Baen could hardly believe she had forced him into that metal tube and made him contort himself to fit into the tiny, cramped seat for a miserable trip he could have accomplished faster and much more comfortably all on his own. After all, he had wings, didn’t he? If the Light had meant him to ride in unstable bits of human machinery, he would have been summoned without them.
“Would you stop pouting already?” Ivy smirked at him as she led the way through the crowds at the small Beauvais airport north of Paris. They had arrived on the very last flight of the evening, so the terminal was emptying out quickly. “We got here safely, didn’t we?”
Baen muttered something that she didn’t quite catch. Luckily. “I could have taken us straight to the city,” he added in a louder voice.
“Not while I have a breath in my body, pal.” She hitched her small satchel higher onto her shoulder and picked up her pace. “Hurry up. I want to make sure we get a cab before they all disappear for the night.”
He trailed her toward the airport exit, feeling a little too much like a faithful pet for his liking. He honestly had not believed Ivy would manage to find them a flight on the same day they needed to leave. For some reason he had understood this to be difficult to accomplish in the human world, so he had been anticipating the pleasure of holding her as he transported them between the two cities.
Instead, she had managed the impossible, or nearly so. While unable to book them directly into one of the major Paris airports, she had gotten them close. Beauvais was only about fifty miles from the capital.
“Where will we take this cab?” he asked grudgingly as he followed her out into the chilly evening. “It seems a long trip to ask of a hired driver.”
“Well, we are not taking it into Paris.” She snorted. “I’d need to mortgage Uncle George’s house to pay that fare. We’ll go into the nearest town and find a hotel or something, then we can take a train into the city in the morning. We’ll still get to our meeting in plenty of time.”
He grunted. She didn’t seem to require a further response. After all, the human clearly had everything under control. It made him itchy.
Baen was unaccustomed to the quandary in which he found himself. In all of his existence, he had woken to the heat of battle. Never before had he experienced a situation that forced him to face such long periods of inactivity. It left him feeling superfluous and almost useless. Give him an enemy to slay, and he would do it; ask him to entertain himself during a day of waiting and mechanical travel and he grew frustrated enough to scream.
Outside the airport terminal, a short line of taxis had queued up to the curb, waiting to ferry arriving travelers to their destinations. Ivy made a beeline for an empty vehicle and the driver opened his door and climbed out.
“Bonsoir,” he said politely, though the boredom in his voice was obvious. “Avez-vous besoin d’aide avec vos bagages?”
Ivy flashed the driver a smile, and quickly the man drew himself up straight and puffed out his chest. His gaze traveled over her petite form with obvious appreciation and he started to hurry around his car as if he wanted very badly to help her with something else.
Baen flashed him a smile full of teeth and empty of goodwill. “Non.” To make himself plain, he reached out to rest his palm against the small of Ivy’s back and guide her close to his side. “Ce n’est pas nécessaire.”
For a second it looked as if the driver would push his luck, but then he tore his gaze off Ivy’s sweet curves and caught a glimpse of Baen’s expression. Quickly he raised his hands and took a step backward. “D’accord, d’accord. Euh, où allez-vous ce soir?”
Ivy looked between them, her brow furrowed. She hadn’t mentioned whether she spoke French, or how well, but at least she didn’t interrupt to demand a translation. Baen would prefer to handle this driver on his own.
“À la ville,” he said. “Nous cherchons un hôtel ou une auberge pour passer la nuit.” Into town. We’re looking for a hotel for the night.
“Bon. Je vais vous y emmener.”
Having agreed to the fare, the driver made as if to open the rear door of his cab for Ivy, but a low sound from Baen had him thinking better of it. He scurried back around instead and climbed back behind the wheel while Ivy got in and scooted across the seat to allow Baen to follow.
“What was that all about?” Ivy asked softly, leaning close under the pretense of settling her satchel onto the floor at her feet.
“Do you speak French?” Baen asked just as quietly.
“Like a learning-disabled three-year-old.”
He took that to mean she wasn’t fluent. “It was nothing. I merely asked him to take us to a place where we could find accommodations for the night.”
Ivy didn’t look entirely satisfied by the answer, but something must have convinced her to let it go, because she lapsed into silence beside him and turned her attention to the window. The sun had set just as they landed, so there wasn’t much to see beyond the twinkling cluster of lights in the distance that he assumed indicated the location of the nearby town. Still, it was enough to keep Ivy’s attention, allowing Baen to turn his back to the driver.
A young man, probably in his mid-twenties, he had cocoa-colored skin and an accent that indicated he’d been born not in France itself but likely one of its former colonies in the northern part of Africa. His smooth, even features probably made him attractive to most human females, Baen conceded reluctantly, but if he wanted to keep those dark eyes of his in his head, he needed to stop using his mirror to steal covetous glances at Ivy as he drove.
