Chapter 19
CHAPTER
NINETEEN
He watched in fascination as her cheeks turned a darker color. The urge to run his lips over them, to feel the heat of her blood as it settled beneath her silky skin, was a tearing thing in him.
“You’re beautiful,” he whispered.
Cecilia looked down. The long, curly wisps of her lashes hid her eyes from him as she skimmed her fingers down his arms to find his hands. Holding them between their bodies, she examined his gloves. “Do you have to wear these all the time?”
He peered at their hands. His looked monstrously large compared to hers, and tipped in the metal claw-caps, they couldn’t have been more different. Sloane’s jaw tightened.
He didn’t want to be different from her. He didn’t want to hold himself separate.
The helmet was a necessity, but the gloves… If the sovereign himself could defy convention and be rid of them, so could Sloane.
“I don’t,” he answered, offering her his hands in a pose very close to supplication. “You can take them off if that’s your preference.”
Cecilia traced the contour of one of his palms. Her fingertips trailed over the smooth, well-worn leather until she found the thick bar of his wrist. Slipping them under the edge of the glove, she silently began to strip it from his hand.
Pale purple flesh, callused from decades of hard training, was revealed by her careful work. Trails of fire were left in the wake of her touch, making the beds of his claws pulse and burn with the need to retract.
With his helmet on, his body hadn’t been exposed to enough of her pheromones to completely start the biological cascade that would trigger things like that, but he felt it there, hovering just on the edge.
When she got to the ends of his fingers, the metal claw-caps slipped off his natural claws with a soft shwick. His right hand was left completely bare as she discarded the glove onto the garage floor.
“You have beautiful hands,” she noted, cupping it in both of hers. Cecilia turned it over to look at his scarred knuckles and tips of his claws. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen an elf’s hands up close.”
“Gloves are traditional,” he explained, shoulders rounding as he unconsciously pressed closer to her.
“Why?”
Sloane watched his own fingers closely. The more she touched him, the more his nail beds burned, and as she pressed the pad of her thumb into the claw of his index finger, he caught the tiniest retraction.
So dangerous. So, so wanted.
“Because they hide our weakness,” he murmured. “When we meet our mates, our claws retract. Gloves hide it.”
“Oh.” A shadow passed over her expression before a bright smile erased it.
“Well, that’s a fun fact most people probably don’t know.
And I guess it’s a good thing that didn’t happen with me, right?
You should probably end up with an elf. I mean, who’s ever heard of an arrant and an elf, anyway? That’s crazy.”
Something in him — pride, perhaps, or something more pitiful, like the childish need to be loved — roared with outrage at the thought.
“No,” he hissed, bringing his visor very close to her face. “I will not end up with an elf. I’m your mate.”
Cecilia’s lips parted with an astonished breath. “But you just said—”
“You ask me why I won’t take my helmet off.
That’s why. The air filter is protecting you.
If I take it off or if it breaks again, I’ll react to your pheromones and my claws will retract and I won’t be able to give you a choice.
” His bare hand lifted to set his trembling fingers on the base of her throat, the most precious and private of places to an elf.
In a raw voice she couldn’t hear through the modulator, he confessed, “I want to be your choice. That’s why I need you to teach me how to do this. ”
“Wait— Hold on.” Cecilia sat back until her spine hit the dash. Fearlessly holding his helmet between her hands, she demanded, “Are you telling me I’m your mate? Like how orcs mate with the kohl and nests and whatall? Like… like—”
“We call them consorts,” he told her.
For once, he managed to shock her into complete silence.
Cecilia stared at him, gobsmacked, until she let out a concerning bubble of laughter. It only lasted a moment before she started nodding her head. Eyes wide and hands still gripping the sides of his helmet, she breathed, “Oh. Oh, okay. Yeah. No. That makes a lot of this make more sense.”
Tilting her head back, she unknowingly exposed the long line of her throat as she took several deep breaths. The urge to bite her, to pin her down with infinite care, made him clench his upper and lower fangs so hard they squeaked against each other, inadvertently sharpening themselves.
“Wow. Wow. Okay. Wow.” Cecilia laughed again, but this time it was a little less concerning. “So when you said you’d never hurt me, you meant that you’re, like, biologically incapable of it.”
“Yes,” he answered, a mite defensive, “but even if I wasn’t, I would have no reason to hurt you.”
“Sorry, yeah, I get that. I’m just kinda… thinking aloud here. You know, processing the bomb you just dropped while also trying not to be quite as turned on as I am. Give a girl a second.” She shook her head. “Man, it’s been a weird few days. I can’t seem to catch up.”
Taking her rambling complaint as an order to be silent, Sloane occupied himself with counting the beats of her heart beneath his palm. He suspected it was a bit faster than normal, which was somewhat gratifying, but he couldn’t know for certain until he had a vitals baseline for her.
Another task to add to the list.
“I have a mate. My stalker is my mate,” she muttered, dropping her hands to his shoulders. Her blunt nails dug into the armored padding there, making it creak. “Or… I guess I could have a mate? If you took the helmet off?”
Sloane nodded.
Cecilia startled almost like she was finally understanding the situation. Her eyes widened in slow motion. “So you’ve just… decided that you’re going to live with that thing on until I decide I want to keep you?”
He dared to brush his thumb over the tiny bit of her clavicle that was exposed by her shirt. It was as delicate as the bones of a bird’s wing beneath his fingertip. “Yes.”
She leaned closer again, until she was hardly an inch from his visor. “What if I don’t?”
The muscles of his throat and jaw worked hard as he fought his instinctive response. “Then I’ll keep it on so I can do my job.”
