quit wiggling around. You’re only turning me on more.”

In a heartbeat she went still, her pink cheeks giving off heat as he raised his head off the bed to kiss one. Then her lashes dropped to half-mast and her gorgeous brown eyes turned sepia and sly. “What’s the
madda witchu
? You don’t want me turning you on?”

No words came out of his opened mouth. A mischievous smile spread across her lips. Her Nymph side taking over, she tipped her head and slowly kissed his lips.

His response was instantaneous and combustible. Rock hard in a flash, he pressed himself against her lower belly. The sensation rippled, causing his breath to hitch sharply. He wrapped his arms around her and rolled them over, trapping her body beneath his. The back of her head cradled in his palm, his mouth pressed hot and urgent against hers.

He slid his tongue against her lips, coaxing them apart, and then plunged deep when she finally parted.

Rhycious was instantly besieged, his heart thrashed against his chest, his body flushed with sudden heat from head to toe. He burrowed his hand deep into her soft hair, kneading her scalp in slow, firm circles until he felt her go limp beneath his ministrations. Her untamed taste flooded his senses, beckoning him for more, thrilling him with desire.

She groaned into his mouth, and he imprisoned the pleasurable sound as he fitted her fully beneath him, using his arms to keep from crushing her. Her knees rose so her thighs cradled his hips. His muscular belly pressed against her softer one and between them lay the solidity of his inexorable erection. Her delicious body snuggled against his, and like a flashpoint, he grew larger and harder.

Their position became everything wild and titillating. He took a deep breath in through his nose, flaring his nostrils in baser Centaur form. Her sexual excitement fragranced the air and perfumed the bed sheets.

Again, he breathed in her scent.

Stark hunger fell over him as he gazed into her slumberous eyes. The powerful drive of her inner heat beckoned with lustful enchantment. Suddenly voracious, his mouth attacked her soft malleable lips. As if she couldn’t get enough of him, she gasped for her breath beneath his onslaught.

The stallion side of him climbed higher, the need to breed turning him raw. He devoured her lips again and again, exposing the erotic dangers of his untamed side. He had no fear, no regulation.

His hands dove beneath her back and cupped her shoulders tight, fingers curling above her collarbone. The sensation of fragile bone and lithesome muscle churned his blood to a raging boil.

Half of him wanted to hold her arms down so she’d be pliant on the bed, the other half couldn’t resist letting her hands have free rein, to run them over the bare skin of his shoulders and back. Light touches of her fingers acted as a catalyst, causing him to take hold of her even tighter, freeing a low growl from the depths of his throat. 

Rhycious recognized his vocal vibrations as an entirely possessive sound. It warned others to back the hell off. Patience was his mate, and he wasn’t about to share.

On that avaricious thought, he broke away from her delicious mouth. In unison, they panted hard for breath. Gulps of comingled air brushed across their faces.

Then, with slow deliberation, he slid down her body, her nipples marked for his destination.

“Dog it.” As usual, he had no idea what she meant.

“Huh? I’m a little busy here.” He closed his mouth directly over the point of her nipple, scraping his teeth against the tightened bud. Her hips leapt off the bed as the grating sensation blasted through her, and he chuckled low in his throat.

“You have . . . 
ohhh
  . . . a problem,” she said.

Her stiff nipple prodded his famished tongue and she squealed when he increased the power of his drawing mouth. He circled the pebbled bud, rolling it under his tongue. Her body coiled like delicate strings he pulled with expert ease.

He palmed her opposite breast. His hand tightened and squeezed gently, her responding moan so loud he immediately did it again. The back of his thumbnail scraped across her point, painting over it repeatedly until he felt she was liable to scream from the sensation.

Greedily, he sucked her nipple. She squirmed beneath him, stimulating his imagination in all the ways he wanted to pleasure her.

“Rhy, aren’t you going to get that?”

He made passionate love to her breasts, all the while shifting his way profoundly deeper between her widening thighs. He lifted his lips, breaking the suction momentarily. “I’m getting there,
polytima
.”

He raised his hips and notched himself against her opening. Hot and wet met his probing cock. Groaning, he was barely able to regain control.

The astoundingly sensual woman beneath him, her seeking hands running up and down his shoulders, back and sides, wanted him—head trip flaws and all. As clear as mountain spring water, she accepted him.