Not that Baen couldn’t understand the impulse to stare at her. He spent enough time fighting against it, but that didn’t mean he liked it when another man followed suit.
Even in another of her disguises, his Warden looked good enough to eat. He hated her wig, of course, even though this one suited her better than the blond thing she had sported when he had first set eyes on her. This one looked as sleek and dark as mink, falling straight to her nape in back but angling down as it moved forward so that the hair in front curved under the smooth angle of her jaw at the sides and fell in a heavy fringe to her eyebrows at the center. The color made her skin look impossibly pale and milky so that the freckles dusting her skin appeared like nothing so much as a sweet sprinkling of cinnamon sugar atop a bowl of rich cream.
Oh, how he wanted a taste.
Swallowing against the sudden watering of his mouth, he glanced back at the road visible through the windshield of the taxi and frowned. Was he imagining things, or did the road they had just turned onto appear to run in the opposite direction of the small town whose lights he had spotted a few minutes ago?
He shifted his glance to the driver’s profile and scowled. “Où allez-vous?” He demanded to know where they were going.
The driver glanced in the rearview mirror. “Calmez-vous, Gardien. Vous ne voudriez pas faire peur à la jolie fille.”
Relax and don’t scare the girl?
Baen stiffened. In the dim light of the dashboard, he could suddenly see that the eyes that stared back at him in the reflective glass no longer appeared soft and brown but now blazed with a dark and sickly red glow.
Shit. How had the Darkness found them again? Especially so soon and when they hadn’t even known their own travel arrangements until a few hours ago?
Now was not the time to stop and ask questions, though. Now was the time for action.
Without warning, Baen jackknifed in his seat, one arm reaching back to seize Ivy around the waist, the other reaching out to wrench at the handle to open the car door. A snapping sound registered in his ear a split second before his fingers jerked at the little metal grip. The small lever snapped off in his hand, and the locked door didn’t budge. The driver laughed darkly and punched the gas pedal, sending the car into a fast, forceful acceleration that had Ivy looking around frantically, her eyes wide and startled.
“What’s going on?” she cried out, her fingers curling around Baen’s arm as he gripped her waist.
“Hold on,” he ordered, not bothering with explanations. Those could come later. Right now he needed to move. Quickly.
Pivoting on his seat, Baen pulled up his knees, then slammed both feet hard against the locked car door on the side opposite the hinge. Even in his human form, he still possessed near Guardian-level strength and the lock gave way with a shriek of protesting metal. The door swung wide, so wide that it snapped the hinges as well, and crashed backward to leave a giant dent in the front passenger door before falling away to clatter on the pavement behind the speeding car. The possessed driver shouted a foul oath, jerking the steering wheel hard so that the force of gravity tossed Ivy and Baen to the opposite side of the rear seat, away from their escape route.
It would take more than that to stop a determined Guardian. Securing his grip on Ivy with a firm squeeze, Baen gathered himself and launched them both through the opening left by the missing door. As soon as he felt his hips clear the vehicle, he launched his shift and got in one good beat of his wings, which allowed him just enough control of their momentum to turn their bodies and take the impact of their rough landing on himself.
To her credit, Ivy didn’t waste her breath screaming, but the force of the jolt did tear one short, sharp cry from her lips. Her fingers had dug into him the moment he set him moving, and she continued to cling while he climbed to his feet and glanced around to orient himself.
The squeal of brakes and rubber on asphalt accompanied a bright red pulse of brake lights. The car screeched to a stop and the driver’s door opened with such force that it repeated the fate of the rear door, snapped hinges and disarticulation included. It thumped to the ground even as the demonic driver raced toward Baen and Ivy across the open field where they had landed.
Baen set his female aside and met the charge with a bellow of rage. The demon’s actions could have killed the fragile human, and Baen intended to make clear the penalty for endangering Ivy’s life. It would be fast and brutal and bloody and would serve as a warning to any who came after that the woman was under his protection. To hurt her was to beg for death.
A death Baen would grant only too gladly.
The demon met him with a swipe of the claws that burst forth from the fingers of its human host. Like the creature Baen had fought off in the alley to save Ivy the previous night, this servant of the Darkness had no regard for the broken body it would leave behind; it craved only death and destruction. Baen was only too happy to deliver, but he would choose what was destroyed in this battle, not the demon.
Back in his natural form, Baen felt the power of the Light fill him. This was what he had been created to do—to fight against the Darkness hand to hand and claw to claw. To protect. To defend. To defeat.
To be honest, one minor demon offered no great challenge to him, and it made Baen suspicious. Why would the Darkness bother to reveal itself when it had only one human under its thrall? If it had located him and Ivy upon their arrival in France, wouldn’t it have proved a better strategy to simply note their whereabouts, leave them at a hotel, and then return with a greater force? Baen might be powerful and fierce, but he was only one Guardian. If faced with sufficient numbers of the enemy he could be defeated, or at least distracted long enough so that they could get to Ivy. Kill his Warden, and the Darkness would accomplish two goals with one blow—they would further weaken the Guild according to their long-term plan, and they could weaken Baen considerably by removing his support and his mate all in one deft strike.
