“I suspected the reaper might have had something to do with it, but this has not got his imprint.”
Alarm stirred. Reading my mind was one thing, but if Azriel was also altering the direction of my thoughts… “Meaning you’ve felt him before?”
“I’ve sometimes felt his echo. He reads your mind far more than you think, Risa.”
The alarm abated. I was well aware of just how often he was reading me. It was the thought of him actually doing more that had me worried. But even as that thought crossed my mind, I swiped it away. Azriel wouldn’t do that. He was a man—a being—of more integrity than that. Lucian, on the other hand, was an entirely different matter.
He nudged my knees farther apart, obviously preparing to claim me more intimately. I ducked under his arms and retreated, but I was nowhere near fast enough. He grabbed my hands, pinning them behind my back as he pressed me belly first against the wall.
“Damn it, Lucian, this has gone far enough.”
“Then tell me who Jak is,” he murmured, his words little more than a heated breeze near my left ear.
I shivered, torn between desire and growing anger. “Why do you need to know? It’s not as if you’re jealous or anything.”
“At first, it was nothing more than curiosity.” He shifted his grip so that both of my hands were held in one of his, then he pulled me back just enough to slip his free hand between the wall and me. He cupped my breasts, pinching and rolling my nipples, playing me like a master played his favorite instrument—with ease and assurance. He added, “Now, however, it is something of a challenge.”
“And yet another one you won’t win.”
“Oh, have no doubt that I’ll win this one,” he said softly. He continued to knead and press and tease my flesh, until I was trembling to the tune of his fingers and beginning to hunger for a whole lot more. It was frustrating—truly frustrating—that I just couldn’t seem to say no to this man and actually mean it. It was almost as if he’d become an addiction. “When I mentioned a moment ago that I wasn’t able to read your thoughts as much as I used to, I did leave a little information out of the equation.”
“There’s a surprise,” I muttered, my body still quivering under the delicious assault.
He chuckled softly and once again gently prized my legs apart with his knee. Then he claimed me from behind, his cock thick and hard and oh-so-heated as it thrust up into me. I made a sound that was a confused mix of annoyed growl and moan of pleasure. He chuckled again, his lips brushing my ear before he whispered, “I can read you when I fuck you. And right now, I intend to fuck you so completely that protecting the elusive Jak’s identity will be the very last thing on your mind.”
And that’s exactly what he did. Until the water went cold and the shower automatically shut down, until my body was trembling with exhaustion and the repeated waves of orgasm. Until, I guess, he’d finally mined the information from my mind. Only then did he allow himself to come, and finally end the ordeal.
For several minutes neither of us moved. His hands were still wrapped around mine, and my legs were so wobbly that his grip was the only thing keeping me upright.
He released me, then blew out a breath, the breeze of it whispering past my cheek. “So,” he said, and for the first time there was weariness in his voice. The legendary Aedh stamina had finally hit a wall. “Jak is an ex-lover you met up with yesterday morning.”
If I’d had the energy I would have pushed him away from me. As it was, it was all I could do to turn around and glare at him.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“He’s in town and wanted to catch up. Nothing more, nothing less.”
His gaze swept mine, as if he was trying to work out whether I was telling the truth or not. And that surely meant he hadn’t dragged all the information about Jak out of my mind during the marathon session. Though whether the relief that followed this realization stemmed from Azriel’s distrust or my own lingering sense that something wasn’t quite right, I couldn’t honestly say.
“So you won’t be meeting him again?”
“I might. I might not.” I hesitated, then added in a more biting tone, “Which right now is exactly what I’m thinking when it comes to seeing you again.”
He chuckled softly. “As if you could give up what we share so easily. Do not fool yourself, Risa. Roughhouse or not, you enjoyed every inch of what we did here today.”
“I did, but that isn’t the point.” I ran my fingers through my sweaty, matted hair, then added, “Just go. I don’t want to see you, I don’t want to smell you, and I certainly don’t want to feel you. Not now, and not in the foreseeable future.”
He raised an eyebrow. “And just how am I to get out, given the wards and the security system you have installed in this place?”
“Easy,” I muttered. “I’ll let you out.”
I slipped past him and walked naked to the front door, waiting impatiently as he unhurriedly dressed and sauntered out.
He stopped in the doorway, his expression still amused. “I give this anger two nights, at the most.”
“Yet another bet you’ll lose,” I snapped back, and slammed the door on his retreating butt.