Up in Smoke - Katie MacAlister [77]
“Really?” I asked, getting into his suddenly playful mood. I tugged gently on one of his dreadlocks, twining it around my finger. “Would he happen to have the most amazing silver eyes that melt me with the merest look?”
“He might. He might also have every intention of giving you more pleasure than you’ve ever had before he takes his own,” he said, setting me down on a wide chaise longue. “Stay there. Don’t move.”
He disappeared back into the room, and I took a moment to look around the balcony. Tall plants bordered either side of the deck, providing privacy from neighboring houses. Only the front facing the vast sapphire ocean was unobstructed. A few sailboats dotted the coastline, but they were too far off to see what we were doing. I started to take off my shirt, but Gabriel called from inside the bedroom, “Do not undress yet, Mayling. I plan on disrobing you slowly. Just sit there and mull over the many ways I’m going to pleasure you.”
“You’re not going to insist that we try to do foreplay, are you?”
His head popped around the opened French door. “I promised you foreplay, and I fully intend to fulfill that promise. I am a wyvern. I have immense self-control. Just not around you, but that will change, mate; just you wait and see. I will control my seemingly insatiable desire for you and pleasure you as you deserve.”
He disappeared before I could answer. “I think you’re beating yourself up unnecessarily,” I called to him, relaxing against the sun-warmed chaise, closing my eyes to better enjoy the thought of Gabriel, naked, and allowing me to frolic all over his delectable body.
A small fire broke out next to me. I beat it out as Gabriel answered, “That is not the point. As your mate, I am honor bound to show you certain respect. That includes giving you foreplay.”
“Somehow I doubt that ‘Must provide reasonable amount of foreplay’ made it into the wyverns’ handbook.”
He leaned out of the door to grin at me. “You’d be surprised what makes it into the handbook.”
“Are you naked yet?” I asked, noting that what I could see of his chest was bare. I held out my arms. “Come foreplay me, you handsome dragon, you.”
“Not just yet.” He withdrew back into the room. I began to wonder just exactly what it was that he was doing—not to mention why it was more important than making love to me. “Well, so far as I’m concerned, foreplay is overrated. The way you do things is perfectly all right by me.”
“It’s not all right by me,” he answered, a loud thump punctuating the sentence, followed by a muffled oath. “Would you mind saying something lengthy?”
“Something lengthy?” I sat up and leaned over to peer into the door, astonished by the site of Gabriel blindly groping his way out of the bedroom. “Agathos daimon. What on earth are you doing?”
“Pleasuring you,” he said, waving a hand around in the air. “Say something. If I can follow your voice, I’ll find you.”
“Pleasuring me?”
“Well, I will be once I find you.” His hand waved around in the air as he took another couple of steps forward. “Speak, mate.”
“How about this: I highly approve of the fact that you are naked. No, more than highly approve, am sincerely grateful and completely enjoying the fact that you’re naked. But the bowl, the eyeshade, and the peacock feather have me more than a little concerned. You haven’t been hiding some deviant dragon-sex secrets from me, have you?”
He grinned again, grabbing the hand I had held out for him, edging forward until he found the small round glass table next to me. Carefully, he set down the covered bowl and the feather. “Not deviant, Mayling. Well, perhaps a little. Now I shall undress you, and then we will be able to proceed.”
I watched with amusement as he groped his way over to my chest, unbuttoning my shirt. “I wouldn’t be female if I didn’t attribute the fact that you’ve had to blind yourself before touching me to a sudden, overwhelming disgust at my appearance, but knowing you, I suspect it has something to do with some perverted sense of determination to provide me with foreplay. Or are you just suddenly