By contrast, this clumsy attack by one possessed human mere minutes after their arrival in France had little chance of success and only served to put Baen and Ivy on their guard. What exactly did that accomplish for the enemy?
Even with these thoughts to distract him, it took Baen mere moments to dispatch the demon. He didn’t even bother to summon his bardiche, simply using his claws to tear into the vulnerable human flesh and his strength to snap the neck of the host, rendering the demon powerless. It fled its useless shell in a rusty black cloud of pollution before dispersing into the atmosphere. Baen hadn’t destroyed it, but he had sent it back to the plane of its origin, and for the moment that would have to do. At least Ivy would be safe for a time.
He turned to find her gazing at the driver’s destroyed body with a vaguely gray cast to her skin. Hurrying to her side, he tugged her close and felt her tremble against him. “Are you all right?” he asked. “Are you hurt? Did the fall from the car injure you in any way?”
She shook her head, but her gaze remained locked on the corpse. “No, I’m fine. I’m just a little … um … I’m fine,” she repeated. “I’m fine.”
Baen wondered if she was simply answering his question, or trying to convince herself of something she did not quite believe. He shifted to block her view of the fallen man and waited until she dragged her gaze up to meet his. She looked a little dazed and a lot worried, but he decided she would be fine with a little time and distance.
He urged her away from the road and the car that still idled in the center, lights pointing into the hedge that bordered the pavement. They appeared to be in a quiet area, still close enough to the airport for few humans to be likely to wander here, especially after it had closed for the night. Still, he had the feeling they should not linger. Better to get them to the nearest town, or even to Paris, where they could better blend into the crowds.
Yes, he thought. Right now, the more humans surrounding them, the harder it would be for the Order to isolate them and attack. Not that the nocturnis ever cared about avoiding collateral damage, but searching for a needle in a haystack always presented more of a challenge than searching for it on a blank sheet of paper.
Decision made, Baen scooped Ivy into his arms and cradled her tightly against him. One thrust of his powerful legs launched them into the dark sky and on toward Paris. When Ivy barely uttered a word of protest, he pressed his lips together with grim determination. If she didn’t fight him about being carried through the air, then she must be even more shaken than he had believed. Time to get her to safety. Once they were secure for the night, they would have the chance to determine what this latest attack had to tell them about the Order’s next move.
Whatever it was, he had a feeling that countering it would require more than simple brute force.
* * *
Ivy wasn’t certain whether she fell asleep or just passed out for the duration of the short trip from Beauvais to the center of Paris. Frankly, it didn’t really matter. So long as she didn’t have to watch the hard, hard ground flashing before her eyes like a portent of her own painful death, she was fine with it.
Had Ivy mentioned that she really didn’t like unsupported heights? Or falling from them? Or, worst of all, landing after falling from them? The whole chain of events just made her twitchy.
Either way, she felt just as glad not to remember any of that journey. When she woke to the soft jolt of Baen’s landing, she opened her eyes, relieved to find herself standing on solid ground. Sort of. Judging by the top of a chimney stack a few feet away and the view overlooking a cozy neighborhood in one of Paris’s central arrondisements, Baen had once again chosen to use a rooftop as his own personal helipad. Or Guardi-pad. Whatever.
Deciding it would be pointless and disconcerting to ask him about the flight, she settled instead for, “What time is it?”
The Guardian shrugged. “Most likely two hours or so before midnight. Not late. The trip from Beauvais was not far.”
He said it with the unconcern of someone who didn’t have to worry about the consequences of being dropped from a height of a couple thousand feet. Winged bastard.
Patting her satchel to reassure herself it was still there, Ivy reached into the pocket of her jeans and pulled out her cell phone, relieved to find it present and working. “Okay, well, first thing we need is to find a place to stay. After that, we can figure out everything else. Personally, I would kill for a cup of coffee right about now, but we should be able to get that in a hotel room.” She pulled up her Internet app and started searching for accommodations.
A few seconds later, she found herself scowling and muttering at the glowing screen.
“What is the trouble?”
She shook her head and scrolled down the page. “Nothing. It’s just that I’m not finding any place to stay in this neighborhood that has more than one room available. Apparently this is a really residential section, so it’s all little B and Bs or rooming houses, no major hotels. Damn it.”
“We do not require a second room.”
“Excuse me?” Ivy looked up and shot him a level glance. “I do not sleep with men I’ve only known for twenty-four hours.”
He didn’t even bother to hide his dismissive expression. “I have recently woken from a sleep that lasted more than three hundred years. I will not require rest for some time. You may sleep undisturbed.”
