Chapter 16 #2
I didn’t mention the séance on Sunday. They had security, too, but it was a corporate party downtown on the top floor of one of the high rises.
Much less capacity for security in a way that would have made Raj happy.
And there was a protest planned for the plaza right outside the building.
Ward and Mason had been talking about it today. I hadn’t mentioned that to Raj, either.
It didn’t feel good, keeping it from him, but I also didn’t want to argue about my job again. I was tired of fighting with him.
So, instead, I leaned against his broad back as he washed the dishes, feeling the movement of muscle under his skin, just listening to his breath and heart.
“Are you going to stay there all night?” he asked, finally, and I realized that he’d finished the dishes and had even dried off his hands.
“Maybe,” I replied, feeling oddly vulnerable.
He let out a sigh, then turned away from the sink, forcing me to step back and let go. I looked up at him, my throat tight.
He ran both hands through my hair, the longish strands slipping through his fingers as he cupped the back of my head and tilted my face up so that he could bend and kiss me.
It was a gentle kiss, tender, soft, and slow.
I reached for him, letting my hands settle on his waist, surprisingly narrow for how big a man he was. I wanted more than gentle. More than soft and slow.
I chased his mouth with mine, trying to push myself up on my toes to turn the kiss into something more. Something deeper.
I needed something from him that wasn’t going to be careful and overprotective. Something that pushed the boundaries of what was safe.
But he pulled back. “Rayn…”
“I don’t want to talk,” I told him.
He looked startled. “I—” He swallowed, hesitating, but I was close enough to him that I could tell he understood perfectly well what I meant and that he was just as interested in not talking as I was.
I pulled myself closer, pressing our bodies together so there could be no question what I wanted. And no question that I knew what he wanted.
He made a small sound in the back of his throat, the muscles in his body tight and tense.
And then he made a decision, and his body uncoiled, hands dropping to my butt and heaving me upward.
I gasped, throwing my arms around his neck to hold on, spreading my legs to hook them around his hips.
He growled, one hand staying under my backside to hold me up, the other spreading wide across my lumbar spine, pulling me tight against his stomach and chest. I kissed him roughly, teeth scraping against his before I sucked his lower lip into my mouth.
He turned, setting me on the counter so that he could pull my mouth more tightly against his with one hand, claiming my mouth with his tongue, a low rumble in his chest vibrating against mine.
I felt more than heard myself whimper, clinging to his neck and pushing as much of my body against his as I could.
He tore his mouth from mine. “Fuck, Rayn,” he breathed.
“Yes,” I agreed. I wanted him to.
He didn’t reply to that, instead burying his face in the side of my neck, nuzzling and licking and, occasionally, sucking gently.
It felt good. Really good.
I needed more.
I slid my hands into his thick, dark hair, and pulled. His lifted his head, gasping a little, eyes wide, pupils blown so that there was barely a rim of gold around their dark centers.
I pulled his head to the side and leaned forward, kissing down his neck until I reached the top of his trapezius muscle.
And then I bit him.
That earned me a snarl, and I found myself heaved off the counter and carried through the main room and into the bedroom before being half-dropped on the mattress on the floor, Raj’s big body cradling mine, although my back hit the mattress hard enough that the air rushed out of my lungs.
I was so hard it almost hurt.
He pushed himself up, his brow furrowed a little. I knew that expression. It meant he was about to ask if he’d hurt me, if I was okay, if I was sure.
Fuck that.
I grabbed his head and pulled him down, biting his lip—not hard enough to break the skin, but definitely hard enough that it was clear I was biting him, not nipping or nibbling.
He growled again, then stripped off my shirt and pants in a few quick, sharp movements. I felt the edge of his nails against my skin as he stripped off my pants, and they were a lot sharper than they usually were.
This didn’t bother me even a little, and by the time he got them off my legs, there was a wet spot in the middle of my grey cotton shorts.
I saw the moment he noticed, his nostrils flaring as the skin across his cheeks and chest darkened with a rush of blood.
If his skin had been as pale as mine, it would have been flushed pink.
I heard the sound of fabric tearing as he pulled off my shorts—his claws, or nail-claws, since they weren’t fully at tiger-length or sharpness, puncturing and tearing the fabric as he tugged.
And then I let out a yelping gasp as he buried his face between my legs, his tongue laving along my aching cock as his hands spread my thighs wider.
