The Fox and the Falcon (No Other Gods #2)

Chapter Two

November, age 20

There were dozens of reasons to let someone into your bed. Intimacy, stress relief, boredom, experimentation, and lust, to name a few. I once fucked a girl—poorly, I might add—who’d spent years pining after me just so she could shake the cobwebs of fantasy from her head and realize we were, in fact, a terrible match. A perfume-scented, brightly colored magazine had once proclaimed that women who’d had more than twenty partners were unlikely to find love.

Good , I’d thought. At least then, I’d have an excuse.

Caliban wasn’t my first, or third, or fifth.

He wasn’t real, after all—the man who’d haunted my steps for as long as I could remember. But he was one hell of a coping mechanism, and this beautiful, perfect figment of my imagination had helped me survive my tumultuous upbringing. He had been there for my rocky transition from the sheltered church to the liberal hedonism of a non-Christian college. Now, god willing, he’d help me keep my head above water as I studied for midterms while writing a novel. Why I’d thought it was a good idea to spend my junior year squandering my free time as I role-played as an author was a mystery I’d never solve.

I’d thought about taking Caliban to bed, of course. I’d picture looking into those silver eyes while gripping the back of the neck of whoever happened to be on top of me. I’d imagined chilled lips sending goose bumps down my neck while being kissed by another. I’d allowed my imagination to explore the forbidden curiosity of someone stepping from the shadows to run their hands up my dress, under my shirt, cupping my jaw, claiming my mouth.

Tonight, he was there before I’d finished my unsatisfied daydream.

I was overcome with the misty rush of the forest floor while a candle flickered and The Weeknd piped through my bedside speaker. Maybe my phantom had sensed my anxiety as I struggled to get Booker, the basketball team’s leading point guard, out of my bed. I wondered if he could smell it too—the cologne of petrichor and magical otherness—but perhaps he thought it was just the candle. He was a man, after all.

I’d stepped into my panties and tugged a T-shirt over my head the moment he’d finished and immediately began to collect his clothes. His belt buckle clattered as he caught it with a chuckle.

“Come on,” Booker said, one muscled leg still beneath the covers, “let me stay over.”

The sooner he left, the sooner I could crack open my bedside drawer and get myself off. Booker wasn’t terrible between the sheets. He was uncomfortably big, which meant an overuse of lube and the wincing that came from a man hitting your cervix, and never in a good way. But for a few sweaty minutes, I was able to escape my life and just be utterly present. And I’d be lying if I said a huge facet of my attraction wasn’t simply knowing that he was widely coveted, yet I was the one kicking him out of bed.

I cracked the bedroom door and gestured toward the living room. “I have an eight a.m. lab,” I said. “I can’t stay up late.”

He was unamused as he swung his legs over the side of the mattress and slipped into his jeans. “We’ve been hooking up long enough for me to know you dropped out of chem. You don’t have anything in the morning.”

Shit.

Booker crossed the room in three steps. The candlelight exaggerated the contours of his abs and broad shoulders. He kept his T-shirt in his hand as he looked down at me. “We don’t have to do this booty call thing, Marlow. I want to take you to dinner. I want to look up into the stands and see your face. I want to watch movies with you and introduce you to my teammates and…”

His voice drifted off as he studied the apologetic pucker between my brows.

“You’re a nice guy, Booker.”

The hope in his eyes dimmed, then smoked out. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. A muscle ticked in his jaw as he steeled himself against rejection.

“I’m sorry. I really am. It’s just…”

“Spare me.” He slipped the T-shirt over his head and left without a goodbye. Perhaps if I were someone different, I would have felt bad about the way we’d left things. Instead, I felt only relief that he was gone, and that I knew exactly who I’d find when I turned around.

The corner of Caliban’s lips tugged up in a half-amused smile. I relaxed and riled at once, both relieved by his presence and excited he was here. I could never anticipate his visits, but if he were a figment of my imagination, he must have appeared because I needed to get things off my chest. Booker may have been a perfect specimen by every human standard, but Caliban’s beauty stole my breath altogether.