She eyed him suspiciously, the voice in her head grumbling. Those were pretty big words for a man who’d kissed the snot out of her a few hours ago. Had he suddenly lost interest in her? Was it from carrying her pudgy ass all the way from Beauvais?
Oh, get a grip! she scolded herself. There she went again, talking crazy to herself. She was not here to try to catch the Guardian’s interest, so it didn’t matter if he thought she was fat or thin or the next best thing to sex on two legs. They had a purely professional relationship and nothing else.
Except for when he tried to devour her whole, like a bowl of ice cream on a hot summer day. That hadn’t felt too professional. It had felt delicious.
Down, girl. She tried to wrestle her libido into submission and scoured the listings on her phone to at least find a room that offered two beds. A girl could never be too careful, after all.
She skimmed through the listings, checked the reviews, then shrugged and clicked the button to book the room. After all, they would only be there for a few hours; it didn’t need to be the George V. It just needed a door, a lock, and a bathroom.
And two separate beds. Everything else was window dressing.
“Okay.” She checked the map on her phone, oriented herself, then shoved her phone back in her pocket. “Five blocks that way. Any ideas on how we get down from here?”
That turned out to be easy. Baen had chosen his landing spot carefully, locating a building of no more than four stories with an exterior fire stair extending up to the top floor. With a little help from him, Ivy found herself lowered to the top landing and quickly led the way down the metal structure to the street.
She didn’t even pause at the bottom, wanting to put space between them and the building. Baen might have the ability to move as silently as a shadow even once he shifted to a human appearance, but her mortal feet had clanged hard against a couple of those steps. If any of the building’s residents panicked and called the police to report prowlers, she didn’t want to find herself in the nearest police station, or trying to explain to the local gendarmes what she had been doing at that address.
She kept an eye out during the short walk to the small B and B, but within twenty minutes, they had been welcomed by a beautifully apathetic manager and shown to a small room under the eaves of a seventeenth-century town house on a quiet side street. The moment the door closed behind their host, Ivy plopped herself onto the end of the closest of the twin beds and let out a groan of exhaustion. Apparently, even the last eight months of work as an operator on the Wardens’ Underground Railroad hadn’t been enough to prepare her for the previous twenty-four hours.
But then again, she wasn’t sure anything could have.
While she sat and tried to get her bearings, Baen prowled around the small space, poking into everything, then pushed aside the lacy curtains to peer out the multipaned window. He said nothing, so Ivy finally gave him a verbal poke.
“Any sign of the boogeyman?”
He grunted, a sound she took to mean that he heard and understood her sarcasm but refused to respond to it. Instead, he merely said, “We should be safe enough here for a few hours. I will keep watch while you rest.”
Ivy frowned. “Do you really think that’s necessary?”
“We have been attacked three times in the space of a single day.” He let the curtain fall and focused his hard gaze back on her. “I find it difficult to ascribe such events to random bad luck.”
The man—er, Guardian—had a point.
To be honest, Ivy had been trying hard not to think about that. The chaos of the attacks themselves, combined with the appearance of Ash and Drum and all the other things that seemed to have happened in rapid-fire succession, had made it easy to simply react and set thinking aside for another time. It looked like that time had finally arrived.
“Yeah, I guess that is kind of weird,” she acknowledged. “The first time was easy to explain, and I guess since Martin turned out to be on the Dark Side, that one can go down to him, but this last one? The cabdriver? That one caught me off guard.”
“Why do you believe the first attack is so easily explained?”
The question took Ivy by surprise. “Well, that’s something I’m always aware is a possibility when I’m transporting a Warden out of England. We all know the Order is after them, so we need to stay on our toes and be prepared for an attack at any time. I mean, clearly they don’t want us getting the Wardens to safety. That completely blows their plans.”
She paused as a thought occurred to her.
“Which, if you think about it, actually points to Asile not being one of them. Why try to stop Wardens from reaching him if he was just going to let the Order kill them anyway?”
“Any number of reasons. To maintain a certain appearance of uninvolvement? To prevent closer scrutiny? As a kind of perverse game? I can conceive of many possible explanations.”
“Wow, that makes me feel better.”
This time, he ignored her sarcasm. “In any event, I am not certain that I agree the first of the attacks can be so easily explained. Did you not keep your identity and your purpose a secret? And did you not take precautions against being discovered or followed during your movements?”
“Of course I did.”
“Well, then? How did the demons find you?”
Ivy’s mind raced. She didn’t like the implications of his questions. “Maybe that’s down to Martin, too. After all, we think now that he’s been working for the nocturnis all along.”
Baen lifted one shoulder. “This may be true.”
“But you don’t think so.”
“I do not. Martin’s involvement with the Order still does not explain the third attack, and nothing explains the persistence of so many attacks in such a short amount of time.”
