She shrugged, shot him a playful smirk. “You never asked.”
He grinned back at her, but he wasn’t about to let her have the last laugh. As payback, he dived into that tempting little thatch with his lips and tongue, wringing a startled cry out of her as he sought--and found--the bundle of nerves nestled between her folds.
He suckled her, kissing her as passionately and deeply here as he’d kissed her mouth a few moments ago. He didn’t let up until she was writhing under him, her hands twisting in the sheets as her body arched against his lips and tongue.
“Oh, God,” she gasped, panting as he took her even higher. “Oh, fuck...Mathias...”
He glanced up as her orgasm rolled through her. She watched him too, her eyes locked on his as her pleasure crested, overflowed.
Mathias held her gaze, giving her a silent promise that this was only the beginning of what he intended to show her.
He wanted to make up for all of the abuses she had suffered at the hands of another, even if it took the rest of his life to help her forget.
Hell, watching her surrender so openly to him now, there was a part of him ready to give her an eternity.
If he had anything to say about it, this moment was already the start.
“Mathias,” she murmured, breathless from the aftershocks of her climax. “I don’t want this feeling to stop. Not yet...”
“No,” he growled. “Not yet.”
Stripped out of his clothing and boots, he then knelt beside her, growing hungrier, impossibly harder, as she drank in his nakedness with passion-drunk, heavy-lidded eyes.
His pulse hammered in his ears, in his temples, his blood running like molten lava in his veins from the intensity of his need for this woman. His glyphs surged with heat, color flooding their swirling, arcing patterns on his chest and shoulders and biceps.>If she let it fall, there would be no building those defensive walls again--not with him.
She would be at Mathias’s mercy, and he already knew too much.
He’d seen too much.
Nova moaned, forcing herself to break away from the pleasure of his kiss.
“Mathias, I don’t...I can’t,” she stammered, not even sure what she was trying to deny anymore. She only knew that if she let him continue touching her, kissing her, wanting her, she would be lost to him completely. “Don’t do this to me.”
“Don’t do what?” His deep voice was a growl against her cheek, then down along the side of her neck. “Don’t kiss you? Don’t want you? What shouldn’t I do, Nova?”
“Everything.” She drew back from him then, crossing her arms over herself when his body heat was gone and a chill settled into her bones. She put more distance between them, needing it in order to convince herself that she could do this--that she could push him away when it was the last thing she wanted in that moment. “I’m scared, Mathias.”
He took a step toward her. “Don’t be. Not of me.”
She bit her lip, trying to conjure the words she needed to save herself from giving in to him, from falling any further. But her heart wouldn’t cooperate with her head. Words lodged in her throat.
Then a knock on the door did the hard work for her. Eddie’s voice sounded on the other side. “Nova, you there? Let me in, will ya?”
God, she couldn’t let the kid see that she had someone in her apartment. Especially not a Breed male, whose glowing amber eyes and sharp white fangs were liable to send Eddie screaming back to Ozzy downstairs in the studio.
She’d begged off her shift tonight and cancelled all of her appointments, claiming she was sick. That lie would hurt even worse, if they knew she was up there thinking about getting naked with Mathias.
Which she wasn’t, she told herself. Not thinking about it, or doing it.
She closed her eyes, exhaling a heavy sigh. “Another time, Eddie, okay?”
“Oz sent me to check on you, make sure you’re not pukin’ your guts out or something.”
“I’m not,” she said, casting Mathias a pointed look. “I’ll be fine, I promise. I just need some time alone, that’s all. Tell Oz not to worry about me.”
“Sure, but you know he’s gonna worry ‘til he sees you for himself. He says you’ve never called in sick once, Nova.”
“I’ll come down later, promise.”