“I’m switching back to women,” I said as I flopped onto the bed. I watched him lean against the wall near the door, arms folded over his broad chest. “Men bring a dick to the party and think it’s all they need to get you off.”

“It can be,” he said, silver eyes glinting with some wicked sense of knowing. He tilted his head as if listening for the distant sounds of a disappointed basketball player’s footsteps. “But I’m not confident in your taste in men.”

I propped myself up on my elbows, eyeing him.

A beat pulsed between us where the time for me to reply had come and gone. I was generally so quick with my smartass retorts and general complaints.

He looked at me with a single quirked brow. My heart skipped a beat as I summoned whatever courage I possessed.

“You’re a man,” I said at last.

He rubbed his jaw as he chuckled. “Love—”

I thought of the first time I’d brushed his hand—quite by accident—and how my veins had filled with cold, spiked adrenaline when I realized just how solid and real he’d felt. I’d grown bolder as the years ticked on, reaching for his hand when I needed, thinking of the arms wrapped tightly around me when I’d longed to be held, or the night I’d rested my head in his lap and he’d touched my hair until I fell asleep. “Sit next to me?”

Caliban ran a pale hand through his hair. “Listen, Love—”

“Is it not possible?” I asked.

The amusement faded from his voice. “It’s more than possible, it’s just—”

Great . An imaginary friend rejecting its creator would be a new low. Possibility aside, was there something within me that deemed me unworthy of indulging my fantasies? Perhaps this was a lesson in self-love. At least, I told myself as much as I asked, “But you don’t want me?”

“Oh,” he said, the sound so quiet it was more of a soft, chastising breath than a word. The bed slouched under his weight as he sat beside me. He tucked his arm behind me, and I rested my head on his chest. He touched his lips to my hair as if to kiss it, but instead, he muttered, “If I’ve made you feel unwanted even for a moment, I’ve failed you.” He brushed cool fingers along my jaw, working them into my hair and slowly knotting them to force my chin up. No longer was I a woman poised for rejection, but mere inches from his lips. He inhaled, and the lightning bolt that passed between us was like a cord that rose from my belly, traveling through my throat as he sipped my breath like electric, crackling wine.

I had never craved anything like this kiss.

I tried to close the space between us, but he tightened the hold on my hair, immobilizing me. “If we start, I won’t be able to stop,” he said.

“I don’t want you to stop,” I replied.

He shut his eyes, flattening his lips into a line as he struggled with some controlled emotion. “It’s not… I don’t mean tonight. I mean: I love you for you. I love our conversations and losing myself in the labyrinth of your mind. I love championing your dreams. I love catching your tears and righting your wrongs. I don’t need anything more from you to be utterly fulfilled. But if you let me into this part of your life, you will be opening a door that I’d sooner die than close.”

It was a warning, but it wasn’t a no. He wanted it every bit as much as I did. He had more self-control, though, as he managed to remain statue still while I tried once more to kiss him. This time when he tightened his grip on my hair, I released a quick gasp at the small hurt.

“You’ll have to say it, Love.”

“Say what?”

His jaw flexed as his gaze flitted from my eyes to my lips to my throat, wandering lower, looking at me as if I were something to be eaten. I was acutely aware of his cool fingers in my hair, of the prone position that left my neck exposed, of the excited flood between my legs as the electric crackle worked its way into the deepest parts of me.

“Tell me that you want this with me. Tell me your body is mine, and I’ll make it so.”

The chilled spike of fear only added to the excitement. I wasn’t sure what fucked-up parts of my brain had turned my sexual perversions into deals with the devil, but I knew I wanted this more than life. I needed to be wrapped in the arms that had kept me safe for so many years. I needed to know what it might be like when the person in my bed was someone who lit my soul on fire. I needed to know how full a ghost could make me feel.

“It’s yours,” I breathed.

His eyes remained closed. His whole face twitched. “Say it all.”

There was no oxygen in the room as I struggled to say, “I want this with you, Caliban. My body is yours.”