“So what’s your theory, then?”
He fixed her with his gaze and she watched as his eyes went from dark and human to black and burning and something else entirely. “It has occurred to me that the only element common to all three incidents is you, Ivy Beckett.”
The statement sent her reeling. Threw her for a loop. Knocked her upside the head. Did all sorts of metaphorical things that all amounted to shocking and scaring the shit out of her. What the hell was he trying to say?
“Are you trying to tell me you think that I’m working with the Order, too?” she demanded, outrage propelling her to her feet.
Baen’s startled expression told her he had never intended for her to draw that conclusion from his statements. “Of course not.” He dropped his arms from their position folded over his chest and his stance noticeably softened. “No, Ivy. I know that you would never aid the Darkness. I did not mean for you to think I even suspected such a thing. I do not.”
“Well, then?”
He stepped forward to grasp her gently by the arms, his huge hands careful of their strength. “I am not wary of you, little human. I am wary for you.”
“What do you mean?”
He hesitated, his palms absently stroking back and forth across her upper arms until she felt gooseflesh rise on her skin. Even that simple, comforting contact made her tingle. She couldn’t explain her reactions to the enormous supernatural protector, but she was beginning to be able to predict them. He was quickly becoming her own personal kryptonite.
“I have come to suspect that the nocturnis are watching you, little one,” he finally told her, his tone making his reluctance to do so obvious. “I believe they have been for some time, and I believe they perceive you as a threat that must be … dealt with.”
“Me?” She laughed incredulously. “That’s ridiculous. The Order knows they have five Guardians out there to deal with—six, now, with you—not to mention the Wardens that go with them. And you think they’d be worried about one little human whose greatest contribution to the fight against the Darkness is as a glorified volunteer travel agent? Are you high?”
He glanced at the floor with obvious confusion. “I am on the same level you are.”
“It’s an expression, rockhead. It means you’re clearly out of your mind. I am absolutely no threat to the nocturnis. I’m not a Warden—” She held up a hand to cut off his protest. “I have no magical abilities, let alone training, and my supposed ‘talent’ is about as useful as a bikini at the South Pole. What the hell could they possibly hope to gain by coming after me?”
“I do not know, but we cannot dismiss the possibility given the evidence at hand.”
“The ‘evidence’ being that I got lucky enough to be nearly killed three times since last night.” She scowled at him.
He glared right back. “The Order might be indiscriminately violent and evil, but they always have a plan. They would not come for you so many times unless they had something to gain by it.”
“I’m N-27 on their BeelzeBINGO cards?”
His fingers suddenly tightened their grip on her. “You should not make jokes about your safety.”
“Well, what the hell else am I supposed to do? Curl up in a ball and sob? That doesn’t help anyone, and all it does is make my face splotchy and my eyes swollen. No, thanks.”
Baen looked like he wanted to shake her to see if some sense would settle back into place, but even in that moment, she knew he would never do anything to hurt her. She didn’t know where that utter confidence came from, but it was there. She trusted the Guardian more than she had ever trusted anyone in her life. He might drive her crazy, but he would die before he let anyone hurt her, even himself.
“You make me insane,” he growled at her, staring down with his expression hard and his eyes blazing. “You scatter my thoughts and test the very bounds of my self-control. Why do you affect me this way?”
Suddenly, the urge to continue bickering with him slid away. She found herself trapped in the flames that flickered behind his dark eyes, caught up in the intensity of his regard. All at once, she no longer believed he was angry with her. This was not the gaze of an angry man. This man hungered for her.
The bottom dropped out of her stomach, and Ivy felt her heart begin to race like a thoroughbred just released from a starting gate—that giant leap from a standstill to a blazing gallop. Her breathing stuttered, her throat tightening until not even air could pass through. She went suddenly cold, then hot, her skin contracting and then flushing until her nipples stood at attention and it felt like her panties might burst into flames.
And all that happened even before his head began to dip toward her.
When it did, her brain shut down.
His mouth didn’t settle on hers; it seized, conquered, and pillaged. A sharp nip had her lips parting on a cry, and he swept inside to claim and explore. She felt like he’d planted a flag on her, but for some insane reason she didn’t even care. To hell with independence and being a modern woman—that had never made her feel like this.
Once the initial shock of the kiss wore off, Ivy found herself back in control of her own limbs, and she celebrated that return to voluntary movement by wrapping her arms around Baen’s shoulders and trying to climb him like a maple tree. He offered not a sound of protest and instead reached down to cup her ass in his hands and help by lifting her against him. She immediately hooked her legs around his hips and clung like a lemur.
A horny lemur.
