“How many personas have I played, you mean? Many.”
“I’m sure you have an exact number.”
“Sixty-seven.”
His eyes snapped wider. He must have expected her to prevaricate, and probably couldn’t imagine someone could have played that many roles.
At length, he said, “Counting the two personas I know?”
“No.”
At her immediate answer, he pursed his lips. “Why not? They are very well-drawn and distinct personas.”
“Just in their different names and life stories.”
“Still claiming you never acted with me?”
“You be the judge of that.” She took one of his hands, guided it beneath her panties. As his fingers slid between her swollen, melting flesh, his erection grew so hard, it hurt poking into her side. “Can this be an act?”
“Not this, for sure.”
Moaning, she opened herself to him, and those long, powerful fingers caressed her feminine lips apart, sawed through her molten need, knowing exactly where and how to press, how hard or soft to rub, how fast or slow to go. She keened, lurched with sensations almost too much to bear. And that was before he dipped two fingers inside her. It again made her feel so acutely how empty she felt. How only having him inside her had ever filled the void.
“Take me, Raiden. No foreplay...please.”
In answer, with movements that bordered on magic in their efficiency, he rid her of her every garment, had her naked beneath him in under ten seconds. Before she could fumble with his zipper to release him, clutch him to her and bring him inside her, he slid down her body.
Protesting weakly, yet unable to do anything but surrender, she arched helplessly as he triggered her every erogenous inch, which under his hands was every last one she had. Again and again she tried to drag him up to her until his magnificent head settled between her thighs and his lips and tongue scorched the heart of her femininity. The sight and the concept of what he did to her were even more incapacitating than the physical sensations.
Through the delirium, she watched him cosset her, drink her, revel in her essence, in her need and taste and pleasure. Then, as always, he knew exactly when she could take no more.
His lips suckled her nub, his teeth grazing it even as his fingers strummed her inner trigger. But it was his command that snapped the coil of unbearable tension inside her.
“Let me see and hear how much I pleasure you, Scarlett.”
Shrieking with the recoil of sensation, her body heaved in a chain reaction. She held his eyes all through, as he always demanded that she did in the throes, letting him see what he was doing to her.
Finally subsiding, unable even to regulate her breathing, she watched through drugged eyes as he began again, varying his method, renewing her desperation, deepening her surrender.
She knew there was no point in begging for him again. He’d do with her as he pleased. And give her pleasure beyond endurance while at it.
It would be wise to save her breath for the screams of soul-racking ecstasy he would inflict on her all night long.
And if a voice in her drugged mind told her this would end with a far worse scar than in the past, she didn’t care.
The end was still weeks away. And she was savoring what she could have with him until the very last second....
* * *
The first thing Raiden saw as soon as he opened his eyes was Scarlett. He had to blink to make sure he actually saw her. Nowadays he saw her whether she was there or not. She was all that filled his mind’s eye, his every thought and fantasy.
But she was really here this time. Barely. She’d already showered, dressed and packed her famous overnight bag. Her bag of tricks, as she’d once teasingly referred to it. She did have it filled with stuff that tricked his senses into catapulting to a higher realm. Lingerie, oils and an array of surprising enhancers of her own concoction.
Not that those things were what affected him. They did only because it was she who wore them, who wielded them. Now the bag was over her shoulder and she was about to walk out of his bedroom.
Since they’d started their arrangement six weeks ago, this was the first time he’d woken up before she’d left. Which was unbelievable. Not that he’d woken up this time, but that he’d actually slept through all the other times. As someone whose senses had been conditioned to be on full alert all the time, he’d never relaxed around anyone so fully, not even his brothers, to let sleep claim him so completely.
But against all the reasons he had to distrust her, Raiden’s instincts told him otherwise. They trusted her implicitly, turned off his every built-in alarm system, to the point that they made him sleep—deep, blissful, rejuvenating sleep—only while beside her. And to continue surrendering to slumber even as she puttered around his domain, knowing he was his safest with her around.