Her eyes revealed every color of fire. “Again.”

Tallis recaptured her mouth. She forced her tongue between his lips, between his teeth. A dare. He clasped harder, holding the bite as if he’d sunk his teeth into the sensitive skin at her nape. The thought of claiming her in the Pendray way shook his control. That manner of claiming symbolized permanence among his clan.

He didn’t lose control. He didn’t bite deeper. But he realized that an imagination was a bad thing when he was already so overwhelmed. To picture him bowed over her body, both of them on all fours, was an invitation to ruin her first time by default—not because he would hurt her, but because he’d be some untried lad who came before sinking home.

He released her tongue, then traveled lower. She seemed to like his hair, because she threaded her fingers into the thickest locks at his crown. Her touch didn’t guide him, but as when he’d licked and sucked her pussy, she offered tiny flinches as signposts. She liked slick tonguing kisses on the undersides of her breasts, and she liked a hint of teeth across the tips of each nipple. She liked the way he breathed against her damp skin, and how he slid his caress down each gracefully strong thigh.

He knew, because she was one of the most articulate lovers he’d ever taken. She spoke with the unconscious language of her body. A week and a ream of paper wouldn’t have been enough to transcribe what he learned from dipping his tongue in her navel. She offered praise and encouragement with goose bumps, panting breaths, and restless hands across his upper body. Everywhere she touched, she trailed flame.

Kavya’s skin. Tallis’s skin.

They still had names. They were still contained in separate bodies.

Time to change that.

He knelt on the ground with one knee on the hard concrete and one accidentally padded by a strewn towel. Only once did he glance up. Kavya had lowered her chin and was staring at him with more of that unspoken fire. She smiled. “I like this part,” she said, the words full of husky teasing.

Tallis tasted and teased her honeyed sex. Every lick dragged him closer to the moment when he would need to be inside her. Somehow. Anyhow. He could become addicted to her as easily as he’d become a supplicant to his dreams.

But no.

He stood abruptly and kissed her again, sharing the taste of her by plunging deeply, giving no quarter. This was no dream. He was with Kavya. She moaned. The sound reverberated down his throat and his chest, until that humming excitement ratcheted his arousal. This was real because it was imperfect. A laundry room? The basement of a hotel he’d broken in to? Imperfect, yet just what he needed when the perfection of Kavya’s responses raised his suspicions that she was too good to be true. Too much like his dreams.

Her slender hand grasped his cock.

“Bathatéi!” He snatched her wrist and pinned it against the cinder block. “Don’t do that again.”

She held his gaze, flames watching flames, and smiled. “I have before.”

The shock of her other hand was just as powerful. Only this time, Tallis didn’t pull her away. “Fine,” he ground out, closing his fist around hers. “If you want to play, play.”

Her rhythm was more assured this time. Long strokes down. Long pulls up. Tallis pressed harder so that their hands became overlapping vises to torture his engorged flesh. He’d taught her the rhythm he liked, the speed he liked, but he hungered for the closeness of his closed fist around hers as they pumped.

“You’re big. Did I forget to mention that?”

Grinning felt out of place, but then again—no, she was smiling and he wanted to as well. “I am. And you did forget.”

“You’re practically monosyllabic. Although I’m impressed I can talk at all.” She wiggled the wrist he’d pinned against the wall, silently asking permission to be freed. He complied. Cupping his cheek, still gripping and caressing his cock, she gazed up at him with an expression of wonder layered over with frustration. “I didn’t think I would, but I wish I could read your mind right now.”

“I’m glad you can’t.” He grunted on a particularly fast trio of strokes.

“I wouldn’t like what I found?”

“No. Just . . . pointless. Thinking. Feeling. Inseparable right now. Tell me I’m wrong.”

Kavya closed her eyes and let her head fall back against the wall. The hand holding his cheek slid down, down, until she found the meat of his upper arm. She smiled softly, contentedly, although her body still hummed with want and pent-up energy.

“You’re not wrong,” she said. “Thinking, feeling. All the same. When I think about your size, my body aches. Thinking, feeling . . .”

“Come here. Up.”

He cupped the back of her head to drag her to face level. Her eyes were hazy, yet sharp with curiosity. He would’ve loved to fuck her against the wall, just taking, which would scrape the living hell out of her back. The demon in him wanted that overload of sensation.

Tallis released her hand and forced her to release his shaft. “Hold on. Your arms around my neck.” She complied, and he lifted her off the ground. The crooks of her knees locked over the inside bend of his elbows. He gripped her ass, then braced himself with his back to the wall.

“This is your first time, Kavya.” He shook his head. “I can’t trust myself.”

“Tell me,” she whispered.

Tallis closed his eyes. “Against the wall. Or down on the ground.”

“You’d lose control.”

“Yes.”

She purred in the back of her throat, with a cat’s smile to match. “Someday, maybe. But for now?”

“You’re going to fuck me.”

CHAPTER

TWENTY-TWO

His words jolted through Kavya with as much force as every physical torment he layered over her body. He wasn’t kissing now—not anywhere—although the memory of his mouth between her legs released another rush of wet, hot readiness. He was enormous. She was ready for him.

He held remarkably still, considering how closely they were perched on the edge of falling. It felt like falling, into an abyss of sensation that would fill her mouth, flood her lungs, and drown her. She sucked deeper until those sensations became air and untold boldness. She leaned forward and licked from the notch at the base of his throat to his thin lower lip.

“Again,” he rasped.

Because he’d complied with her equally blunt demand—when he’d bit her tongue, just shy of pain—Kavya returned the favor. That was the best part of sex so far. Returning favors.

He was sandalwood-scented, as she’d imagined, but retained a slight hint of salt and musk. The scent and taste of Tallis. Although the notch was smooth, his skin turned rougher, pebbly and scratchy with stubble as she dragged her tongue up his throat, over his chin, and back to the utterly sleek welcome of his kiss.

“Put my cock between your legs.” He swallowed tightly. “I’m holding you. But I can’t be the one who starts this. But once we start . . .”

“You’ll set the pace?”

A ragged grin turned up one side of his mouth. “Yes, I will.”

Kavya reached a hand between their bodies and grasped his thick, hard shaft. She’d loved the rush of power that came with stroking him. Now . . . now her body would do the same. Perhaps her youthful fears of being forced had made the act seem so one-sided. There was only penetration and being penetrated. But Tallis would be just as helpless as she, sucked into her warmth and pulled by the need for more and more pressure. She saw it so clearly now.

There was penetration, and there was being consumed.

They were devouring each other.

She rubbed a drop of slick fluid around his throbbing head. He hissed. He shifted his grip. “Do it, Kavya.”