He didn’t even grunt at taking her weight, like it didn’t even register with him. He just kept feasting on her, and damned if Ivy didn’t nibble right back. Their tongues tangled in the hottest kiss she had ever experienced, but all it seemed to do was stoke the fire inside her to another level. Plug her into something, and she felt pretty confident she could heat half of a major metropolitan area through the worst blizzard ever recorded. And that was without counting the heat she could feel pumping off her partner in this crazy experiment.
Baen pressed against her, his hands kneading her bottom in a way that turned her knees to jelly and made her thighs quiver. In their current position, her hips cradled him, making her keenly aware of the hard bulge behind the zipper of his jeans. It pressed up against her most sensitive flesh, and she couldn’t suppress the urge to rock against it until her clit throbbed in time to her heartbeat.
With a low rumble that vibrated in his chest and made her think of hungry predators, he took two steps forward and lowered her to the narrow single bed, pinning her to the soft mattress. She arched up against him, the feel of weight pressing into her making every nerve ending in her body come alive.
She wanted to howl with relief when he stroked his hand over her, but too soon the fabric of her clothing muffled the sensation. Never in her life had she wished harder for real magical abilities so that she could be rid of the pesky material with a quick snap of her fingers.
Baen took care of the problem.
Sliding his mouth from hers, he trailed kisses across her jaw and down her throat, nipping and laving the skin as he went. As soon as he reached the collar of her shirt, he made a frustrated sound and his hands came up to grip the fabric and rip it from her. Buttons pinged against hard surfaces, and the hissing sound of tearing cloth filled her head. Part of her said she should be angry at him for destroying her clothes, but that part got a quick beat-down from the other ninety-nine percent of her that didn’t care how they got naked, as long as it happened fast.
She reached out to help, shrugging out of her top and fumbling with the clasp of her bra. Too impatient to wait, Baen shifted a fingertip to reveal a handy, razor-sharp claw, and sliced through the fabric. Her breasts spilled into his hands, and he lifted them to his mouth. His tongue dragged over one stiff peak, rasping the sensitive skin until she moaned and clenched her fingers in his short, dark hair.
When he closed his lips around her and began to suck, her hips bucked up off the bed. It felt like a direct line had formed between nipple and clit, one pulsing in time with the other.
He pressed his weight into her, grinding his pelvis against her and giving her a taste of the pressure she needed. But the barrier of their jeans was driving her crazy. She needed to feel skin on skin, heat against heat. She needed him inside her, damn it.
She moved her hands down to yank at his shirt, dragging the hem from inside his waistband and yanking the fabric up over the top of his head. Unhappily, he let her nipple pop free and finished the job for her. He ripped the shirt off and tossed it aside, his eyes never leaving her beaded flesh.
Before he could dive back to work, she managed to flick open the button on his jeans and tug at his zipper. She couldn’t get it all the way down, though, not with the way his erection pressed against it, stretching the fabric to its limits.
Shoving at his shoulders, Ivy made her priorities clear. “Naked. Now.”
He looked for a second like he wanted to argue, but the logic of her demand must have sunk in. He had himself stripped and ready to go in seconds and reached out to help her wriggle out of her own jeans, as well.
When the clothes lay discarded and forgotten on the floor of the hotel room, Baen eased back into place above her, his bare skin rasping over hers and sending her nerve endings into overdrive.
Dear God, the things he did to her.
Ivy had never felt so aroused, so frantic or needy, in her entire life. She hadn’t even known this was possible. Every inch of her felt transformed into an erogenous zone. She rubbed the soles of her feet along his calves and felt her pussy clench. Her wrists rubbed against the back of his shoulders and tingled where they made contact. Even her scalp felt tight and sensitized, so that when he tangled one big hand in her hair, the tugging sensation made her whimper.
She burned for him.
The phrase suddenly made sense in a way she had never imagined. Her body felt overheated, her skin tight. When his lips brushed against her, she shivered as if rubbed with an ice cube, or consumed by fever. She could feel her skin grow damp with perspiration and could see the sheen of it on him as well.
They really were hot for each other.
The thought almost made her giggle, but the sound caught in her throat when Baen shifted above her and began to slide his lips down her chest and over her quivering belly. Every one of her muscles from the waist down clenched in anticipation. The long strokes of his hands petting her from neck to knees did little to relax her. They just wound her tighter until she wondered if it was possible for a human being to snap like an overstretched rubber band.
Not the most romantic of notions, but she felt that tense and drawn.
She tried to yank him back up. Maybe another kiss would distract him enough to make him abandon the foreplay. She didn’t need it. All she needed was to feel Baen above her, around her, inside her. All she needed was him.
“Please.”
Her fingers clenched so tight around his shoulders she worried her nails might actually draw blood. He didn’t even seem to notice. He just shook his head, his lips still so close to her skin that they brushed against the top of her mound with every small movement.
“Soon,” was all he would tell her.
Soon would end up being too late if he gave her a heart attack. The possibility looked increasingly likely.
