Chapter 4 If You Could Read My Mind
If You Could Read My Mind
… I woke with my head on his thigh.
My neck was stiff. His thigh was too hard to be a good pillow. It would have been a fantastic thigh in any other context.
“It’s dawn,” he said softly.
“Oh, sorry! I meant to stay up with you.”
“There was no need, and you were tired after your unaccustomed danger.”
“You should sleep now, though. Didn’t you say you just arrived in the country yesterday? You must be jet-lagged. Take my bed.”
“You should sleep more as well. You had a long and tiring day, and you stayed up late.”
“We can, um, it’s a double bed. If you want to share.”
“Lead the way, my host.” He gestured toward the bedroom.
I led.
He had returned to my apartment earlier with a small bag slung over his shoulder, but since he didn’t bring it to the bedroom, I assumed it didn’t include pajamas.
“Do you want something to sleep in?”
“Not especially, but I will if you prefer me to.”
I blushed again. Dammit. I’d blushed more times today than in the past month. “I should mention that I’m gay.”
He chuckled. “I know.”
I dropped the tee shirt I’d been considering. “What! How?”
“I’ve known since I held you against the wall.”
Could my face get any hotter? “What was that, anyway? The wall… thing.” Him looking into my eyes.
“I can see if one has been influenced by the dew.”
Oh. Well, telepathy was less embarrassing than if I’d poked him with my hard-on. Maybe? Although if he was psychic, did that mean he’d heard me thinking about having sex with him?
“I can’t read your mind,” he said, smiling.
I exhaled in relief, then frowned. “Wait, if you can’t read minds, then how did you know what I was thinking?”
“It’s a natural concern. And also you don’t have much of a poker face.”
I expected my expression was proving him right.
“I only have a special perception of supernatural… corruption,” he explained. “But I wouldn’t have been offended if I had heard your thoughts earlier. And I’m not offended now.”
Shit. I was thinking about fucking him again. More directly than earlier. Before, it had been a vague attraction and curiosity. Now it was: I wonder if he’d be willing to push me onto the bed and pound me until I can’t think straight.
My face was burning. My cock was painfully hard. I couldn’t look away from him.
Contrary to my peers’ assumptions, I’d actually had a lot of sex.
In college. I’d been shy, but if other people approached me and flirted…
I was easy. I liked compliments, of which there’d been a dearth in my personal life up to that point, and I liked sex.
I hadn’t had much luck in my brief relationships, and the one guy I’d introduced as my boyfriend had dumped me two hours later, but the physical part I was good at.
But then I decided to go to grad school, and I didn’t want a reputation for being a slut—not that I thought there was anything wrong with promiscuity, but I’d heard the things people said—and anyway, there hadn’t been anyone here I was into.
So that had somehow turned into a five-year dry spell. Fuck, how had that happened?
I licked my lips.
“No pressure,” Siya said, slipping his leather jacket off and laying it over the antique blanket chest where I kept spare bedding, packed with spice sachets like a medieval lady. They smelled nice, okay?
“Pressure?” My groggy brain had lost track of the conversation.
Siya smiled, stepped forward, and kissed my forehead. Then stepped back and removed the rest of his clothes.
He didn’t make a production of it. He didn’t need to; I was already staring.
Since he hadn’t asked for privacy, I felt no compunction against ogling his muscled chest and shoulders. His abs were firm. A line of dark hair ran down his chest and ended at his navel.
Also, he had scars. Quite a few. The most vivid was a set of four claw marks across the bottom of his ribs. I could picture Durgan or something like him ripping into Siya, Siya bleeding and struggling.
“They’re ugly,” Siya apologized.
“No,” I said quickly, putting my hand to the scars. “I’m only thinking how much they must have hurt… how many times you’ve been hurt.”
“That’s unavoidable. And one of the reasons demon hunters tend to be single. No one wants to sit at home wondering if tonight is the night the one they love doesn’t come back.”
It sounded like a warning. But I barely knew the man, and he wasn’t staying, and he hadn’t moved away from my touch.
I let my hand slide lower, over his abs, a caress.
He watched me, eyes darkening.
When I reached his pubes, I tangled my fingers in the soft curls and tugged.
He made a rough sound in his throat, took my face in his hands, and kissed me. It was a fierce kiss, teeth scraping and tongue down my throat as he pulled me onto the bed.
Zero objections on my part.
Siya pulled my shirt over my head and trail-blazed kisses down my neck, hands hooking under my waistband and pushing my pants down, then cupping my ass and drawing me closer to grind against him.
I purred with pleasure. How had I gone so long without being touched?
“Lube?” Siya asked between rough mouthfuls of my neck.
Shit. “Drawer. I don’t have condoms, though.”
He lifted his head to regard me with smoky eyes. “I get lots of blood tests because of the biting and clawing.”
“Yeah, I… haven’t been with anyone since my last checkup.” No need to say how long ago that had been, right? Although he’d probably guessed from my lack of supplies.
I had been careless a couple times when I was nineteen and drunk. I’d never deliberately gone bare, though.
Maybe I was feeling reckless after my brush with danger. Maybe it was just that it had been long, and he was so, so hot.
His mouth met mine, and I absolutely wanted him to fuck me.
Not that I was in a hurry. He was a good kisser, and the thing he was doing with his fingers was…
I moaned into his mouth as he added a finger.
His other hand explored my body, thorough as a cartographer mapping a new land.
Pointy hip bone, tummy a little softer than I would have liked, but I didn’t feel self-conscious right now as he palmed it gently.
The ridges of my ribs, the warm curve of the small of my back, long line of spine, ticklish place under my arm, soft circle of my aureole—I cried out as he played with my nipple—the angle of my collarbone, the width of my shoulders, strengthened from digging.
By the time his hand came to rest on the back of my neck, I was panting and leaking and begging, “Please fuck me, Siya, please.”
“You are so beautiful,” he said thickly. “Ride me and let me look at you. Let me watch you come.”
I whimpered, more from his words than from the faint burn of his cock stretching me as I sank onto it. “Fuck. Stop being so hot or I’ll come right now.”
“Go ahead, I can get you off again in ten minutes.”
I moaned and pressed myself down to capture his mouth again, shuddering at how the movement shifted him inside me. I clutched at his arms, willing myself to last longer.
His hand settled on my hip, a hard grip that forced me to move in the rhythm he directed. I couldn’t tell my heartbeat from the rhythm of his cock pounding into me.
I wasn’t complaining, though. I couldn’t have even if I’d wanted to. He didn’t leave me the breath or the ability to think.
Luckily, I didn’t want to think. It was an incredible relief to let him fuck me mindless. To be filled and held and fucked until there was only sensation.
I was saying something, fuck or please or his name, I didn’t know; I couldn’t hear myself over the rush of my pulse and the fireworks exploding inside me and filling me a thousand points of light.