Save My Soul (A Paranormal Romance: Preternaturals Book 2) Page 20
He hadn’t wanted to leave her, but he needed to feed. She’d sent him away, assuring him she was fine. She hadn’t been prepared to consummate this . . . whatever it was, with Luc. Not while she was still so freaked about the episode with the magic downstairs.
That was five minutes ago. Now, she felt a little differently about the issue. She wanted him with her, and if he had to feed to do that, so be it. She got out of the bed and went downstairs, still feeling a little wobbly.
Drawing a shaky breath, she knocked on Luc’s door before she lost her nerve. Olivia was visible in the background when he answered.
“Anna, are you all right? Do you need . . . ?” He faltered over the words as if he couldn’t quite determine what it was that she needed.
“I’d rather have stolen moments than nothing.” Anna turned to go back upstairs. She didn’t have to look behind her to know Luc would follow.
Chapter Twenty-Four
The door clicked shut, and Anna spun to find Luc standing with his back pressed firmly against it, that predatory gleam in his eyes. Part of her loved that look, and yet . . .
He looked at her as if he was the big bad wolf, and the only weapon she had was a picnic basket. Why couldn’t he choose now to be disarming? She longed for petty arguments over bath towels or holes in the wall. Anything to make what they were about to do seem less scary.
Her heart pulsed out of control as he stalked her, crossing the floor so fast it made her breathless. Then his hands were tangled in her hair, and his mouth covered hers until she gasped for air. A moment later, he broke the kiss, his hot breath in her ear.
“God, Anna, it feels like I’ve waited years for this.” His hands skimmed over her arms like he was trying to be sure she was real. “You’re trembling.”
“I’m scared.”
“You know I won’t hurt you.”
“There’s more than one way to hurt someone.”
If she crossed this bridge with him, it was over for her. No one else would compare to an incubus. When he inevitably left to go off and do what incubi do, she would be the one with the gaping hole in her chest where her heart had been.
His eyes locked with hers. “I’m going for a change of venue. I need you to relax.” He flicked on the small television set. “Sit. Watch. I’ll call you when I’m ready for you.”
Images flickered on the screen while the water ran in the bathroom. The words coming out of the speakers were meaningless sounds Anna couldn’t translate in her head. Nothing could distract her from the knowledge that there was a demon only a few feet away who had plans for her. Ten minutes later, the door swung open.
The light from the bathroom cast Luc in shadow, but she could see he was completely, deliciously nude. She had the crazy impulse to say, meow. He was doing strange things to her, throwing her brain off kilter. Nice girls didn’t openly gawk at a man’s package and make cat noises. Technically, nice girls weren’t alone in their bedrooms with sex demons in the first place.
“See something you like?” He waited a moment, watching her blush and enjoying her discomfort, before crooking a finger.
Anna tried desperately to stop looking at his erection. She’d only been in bed with a couple of men, but they’d done it lots of different times. She wasn’t a blushing virgin.
She’d also watched porn. And she’d watched it so when confronted with other naked males, she wouldn’t react the way she was reacting right now. That plan had failed her.
“Are you sure you aren’t using the thrall?” she asked with a little squeak as she reached him.
His gaze heated her from the inside out. “I don’t have to use the thrall.”
She felt ridiculous wearing what amounted to kid’s pajamas. The only thing missing were feet with rubber grips on the bottom. Couldn’t she have changed into something sexier before she’d gone downstairs to drag him from his meal? Anna shivered. He was going to feed off her. But the part that made her shiver was the fact that she wanted him to. After his brief taste the previous night, she was more than a little eager for more.
As if reading her mind, Luc ripped her top. She’d been so focused on his eyes, she hadn’t seen what his hand was doing. He’d kept his form everywhere else, but had brought out his claws. A neat, sharp cut line in her t-shirt left it hanging open. An inch deeper and he would have sliced through her.
She tried very hard to muster indignation over how he played with her life by centimeters. But the way his eyes bored into hers, half challenge and half that lost look she’d only seen men get in movies, caused her to falter. It was as if she were the only woman that existed for him. Intellectually, she knew this was how every woman he’d killed over the centuries had felt, that she was buying into the same seduction. But she couldn’t resist him even with that knowledge.
“I liked that shirt,” she said.
“We’ll get you another one.”
Before he could shred the pajama bottoms to match the top, she quickly moved to take them off herself.
“Deep down, I think you’re a little naughty,” he said, probably in response to her lack of underwear. He pushed her forward into the bathroom, cutting off her very reasonable explanation.
The room glowed with dozens of candles. Candles she’d helped make. Had he been chipmunking them away for his later seduction? Her eyes drifted to the enormous tub filled with bubbles.
“We can’t have an orgy, but we’ll do what we can.”
The blush crept up the back of her neck again. Luc must have been standing in this spot all invisible and sneaky when Cathy had given her the house tour. Had he been planning this since then?
He frowned. “Why are you still wearing that?”
The gaping t-shirt still hung on Anna like a poorly-tailored jacket, the last comforting piece of fabric between her and complete naked vulnerability. Seeing the look in his eyes, she scrambled to take it off.
