Sorceress, Interrupted - By A. J. Menden Page 0,71
They would inevitably hurt me. The one guy that I’d let myself like—I wasn’t getting anywhere close to the other L word—in a really long time wasn’t into me. It was painfully obvious, and I didn’t need to be hit over the head with the fact. Not anymore.
“At least I’m not getting dumped for a vestal virgin this time,” I muttered, picking my dress up off the floor.
He yanked it out of my hands and tossed it off to the side in a movement so quick it barely registered. I stared at my now-empty hands and then at him. He was stripping off his shirt.
“Does it look like I’m rejecting you?” he asked.
“No,” I said, enunciating the word carefully. But I wasn’t entirely sure I wasn’t hallucinating. I reached out a hand to touch his chest, to make sure all of this was real.
“Damn straight.” He grabbed me, gathering me up in his arms while at the same time his mouth bruised mine, giving me a bone-searing kiss that set every nerve in my body tingling. He dropped onto my bed with me under him. Our tongues tangled. I clung to him, wrapping my legs around his hips, forcing him closer. I rocked my hips encouragingly against his, wanting more, needing more. I hadn’t needed anything this badly in eons.
His mouth tore from mine and he moved out of my embrace, catching my wrists and pinning me to the plush bed. Every patch of bare skin on my body immediately seemed hyperaware. “Hold still,” he growled with a half smile, and then he kissed me again, a deep and hungry kiss that I returned just as eagerly, saying somehow what neither of us was able to vocalize.
His mouth left mine to visit my neck, kissing along my jaw to my earlobe and down to the hollow in my throat, pausing to lick there. I shuddered in delight and tried to pull my wrists out of his grasp, wanting to get out of the way all of the remaining uncomfortable clothes between us, but he held me firm. He trailed kisses down my body, mouth hot through the thin fabric of my negligee, causing me to release a soft moan of frustration.
“Please, Cyrus.”
That spurred him on. He let go of my wrists. But I immediately missed the contact and reached up and pulled him to me, kissing him hard, plunging my tongue into his mouth. He reached between our bodies to shuck his pants. I started to slide out of the thin garment I still wore, but he knocked my hand away and got rid of my negligee just as easily as he had his own clothes. He froze then, just staring at me lying naked beneath him. I smiled at the appreciation I saw in his eyes and did some checking out of my own. How had I misjudged how attractive this man was for all these years?
He brushed aside a strand of hair across my cheek. “Goddamn, you’re gorgeous,” he said, his voice a reverent whisper.
The look of pure devotion and warmth in his eyes promised an emotion I wasn’t quite ready to face. It did strange things to me: I felt a tear start to burn in my eye. So he wouldn’t see, I sat up quickly and recaptured his mouth. His bare skin met mine and we both became too distracted by need to think of anything else.
I brought one of my legs up to unzip my boot, but he reached out and stopped me. Our eyes met. “No,” he said, his voice thick with desire. “Leave them on.”
I grinned wickedly. “Whatever you want, Cyrus. Whatever you want.”
“Want? I want to fulfill your agenda, sweetheart,” he said, kissing me again. “And we have a lot of time to do so.”
Some time and several fulfilled agendas later, I was lying blissfully on my back on an extremely rumpled bed. In a near comatose state, I was having a new ward painted on me in henna.
“You’re moving.”
“It’s tickling!”
“Do you complain like this to your djinn?” Cyrus asked, dipping the brush into the henna again before going back to work on my lower abdomen.
“They paint on my arms, not anywhere I’m ticklish.”
“There.” Cyrus sat back and admired his painting. “Now, don’t move until it dries.”
I tried to lean upward and read it but couldn’t and quickly gave up. From what I could see there were just numbers, much like the numbers on his arms.