“I want to put my mouth on you. Everywhere,” she continued as Emin developed an ulcer in front of her, trying to snake one of her arms through a sleeve. “I want you to put your mouth on me. Everywhere. I want you to make me warm. And bite me.”
He needed a second. Pacing away from her, he ripped a hand through his hair. Something inside him was dangerously close to fluttering away and he was pretty sure it was his self-control. Too bad his self-worth was lashed to it.
He took a deep breath.
“I’ve seen your man parts,” she said.
Emin’s deep breath wheezed out of him like a water balloon that had been pricked with a pin. “What?”
“Before we met, in my tiger form. Some nights I would follow you home and watch you shift. I’d see you naked. I liked it.”
“Christos,” Emin muttered, his stomach clenching. He jammed her other hand through the t-shirt and finally she was covered. It did nothing to relieve the tumbling in his stomach. The tightening of his cock. He was covered in her scent. Her hair rained over her. The silver light of the moon painted her blue.
“I want to touch you there,” Glory said, her eyes wide and guileless. “I’m not sure why, but I want to taste you there.”
Well. That did it.
“No! Glory, stop this.”
“Why won’t you touch me? Kiss me?” she asked him, padding after him as he paced to the kitchen.
“You are not mine to touch,” he growled, striding past her. He needed a door between them. The bathroom. He slammed inside and turned the latch. He could see the shadow of her two feet at the door as he splashed cold water on the back of his neck.
“Of course I’m yours. Who else’s would I be?”
“Anton’s,” he answered, his brother’s name like a knife over his tongue.
Glory gave a delighted, twinkling laugh that made Emin want to tear the door from its hinges. “What? No way. Anton is a very sweet man. And so sad. But I don’t want to smell his hair or run my tongue on the line of hair below his belly button like I want with you.”
Emin laid his forehead on the wood of the door.
“And he doesn’t want those things with me. That’s why he’s so sad.”
“What?” Emin finally pulled open the door and she wobbled a little. He steadied her. “What do you mean? He is sad because of his past, no?”
Glory bit her lip. “I can’t explain without telling a secret. But Anton is sad because of what happened with Navuka. But he is sadder because he can’t have something that he really wants. And it’s not me.”
Emin narrowed his eyes. Could that be true? Could he really be so blind where his brother was concerned?
“Touch me, Emin,” Glory said, blinking up at him, one hand gently tugging at the collar of the t-shirt she wore. “Please touch me.”
A snake curled in Emin’s belly. Ready to strike. He didn’t know how much longer he could hold it off.
Maybe she could see the resolve thinning in his eyes because she stepped closer to him. “Please. When you don’t touch me, it hurts. In here.” She placed her palm on her lower belly first, and then between her breasts, over her heart.
A few things clicked into place for him at once. She didn’t want Anton. She wanted him. And she wasn’t a child. She was a 27-year-old woman, wearing his shirt and begging him to touch her. He rearranged the pieces and they started to look suspiciously like hope. Like a light at the end of his sexual frustration tunnel.
“No,” he said, taking her by the shoulders and leading her toward the bed. “I will not touch you or kiss you tonight.”
She made a little sound of distress that arrowed right through his chest. He sat her on the bed.
“Because for your first kiss, you will not be drunk.” He crouched in front of her, reaching up to play with a strand of her hair. He’d never let himself do that before. It nearly undid everything he was working to hold together. “You will not be drunk when I first touch you. You will remember every second. My touch, my kiss, will burn into your memory. When you are old woman someday, it will be the last thing you think of before you leave this world.”
Glory gasped, her breath coming out in pants. “When will you touch me?”
“Tomorrow,” he said, laying her down on the pillow and covering her over with the blanket.
She didn’t protest, maybe not wanting to push her luck. Emin padded back over to his nest of blankets and slammed his eyes shut. He thought he’d never be able to sleep. But as her breaths became even, so did his.
CHAPTER NINE
Glory sprang from her bed the first second that the light hit her eyelids. It was kissing day! But her heart fell when she saw that Emin’s blankets were empty. He wasn’t there.