Part 12 (1/2)
”I'm not crazy, if that's what you're thinking.”
Lucan gave a slow shake of his head. ”I am not thinking that at all.”
”I despise pity.”
”So do I,” he said, detecting the warning in her words. ”You don't need pity, Gabrielle. And you don't need medicine or doctors, either.”
She had been retreating into herself from the moment he had first discovered her scars, but now he felt her hesitation, her tentative trust in him slowly returning.
”You don't belong to this world,” he told her, not sentiment but fact. He reached out, cupping her face in his palm. ”You are far too extraordinary for the life you've been living, Gabrielle. I think you've known it all along. One day, it will all make sense to you, I promise. Then you'll understand, and you will find your true destiny. Maybe I can help you find it.”
He meant to resume bathing her, but the awareness that she was watching him made his hands still. The profound warmth in her answering smile put an ache in his chest. Snared in her tender regard, he felt his throat constrict strangely. ”What is it?”
She gave a small shake of her head. ”I'm surprised, that's all. I didn't expect a big tough cop like you to speak so romantically about life and destiny.”
The reminder that he had, and was still, coming to her under false pretenses jolted some of his wits back into his brain. He plunged the washcloth back into the soapy water and let it float among the suds. ”Maybe I'm just full of s.h.i.+t.”
”I don't think so.”
”Don't give me so much credit,” he said, forcing a casualness into his tone. ”You don't know me, Gabrielle. Not really.”
”I'd like to know you. Really.” She sat up in the water, the tepid little waves lapping around her nude body the way Lucan wanted to do with his tongue. The tops of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s rode just above the surface, pink nipples hard as buds, surrounded in frothy white foam. ”Tell me, Lucan. Where do you belong?”
”Nowhere.” The answer slipped out of his mouth in a growl, a confession closer to the truth than he cared to admit. Like her, he despised pity and was relieved that she was looking at him more in curiosity than sympathy. He ran his finger along the pert, freckle-spattered bridge of her nose. ”I am the original misfit. I've never really belonged anywhere.”
”That's not true.”
Gabrielle's arms circled around his shoulders. Her soft brown eyes held his gaze tenderly, with the same care he'd given her as he'd brought her out of the locked darkroom and into the warm bath. She kissed him and, as her tongue swept his lips, Lucan 's senses were swamped with the heady perfume of desire and sweet, feminine affection.
”You've taken such good care of me tonight. Let me take care of you now, Lucan.” She kissed him again, a deep plundering with her slick little tongue that forced a groan of pure male pleasure from deep within him. When she finally broke contact, she was breathing hard, her eyes afire with carnal need. ”You're wearing too many clothes. Take them off. I want you naked with me in here.”
Lucan obeyed, shucking his boots, socks, pants, and s.h.i.+rt to the floor. He wore nothing else, standing before Gabrielle fully nude.
Fully engorged and eager for her.
He was careful to keep his eyes tilted away from hers now that his pupils had narrowed with hunger, and he was mindful of the throbbing press of his fangs, which had stretched long behind his lips. If not for the bare trace of light from the night lamp near the sink, she would have surely seen him in all his ravenous glory.
And that would be quite a buzzkill for an otherwise promising moment.
He wasn't about to take that chance.
With a sharp mental command, he shattered the small bulb behind the night light 's plastic cover. Gabrielle startled at the sudden pop, but then she sighed as blissful darkness surrounded them. Her body was making lovely, slippery noises in the tub.
”Turn on another light, if you want.”
”I'll find you without it,” he promised, speech a tricky thing now that l.u.s.t had a firm hold on him.
”Then come,” bid his siren from the warm pool of her bath.
He stepped into the water, sinking down to face her in the dark. He wanted nothing more than to haul her close-drag her into the cradle of his thighs and sheath himself to the hilt in one long stroke. But he would let her set their pace for now. Last night he had come there hungry and taking; tonight he would give.
Even if the restraint killed him.
Gabrielle glided toward him through the thinning clouds of foam. Her feet went around his hips and linked loosely over his a.s.s.
She bent forward at the waist, her fingers finding his thighs beneath the surface of the bath. She squeezed the taut muscles, kneaded them, then firmly rode their length in slow, delicious torment.
”You should know, I'm not usually like this.”
His groan of interest sounded strained in his ears. ”You mean, hot enough to reduce any male to cinder at your feet?”
She exhaled a soft laugh. ”Is that what I do to you?”
He brought her teasing hands up to the jutting thickness of his c.o.c.k. ”What do you think?”
”I think you're amazing.” She didn't withdraw her touch after his hands left hers. She traced his shaft and b.a.l.l.s, then lazily brought her fingers up around the bulbous head that more than breached the surface of the bathwater. ”You're not like anyone I've ever known. And what I meant was, I'm not usually so... well, aggressive. I don't date a lot.”
”You don't take a lot of men to your bed?”
Even in the dark, he sensed her sudden blush. ”No. It's been a very long time.”
In that moment, he didn't want her to take any other male-human or vampire-into her bed.
He didn't want her f.u.c.king anyone else ever again.
And G.o.d help him, he would hunt down and disembowel the Minion b.a.s.t.a.r.d who might have harmed her today.
The thought hit him with a savage rush of possessiveness as her fingers squeezed his s.e.x, wringing a drop of slick wetness from the tip. When she bent down over him and drew his c.o.c.k into her mouth, suckling him deeply, he arched up as tight as a bowstring.
Forget tearing out the Minion's entrails, he would settle for nothing less than flat-out, b.l.o.o.d.y murder.
Lucan lowered his hands onto Gabrielle's shoulders as she worked him into a mindless frenzy. Her fingers, her lips, her tongue, her breath rasping against his bare abdomen as she took him deeper and deeper into her hot mouth-all of it driving him to the brink of extraordinary madness. He couldn't get enough. When she drew off of him, he swore roundly at the loss of her sweet suction.
”I need you inside me,” she told him, panting.
”Yes,” he snarled. ”G.o.d, yes.”
”But... ”
Her hesitation confused him. Angered that part of him that was more savage Rogue than considerate lover.
”What's wrong?” It came out more of a demand than he meant.
”Shouldn't we... ? Last night, things got out of hand before I could mention it... but shouldn't we, you know, use something this time?” Her discomfort sliced through his pa.s.sion-drenched mind like a blade. He grew still, and she pulled away from him as if to get out of the tub. ”I have some condoms in the other room... .”