One last frantic attempt to pull him toward her only earned her a burning glance and a new form of torture. He grabbed her wrists and transferred them to one of his big hands, cuffing them in place against her stomach. Then he wedged her thighs open with his broad muscled shoulders and looked down at the core of her like a starving man surveying his first meal in weeks.
Ivy turned the color of poppies and began to shake like a leaf in a storm. She squeezed her eyes shut, unable to look at him looking at her.
She’d had her share of sexual encounters in her lifetime, but nothing—nothing—had ever felt this intimate. Nothing had ever even approached it. She felt absolutely vulnerable, naked in a way that had nothing to do with her lack of clothing. Yet at the same time, she had never felt so safe or so cared for. The dichotomy of it was enough to make her dizzy.
Or maybe that was just the mix of arousal and anticipation racing through her veins.
With her lids clenched shut she couldn’t see the way Baen’s eyes had gone completely inhuman, the whites hidden entirely behind flame-backed blackness, but she remembered her last glimpse of them. They’d been fixed on the puffy pink lips of her sex, on the moisture making them shine, and they had affected her as deeply as a physical touch.
But that didn’t mean that if he kept staring instead of stroking, she wouldn’t rip his wings off and use them to beat him unconscious.
A slow, quiet shift of air registered in her hearing, and it took her jumbled senses a moment to process it as a deep inhalation. He was drawing in her scent like she was warm apple pie, or bread fresh from the oven. Like she smelled delicious.
A puff of air from the subsequent exhale danced across her skin, making her jump. Once again that rumbling sound came to her, full of satisfaction and anticipation. This time, she could even feel it, and her thighs pressed against him in an involuntary embrace.
Unable to survive another moment of waiting, Ivy opened her mouth to encourage him again, but the only sound that emerged was a strangled shriek. Finally, mercifully, he had done with teasing and he lowered his head to press his mouth fully against her sex.
That’s when the world ended, or the sun exploded, or her mind shattered into a billion unidentifiable pieces. Something like that. He began to destroy her with hard strokes and teasing flicks and stinging nips to the very heart of her.
She couldn’t think, couldn’t speak, couldn’t catch her breath. She couldn’t even brace herself against the torment, because there was no way to anticipate what he would do next. One moment his lips closed around her clit and sucked hard until she nearly came, but as soon as she began to quiver and lift into the sensation, he would back off and nip at her labia, then soothe the sharp sting with a stroke of his wicked tongue.
Her heels pressed into his back and her wrists twisted in her frantic attempts to get free, but he held her ruthlessly in place. Honestly, she had no idea where she thought she was going to go, but the sensations he lavished on her were so intense, she didn’t think she could stand them.
He controlled her as easily as a fractious kitten, his grip implacable but always gentle. Her head filled with a dull, hoarse sawing sound, and it took ages for her to realize it was the sound of her own harsh breathing as she struggled for air in the face of the overwhelming pleasure. He was going to kill her.
She felt his shoulders roll as he shifted, then a heavy pressure at her entrance. At first, she felt a wave of relief that he was finally giving up and fucking her, but a long hard draw on her clit put paid to that idea. It also pushed her to the brink of a screaming orgasm. Then she felt something hard slide into her channel and realized it was his finger, long and thick and blunt, and curved just enough to scrape against the spongy spot on the wall of her pussy.
He might as well have lit a firecracker inside her.
She screamed and shattered, the direct stimulation to her G-spot combined with the continued pressure to her clit enough to shoot her into the stratosphere. She had never come so hard or so fast or so damned loudly in her life. What had he done to her?
Whatever it was, he clearly wasn’t finished. He lifted his head from between her legs and sent her a look so hot and so filled with intense male satisfaction that it barely registered that her eyes had flown open when she came. That didn’t mean she could focus on anything—he’d blinded her with pure ecstasy—but it was interesting to note.
“Again,” Baen growled, and Ivy shook her head.
“No. Please. I can’t.”
“Yes you can, little one. Give me your pleasure. Again.”
His finger began to pump inside her, scraping against her quivering inner walls with every stroke. She felt herself beginning to go under, but she fought against it. Right up until the moment he withdrew only to return with two fingers, filling and stretching her while his thumb brushed over her sensitive clit with clever strokes.
Shit. He so didn’t play fair.
Ivy’s head fell back against the pillow and her heels slid to the side to dig hard into the fluffy mattress. She needed to brace against something, because every stroke of his fingers sent her flying further away from reality. She wasn’t a multiorgasmic kind of girl, but Baen didn’t seem to care. The look on his face told her he’d make her come again if it killed him. Or her. Or poor, innocent passersby.
Damn it, she was not going down without a fight, and she had no intention of going down alone.
