Chapter Twelve #2
She stared at him, shocked to the core by his words and the underlying anger in them.
He laughed without warning, and that made her frown harder.
“I might try to shift and then have a swim,” he said, changing the subject. “Will you swim with me?”
“I can’t swim in this.” She indicated her wrap.
“Take it off. No one comes to this beach apart from my family. They know we’re here and they won’t interrupt us unless it’s an emergency.” He stood and extended his hand.
She took it, and he hauled her to her feet. Deft fingers untwisted the knot at her breasts and before she could gather a protest, the silky fabric fluttered to the sand, leaving her naked.
“I’m going to shift now,” Leo said. “Fingers crossed that everything goes as it should.”
Betrys stood back and watched Leo. The transformation from humanoid to feline seemed to take even longer than the first time she’d seen him shift.
The sounds of bones cracking and reshaping made her wince.
Then, Leo stood before her in leopard form, his sides heaving with exertion and his maw open wide while he panted.
“Do you want some water?”
He grunted once. Once for yes, she recalled, and reached for the water bottle. She was unsure of what to pour the water into then noticed the shallow bowl in the basket of food someone had packed for them. She poured water for Leo and waited while he drank his fill.
The solar star was hot on her bare skin, and when Leo ambled into the jade water, she followed him.
“It’s cold,” she shrieked.
Leo grunted and he gamboled around her, splashing her with more cool water, his mouth open in a kind of a feline smirk.
The expression on his face, the humor in his familiar green eyes reminded her of her son.
For once it was a good memory, one of fun and games, and she laughed out loud and scooped up water in her hands to splash him in the face.
He let out a strange, yet heart-warming bark of laughter and burst into a frenzy of movement, splashing them both.
“Right,” she said. “This is war.”
They played and giggled and splashed each other until they were both soaked and Betrys warded him off with raised hands.
“Enough,” she said, still chuckling.
Leo exited the sea and shook himself with vigor.
“Hey!”
Leo flicked his tail and trotted up the beach to where their belongings lay on the sand. Betrys paused to release her hair from its scraggly bun and wrung out the excess water.
“Hurry up, slowpoke,” Leo called.
Betrys glanced in the direction of his shout. “You shifted.” She hurried across the sand. “Are you all right? How do you feel? Do you need to take more painkillers?”
“I’m fine.” Leo cupped her face and smiled. “Saber was right. I feel much better after my shift, and the transformation was much easier just now. I’m starving. Do you want something to eat?”
He grabbed her hand and tugged her onto the blanket they’d spread out earlier. His gaze wandered her bare shoulders and followed the progress of a droplet of water as it dripped off a tendril of hair and rain over her collarbone and down, down across the curve of her breast.
“Or maybe we’ll eat later.” He leaned closer to lick the bead of water off her skin.
Her breath caught and caught again when his mouth shifted to settle on one nipple. Instead of sucking, he delicately licked, his tongue a brand on her senses.
Betrys clutched his shoulders and clung, her head tipping back as she thrust her breasts forward in a silent demand for more. “Leo.” She followed up with a verbal entreaty. “Please.”
He lifted his head, his eyes doing a weird shift to partial feline. “I do please.” And he pushed her back onto the blanket and rose over her. “I want you. I always want you.”
“You do?” She bit her lip on hearing the insecurity in her tone, but the truth was Iseult had dented her confidence, made her doubt herself and wonder about Leo’s intentions.
She tried not to dwell on things outside her control.
Yes, once Ricci was safe she could move on and create a new, safe future for both of them.
“One day you won’t doubt me.” Leo’s voice took on a hard edge. “I understand more than you think, which is why I’m willing to give you a chance to accept this, us.”
“We’re friends.”
He gave a sharp shake of his head, his eyes shifting even more catlike. “We’re more.”
“But—”
“Enough,” Leo barked, and he kissed her in a possessive manner as if to make sure she didn’t speak at all.
Betrys surrendered and held him close, kissing Leo back with the same urgency.
His hands started to wander, exploring the parts of her he could reach.
One breast. Her hip. He kissed her until raw need chased them both, and her lips were swollen and tender.
His mouth traveled across her cheek, then followed her neck, taking tiny bites that made her nerve endings salute with excitement.
Tendrils of desire crawled over her skin, slid through her veins to settle between her legs.
“Leo, please. I want you inside me, filling me.”
“You want me to fuck you?” he demanded.
Her eyes flew open, and their gazes met. No. No, that wasn’t what she wanted, and she saw he knew it too.
“Or do you want me to make love with you?” he whispered, his breath hot against her ear. His finger circled one of her nipples, the gentle friction driving her to distraction. She shuddered at his repeat of the action and the slow slide of his tongue. “You tell me what you want.”
“I want you. Make love to me. Please.”
“My pleasure, sweetheart.” He parted her legs with a decisive shove of his thigh between hers. She was wet and needy, the air cool on her hot flesh.
Somewhere overhead, a bird called and the solar sun shone down. His masculine scent filled each of her breaths while frissons of excitement danced across every inch of her skin.
When he guided his cock into her warmth, she swallowed and arched her hips to take him deeper. Her mouth was dry, her heart thudding, her quim on fire for his possession.
“Leo, yes,” she cried.
He forged into her flesh, stretching and filling her slick channel. “Fuck, you feel good. So perfect.” He pulled back and drove in again, and they gave a unified groan.
