Its iridescent eyes a cool shade of ice, it pursed perfect lips that held a twist of cruelty and blew her a mocking kiss over his shoulder.
Her mouth opened on a scream.
But they were already sifting.
* * *
They sifted place for hours.
At first she was still in such a sensual daze that she could hardly even think, didn't even bother trying to speak. Her whole body was caught in a suspended, painful state of erotic awareness that was taking much too long to dissipate.
Well, at least one part of the Book of the Sin Siriche Du had been accurate, she brooded, the part about: so sates a lass that she is oft incapable of speech, wits muddled.
For not even fear for her life, it seemed, had much of a dampening effect on the storm of desire Adam had stirred in her.
Then again, she half-suspected she might be getting a little numb to fear; repeated exposure and all.
Still... the passion he'd awakened in her was like nothing she'd ever felt before. Nothing she'd ever thought possible to experience. Quite simply, being touched by Adam Black made her whole body feel gloriously, intensely, addictively alive.
It was just as she'd always feared: a few Fae kisses and a woman was lost.
And it wasn't as if she were a novice where kisses were concerned. She'd kissed a lot. In fact, she suspected she'd kissed a whole lot more than most women. Because she was a virgin and men were... well, men, her dates had put extraordinary effort into foreplay with her, each determined to be The One That Scored, like it was some kind of competition.
Hours of expert, seductive kissing, and she'd always seen her dates firmly to the door.
Yet after a few kisses from Adam, she'd not only been hovering absurdly close to orgasm, she'd been about to fall— literally— into bed, or rather on the floor, or any damn where he'd wanted her.
He was addictive. It had been bad enough looking at him and wondering what he would be like in bed, but now she had a clear idea, and she was never going to be able to look at him again without thinking about it. In great detail. Now that she'd gotten a taste of him, she was finally able to put into words what she'd sensed about him from the very beginning, what had been wreaking havoc with her senses since day one: Adam Black was more man than most men.
He was strong and sensual and certain of himself, an uninhibited hedonist, every last glorious gold-velvet inch of him. He adored sex, savored it, everything about it. He was controlling, yet in a way that fed a woman's fantasies. He would be, she now knew, a whole lot dominant in bed and a little bit dirty. He would take her every way she'd ever imagined and. she was quite certain, a few-ways she probably hadn't.
He would be inventive and inexhaustible and utterly devoted to pleasure.
There was now no doubt in her mind that he could do as he'd said: leave her so limp, so dazedly and thoroughly sated that she'd not even be able to summon up the strength to feed herself, to lift her head from the pillow, or the floor, or wherever else he chose to leave her when he was done with her.
A woman could hurt herself on Adam Black in bed.
And out of it, O'Callaghan, that faint inner voice warned.
Oh, yes, she didn't bother arguing, And out of it. And that was something she needed to devote careful thought to, and not while he was touching her either. And she would, just as soon as things settled down a bit.
Not that she was making excuses for herself, but as crazy as her life had gotten, she was pretty much being forced to constantly react, not getting a chance to think things through and act.
She didn't need to dredge up one of Gram's many pertinent adages to understand what a dangerous way that was to live.
But, heavens, she thought, with droll exasperation, it would certainly help her think more clearly if she could just figure out what her odds of survival were. When one didn't know how much longer one might live, discipline and self-denial had a funny way of flying right out the window alongside calorie-counting.
It was quite some time before her body calmed from its wild fever-pitch arousal enough that she was able to relax in his arms while they sifted. Even then, she did it very carefully. Avoiding contact with that part of him that was still rock-hard and would only make her feel so miserably turned on again. She noticed that he, too, was trying to avoid contact for a change, and when she inadvertently brushed against him at one point, he made a harsh sound and snarled. "Don't touch that. It hurts. Christ, I'm not made of stone."
"Sorry," she said instantly, though inwardly an utterly feminine part of her beamed, delighted to know she wasn't the only one having such a hard time recovering. That she wasn't the only one their intimacy had affected so intensely. (And he certainly felt like he was made of stone, at least there anyway.)
She was shocked, sometime later, to find they were back in the hotel room, where Adam grimly snatched up their luggage. She opened her mouth to ask what in the world was so important that he'd risked returning for it— really, clothes and toiletries were eminently replaceable— but he'd sifted place again and she'd learned her lesson about keeping her mouth shut while doing so. (Fortunately they encountered no lakes on their itinerary this time; she was grateful they weren't near the coast, materializing in shark-infested waters would have been way worse than being dunked with tadpoles.)