2. Clouded with Wine #3
“Good.” Thais reached back, her hand settling possessively on the mystery woman’s waist, and drew her flush against her side.
She released a subtle pulse of her power, a wave of warmth and suggestion that washed over me.
“Because my friend here is a bit tightly wound. I was just helping her loosen up.” Her gaze darted from me to her, then back again, glittering with a mischief that was pure Aphrodite. “Maybe you’d be willing to take over?”
The mystery woman didn’t pull away. She rested in Thais’s hold, her chin tilted up. “Maybe he can’t handle it.”
A familiar, predatory thrill shot through me. “I’d be honored to try.”
Thais didn’t wait for a reply. With a smooth, practiced motion, she unwound the woman from her side and guided her directly into my arms.
My hands found her waist as she came into my arms. A clean, grounding shock went through me, slicing through the last of the haze in my head. The woman’s body was a contradiction against my palms. Slender, yes, but beneath the silk of her dress, I felt a core of unyielding strength.
“Have fun, you two.” Thais gave a theatrical wink and melted back into the press of bodies. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”
The slow, pulsing beat of the music vibrated up from the deck.
The rhythm thrummed through the soles of my shoes, through her body, into mine.
But the woman in my arms drowned out everything else.
Her head was tilted back, her eyes dark and clouded with wine and pheromones.
Deep within that haze, a flicker of clarity remained.
The same sharp intelligence I’d seen on the deck was still there, watching me.
“Did you want to finish our conversation from the deck?” My lips brushed against the shell of her ear as I spoke. “Or maybe something else?”
A tremor went through her. Her hands clamped down on my shoulders, her knuckles digging into the fabric of my suit jacket. She arched against me, sending a fresh jolt of need straight to my gut.
“I’m not sure you’re up to that something.” Her breath ghosted against my neck, hot and immediate. “Or are you, Stormwright?”
Control. The first lesson my father ever beat into me, the bedrock of my House. Command the storm, and never be swept away by it. But her scent, her challenge, the potent magic in the air—it was a tide I had no desire to fight. The foundations of my world felt like they were turning to sand.
“This is a bad idea.” The protest was a last, useless gasp from the strategic part of my brain.
“Then let’s be bad.” She tilted her head back farther, her lips parting, her eyes locking onto mine. And the last thread of my control snapped.
We stumbled off the dance floor, a single entity propelled by a reckless, mutual urgency.
Someone shouted my name, but the sound was a ripple from a world I’d already left behind.
My entire universe had contracted to the press of her body against mine, the scent of her skin, the raw promise in her eyes.
“Somewhere quiet,” I rasped, the demand torn from my throat by a need so intense it surprised me.
She laughed, the sound a bright, reckless burst against my chest. “Find one.”
I did. An unlocked guest room door stood ajar, a dark, silent promise of privacy.
I shouldered it open and pulled her inside, kicking it shut behind us.
The click of the lock echoed in the sudden stillness.
I pressed her back against the cool wood of the door, my hands framing her face, my thumbs tracing the defined line of her jaw.
“Tell me your name,” I demanded, the need to know, to own this moment, clawing at me.
Her hands tangled in my hair, her nails scraping lightly against my scalp as she pulled my head down.
“Make me.”
I crushed my mouth to hers, not to taste, but to conquer.
She met the assault with a desperate energy of her own, her lips parting to let me in.
A raw, possessive instinct roared to life inside me, a primal command to claim.
My hands roamed her body, learning the lines of her through the silk of her dress.
I hooked my arms under her ass and lifted her, driving her back against the door in a single fluid motion. The impact knocked a choked gasp from her lungs. She wrapped her legs around my waist, pulling me impossibly closer.
She clawed at the buttons of my jacket, her nails digging through the thin fabric of my shirt. “More.” The plea ghosted over my temple. “Alexander, more.”
The civilized part of my brain went silent.
A singular, primal thought took root, eclipsing everything else.
Mine. The bonding gland I could feel pulsing under the delicate skin of her throat was a beacon in the dark.
A sharp ache shot through my gums, a painful, physical need to mark her, to make the claim absolute.
I moved us deeper into the unfamiliar room by instinct alone.
My shins collided with a solid bedframe, and I let us fall.
We landed on the cool silk of the duvet, a tangle of limbs and frantic energy.
She ended up beneath me, her eyes wild in the sliver of moonlight cutting through the window.
Her scent was the only air in the room, the promise of everything I had never known I needed.
She didn’t speak. Her hands slid up my chest, over my shoulders, and her fingers locked behind my neck, yanking me down. It was a surrender, and I met it without a fight.