His posture shifted nearly imperceptibly as something clicked within him. He exhaled slowly, releasing his tight hold on my hair as he cupped the back of my head and brought his lips to mine. Goose bumps covered my arms and legs as his lightning worked its way through my blood. Greed crept into my kiss as I plunged my fingers into his hair in return and kissed him back with pent-up intensity.

I swung my leg over him, and for one magnificent moment, he squeezed the small of my waist, gripping my hips with thinly controlled desire. He pulled my tee off first, then drank me in until I began to squirm, self-conscious under the weight of his gaze. He reached over his head, grabbed a fistful of his black tee, and pulled his shirt off in one swift motion before flipping me onto my back with a growl.

The blurs of licks and kisses and teeth, the small hurts of perfect bites, the moans and gasps and sounds, the bucking of hips when touched in sensitive places, the unbridled longing to taste and be tasted—it was all tossed into a blender. I made it abundantly clear that I did not want foreplay. I wanted him inside me. I wanted to see what he’d meant when he’d implied some men might possess the equipment to get me off with a cock alone. He had equipment that I wanted access to.

I maintained my confidence right up until I saw the rock-hard pillar of marble and desire waiting at my entrance, and the blood drained from my face.

“Do you trust me?” he asked, as if reading my mind.

I continued to stare at it as I nodded, one knee near my tit and the other hooked around his hip as my courage waned. I didn’t want it to hurt. My body count of sexual experiences only included two dicks so far, but the one with the baseball bat in his pants had been the sort of mistake I’d sworn not to repeat.

Caliban licked his palm and coated his cock with one smooth motion, then nudged my entrance. I swallowed as I continued to stare, watching with wide, worried eyes as it went in deeper and deeper and deeper. I wasn’t sure at what point I’d closed my eyes and let my head collapse into the pillow, but I focused on my breathing as he pulled out ever so slightly, then worked himself in a little further. My sharp inhalations and pleasurable groans alternated as he moved. I wasn’t conscious of much else as the thumping heartbeat between my legs filled me completely.

I dug the fingernails of one hand into the back of his neck as I pulled his face close to mine, but the other hand gripped his thigh, keeping his body at bay. It felt so fucking good, I couldn’t risk the pain, the flinch, the winching disappointment of him bottoming out and throwing a single moment of discomfort into this utterly perfect moment.

“Hey,” came his husky command, “look at me.”

I struggled to comply, lifting my eyes to meet the starlit burn of his gaze.

“You’re pushing me away. Give me your hands.”

The briefest flash of panic shot through me. “But—”

“Give them to me.”

My heart thundered as I took my hand off his thigh. He didn’t break eye contact for a second as he caught my wrists in his broad, rough hand. I swallowed, worry clear on my face.

“Trust me,” he said with low, husky reassurance. “You can take it. Don’t look away.”

Chills snaked down my spine. Ice and butterflies and adrenaline filled my belly. I looked at him with worry and fear and trust and panic and lust as he sank every inch into me, igniting a light within me I hadn’t known existed. I choked on my gasp as my hips rolled into the shiver-inducing sensation.

“There’s my girl,” came his low growl. “You can take it.”

It was hard to know how much time had passed. Ten minutes? Two hours? My thoughts tipped like leaves in the wind, disconnected from any tree of rational thought. The space between infinities engulfed each slow, hard thrust, filling me with glitter, with starlight, with spirit and flame and shadow and absolute goddamn magic. This was what it meant to be fucked right.

No amount of vibrating toys or swirling, suctioning lips and tongue compared to the secret treasure chest of oxytocin that he alone had managed to unlock. It pumped through me like the most delicious and explicit of intravenous drugs.

I reached up to touch his utterly perfect face, and the sound he made as he kissed my palm was so tender it nearly broke my heart. Except, my precious organ was too pickled in serotonin to ever experience heartbreak. In fact, I was quite certain that if I opened my mouth to express a single thought, I’d only be capable of telling him that my body wasn’t the only thing that belonged to him. I admitted a truth I’d known for a long, long time.

I was his. Mind, body, and soul.