I’d wanted him to fuck me—literally. But, God, what he could do with his tongue.
I couldn’t focus on exactly what he was doing to me—lips and tongue, the pull of his mouth, the tip of his tongue pressing against the slit, the occasional light-but-not-too-light scrape of teeth—but I writhed under him, making sounds that I don’t think I’d ever made before in my life.
And then his big hands pushed my legs up, lifting my hips just a little, and he drew my balls into his mouth, a soft rumbling hum sending electricity through me. He let them slide out, and the chill of the air after the heat of his mouth sent shivers through me.
And then he grabbed a pillow, pressing my legs to lift my hips. I was panting, my chest heaving, sweat shining on my skin.
I expected his fingers.
Instead, he slid lower and licked his way to my hole, his tongue drawing shudders from me until—
“Fuck!” I gasped out, earning a rumbling growl in return that made every muscle in my body tense as the sound rippled through me from his tongue thrust into my body. Raj’s fingers tightened on my thighs, pushing and gripping at the same time, and I felt the slight bite of his claws against my skin.
My hips bucked, one hand fisted in the sheets, the other in Raj’s hair as he plundered my body with his tongue.
“I—I can’t—” I gasped out.
He lifted his head just far enough to swallow my cock into the back of his throat, one finger, its passage lubricated by his saliva, plunging into my body, the roughness of the motion causing me to cry out as my orgasm ripped through me, my head falling back as I came.
I kept shuddering as he licked his way up my stomach and chest, burying his face in the side of my neck and breathing in. I slid my hand out of his hair and down his back, around his side, finding and gripping his cock, hot and hard in my palm.
He let out a soft moan, then pushed his hips up just enough to give me room to stroke him, one of his hands tangling in my hair against the top of my skull, his hips thrusting forward a little as I slid my hand along his length.
“Rayn,” he breathed into my skin. “God, mera ravi…” The next sound he made was strangled, his hips bucking as hot liquid coated my hand, his cock pulsing between my fingers.
We stayed that way, our foreheads pressed together, for longer than I would have been able to hold myself on my elbows, although Raj was a lot stronger than me. Then he rolled to the side, falling onto his back, his chest still rising and falling faster than normal, eyes closed.
I pushed myself up a little, grimacing at the mess we’d made on my stomach, then felt my eyes go wide.
There were visible raised welts on the insides of my thighs—claw marks from where he’d spread my legs. They weren’t particularly deep, just raised ridges of puffy skin, here and there punctuated by a tiny dot of red where the skin had just broken.
If he saw them, Raj would freak out.
I pushed myself the rest of the way up and went into the bathroom to clean up and figure out how to keep him from noticing.
I didn’t mind. In fact, part of me rather liked the idea that I’d made him lose control of himself.
And, weirdly, although I didn’t want to think about why too much, I liked that he’d left some sort of more permanent mark on my skin than the flush of arousal.
But I knew he wouldn’t see any of it that way.
He would think he hurt me, and would become even more cautious and overprotective. He’d hesitate to touch me, and, when he did, he would be extremely tentative.
I didn’t want him to be tentative or cautious. I didn’t want him to hold back or feel like he couldn’t do or feel what he wanted to because I might end up with a few scratches.
He would argue that he couldn’t be trusted with me, that he shouldn’t touch me, maybe even that he shouldn’t be dating me—especially since he hadn’t wanted to date me to begin with because I wasn’t old enough, despite the fact that I’d been twenty-four, and was now twenty-five.
“Rayn?” he called.
“Yes?” I answered, still not sure what to say or do.
“Are you okay?”
“Yes,” I repeated, more emphatically. Apparently too emphatically, because he came to stand in the bathroom doorway, far more quickly than I could do anything to cover the scratches, or, honestly, even think of how I might do that.
So I was standing there naked, stupidly holding the washcloth I’d used to clean my stomach.
His eyes widened, the pupils narrowed in the light of the bathroom, the gold of his irises thick and particularly inhuman as he stared at my thighs.
“It’s fine,” I blurted. “I don’t mind. Really.”
His eyes tracked up to my face, his cheeks darkening. He reached out a hand, but pulled it back before he touched me.
Damn it.
“Don’t you dare not touch me,” I snapped, then blinked, a little shocked at the vehemence in my own voice.
He looked just as surprised, his mouth falling open.