Lauren Dane

“You’re thinking again, Em. It’s always troublesome when you do that. You work yourself up into some kind of state where you start to beat on yourself or me. Stop it. Believe in me, Em. Believe in yourself.”

She took a deep breath and turned back to him. “I don’t know how.” She was quiet for a few moments and held up a hand to keep him back. She took a deep breath and forged on. “I’m supposed to go to Adelade’s and look through her library. I think she has the book but doesn’t know it. She’s got a collection of books in dead languages that she’s been unable to translate. I think the book is there. I was going to see if I could match the symbol to any of them. I’ll just take you with me and you can have the book and take it back to wherever and I’ll go home and the world will be safe for another season.” Her heart stuttered at the thought of never seeing him again.

“Why do you doubt me, a ghra?” He wanted to shake her but he heard the doubt in her voice-the fear.

“I don’t even know what I doubt. I don’t understand this situation. I don’t know what to do or say.” Confused, she turned away and he caught her around the waist, pulling her into his body.

“You think I understand it?”

“Aidan told me that you were a womanizer.”

He stiffened and for the first time in thousands of years felt embarrassment and regret over his behavior. He didn’t understand it but he knew that the woman in his arms would be the only woman for him for the rest of his life. He’d waited all of his life for her and now that he had her there was simply no way he’d let her go.

He sighed and sat down, pulling her onto his lap and into the shelter of his body. “Em, I won’t deny that there have been many women before you and that I have a reputation for being a great lover of women. But I object to the term womanizer. I never manipulated or hurt the women I was with.

“But that means nothing now. How can I convince you that you’re the only woman I want? The only one I need?” He gentled his tone and touched her face.

“I don’t know,” she whispered softly. But she didn’t care because at that moment, in his arms, she didn’t want anything else. She’d figure out the rest later but for now she just wanted him to touch her.

“A ghrá mo chroí, let me show you with my body, prove to you with my touch,” he whispered seductively as he nuzzled the place where her neck met her shoulder.

She sighed as she turned into his body to give him more access.

He felt a surge of triumph as she softened and surrendered to him. He drew off the sweater and turned her to face him astride his lap. “Your body is incredible,” he murmured as he skimmed his lips across her collarbone and down the seductive curve of her breast. He curled his tongue around her nipple and she shuddered.

She reached between them to undo his pants but he grabbed her and held her wrists together at the small of her back.

“I want to touch you,” she said, her words slightly slurred as he abraded her nipple with his teeth.

“You will. But for now, I plan to feast on you and I won’t stop until I get my fill,” he said in that musical voice that she’d come to love.

He used his free hand, sliding it down her neck and over the other breast, stopping to palm her nipple and then roll and tug on it until she arched into him, grinding her pussy over his lap.

“Take your hair down. I love the way it looks when it’s unbound… The way it feels when it glides over my skin,” she breathed out.

He looked into her face and reached back, removing the leather thong holding his hair back and it tumbled free. Her eyes closed at the intensity of feeling as the silky texture feathered over the skin of her arms.

“Wrap your legs about my waist,” he ordered, still holding her wrists so that she couldn’t move her arms.

She squirmed so that she could wrap her legs around him and he stood, carried her into the bedroom and deposited her on the bed. He stood over her, his golden eyes glittering with desire.

“So long and lithe. Sexy.” He picked up her foot and massaged the arch, his big hands kneading. “Your legs do me in. I love long legs and every time I look at yours all I can think of is having them wrapped around my waist or thrown over my shoulders.” He gave her a wicked grin and moved his hands up her calves. He knelt beside the bed and laved the backside of her knee and she gave a soft, breathy moan of pleasure.

He traced up the inside of her thighs with his fingertips, carefully skating over her pussy, up to the waistband of her panties. She watched as he drew them down her legs, tossing the scrap of silk to the side. He drew open her labia with his thumbs. “So pink and pretty, soft and,” he leaned in and gave a long lick, “juicy. Knowing I’m the first, and the only man to ever be here and see this, touch this, taste this…it makes me hard. Makes me want to show you a hundred times a day just how good I can make you feel.”

Em stared at Con, unable to speak around the lump in her throat. This man did things to her, thawed out her heart, made her feel desire. Desired.

She reached down and caressed his face, drawing him upwards, needing his lips on hers. When he kissed her she felt the last bit of the defensive wall she’d built around her heart shatter into a million pieces. She knew she’d been lying to herself that it was just about wanting him sexually. She admitted to herself then that she’d never be able to stop herself from loving him. That she already had loved him since before she’d ever met him.