He feasted on her mouth, then lifted his head to reposition his attentions. He scraped his teeth over the fleshy part where her shoulder and neck met and on his next hard thrust, he bit down.
The unexpected pain brought a spike of pleasure, a surge of wetness, and a rough growl vibrated in his chest. His cock seemed to swell inside her as his tongue licked across the sensitive flesh of her upper shoulder.
She moaned, arched upward to take his hard strokes, the sweet rub of his flesh against her clit.
She soared, feeling as if she were flying out of her skin.
Leo kissed the spot again, and everything pulled tight inside her, detonating with a suddenness that yanked a scream from deep in her chest. It was hard to breathe, hard to contain the sensations coursing through her, hard to believe she was naked with Leo.
His tongue worked back and forth over the spot where he’d bitten her, and that seemed to prolong the spasms of pleasure. He bit her again, the wet rasp of his tongue sliding across her flesh and chasing away the prick of pain.
He shoved into her, and she clung, letting him take what he needed.
Then he lifted his head and cried out with a harsh groan of enjoyment.
She caught his next moan with her mouth and held him as his orgasm thundered through him.
His large form shuddered as he dragged out every last sensation then stilled.
“Aw, sweetheart.” His mouth curved into a seductive smile, and his fingers smoothed across the spot where he’d bitten her.
She shivered, and her quim gave a sharp pulse around his cock. “Do that again.”
His fingers stroked back and forth, a hint of smugness sliding into his expression. “Feel good?”
“Yes.”
Leo pressed his forehead against hers, his lips curving upward at the corners. “I think it was fuckin’ great.” He speared his fingers into her wet tendrils of hair. “I like this loose. Why do you never wear it this way?”
“It gets in the way…” She sighed. “No, that’s not the truth.
I’ve noticed how Iseult yanks on hair, and I saw her grab one of the servants by his hair tentacles one day.
She yanked two of the tentacles off, and he almost died because I had difficulty halting the loss of life force.
” Horror filled her at the memory of the streams of purple life force spurting between her fingers and pooling on the floor.
“He ran off after that, and luckily for him, Iseult’s men didn’t find him. ”
“That’s why I shaved off my hair.”
Betrys pulled back, then reached for his hands and squeezed them in sympathy. “I’m sorry. So sorry that I dragged you into Iseult’s world.”
“It’s in the past now. Besides, if I’d walked away from the contract offer, we wouldn’t be here now.”
She didn’t have the same facility to forgive and found it difficult to believe Leo and his family could find the generosity to let her error of judgment go. “When do you think we’ll hear from your brothers?”
“Later tonight. Don’t worry. Sly and Joe will come through. Saber wouldn’t have sent them if he didn’t think they could do the job. Are you hungry? I am.”
“I can’t help but worry,” Betrys said.
“Don’t.” Leo rubbed his finger across the spot where he’d bitten her.
It should have hurt, considering his sharp teeth, but each time he touched her there, a spike of sexual heat landing with a sizzling pulsation in her quim. “What are you doing to me?”
“Touching you.” Leo’s lazy satisfaction came through clearly as his gaze drifted across her face to land on the spot he stroked.
The needy heat coalesced low, but this time her stomach rumbled, and he laughed at her heated cheeks.
“But I’d better feed you because you’ll need your strength.”
A sense of breathlessness grabbed her, slapped heat to her cheeks while she stared, unable to summon words to reply.
“That’s a promise,” he said in his husky voice, and he didn’t need to touch her to send messages of lust bolting from head to toe. His heated gaze did that on its own.
The scent puzzled Iseult for the entire day. She ate the food Betrys had ordered for her and dined heartily—better than she’d eaten for eons. Her limbs shook less and although her busy mind hadn’t let her sleep for long, she felt stronger and eager to seek out her next essence donor.
That thought sent her mind back to her timid assistant. She hadn’t behaved as normal. She’s more…confident and assured, Iseult thought with a frown. Since their last meeting, her assistant had found a backbone.
“Hard to imagine a man wanting to fuck her,” Iseult thought aloud. “But at a resort such as this, a man would offer himself… Or maybe she used one of the fantasy rooms and became aroused. Yes, yes. That could have happened, yet her scent is overlaid with another.”
The scent, the memory of it continued to niggle at her.
Iseult poked through her mind and froze when the answer came to her.
Betrys smelled of Pretty.
No. No, that couldn’t be right. Pretty had succumbed to her demands and died after she’d sucked him dry of essence.
Iseult sniffed the air and caught faint tendrils of the scent. She halted to puzzle over the information while she drew the fragrance deep into her lungs.
Betrys and Pretty?
No, impossible.
But Pretty did have brothers who lived here, and her assistant was having sex with one of them or coming in close contact, near enough for their body scents to mingle, when she should be working to contract their services for her.
Iseult started to pace, angry stomps as her feet struck the tiles.
The tap-tap-tap, tap-tap-tap of her rapid steps matched the rapid pounding of her heart.
No. No. Betrys hadn’t received that scent from a fantasy room, nor had she received it while brushing past one of Pretty’s kin. No, this scent was deep within her, had seeped into her pores. Plain Betrys was fucking the man meant for her.
She would stop this.
She would halt this now, and Betrys would pay for her double-crossing, deceit. The effrontery. The audacity of the woman.
Oh yes. Betrys Torin would rue her mistake in trying to cheat Iseult Orna.