Moreover, passion and hunger caused her earlier embarrassment to fly out the window, overcoming to the point where she forgot herself entirely. Lifted and seeking, her hips pumped against his, rubbing the center of her core against his shaft, lubricating him with her readiness.

Her moisture—pure heaven. Nectar from the gods. A true sign of just how badly she wanted him. So generous, she saved his life with her gentle and compassionate ways. Whatever Patience did, he would see that she never suffered again.

The protective thought nearly made him stop. He feared for her life with his traumatic mental flare-ups and didn’t want to hurt her. Just the same, he couldn’t give her up either. In truth, he wanted to plunge into her, plant himself deep inside, and allow friction to wash over them in a sensuous tide.

Bathed and coated in her moist heat, his hips thrust out of control. She whimpered against his mouth, her fingernails cutting into his back with magnificent ferocity. With every forward stroke, his rubbed his pubic hair against her sensitive clit.

“Lose yourself with me,
Polytima
. Just let yourself go.”

Damn, she was tight as his fist. As soon as she peaked, he’d let himself go deep inside her. He groaned at the mental image, his swollen cock enormous and heavy as it moved in and out of her.

“Rhycious . . . .”

“Am I hurting you?”

“No, but . . . .” Her panting was loud in his ear, fueling his desire to take her to flaming heights.

Hard with need of her, suddenly angry for his many failings, he rammed forward, lifting her hips off the bed with his force.

She cried out, her inner muscles clenching around him in quickening pulses. Teeth gritted, neck straining, barely the presence of mind to wait for her to reach the finish line together.

Gods, she was so blessedly tight around him, it was hard to do.

He wanted to fuck her hard, make her come over and again until she couldn’t think of anything but him.

Her keening cries and arched back took his willpower away. Unable to hold out much longer, he reached between their bodies and rubbed his finger across her enflamed little clit. Muscles clamped down on his cock so strongly that together they reached their peak.

Their mingled breaths panted as their mythic bodies mated. The thin golden thread holding it all together snapped and set them free. Rhycious was fighting compulsion, fighting base need, fighting to collapse the wall between Centaur and Wood Nymph forever.

He growled in bursts of animalistic successions, jerking his hips as he fought her body for depth. Her inner muscles convulsed, milking him for all he was worth. With a deafening roar, he came apart. Hot spurts shot out and he couldn’t restrain himself. He hooked an arm around the back of her knee, pulling her leg high, and thrust against their mutual spasms.

Breathing rapidly, Rhycious collapsed over her, careful not to allow his full, sated weight to crush her. Eyes closed, he let the warmth of Patience’s soul seep into his, healing him from the inside out.

To calm his racing heart, he took a deep breath. Blood pounded in his ears, knocking like a fist to his skull. Rhycious couldn’t move. Hell, he didn’t want to, and why should he when he was so comfortable right where he was.

The writhing under him mewed and stroked his back, gaining his attention.

“What? You want air?” He chuckled and rolled to his side, cuddling her close. “You’re lucky I have the energy left.”

Carefully pulling out his semi-erection, he lifted his hand to cover his eyes and groaned. “My hangover is worse than I thought. I swear there’s someone banging around inside my head.”

Patience giggled and poked him in the side. “That’s what I’ve been trying to
informate
you on. Someone’s at the door.”

What?

He jerked to a sitting position and bolted off the floor bed. Air beads inside the futon mattress crackled like trampled nutshells in a bag as he jumped to his wobbly feet. He grabbed his jeans off the chair.

“Pan’s holy hooves, woman! Why didn’t you say anything?” He jabbed his legs into his pants, zipping them up, forgoing the top button. “Shit. Where’d I put the gun?” He whipped his head about, turning to look around him.

“On the dresser.” Laughter in her voice, Patience held the bed sheet in front of her, pushing her sexy, bed tousled hair out of her eyes. “I’ll get dressed.”

With a flick of his thumb, the gun’s cylinder kicked open to the side. He checked the ammo—all six rounds in place. A quick jerk of his wrist snapped the wheel shut.

“You,” he pointed his finger at her, “aren’t going anywhere. Get dressed if you like but stay in here.” Distraction from whoever kicked his door was the last thing Rhycious needed.