A Witch's Beauty (Daughters of Arianne 2)

When Mina reached out, David paused to watch her while she touched his wing, followed the curve. She tugged on a handful of feathers. Though his desire was a simmering fire, he let himself be drawn to the side, back on his elbows, stretching both wings to half-mast, since the full six-foot stretch on either side would have knocked lamps off the night tables. He laced his fingers behind his head when she guided them there, squeezing his wrists once as an apparent request to keep them there so she could continue her play with him.

Or perhaps it wasn't a request. His witch could get somewhat imperious herself. Perhaps she didn't know that she and Jonah had that in common.

She'd sat up to give him room, and now his humor was swallowed by something more powerful as she leaned forward to run both her hands down the primary and two sections of secondary feathers again, as well as the inner wing layer. She did it slowly, repetitively, almost as if she were playing a harp, strumming down them, one hand following the other, down then across, tracing the arch.

He watched her eyes, the set of her mouth as she stretched out her arm to see how it lay against it, the comparative lengths. Then she turned her attention to his arm, following it from where the elbow bent, down to the crease of shoulder where arm joined to the upper torso. As her fingers lingered on the tautly bunched biceps, her tongue touched her lip, an entirely unconscious move that made more of his blood churn in a downward direction. Noticing his response, she let her hand drift that way as well.

But she paused on the now scarred-over burn mark on his chest, laying her palm over its mirror image in his flesh. That touch almost broke his control. He wanted to take her over, put her beneath him, but then she slid down. Pushing the half tunic out of the way, her thumb hooking on his belt to tease his stomach muscles, she curled her fingers around his heat.

"Mina, look at me." He put his hand up against her face, drew her gaze to him. "Come down here. Let me feel your body lying on mine."

She came to his mouth eagerly. While so little about her was innocent, her complete lack of self-consciousness because of her sexual inexperience was, and it made him crazy for her at the same time it stirred things in him which held him back, wanting to prolong the sweet torment of watching her discover what pleased her.

Mina knew what she wanted. As she slid over his body, straddled him, his cock was there, beneath her thigh, pressed against the outer lips of her sex. She rocked against him, physical coordination difficult during the kiss. God, she loved his mouth. She could admit it to herself. He made every part of her body sing, but his mouth... If she had to choose her eternity, it would be one filled with those long, drugged kisses that drove away everything in her mind.

He was taking his revenge, teasing her with his cock now, bringing her channel down snugly on it and sliding her wetness slowly up and down its length with a firm hand on her backside, his fingers parting the cleft between her buttocks in a way that had her squirming, taking over the movement herself, building her own response.

"Want you inside," she gasped.

"Beg, sweet witch. Ask."

"I can't..."

He nodded. And then, using that effortless strength again, he brought her up his body and sat her fully upon his mouth.

Gods, shouldn't she have taken this lesson to heart earlier? She cried out, would have gripped the headboard, but he had both her wrists, held them pinned against her hips as he suckled her into his mouth, did with his mouth what she so needed another part of him to do. She rocked, bucked, but his hold was immovable. And the higher she got, the further away any resolve got until she was gasping his name.

When he moved her back down, he held her fast on his cock, which had gotten harder, so that when he split her lips with it again, pressing the engorged head against her clit, she screamed.

His eyes flamed. "Ask."

She couldn't. His gaze darkened, his hands tightening on her again. This time he flipped her to her stomach, held her over his legs, his cock pressed into her belly, and captured her hips up high with the other hand. He began to stroke her with just his fingertips, as if he were playing a musical instrument. Her whole body began to shake, spasms with no release, his clever fingers knowing just what to do to hold that out of reach.

She wasn't even sure when she began to speak, but in her dazed mind she became aware that she was gasping it out.

"Please, David. Please..."

"Please what?" He stilled. "And don't be crude. Say what you want. Ask for it."

"I need you inside me. Please." Her fingers were gripping the edge of the bed and something else frightening was happening. Her throat was aching, her eyes filling with tears. Damn him for doing this to her. "Please."

It was then it clicked, an understanding of why he kept doing it this way. Inexperienced she was, but not unintelligent. Overwhelm her, give her pleasure as a method for teaching her submission, and she'd find the trust that came with it. She wanted to rail, wanted to deny it was something she wanted. Needed. All her life she'd stubbornly maintained she was answerable to no one, going the opposite direction the compass pointed.

But she wanted, needed to trust him. Needed to belong to him in a fierce way that was frightening, particularly when she thought, at these moments, he held the key to all of who she was in his single touch. It allowed her mind to be blissfully empty, responding only to his direction.

David lifted her so she sat astride him again, his cock on his belly just between the vee of her thighs when she looked down. While his expression was still quite implacable, there was something in his eyes, when h

e put his hands on either side of her face, that kept a powerful hold on her attention. It told her anything she wanted from him, she could have. His heart, his soul. He'd just tear them out and hand them to her.

All she had to do was ask.

His thumbs pressed at the corners of her eyes, and when she closed them, a hot tear fell, making her jump with its betrayal.

"Take me in your hands," he said with an unutterable tenderness. "Put me inside you, deep as you can take me. Torture us both now."

When she complied, more tears fell. The ache in her chest was going to incinerate her. She opened her eyes as she curled her hands around him, guided him in, the ridged head to her wet lips, both of them shuddering at that first explosive contact.

"Slow," he reminded her, unsteadily. She was salivating to taste his mouth, to tear and bite. She took him deeper, deeper, and the downward descent was like sinking down into the sweetest torment devised by Hell. Oh, gods, she wanted to ride him wildly, buck fast, hard, pump him in and out of her until she was dizzy with the spin, but she obeyed, going as slowly as she knew how, and watched him suffer, a mirror reflection of her own face, she was sure.

"So small and fine," he murmured, tracing her collarbone as she shuddered, holding still for him. She understood the rules now, embraced them, because they gave her something, a fixed point in her chaotic universe. She'd wait until he gave her leave to seek the pleasure waiting in a waterfall just beyond her vision, the fast, rushing descent, the scream of exhilaration. The immersion in the pounding water at the bottom, the salty foam.

"Why are you doing this to me?"

"You ask why a lot." His voice was strained, but there was humor there, too.

"You don't answer a lot."

The amusement died away as his eyes became more riveted upon her face. "Because if you truly belong to someone, you'll be less afraid." He echoed her very thoughts. "And because I want you to belong to me, more than I've ever wanted anything."

"I want to move," she whispered, a soft moan escaping her lips as he did nothing more than let his gaze pass over her breast, the taut nipple, cruise down to the joining point of their bodies. She contracted upon him, an involuntary reaction.