There had to be thrall involved. She was officially losing her mind. Otherwise the only reason she wasn’t a wanton slut was because she hadn’t had sufficient opportunities. It was a possibility she didn’t want to entertain at the moment.
The water was hot, just barely tolerable. Anna sank onto the bench, the bubbles coming over her breasts. Luc joined her and leaned against the rim, his arms propped on the edge, completely at ease.
Of course he was.
“I went to all this trouble, and you look like you’re planning your escape,” he said.
“Just touch me.” Just do anything but stare.
“There’s the demanding Anna I know and love.”
He’d said it again. Love. She wondered if he was normally so casual with that word. Now, instead of making her want to get as far from him as possible, it made her want to move closer. She inched forward.
When she was close enough, Luc picked her up like she weighed nothing and placed her on his lap facing away from him. His erection pressed against her, driving her crazy as he rubbed the tension out of her neck and shoulders. Anna arched at the gentle strength in his hands, and her head dropped onto his shoulder. Before she could issue a flimsy protest, he lifted her again and was inside her.
She was about to give him a dirty look for the proprietary way he’d just decided to take her without further fanfare, but that thought left her mind at the same time the mortifying sound left her mouth.
Her whimper was answered by a rumbling chuckle. They fit together perfectly. The part of her brain that would have reminded her he was a shapeshifter, and perfect fits weren’t shocking, had shut off.
Water sloshed over the sides of the tub as she rode him more aggressively, finding a rhythm. He seemed content to let her pick the pace, not pushing, just quietly urging her on with pleased little growls that set off a series of aroused flips in her stomach.
As they made love, she wasn’t sure if certain images or feelings were actually happening or were just in her mind. Emotions and tactile sensations blended together until it was hard to separate reality from fantasy
.
As soon as her orgasm started to build, he began to feed. She couldn’t stop the soft sighs and moans and vowed she’d share this man with anyone as long as he didn’t stop touching her.
Anna convulsed around him as he kissed and nibbled the side of her exposed neck. When she slumped, boneless, he lifted her into his arms and carried her out of the tub.
“Luc,” she whispered, feeling a little drunk.
“I’m not finished with you yet.” He pulled her down to the floor, so she was on top, straddling him, her hands gripping the furry white rug beneath them.
“Come for me again.”
“I can’t. I just . . . ”
He didn’t have to say anything else; the look in his eyes was enough. She nodded and started moving again. Anna wasn’t sure where this sudden stamina came from. She was a one orgasm per visit kind of girl and had never understood women who could have four or five in a row. Still, she kept going, and that’s when she figured out what the fuss was all about.
A second orgasm built, this one from the inside. Then she felt Luc let himself go, feeding fully now. The tiny tugs suffused her entire body with a pleasant, tingling warmth. If he’d asked for her soul right then, she would have gladly gift-wrapped it for him, too lost in sensation to be able to think past what he was doing to her. She felt as if she were floating when she came again.
***
Sun filtered through the windows, but the warmth Anna felt came from the male body pressed to hers. He’d pulled her up against him in sleep as if unwilling to ever let her go, his arms wrapped around her in a vice. She couldn’t decide if the feeling was comforting or claustrophobic, but settled on the former.
She’d secretly feared the reality of an empty bed at sunrise. How could she feel like anything but his whore if she didn’t wake with him beside her? She knew he didn’t sleep overnight with the harem and wondered what else would be different between them.
As she contemplated this, she realized she hadn’t dreamed.
Well, she’d dreamed. Something about a circus monkey and needing to find Monopoly money so she could buy bananas from a corner grocer with a Haitian accent. But she hadn’t had one of the surround-sound fully lucid but can’t control anything or wake up kind of dreams she’d had every night since Luc had formed the bond with her. She felt him tense.
“Anna, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to . . . ”
She racked her brain to figure out what it was he didn’t mean to do. Then she remembered she hadn’t been there for the afterglow because she’d passed out. The sex had been great, really great. It had been Anna, you’re so stupid you could have been doing this for over a week now great. But somehow she doubted that was why she’d fainted.
“I took too much,” he said, confirming her suspicions.
Anna rolled to face him, surprised by the pain and guilt in his eyes, and even more surprised that she wasn’t at all freaked out that she could have died. So maybe she trusted him a little. She ran her fingers through his bed-tousled hair. “It’s okay. You stopped.”
Luc climbed out of the bed and went to put his jeans back on. Her eyes hungrily drank him in as she watched, causing her to wonder if sex with an incubus had addictive properties.
Finally, he turned back to her. “No. It’s not okay. I haven’t lost control like that for a long time. If you had been hurt . . . ”
For once, Anna was unconcerned with her nudity as she moved to embrace him. Luc’s arms went around her, clutching her.
“Maybe it was the spell,” she said. “Maybe it took too much out of both of us. Next time it’ll be different.” She’d officially lost her self-preservation instinct. She was already thinking ahead to next time.
