Covet (Fallen Angels 1)

Locking eyes with him, she whispered, "Kiss me." Vin froze in the process of getting up. As his chest expanded, he stared at the floor and didn't say a thing.

"Oh," she said. "I understand."

His body might have wanted her, but his mind was jamming at the thought of being with a whore.

In a horrible rush, she saw the faces of the Johns she had been with...or at least those she could recall. So many of them, more than she could count, and they crowded the space between her and this man who sat on his boyhood bed, looking as sexy as anything.

She hadn't wanted the others. Had taken pains to be as separate from them as she could, layers of latex and dissociation barriers she used to try to stay as untouched by the contact as she could.

Vin, however...Vin she wanted close, and he couldn't go there.

This was the real damage she had done to herself, wasn't it: she'd assumed that as long as she stayed disease-free and unharmed physically, the long-term effects were going to be limited to a store of memories she'd be desperate to forget. But this was cancer, not the flu. Because she could barely see Vin through the cast of hundreds, and he was as blinded by the anonymous, invisible crowd as she was.

Swallowing hard, she thought...in this moment, she would have given up everything to have had a clean slate between her and Vin. Everything...except for her son.

Marie-Terese shifted off the bed, but he caught her hand before she could shoot out of the room.

"I can't stop at just kissing you." His hot eyes locked on her. "That's the only reason I'm holding off. I'd like to tell you I'm a gentleman and could pull back or out with only a word from you, but I can't trust myself. Not tonight."

Caught up in the distance between them, all she could hear was, Women like you don't get to say no.

In a hoarse voice, she said, "You already know I'm a slut. So I won't stop you." Vin's expression went cold and he dropped his hold on her.

After a moment, he rose to his feet and glared at her. "You don't ever refer to yourself like that in front of me again. We clear? Never again. I don't give a f**k who you were with or how many there were - you're not a slut to me. You want to beat yourself up, do it on your time and don't try to drag me into it."

On a survival instinct, she cringed back from him and shielded her head, expecting his hands to curl into fists and come flying at her.

She'd been trained thoroughly in what men who were furious did to women.

Except Vin just stared at her, the anger in his face draining out and leaving a pale panic behind. "He hit you, didn't he."

Marie-Terese couldn't answer that. Because even a nod would have sent her into a spiral of tears. Tonight...as Vin himself had said, tonight was not the night for trusting herself: Whereas quitting the business had made her feel stronger, that had been temporary. Here and now, she was vulnerable as hell.

"Jesus...Christ," Vin murmured.

Before she knew it, she was back in his arms, back in them and up close. As they stood together, something occurred to her about the choices she'd made...something that she didn't want to look too closely at, so she pushed it away and locked it up tight.

Lifting her head to look up at him, she said, "Be with me. Now."

Vin went stock-still...and then cupped her face with his gentle palms. "You sure?"

"Yes."

After a long moment, he closed the distance between their mouths and kissed her sweet and slow. Oh...soft. He was so soft and careful, stroking, tilting his head to the side, stroking some more.

It was better than she remembered, because it was better than she'd ever had.

Running her palms up his arms, she felt as if the two of them were suspended in air, tethered by choice, not trapped by circumstance. Light as the contact between them was, gentle as his lips were, careful as her hands were, power sizzled between them.

Vin pulled back a little. He was breathing hard, the muscles in his neck straining. And that wasn't the only thing. As he looked at her, his body was even more ready for what was going to happen next. He cleared his throat. "Marie-Terese..."

It was on the tip of her tongue to ask him to call her by her real name, but she stopped herself. "Yes?" she whispered in a voice as husky as his.

"Lie down with me."

When she nodded, he gathered her into him and pulled her onto the bed so that they ended up with her top. As their bodies adjusted to glorious effect, his hands brushed her hair from her face and lingered on her shoulders.

"I like the way you feel under me," she said.

He smiled. "And how do I feel?"

"Hard." She arched into him, rubbing herself on his arousal.

As Vin reared back into the pillow and hissed, she put her mouth on the rigid cords that lined his neck, kissing her way up them until she got to his sharp jaw. Now she was the one fusing their mouths, and he was following her, tongues sweeping in and out, hands roaming, hips moving in the ancient surging motion of raw sex.

It wasn't long before she needed so much more. Her br**sts were aching, the tips straining against her bra, and she took his hand and eased it under the shirt she had on. The contact of his palm on her ribs made her suck on his tongue and to urge him onward, she guided the contact over to her -

"Vin..."

As he palmed her breast, he groaned and rubbed his thumb around her nipple. "You're hell on my willpower. Total hell..."

With a surge, he leaned up and nuzzled at her breast through her clothes. "I need you naked."

"Just what I was thinking." Sitting back on his hips, she swept her fleece over her head and was attacked by a wave of modesty. Abruptly, she wanted her nakedness to be beautiful to him...she really did.

As if he read her mind, he murmured, "Would you rather do this with the lights off?"

Well, yeah. Except then she couldn't see him. "I'm not perfect, Vin."

He shrugged. "Neither am I. But I will guarantee that whatever you choose to show me I'm going to like because it's you."

Dropping her hands and holding his stare, she said, "Take my shirt off then. Please." Sitting up so that they were face-to-face and she was in his lap, Vin unbuttoned the thing down to her navel, his mouth going to her throat and then her collarbone and finally to the front clasp of her bra. His eyes flipped to hers as he reached up and sprang the fastening.

He didn't let the two sides snap apart, but held them in place.

Inch by inch his mouth kissed its way onto her breast. As he went, he slowly exposed her flesh until he got to her nipple and then he pulled the lace cup off entirely. His whole body shuddered with lust.

"You're so wrong," he groaned. "Look at you...perfect." He extended his tongue and licked her. And licked her again.

Watching him was nearly as good as feeling him, and the two together, the sight and the sensation, fired her blood up until she was panting. Thank God they'd left the light on.

Vin shifted their positions, putting her on the bottom and rising up above her, his broad shoulders blocking out the fixture on the ceiling as he kissed her mouth again. Beneath his strength, she felt small and fragile, but powerful too: He was breathing hard because he wanted her, because his desperation was as sharp and demanding as her own, because he needed this with the same clawing drive she did. They were in this together.

And then she stopped thinking, because he dropped his mouth onto her breast and took deep pulls while he parted her shirt all the way and swept aside the other cup of her bra.

As he continued what he was doing, she was dying to know the feel of his skin on hers, so she fisted the back of his sweater and started pulling it up. He finished the job, lifting himself to peel it from his chest.

In the mirror across the way, she watched as his back was revealed, the light from the overhead hitting the spectacular spread of muscles that filled out his shoulders and wrapped around his torso. And the view of his pecs was just as good.

He was a fantasy made real, his body nothing but ridges of strength that shifted under smooth flesh as he brought his lips down to her nipple again. With his bowed arms supporting the weight of his chest, he was a magnificent male animal ready to ditch fifty thousand years of evolution and mental development for the base mating that was to come.

Talk about perfect...

Marie-Terese rolled her hips and sank her fingers deep into his thick hair. Her body was fluid under his mouth and his touch, heat rolling through her and tightening the ache between her legs. When the erotic need got to be too much, she split her thighs and -