Dark Tarot (Dark Carpathians)

Adalasia framed the side of his face with one hand. He could disarm her so easily. Love overwhelmed her every time she looked at him. It was strange how she had gone from distrusting him to loving him more every moment she spent with him.

He lowered her into the pool. At first, the heat didn’t register, and then she gasped and would have shot straight toward the ceiling of the cave if he hadn’t had his hands firmly around her waist.

“I was thinking loving thoughts, and all along you knew you were going to boil me alive in this hideous water.” She tried to climb up his taller frame.

He threw his head back and laughed. The sound caught at her. She actually felt the burn of tears behind her eyes. Sandu rarely laughed like that. Real. Carefree. After the agony he’d suffered, the sound was so beautiful it tugged at her heartstrings and found its way into her soul.

“The water isn’t that hot, Adalasia. Already, I can feel your body adjusting, and it is soothing the soreness. I was hard on you.”

She wasn’t going to admit the water wasn’t that hot. “I probably do have skid marks on my back and inside, but who cares? That was . . . awesome. The best. I decided being Carpathian has some really good benefits.”

Adalasia ducked her head under the water, and when she surfaced, her lifemate was at the other side of the pool, leaning back, watching her as she swam lazily. He rested his hips against the smooth rocks she’d created to line the pool. She’d been particularly proud of that feature. She’d wanted the rocks very smooth and contoured so they could sit on them either out of the water or just waist deep in it. Sandu rinsed himself off and then sat on the rocks, his thighs apart, his long blond hair drying rapidly with a wave of his hand while he kept his gaze fixed on her.

“Now who doesn’t want to come out of the hot water?”

It wasn’t the water so much; she liked the way he was watching her. He had a way of focusing so completely on her that made her feel as if there wasn’t another woman alive that he would ever notice.

“You know there isn’t another woman for me to notice. You are my only. You always will be.” Sandu proved he was in her mind. His hand dropped to his semihard cock, fingers wrapping around the girth in a tight fist. “Why don’t you swim over this way, little mermaid?”

She raised an eyebrow, the sight of his casual pumping mesmerizing. “Do you have something in mind?”

“I have been thinking about the way your mouth feels when you surround me. I woke with that thought somewhere in the back of my mind, and it suddenly came to the front, and now it is very persistently there. An erotic vison I cannot seem to remove.” He looked around him and gestured to the walls where the shadow figures performed. “All of them seemed to be demanding we follow their example.”

“I see that.” Adalasia smiled at him, a siren’s temptation. She had conceived and designed the shadows from the candles and thrown them onto the walls.

Deliberately, her gaze dropped to his hardening cock, and her tongue touched her lips, moistening them so they gleamed wet as she stood and waded slowly toward him. The water came to her waist. Her breasts swayed, little beads dripped from her nipples and more droplets ran down her skin. She stopped to twist her hair, wringing the water out of it before tossing the mass over her shoulder.

“I wouldn’t want it to be a hardship on you, Sandu, but who knows what would happen if we didn’t do what those little instructors have taken the time to show us we should be doing.”

Her hands cupped his heavy sac, fingers brushing his velvety balls. She found the softer cushion she had provided for herself beneath the water so she could kneel comfortably in front of him, her breasts floating on the water as she tipped her head back to look up at him.

“I think I can endure the hardship,” he said, his black eyes once again leaping with red flames.

Adalasia laughed softly and did her best to swallow him down.

Sandu regarded Danutdaxton and his lifemate, Riley, as they sat outside on the little patio with the rain forest surrounding them. “I had no idea, when I sent the call ahead, what I would be asking of you. I apologize.” He was very sincere.

Dax lived his life away from civilization for a reason. The Old One, the dragon sharing his form, would never have tolerated a town, let alone a city. Danutdaxton had been too long in the volcano, and he had become something more than Carpathian. It was possible he couldn’t have survived long in a civilized setting even without the dragon in him.