Looking like she already knew the answer, she asked, “What’s that?”
“Protecting you.”
“You’d just… deny yourself a mate? Forever?” Cecilia’s incredulous expression didn’t sit right with him.
He knew what it was like to be denied free will. Sloane couldn’t claim to possess an abundance of moral fiber, but he would never do that to her.
“I would do what’s necessary,” he replied.
Cecilia touched the curve of his cheek, or what would’ve been his cheek if the visor wasn’t in the way. In a voice full of wonder, she murmured, “Just when I think I’m starting to get a lock on you, you throw me for a loop.”
Sloane didn’t know what to say to that, so he simply closed his eyes and bowed his head, seeking out the touch he couldn’t feel.
He sucked in a sharp breath as he felt her begin to strip his left hand of its glove. “I don’t know whether I’m ready for a mate this second,” she told him, “but I’ve always had a weakness for dangerous men. Maybe there’s a reason for that.”
He didn’t dare open his eyes when he felt her settle his bare hands on the curve of her waist. A part of him worried that if he looked at her, the moment would evaporate, too good to exist both in his mind and reality at once.
And when she began drawing his hands up, guiding him to trace her shape in a slow stroke, he shuddered with a mix of lust and disbelief.
“Normally I’d end a good date with a kiss, but since the helmet is in the way…
” Cecilia drew her legs up and around his waist, abandoning all pretense of sitting on the motorcycle.
Sloane grunted as the shock of the position ricocheted through him.
His hands tightened around her waist, drawing her into his body with an instinctive jerk.
She gasped, hands flying to his chest as she rocked forward. Her lashes fluttered. “Easy,” she breathed, arching her back a little. “Just explore. Get comfortable with touching me. Find what you like.”
Sloane turned his visor into the sweet curve of her neck.
It was deeply unnatural to not be able to smell the sweetness of her skin or gently scrape his fangs against her pulse.
Even someone as inexperienced as him knew that.
But it was still gratifying when she didn’t push him away from a place as vulnerable as her throat.
Cecilia tilted her head to the side, her hair falling in a dark wave over her shoulder, and cupped the back of his helmet. Instinct drew his right hand up to stroke the other side of her neck with greedy, ungloved fingers.
“I like everything about you,” he breathed. “You’re perfect.”
Her fingers fluttered over the clasp at the neck of his armor. “Can I touch you, too? Or would that be too much?”
There was no stopping the rattling purr that erupted in his chest. Sloane nodded into her throat, incapable of speech.
“Just tell me if you need me to stop,” she commanded him, flicking the clasp open. Cool air kissed the overheated skin of his throat.
Already on the brink of losing his mind, Sloane hissed, “I want to touch your skin.”
He felt her breath hitch more than he heard it. “Then touch it.”
He really, truly didn’t mean to destroy her shirt. It just seemed like the most efficient method to get what he wanted.
Cecilia let out a squeak of surprise as his claws turned her clothing to ribbons. She didn’t complain, though. Instead, she braced her elbows on the handlebars and thrust her chest toward him, one eyebrow cocked.
Sloane thought he knew what it was to be set aflame, considering it’d actually happened to him more than once. He was wrong.
Nothing compared to the sight of his consort lounging on his motorcycle, her legs wrapped around his waist and her breasts barely covered in a nearly transparent bra. Dark nipples hardened beneath the gossamer material, tightening with desire and beckoning him to touch.
He could barely comprehend the sight, let alone the smooth expanse of her stomach and the flush that suffused the skin of her chest.
It was a good thing he’d turned off all alerts in his helmet.
If he hadn’t, he was fairly certain every single medical warning would’ve filled his ears as he brought his trembling hands to cup the delicate architecture of her ribs.
Sloane glided his palms up over the soft mounds of her breasts, his breaths shortening as he circled his thumbs over those silky nipples.
Cecilia’s chest moved beneath his hands with every inhalation, but she was otherwise perfectly still as he explored her first through the thin material of her bra.
When he couldn’t stand even that barrier, he dragged the cups down, exposing her completely.
He was so focused on stroking and gently rolling them between his fingers that it took him a moment to realize she was trembling.
Freezing, he glanced at her expression and expected to see revulsion or fear.
Instead, he found a desire that mirrored his own. It darkened her cheeks and forced her to suck her lower lip between her teeth, holding back a faint whimper whenever he scraped his thumb claws over her sensitive flesh.
“You like this,” he marveled, pressing himself closer. “You like when I touch you.”
Cecilia huffed. “That obvious, huh?”
“No,” he answered, abandoning one breast to sneak his hand around her back.
Pressing his palm against her tailbone, he rocked her forward again, recreating that singular, electric feeling of their hips meeting.
Seeing the look of surprise and pleasure flicker across her flushed face was more thrilling than anything he’d ever experienced — even killing.
“Well, you’re doing a good job,” she assured him, voice thick.
“Tell me what to do next.”
Cecilia’s throat moved with a hard swallow. “I should probably stop you here.”
Sloane’s fingers curled, holding onto her possessively at even the suggestion that she might want to move from this perfect position. “Why?”
“Because this was our first date and this is new to you. We should go slow.”
Head tilting, he pressed, “But do you want to go slow?”
Her tongue, small and pink and tempting, darted out to wet her lips. “No, I don’t.”
“What do you want, doe?”
Cecilia didn’t say anything. Instead, she slipped her hands between their bodies and popped the little white button at the top of her tweed shorts. Eyes dark and needy, she told him, “I want you to make me come.”