He pulled away. “I just wish you would give me . . . ”
“No.” She’d never give him her soul. Trusting him enough to share his bed wasn’t even in the same league as that type of request.
He growled. “Fine. What are we going to do about getting me out of the house?”
The subject change gave her emotional whiplash, and she tried not to feel hurt that he was already concerned with how to get away from her. “I don’t know.”
The demon was scrutinizing her now, and the nudity that hadn’t mattered five seconds before was becoming increasingly problematic. Anna opened a drawer and pulled out the first jeans and t-shirt her hands could close around.
She struggled to cover herself and glared at him. His gaze never wavered from her body. He could at least look away. Yeah, just like you didn’t stare at his ass while he was putting his jeans on two minutes ago.
“You know you’re going to have to burn it down. We’ve tried everything else.”
“If I do, are you going to leave me?” She knew she sounded needy, like she had to keep a man locked in her house for him to want to be with her.
Luc’s eyes shot up to meet hers and narrowed. “So, you want to keep me as a pet now? Did you decide Beatrice had a good idea after all? You can have your very own sex slave. Only twice a week, but it’s quality not quantity, right? After all, I don’t even have to touch you to make you come. I just have to think the right thoughts in your direction.”
“Luc, that’s not what I meant. I don’t want to keep you trapped. I just . . . you’ve been here fifty years . . . can’t you give me a few weeks to work up to the possibility that I might have to burn the house down? Maybe there’s still another way.”
Anna knew it was unlikely but she wasn’t about to set her house on fire if there was even the remotest chance she didn’t have to. She wasn’t ready to become an arsonist.
He grunted.
The phone on the bedside table rang, preventing her from obsessing about his I just have to think the right thoughts in your direction comment. What Pandora’s box had she just opened?
“Yeah?” Anna said, grateful for the interruption.
“It’s Tam. I just wanted to say I’m sorry about the coven’s behavior yesterday. They’ve never been around an incubus before. I should have prepared them better. And they could sense how much you didn’t want them there.”
“So it’s my fault?”
Tam sighed into the phone. “That’s not what I’m trying to say.”
Luc leaned against her dresser, his arms crossed over his chest, making no secret of eavesdropping.
“Sorry,” Anna said. “I’m just cranky. Is that why you called?”
“Yes and no.” There was a pause on the line. “I need you to meet me at the coffee shop. There’s something I have to talk to you about.”
“There’s this wonderful invention called a telephone where you can speak to someone without them being physically present. Oh, hey look, we’re talking on one now.”
“Anna . . . ”
“You can’t just tell me?”
Another pause. “I can’t talk about it on the phone. It’s important.”
“Fine. Give me an hour to get ready.”
***
Tam was tapping her brightly-painted fingernails on the surface of the table when Anna walked into the coffee shop. Her blonde pixie cut had been sharpened into spikes with gel, and there was glitter in her hair.
When Anna reached the table, Tam shot her an irritated look. “You’re thirty minutes late. I called you at nine o’clock. You said, one hour. It has now been ninety minutes. Well?”
“Well, what?”
“Why are you late?”
Anna slid into the booth across from her friend. “I didn’t realize this was a White House luncheon. I got tied up by Luc.” She felt a mixture of indignation and flattery that it had been so hard to get him to let her leave the house. He’d been worried for her safety.
“Really? Maybe my news can wait.” Tam perched on the edge of the booth, leaning toward Anna like a scavenger waiting for her to die so she could eat.
“I didn’t mean it like that.”
“Well, damn. I thought for a minute you might have gotten laid.”
“I did.”
“Chicken salad for breakfast?” Anna asked.
“We’re calling it brunch. It’s ten-thirty.”
Anna didn’t miss the accusation, but ignored it in favor of the sandwich. “So what was so important and mysterious you couldn’t just tell me on the phone?”
“Oh, I don’t think so. You slept with Luc. Spill.”
“It was nice. And I’ll tell you what I told the harem on my way out this morning. It’s personal. Now, once again, what was so important you had to drag me all the way down here?”
The witch had become interested in her own sandwich.
“Tam!”
“Okay, jeez. I think I know why none of the spells and rituals to get Luc out of the house have worked.”
She had Anna’s full attention now. “You mean besides the fact that we know how to break the curse, but I stubbornly refuse to do it because if I did, it would make everybody’s life so much easier, and I’ve never done anything easy?”
Tam smirked. “Yes, besides that. I hope you know I fully support you on not setting the house on fire. We need that kitchen for the business.”
Anna sat with her arms crossed and stared at Tam, not impressed with her stalling tactics.
“Fine. The coven thinks it’s possible Beatrice is still in the house.”
Anna shoved her plate to the side and dropped her head on the table. “I hate my life. So ghosts are real, too?”
“Remember, originally I thought the house was haunted? I might have been right. It’s possible both Beatrice and Luc are trapped.”
Of all the things Tam could have told her, a ghost interfering with the magic wasn’t one she’d been expecting. “But that doesn’t make any sense. Why wouldn’t Luc know she was there? Why wouldn’t she try to be with him?”