your thoughts based on your expression and other bodily clues—” he indicated my chest, and to my dismay my nipples stood at attention “—but I don’t know for sure. I didn’t see your thoughts.” His smile was genuine, warm, and did funny things to my stomach. “Well done.”
The rush I got from his praise scared me just a bit.
“Now let’s see if your wall holds up under pressure.”
“Wait—what?” And dammit, now I had that Queen song stuck in my head.
“Distraction might be more apt.” He shrugged. “You won’t always be thinking of your wall, especially if you’re active and other things happen around you. But it needs to be there, all the time, even without your focus on it. After all, you’ll need it the most when you’re around others. Your attention will be on them and whatever is going on, and you can’t afford to be mentally split trying to keep up your wall. It needs to stand on its own.”
That made sense. “Okay. So, distract me.”
His expression switched from calm instructor to hungry predator in a millisecond.
Chapter 14
Oh, no. I walked right into that one, didn’t I?
Pushing off the pillar, he closed the distance to the ladder with the quiet charge of a brewing storm. His hands grasped the black metal frame, his gaze intently fixed on me.
I swallowed, my heart thudding faster.
“I didn’t know you were a Queen fan,” he murmured as he took the first step up.
Dammit. I repaired the breach in my wall and stuffed Under Pressure playing on repeat back behind the rampart.
By now Azazel had taken more steps up the ladder. His face level with my crotch, he met my gaze with searing intensity.
My heart did its best to break through my rib cage, and I curled my fingers around the ladder’s rung.
No man—not even a demon—had the right to project that much raw sex with just a look. It just wasn’t fair.
Responding like dry kindling to a struck match, my body flared with heat. A well-known throb of desire settled at the apex of my thighs.
He inhaled deeply, his pupils dilating. “I love your scent,” he said, his voice an erotic growl that hummed over my skin.
Without so much as a warning, he pressed his face against my crotch, his nose pushing right on the spot that craved pressure. I uttered a choked moan and gripped the ladder harder so I wouldn’t just flow down, what with my knees having melted.
“I could bathe in it,” he spoke against my mound, and it didn’t matter that technically, there were two layers of fabric separating his mouth from my skin—the heat of his breath, the vibration of his deep voice, the sheer power of him so close to my pulsing core, it might as well have burned away my clothes.
Wait, he wouldn’t just—
“Don’t you dare,” I whispered, snapping my head down to peer at him.
“Dare what?” His expression was just short of on the wrong side of naughty, the fingers of his one hand stroking idly up my thigh, toward the aching center of my lust.
“Burn a hole in my—”
My sentence ended in a strangled groan of helpless pleasure as his mouth closed over my mound—and touched skin, the fabric seared off in between. I gasped for breath, my chest heaving as my head fell back against the ladder. Pleasure spiked where his tongue laved my folds, danced around my clit, teased my entrance.
I squirmed, panting, overwhelmed by the exquisite eroticism of being fully clothed except for that one spot in my crotch area where he sensually attacked my intimate flesh.
Oh, God.
He drew back, and chill air touched my wet folds.
I whipped my head down to stare at him.
“You need to stop thinking about God when I’m eating you out.”
Crap, my wall had crumbled again. Grinding my teeth, I rebuilt that sucker.
His eyes glittered. “You’ll have to keep it up if you want to come.”
I glowered down at him. “That’s unfair.”
“No, it’s an incentive.” He leaned forward and licked over my still heated flesh, making me shudder. “Anytime your wall fails, I’ll stop.”
I contemplated going for that dagger still strapped to my hips. My fingers flexed.
“If you keep the wall intact while my mouth is on you,” he said with a chuckle as he kissed my clit, “I’ll make you come so hard that I’ll have to carry you down this ladder in a boneless heap.”
I whimpered, my bones doing some pre-melting already.
His tongue flicked through my folds again, and my arousal skyrocketed. Closing