Incubus Dreams (Vampire Hunter 12)

I knew I was feeling better, because faintly, I could hear what Nathaniel was feeling. Not a sound, but I had no word for sensing another person's feelings. He was scared, excited, frustrated, confused, unsure, scared, unhappy, worried. I felt each emotion like a cobweb blown across my body in the dark. Nothing to see, and when you brush at it, it breaks apart and blows away, as if it wasn't there at all. Animals didn't have this many emotions all at once. Confused and scared, yes, but not the rest. The rest was still too much for my beast.

Nathaniel's free hand fumbled at the waistband of my panties. My skirt was already pushed up around my waist on its own without any help from him. He pulled my panties down to my knees, but since he was working one-handed, they came down in fits and starts, and it was anything but smooth. He growled his frustration against my skin, and it caught my breath in my throat, made me go weak at the knees. He used my hair like a handle, making it clear that if I went down on the floor it would hurt. It helped me stay on my knees. Helped me concentrate, and that helped me slide a little more inside my own skull.

I wanted to say his name. It seemed like that would help. But I couldn't think of his name. Couldn't say it out loud. It was as if name were an alien concept. Smell, his smell, that I knew. I tried to say it, and it took me three tries before I whispered, "vanilla."

He'd wrestled my panties down almost to my knees. But at that one word, he stopped. He kept his hand on my hair, but he lifted his mouth from my neck, just enough so that his breath caressed like heat on the wound he'd made. "Anita, can you hear me? Are you in there?"

Was I in there? It seemed like too hard a question for me. Was I in there? I think I took too long to answer, because the next thing I felt was his belt smacking against my bare butt. His pants fluttered against me.

The beast ground my h*ps against him, but not to slow him down. The thoughts weren't this clear, but it amounted to: He'd bested us in a fight, he'd earned the right to mate. I knew now why the big cats fought before they mated. You had to prove you were strong enough. That old biology imperative to only breed with the best, with the male that can give your offspring the genes they need to survive.

The leopard didn't mind. She was ready. I, on the other hand, had a problem. Of course, I couldn't remember what it was. Couldn't think. Because the human part of me agreed that Nathaniel had earned his right to be here. He'd saved us. Saved all the nice people outside the office door. Office, that was it. I didn't want to f**k at work. That was it. I moved away from Nathaniel's body. I pulled away from him, and his fear skyrocketed. He had no way of knowing that it was the human me that was wanting to pull away. The beast smelled that rush of fear, and let out a sound in my throat that I'd never heard come out of me. It wasn't a human sound.

He pulled on my hair so hard that it brought a gasp from my throat, but strangely, made me relax. It hurt, but it felt good, too, and gave an echo of that wonderful peacefulness that had happened when he bit the back of my neck.

He brushed the head of himself against my body, and the beast writhed for him. He whispered, "The angle's wrong." Then he used my hair like a handle and his other hand to put me on all fours on the floor.

The leopard crouched down in front of him, giving him my ass like we were in heat. He pulled my panties the rest of the way down my legs, got them tangled on the boots' heels, then they were gone. Maybe the beast was in heat, but I wasn't. Maybe it was losing my underwear, but the ass-in-air position was a little too undignified for me. I raised back up enough to be on all fours, so I didn't look like I was offering myself to him. I opened my mouth to say something, and he pushed himself inside me, and I forgot that I could talk.

The beast had been willing, but there had been almost no foreplay, and I was tight. So terribly tight. Nathaniel had to work himself inside me. He used his hand and my hair to spill me back to the carpet so that I was back where I started. It was just as undignified, but I didn't seem to care. For the first time the beast and I were in agreement.

I'd slept with Nathaniel, but I'd put very firm rules in place. I'd never touched him between the legs, not on purpose. To go from having deprived myself of even a caress to the sensation of him pushing his way inside my body was overwhelming. It wasn't just that it felt good, though it did, it was that it was Nathaniel. Part of me, though I might never say out loud, had been wanting to cross this barrier, to shove it aside, to bend it, break it, ignore it.

He worked until he was sheathed inside me as far as he could go, then he hesitated, stopped moving, frozen against me. "Anita, can you hear me?"

Hear him? Hear him? The cat screamed through my head, and that scream spilled out my mouth. I lost some of the ground I'd gained, because the beast wasn't conflicted, not in the least. It, she, began to work our hips, so that Nathaniel stayed still, but we drew him out of our body, out and out, and then when the tip of him seemed about to spill out, we drove ourselves upon him.

His voice came, "Oh, God."

We moved over him, against him. Shoving as hard and fast and deep as we could. It was as if nothing would be enough. I wasn't open enough to be this rough. I felt him almost catching on the sides, because I hadn't given myself time to grow wider. But I felt frantic. There was no thought about waiting, just the need. I wanted him to f**k me. Sex was too mild a word for it. I couldn't make him do what I wanted. I wanted deeper, I wanted more, and I needed him to help for that.

He let go of my hair, and his hands touched my hips, and he began to ride our rhythm, the cat's and mine. We pushed and he shoved, and just like on the dance floor where I'd followed his body, now he followed mine.

It was a dance of flesh, his into mine, until I was wet and warm, and he moved easily inside me, out and in, out and in. When he could glide inside of me, he shoved himself deeper, harder, as if he understood what my body was asking without words. He used his hands to move me just a little, until he found the spot he wanted, and then he plunged inside me, as if he meant to come out the other side, and I screamed for him.

I looked back over my shoulder, and his eyes weren't lavender, they were blue with hints of gray, and they weren't human anymore. His shirt was open, so I could see his stomach and chest. He did a movement with his stomach like a belly dancer, and his rhythm changed, grew more urgent and somehow smoother, or cyclical, as if he were doing a circle inside me, and out of me. A circle that went lower going in and higher coming out, so that he touched all of me, but not all at the same time.

He'd worked me larger by being rough, making me take all of him and more, and now that he had a hair's breadth of room, he used it. He used it in that circular rhythm, to caress along the walls of me. It was one of the most delicate things I'd ever felt when a man was inside me. So careful, and yet the push of his h*ps was so strong. The control took more strength than just shoving himself inside me. Strength of so many different kinds.

It was the upper stroke as he was pulling out that found that spot. I'd had the spot manipulated by hand and had it included in intercourse, but never quite like this.

Every time he slid over that one spot, my breathing changed, and he heard it, because he changed his rhythm again. Sliding himself over and over that small spot. Not just the tip of him, but the head, and as much of the shaft as he could manage. He used himself to stroke me in a way that I'd only had done with fingers and hands before. As always when that place inside was touched just right, the sensation of pressure was just this side of unpleasant. My body felt as if when he brought me, all the fluids in my body would fly, and not just the ones we wanted. It was always like that, that pressure, more pressure than any other kind of orgasm, as if you would lose control of your body completely. Jean-Claude had had to ease me through it the first few times. Reassure me that whatever happened it would be fine. It would be wonderful.

The pressure built and built, dancing along that line of too much. A pleasure so large it was almost pain. A pleasure that grew and grew inside me like some warm expanding thing, as if the orgasm were something separate from me, something that grew inside me and would burst out of my body.

I managed to whisper--almost hiss--his name, "Nathaniel."

He hesitated a fraction. "Anita, are you..."

"Don't stop, please, don't stop."

He didn't ask again. He shifted his position a fraction, then closed his eyes and gave himself to the rhythm of his body. I tried to move my hips, but his hands clamped tight on my hips, keeping me still. Holding me in place.