She saw him watching her, and she caught his gaze with her own, letting him see the need filling her. She arched her hips into his touch, no longer looking to escape, but mimicking the way she would move if it were his cock inside her instead of just his fingers. She undulated like a belly dancer, parting her lips to free the breathless little moans and whimpers that she had previously struggled to swallow. Let him see exactly what he was doing to her, and how much fun it would be if he let her do it right back to him.
Her strategy worked. She saw the first crack appear in his stony armor when he shifted his weight to the side, no longer pinning her lower body in place with the weight of his. Her writhing against his cock must be starting to make a real impression. That only made her more determined.
Wriggling and panting, she pressed her thigh against his length and made sure to rub skin against skin every time she moved. A muttered curse sent a wave of giddy triumph through her, but it didn’t last long. Fingers still working hard between her legs, Baen brought his mouth back into the battle, leaning forward to capture her nipple between his teeth before sucking it deep into his mouth.
Cheater. Unless he gave her back the use of her hands, that was so not fair.
She opened her mouth to protest, but found herself choking on a gasp as the clever, sneaky man pressed his thumb hard against her clit and simultaneously teased her entrance with the tip of a third finger. Just the thought of stretching to accommodate another digit had her sheath clenching hard and the pressure of that against his rough stroking sent her dissolving into another hard orgasm.
This time, he didn’t wait for her to beg for anything.
Thank the little baby Jesus.
His fingers slid from her still quivering pussy to grip her hard at the hip, pinning her in place. She blinked up at him, barely able to focus but easily hypnotized by the burning depths of his gaze. He held her there for a breathless eternity, his weight pinning her to the bed, before he finally
Finally
Entered her with a deep, heavy thrust.
Her body stretched around his invading length, the sting she had imagined setting every inch of her on fire. Nothing had ever made her feel so full, so challenged, so perfect. So incredibly, impossibly complete.
She hissed and squeezed him between her thighs. He braced his palm beside her head and began to move back, as if afraid he had hurt her. She would hurt him if he so much as tried to leave her now.
“Are you all right?” he asked, his voice tight and gruff.
“I’m dying,” she groaned, bucking her hips hard against his. “Now fuck me.”
He took her at her word.
Lowering his head and bracing his knees, he began to power into her, thrusting forcefully in and out of her tight heat. Every stroke felt like being plugged into an electrical outlet, and to her shock, Ivy felt her arousal building again.
It almost scared her. After coming twice, harder than she had thought possible, she had ached to feel Baen inside her, but she had never expected to come again. She’d figured no way, she was done. Apparently her Guardian and her libido had other ideas.
She redoubled her efforts to free her wrists from his grip, and this time he relented, using the opportunity to hook his arm under her shoulder to better pin her in place. Ivy almost sobbed with relief, finally able to touch him, to stroke her hands over the shifting, rippling muscles of his back as he moved like a great machine above her.
“Baen.” She whimpered his name, everything inside her tightening as he stroked deep and hard within her.
“Come for me,” he ordered. “Again. Come on my cock.”
His formal manner of speech had deserted him, but the blunt, graphic words only made Ivy more frantic. Her nails bit into his flesh and she tilted her hips, searching for the perfect angle, the perfect pressure to send her sailing over the edge. But Baen was the one who found it. With a grunt, he released her hip and grabbed the back of her knee, pressing her leg back against her chest and opening her even wider. Another thrust drove him deeper inside her and pressed his pelvis hard against her, providing just the right pressure to her swollen clit.
She came again, silently this time. She didn’t have the breath to scream. Every inch of her body seemed to clench tighter than a fist, the climax almost painful in its intensity. It rolled over her like a tsunami, fast and brutal and quickly retreating back to the sea.
Vaguely, she became aware of Baen’s last quick, hard movements, of his body going still and taut above her, of the roar that broke from him as he poured himself into her. All she could do was hang on and clutch at him bonelessly as he collapsed on top of her.
After that, she could barely even breathe.
Literally. The Guardian weighed a ton. It felt as if he were still made of solid stone.
Ivy pushed weakly at his shoulders, and eventually, he grunted and shifted far enough to the side to allow her lungs to reinflate. Honestly, they were the only part of herself she could be certain still worked. Everything else felt as limp and useless as wilted flowers, including her brain.
Ah, what the hell, she decided, as she felt exhaustion wash over her. She’d gotten this far without using her brain. What harm would a few more hours do?
Keeping that thought in mind, she closed her eyes and let her body sink fully into the soft, duvet-covered mattress. The fleeting thought occurred that she should probably be sleeping under said duvet rather than on top, but with the huge hunk of man next to her pumping out heat like a forest fire, she figured she wasn’t likely to catch cold.
Now, if only she could figure out how to catch ‘smart’ instead of letting her brain turn off whenever he looked at her …
She drifted off, determined to figure it all out tomorrow. After all, chances were she’d have more mistakes to add to her list before she even sat down to breakfast.
She was just lucky like that.