Immortal Rider_ Lords of Deliverance Series_ - Larissa Ione [76]
Tentatively, she touched the tip of her finger to the horse’s long neck. Even though she’d shut off her gift, faint stirrings of confusion, annoyance, and anger filtered in, but she couldn’t tell if it was coming from the horse or from Thanatos.
She traced the lines, working her way over the animal’s ears, jaw, nose, then down the front of his throat. When she slowly drew her finger along its chest, Thanatos inhaled harshly, and his pulse picked up, hammering into her thumb. He liked this, so she lingered, stroked. In the silence marked only by the crackle of the fire, she eased her fingertip along the beast’s belly and then up, over its back and down around the curve of its rump.
Again, she stroked, feeling the textures in Thanatos’s skin, the hard, pulsing veins that shot through the stallion’s lines. And under her thumb, his pulse quickened more.
“What are you doing?”
She blinked up at him innocently. “Tracing the lines. It’s exquisite. Can the horse feel it?”
A muscle in his jaw leaped. “Yes.”
“So he’s aware that I’m touching him?”
Another leap of muscle. “Yes.”
“Does he like it?”
“Yes.”
Hiding a smile, she ran her thumb over its belly again, and Thanatos hissed softly. “If your horse—Styx, right? If he was standing here, would he let me pet him?”
“He’s ill-tempered.”
“Like his master?”
“You’re funny.” He watched her fingers play, his throat flexing with his frequent swallows. “He seems to like… this. So he will probably allow your touch in person.”
What about his master? She didn’t say anything, but she did decide to forge a new path and see how far he’d let her walk down it. Pretending to be in awe of his other markings—which wasn’t hard, since she kind of was—she slid her hand up to the image of a bow and arrow that was half-hidden under his sleeve.
“And what’s this?”
“It’s the weapon I used to kill the man who raised me,” he said, his voice flat, toneless, and it turned the warm room cold. He pulled his arm out of her grip. “Enough. It’s late.”
She glanced at her watch, and sure enough, it was two in the morning. “Do you mind if I take one of these books to read in bed?”
“Can I make a suggestion?” he asked.
She shrugged. “Sure.”
A wicked, crooked smile lifted his lips as he reached for the Horsemen erotica. “This. In case you need to stay warm.”
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In case you need to stay warm? What kind of crap was that? Than was an idiot. He didn’t need to be playing with fire, and Regan was a damned inferno.
What he needed was to get the hell away from her. He spun around, but she stopped him with no more than a word.
“Wait.”
He stared at the doorway, because hell if he was turning back to look at her. “What?”
“How does it end?” Her voice was soft as a whisper, just like her touch. “The story, I mean.”
“I told you. She has a bunch of kids, and—”
“No. Your part of it. After you were done with her. When you came back out into the tavern, and Reseph was with all those females. Did you share stories?”
“You mean, do I kiss and tell? Is that what you want to know?”
“Sort of.”
He had no idea what got into him, but in an instant, he was in front of her, one hand gripping the back of her head, the other at her waist as he tugged her to him. Then his lips were on hers, and his head was spinning, his blood was thundering through his ears, and her eager mouth was open to him. Their tongues met in a hot, wet tangle, and his erection was a throbbing rod of need against her soft belly.
He pulled away, enjoying the way her eyes had glazed over. “Do I kiss and tell? Guess you’ll have to find out for yourself.”
This time he stalked out of there, and this time, he intended to stay away. If five thousand years had taught him anything, it was that he could tease himself to the point of insanity and still come away without getting his dick wet.
There’d been a time when he’d taken himself to the edge, had drowned himself in females just to see how far he could