Hidden Moon (Nightcreature 7)

When I opened my eyes, Malachi stood right in front of me. He smelled like summer rain, new grass, the night, and I knew I didn't want him to go - not now, maybe not ever. I inched closer, resting my cheek against his chest, and his arms came around me so gently I wanted to weep.

Since that would kill the mood even quicker than any panic on my part, I kissed him as passionately as I knew how.

Lip-to-lip, tongue-to-tongue, I tangled my fingers in his still-damp hair, and the curls tumbled over my wrists. The cross that swung from his ear tickled the sensitive V of skin between my thumb and forefinger, and I moaned into his mouth, licked his teeth, backed us up until my thighs hit the bed, then tugged him onto the mattress with me.

We bounced once before he pulled away. "Claire, it doesn't have to be like this. "

"Like what?"

"So fast, so - " He broke off.

"Desperate?"

"I know you're not desperate," he said softly. "Neither am I. "

No, I was certain he'd had good sex in the last year.

"We'll go slowly. " He sat up, bringing my knuckles to his lips and kissing them.

"If I wait too long, I might not go at all. "

He dropped my hand and turned away. "Then we shouldn't. "

"We should. " I touched h

is shoulder. "I need this. I need you. Mal, please. "

His skin twitched beneath my hand, almost a flinch but more likely pain caused by crashing into a tree. The guy probably had bruises everywhere. Maybe I needed to be gentle with him.

The notion intrigued me. What if I treated Mal as if he were the broken one?

Slowly I eased myself into a sitting position, then laid my cheek against his shoulder, pressed my breasts to his back. "Make me forget," I whispered. "Everything but you. "

He turned in my arms. Lightning flashed, weaker, hardly a flicker, and in it he appeared anguished. "There's so much about me you don't know. "

"I don't want to know. It's just you and me. No one else, nothing else, matters. "

He hesitated, seemingly torn, and for an instant I wondered what he might confess. A hundred thousand lovers? Thievery? Murder? STDs?

Crap.

"Do you have a condom?"

"Of course. "

Of course. What man wouldn't? Especially a man like him.

And why did that bother me? I certainly didn't have any handy, and I knew better than to sleep with him without one. Desperate passion is one thing, desperate stupidity another.

"Don't leave," I murmured, and I wasn't sure if I meant tonight or next week.

He put his forehead against mine and sighed. "I can't. "

He kissed as if he'd been doing it for centuries and getting better with every one. He made love to my lips with varying degrees of pressure, tiny scrapes of his teeth, but no tongue. Not yet.

He touched me nowhere but my face, his long, hard fingers tracing the line of my jaw, his calloused thumbs stroking my cheeks and then my forehead. Who knew being touched on the forehead could be so erotic? Pretty much everything this man did was.

"Touch me," I gasped.