He cupped it, resumed stroking it, stoking both his and her lust. “Just kidding. I can shift parts of me into inanimate objects. But to shift fully, I have to become something living, even if it’s totally made up in my mind. So—still not scared?”
“Because you followed me, or because you can ‘shift’ into whatever your imagination can conjure?”
She’d latched on to his terminology, was giving it back to him. “According to mortals, both are the stuff of nightmares. We are talking stalker and monster from your worst ones.”
Her eyes narrowed. “You want me to be scared, or what?”
“Only for the right reason.”
“And that is?”
“That I want to ravish you. Until you’re so sore and satisfied you can’t even beg for more.”
She suddenly rose. Before he could think, move, she slotted her every firm curve into his hard angles, dragged his head down to hers by his hair. Then she closed her lips over his ear in a hot suckle, poured her demand right into his brain.
“Dance with me.”
Hunger exploded in his depths, whatever had been keeping it leashed snapping. He dragged her into his arms, slammed her into him, plastered her against his hardness.
People bumped into them as he swept her onto the packed dance floor. He exerted enough influence to empty a circle around them. He didn’t want contact with anyone to dilute the feel of her or jar his focus from her. He couldn’t bear any touch that wasn’t hers.
He bent, kneaded her from the ankle up, bunched her skirt on his way until he had the resilient flesh of her thigh in his hungry grip. He raised her leg around his waist, ground his erection into her tight abdomen. She tossed her head back, arched, undulated against him to the now-languid rhythm. Her breasts rubbed against his chest to the tempo as the thrusts of his hips mimicked the possession he’d soon enact without barriers. Their every inflammatory movement ratcheted the exquisite agony of anticipation.
“Man, you’re big.” She pressed her lushness all over him. He pictured himself tearing those unflattering clothes off her where she stood, driving into her standing up. “Is that real?”
He wound his hand in her hair, secured her head by its tethers. “That’s the real me, yes. I can…shrink, if you prefer.”
“Don’t you dare!” She dragged him closer, her hands greedy on his arms, back and chest. “I’ve been the huge girl all my life, and it’s no fun. Men usually make me feel like the Hulk. Being dwarfed is…incredible. Don’t you dare shrink an inch.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He chuckled, delighting in her candidness, his lips gliding over her velvet flesh, teasing her when she tried to capture them with hers, instead took them to her ear. “So tell me. Why are you not terrified? You act as if what you saw me do and become didn’t upset your fundamental belief of reality and the world.”
She punished him for denying her his lips, dug her fingers into his arms, gyrated harder against his erection as she poured her answer in his ear. “It didn’t. I know weird stuff exists.”
“How?”
“I’ve had some pretty inexplicable things happen in my life, ever since I was a kid, and I am now forced to accept the weirdest explanation for them as the truth.”
He didn’t want to know details. He would be out of said life by night’s end. But he still wanted to know one thing more. “Tell me this, then. How did you fight that Odinian as if you were on the same level? Actually, since he had super strength and speed, dozens of levels above.”
“Yeah, sure, that’s why he managed to use me as a shield.”
He nipped her earlobe in objection. “He would have risked anything to avoid me. Where did you learn to fight like that?”
She rained kisses on his jaw in return. “I wasn’t always a respectable doctor. I was once a misfit living more on the streets than in the foster homes that hated taking me in. My juvenile record never made it to my permanent one, since I walked the straight and narrow from seventeen onward.”
He pulled back to smile his satisfaction down at her. “You did look like a warrior. And you are. A street fighter, efficient, ruthless, dirty if need be. I should have recognized your method.”
She grinned up at him, making her beauty almost unbearable. He wanted to devour her. “Since it’s the same as yours? Yeah. Once you decided to end the fight, I almost pitied the bastards for how fast and easily you finished them off.”
He cupped her luscious ass in his hands, lifted her against him again. “Almost but not really, huh?”
Another reason-annihilating moan of pleasure spilled from her. “One thing I’m not is a bleeding heart. They deserved what you did to them and then some. They would have killed us both, after torturing us. You probably saved endless future victims, too.”
He arched her backward, swaying her to the blood-boiling beat. “Don’t you put me in shining armor and shove me on a white steed.”
“A white knight would leave me yawning. A dark avenger on the other hand…” She kneaded his buttocks, every inch of her rubbing against him, explicit in invitation.
Suddenly he wanted to tell her the whole truth, before he took her. He, who made a calling of conning mortals into doing his bidding.