Chapter 1 #2
She laughed, and I kissed her before it could fade. I'd been wanting to hear her laugh that way since the day I first saw her. We fell onto the bed in a tangle of arms and legs, and that was exactly where any resemblance to my usual evenings ended.
I'd been with women who were beautiful and women who were willing, and those who ticked every box on whatever list I'd been running at the time. I knew my way around a woman's body. How to make her moan with longing, how to make her come so hard she cried.
But it had never felt like this.
This was six months of wanting compressed into every point of contact, her hands pulling at my shirt, mine easing the jumpsuit from her shoulders, both of us moving fast and then slowing down because fast wouldn't cover it.
I got her out of it completely and stopped to look at her luscious curves. She made an impatient sound, with me quick to act on her unspoken plea.
After unclipping the front of her lacy white bra, I peeled it to the sides, her breasts mine to devour. Still not content, I slipped my thumbs into the sides of her barely there panties, with her soon kicking out of them.
Her gorgeous body, spread out before me and bathed in pink light, left me stumbling to my feet. Not in all my years of dating had I ever stripped as fast as I did then, all fingers and thumbs and my clothes sent flying.
"Hurry," she urged.
“I am," I gritted out before ditching my boxers and pitching forward to join her.
"Daemon."
"Give me a second." I pressed my mouth to her throat, her collarbone, the curve of her breast, taking my time with each while she made small, urgent sounds and her fingers tightened in my hair.
I kept going, tracing my mouth down her stomach, feeling her muscles tighten under my lips, until I settled between her thighs. I'd waited six months for exactly this, and I was going to savor it.
She stopped being composed approximately thirty seconds later.
Her free hand found the headboard, and she said things that would have given Lindsey Hunter enough material for at least two chapters. I filed it all away because I intended to use it later.
When she came, she said my name, her voice raw and throaty, her thighs clamped around my head, her back arched clean off the bed. I stayed with her through every second because I wasn't done yet.
I worked my way back up her body while she was still catching her breath. She reached for me before I got there, her hands demanding. I let her pull me up.
"Daemon," she whispered. "Now."
I leaned away long enough to grab a condom from the nightstand and roll it on, her eyes tracking every move like I might change my mind.
Not a chance.
I pressed into her slowly, taking my sweet time and savoring every inch, despite every instinct firing in the opposite direction.
I wanted to feel the exact moment she took me in, all of me. I wanted to watch her face when I got there. Her eyes met mine and held, and something broke loose.
Something I hadn't been expecting.
That I hadn't been ready for.
I moved, and she rose to meet me, her rhythm matching mine with an ease that felt like we'd been doing this forever. Her nails dragged down my back. Her legs wrapped around me, pulling me deeper, and I went, burying myself to the hilt while she gasped into my neck.
We found our pace, and it wasn't slow for long. Six months of want had nowhere to go but forward, and she was right there with me, her whole body telling me exactly what she needed.
And I gave it to her. Every bit.
The urgency built and tightened, and I let her pull it out of me, both of us chasing the same thing until she clenched around me and cried out.
I followed her over, her name filling my mouth as I drove as deep as I could, giving her all of me.
Every broken cell, every regret, every missed opportunity.
I melted against her and mumbled her name into the side of her neck, and the act itself told me I'd been wound tight for longer than I'd realized.
Afterward, she lay with her head on my chest while her breathing slowed, one arm across my ribs like she wasn't entirely sure I was real. That what we'd experienced hadn’t been a dream. I was stunned myself.
I stared absently at the needlepoint above the headboard, at the ceramic cats watching from the shelves, and knew it was only a matter of time before the postcoital glow dimmed enough for Nadia to take in her surroundings.
"Daemon," she said, in a tone that told me the time had arrived.
"Yeah?"
"What is with that lamp?"
I closed my eyes. "Sofia painted the shade herself."
"Your landlady?"
"Yeah. She's eighty-six," I said defensively. "I'd get rid of it, but she asks about it now and then."
Nadia processed this. "And the cats?"
"They're hers, too. I moved in and they were already—"
Nadia laughed, and I pulled her closer while Sofia's radio murmured overhead, a constant since she rarely slept more than a couple of hours a night.
Nadia rolled onto her side and looked at me, a bright smile still in place. "You spent six months trying to get me here, and you never thought to mention the decor."
"I was hoping you wouldn't notice."
"There are twelve cats, Daemon."
"Fourteen, actually," I said, and kissed her shoulder. "Sofia added two more in the fall."
She laughed again. Really laughed, the kind that shook her whole body and pressed her closer against my side. We lay there in the pink lamplight with a clowder of ceramic cats, and I felt something settle that had been restless for a long time.
I was in a lot of trouble.
The very best kind.