The Dragon Marshal's Treasure (U.S. Marshal Shifters 1)

The gabled attic had always looked to Jillian like it had been imported from some older, stranger house. Over the years, it had become the dumping ground for everything her dad wanted to own but not actually look at or deal with, and that made it stranger still. No nutcrackers, just a lot of expensive original art covered in muslin tarps and a bookcase full of well-maintained, unopened first editions.

All Jillian cared about in that moment was the bed. It was all gleaming brass and so rickety that she had woken herself up last night from the groaning squeak it had made when she’d rolled onto her side. There was no way they’d do anything on it without making enough noise to wake the dead, so it was just as well that Tiffani hadn’t had any illusions about what was on their minds.

She nudged the mattress with her knee. A low, seesawing creak reverberated through the bedframe.

Theo winced. “We’ll bring the house down.”

“Promises, promises,” Jillian said.

Then his lips were once again on hers. She couldn’t imagine getting enough of him: she could barely understand how she had managed to ever kiss him and then stop without being completely satisfied.

His hand stole to the front of her shirt and undid button after button. As soon as the tops of her breasts were exposed, he lowered himself onto the bed and kissed and sucked at her sensitive skin right where she spilled from the cups of her bra. His mouth drove her to distraction and she moaned before biting down on her hand. He unclasped her bra and let it fall to the floor and pressed the flat of his tongue against one nipple, smiling up at her throughout.

“Please,” she said. She’d never thought of herself as a whimpering kind of person, but with him she seemed to do nothing else. She was fine with that.

He teased her nipple to a tight, furled point and then sucked, stroking her other breast with his hand. For a throbbing moment, she thought she would come just from that, from the heat and skill of him.

The devotion of him, with him sitting as she stood, with him using his hands and mouth to do nothing but please her! It made her want to do the same for him. She couldn’t even understand how she had let this kind of unfairness go on so long, with him still being almost completely dressed while she stood there in nothing but jeans.

“I need to see you.”

“I need to see you too,” he countered, his thumb against the button of her jeans.

“Don’t rush me, Deputy.”

She unbuttoned his shirt slowly, letting her hands explore his hard, muscular chest, now covered only with thinly ribbed white cotton. The second she no longer had his undershirt pinned between his skin and hers, he tore it off and tossed it aside.

He had tattoos she hadn’t noticed before. They were red and gold, the colors shifting so subtly that she couldn’t tell where one turned into the other. They flowed like water down one shoulder and onto his back, just a single band reaching around to the front a little bit above the perfect sharp edge of his hip. She wanted to press her tongue there.

But instead she traced the border of the gauze on his arm, momentarily coming out of the spell of attraction, but Theo caught her hand in his and kissed his fingers.

“I’m fine, remember. Just a scratch.” He unfolded her fingers and drew her nails lightly across his skin, making a series of fine pink lines. “It’s the same as that, only it wasn’t nearly as pleasurable to get it.”

“I hope not,” Jillian said. Her voice was low, as if she could barely get the words out around the knot of lust in her throat. “Well, for the rest of tonight you’re mine to scratch, so the glass will have to stay away.”

“No glass,” he agreed instantly. “I never liked glass anyway.”

He tugged her down to the bed with him and for an agonizingly, amazingly long time, she enjoyed what it was like to kiss him while lying down, when she could tangle her legs up with his. The rest of their clothes gradually disappeared, shed item by item. His erection was hard against her leg, the skin silky and hot when she stroked it.

“Not so fast, if you don’t mind,” Theo said. “Patience is my virtue.”

He moved to the foot of the bed and nudged Jillian’s legs apart. She had always been self-conscious about this, convinced that the guy didn’t enjoy it, but now her thighs parted with no hesitation, with active longing. She wanted him so badly.

And, unbelievably, she knew he wanted her the same way. She was sure. He wasn’t doing this as some gesture towards equality or even to impress her. He wanted to taste her. He wanted her everywhere in the same way she wanted him everywhere.

Even the heat of his hands on her inner thighs was unbearably arousing.

“You’re always so warm,” she said in wonderment. “Your skin—you’re always so hot.”

“Does it bother you?”

“No. Never. Burn me down.”

“You’re beautiful,” he said. He stroked her thighs and her lower lips, moving his thumb teasingly around her clit but not yet touching it. “You’re a pearl.”

“I’m a pearl?” she said, laughing but not laughing, wanting the word too badly to make fun of it.

“Yes,” Theo said, with inarguable authority in his voice. “You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen in my entire life—you’re all the treasure anyone would ever need.”