Immortal Rider_ Lords of Deliverance Series_ - Larissa Ione [54]
“I couldn’t take the deal because I couldn’t have lived with myself.” A sudden, gory image of Limos being brutalized at the hands, claws, and tools of those demons flashed in his head, and he had to tamp down a growl. “I know what those fuckers were capable of, and I would never wish that on you.”
Her throat worked on a swallow. “What do you wish on me?”
“Me,” he said with brutal honesty. “Fool that I am, I wish me on you. Like, on you. When I said in the bedroom that I’d have had you under me in a heartbeat, I meant it.”
She blinked. Opened her mouth. “But h—” He didn’t give her a chance to say anything. He grabbed her shoulders and hauled her against him. She let out a little gasp, but she didn’t refuse him anything as he took her mouth the way he’d fantasized about every time he closed his eyes.
Water splashed around them, tiny droplets of mist blanketing their faces as their tongues met. Limos’s lips were soft, her body hard, her fingernails sharp as she dug them into his biceps. But, like before, when she slid her hands up to his shoulders, her touch was tentative, halting.
He wasn’t so reserved.
He dropped his hands to her thighs and then dragged them up and under her wrap, but she grasped his wrists and stopped him.
“Why,” he murmured against her mouth. “Why are you so skittish?”
“Because I’ve never done this.”
He whipped his head back. “Bullshit.”
“It’s true.”
“You’re saying you’re a virgin? You’re five thousand years old and you’ve never had sex?”
“How could I?” A bird fluttered past, and he wasn’t surprised when Limos’s attention went with it. He waited impatiently for her to turn back to him. “I was betrothed when I was a child. You experienced what happened when I kissed you.”
God, he hadn’t even thought of that. Of course she wouldn’t have been able to be with anyone if her fiancé took jealousy to a galactic extreme.
“Why me?” he asked, dying to know why, after all that time, she had finally given up a kiss. “Why did you give in to me that night?”
Her entire body began to tremble, and he held her tighter. Then, as if a switch had been thrown, she stopped shaking. “Because I’d been drinking.”
Instant bullshit flag. He’d been watching her all night, and yeah, he’d seen her suck down some nasty-looking blue drink and later, a slushy pink one, but no, she hadn’t been drunk.
“You’re lying.” He palmed the back of her neck and massaged, urging her to come clean.
“I’m not.”
“That’s a lie too. There’s nothing I hate more than lying, Horseman.” Leaning in, he kissed her throat to soften his words, though nothing would ever soften how he felt about lying. He’d fallen for far too many of his father’s lies, had seen his mom and sister deeply wounded by those same lies. “Tell me why you finally gave in.”
A soft cry escaped her, almost as if telling him the truth pained her, and for a terrible second, he was afraid she’d say that she’d done it on a whim. To satisfy her curiosity. That he could have been anyone and that he’d been the chump who’d rolled the crappy dice.
“Because in all those centuries, you’re the first male I’ve wanted that badly.”
Masculine pride puffed him up at her answer. “That’s really cool to hear, but why me?”
Her lips, swollen from his kiss and dewy from the waterfall’s mist, turned up in a dazzling smile. “Do you remember the first time we met, at Than’s place? And you were all in awe of us?”
“Awe is a strong word,” he muttered, and she laughed. She was beautiful when she did that.
“You amused me. Not many people do that. And you took having your ribs broken really, really well.”ellv>
“So you were attracted to me because I have a high tolerance for pain?”
“Well, that’s hot, but you also made me laugh, and you give me butterflies,” she added brightly before sobering. “You also… you looked at me like I was… I don’t know…”
“Wicked sexy?” he offered, and that smile hit him