J.R. Ward the Black Dagger Brotherhood Novels 5-8 - J. R. Ward [123]
Mine.
“I haven’t kissed you yet,” he said.
She arched against him and used his chest for balance, just as he wanted her to. “Not on the mouth, no.”
“May I?”
“Please.”
Shit, he was nervous as he looked at her lips. Which was so strange. He’d had so much sex over the course of his life, all different kinds and combinations, but the prospect of kissing her properly wiped all of that away: He was the virgin he’d never been, clueless and weak-kneed.
“So are you going to?” she asked as he stalled out.
Oh…shit.
With a smile like the Mona Lisa’s, she put her hands to his face. “Come here.”
She pulled him down to her, tilted his head, and brushed her lips against his. Vishous’s body shuddered. He had felt power before—his own in his muscles, his godforsaken mother’s in his destiny, his king’s in his life, his brothers’ in his job—but he’d never let any of it overcome him.
Jane overcame him now. Held total sway as she cradled his face in her palms.
He gathered her close and pressed his lips tighter on hers, the communion a sweetness he never would have believed he’d want, much less revere. When they broke apart, he soaped up her sleek curves and rinsed her off. Shampooed her hair. Cleaned between her legs.
Handling her with care was like breathing…an automatic function of his body and brain that he didn’t have to think about.
He shut off the water, toweled her dry, then picked her up and carried her back to the bed. She sprawled out on his black duvet, arms over her head, legs slightly parted, nothing but flushed female skin and muscle.
She stared at him from underneath lowered lids. “Your pajamas are wet.”
“Yeah.”
“You’re hard.”
“I am.”
She arched on the bed, the undulation riding up her torso from her hips to her breasts. “You going to do anything about it?”
He bared his fangs and hissed. “If you’ll let me.”
She moved one of her legs to the side, and his corneas nearly started bleeding. She was glistening at her core, and not from the shower.
“Does this look like a no to you?” she said.
He ripped off his bottoms and was on her in a heartbeat, kissing her deep and long, lifting his hips, positioning himself, sinking in. She was so much better like this, in reality, not a dream state. As she came for him once, twice…more…his heart broke.
For the first time he was having sex with someone he loved.
He felt a momentary blind panic at his exposure. How the fuck had this happened?
But, then, this was his last—well, only—shot at the love thing, wasn’t it. And she wasn’t going to remember a thing, so it was safe: Her heart wasn’t going to be broken at the end.
Plus…well, her lack of memory made it safe for him, too, didn’t it. Kind of like that night he and Wrath had gotten shit-faced and V had talked about his mother.
The less people knew about him, the better.
Except damn, why the hell did the thought of cleaning out Jane’s mind make his chest hurt?
God, she was going so soon.
Chapter Twenty-five
On the Other Side, Cormia stepped out of the Primale’s temple and waited as the Directrix shut the enormous gold doors. The temple was on top of a raised knoll, a gilded crown on the head of a small hill, and from here the whole of the Chosen’s compound was visible: the white buildings and the temples, the amphitheater, the covered walkways. The stretches between landmarks were carpeted with cropped white grass that never grew, never changed, and as always, the vista offered little in the way of horizon, just a diffused blurring of the distant white forest boundary. The only color to the composition was the pale blue of the sky, and even that faded at the edges.
“Thus ends your lesson,” the Directrix said as she divested her neck of her graceful chain of keys and locked the doors. “In accordance with tradition you shall present yourself for the first of the cleansing