Holidays are Hell(110)

Zoe looked up when she felt Warren's weight drop down beside her. "Whatever he took from you, Zoe, you gave willingly. You had to have seen and felt it happening."

"So did you," she said sharply, wiping at her eyes.

"And what was I supposed to do?" he shifted, putting distance between them without really moving. "I couldn't contact you, and even if I did I couldn't order your withdrawal, nullifying all the years you'd put in up to that point. Do you realize you've spent more accumulated years outside of the sanctuary than in it? You grew up there, but it's not your home. Your home is your will and desire, and what you want. It's all that matters. It's all that ever mattered."

She turned toward him, and after a long moment, lifted her tear-streaked face to his. "You mattered."

It wasn't what he'd expected, and he jerked back before he could stop himself. She stayed him with a hand on his arm, and when he didn't shake it off—just swallowed hard as he saw her intent—she shifted closer. Ran her hand up his shoulder to curl around his neck. Used the same smooth, liquid motion she had before she was reduced to mortality to pinion around, above, and upon him; the weak cradling the strong as a tear raced down his moonlit cheek.

"You mattered," she whispered again, and wrapped her limbs around him so she wouldn't have to see it, put her head on his chest and shut her eyes, resting there until his arms finally came up to encircle her.

This, she thought, was home.

She sucked in a deep breath, and scented only what her mortal nose would allow, the menthol rub he used on his bad leg, the fainter scent of his soap, and beneath it all, the warm, earthy wisp of the man she loved. She tilted her head, pressing her lips against the first available patch of bare flesh that offered itself to her, his biceps.

"I missed this so," she murmured, voice muffled.

"My arm?" His voice was softly teasing, as it used to be.

She'd missed that, too, she realized with a smile. Pulling away to peer into his face, dry now, doe-brown eyes deep pools of softness in the moonlit room, she knew that no place—sanctuary, safe house, mansion or motels—was more linked in her mind with home than his arms. She straightened her spine and pressed into him so that he sucked in a needy breath. They were fused at hips, her small breasts pressed against his wider chest, and he tilted his jaw up to find her lips. The need in that first kiss illuminated all the hard words between them, showing them for what they really were: smoke. Camouflage to protect the emotion they couldn't put to words; the "I love yous" and "I miss yous" and mostly "I can't… not without you."

So they abandoned words for the tangible, and Zoe found she'd been missing a lot more than just his arms.

Warren lifted her and Zoe didn't rail at him for manhandling her like she would have with anyone else. She didn't fight to assert her own control over this lovemaking just to prove she could. She just let herself be swept up and away, because the weakening of her knees, her limbs, the numbing of her mind and thoughts, had nothing to do with his otherworldly strength versus her much-hated humanity. It was just Warren loving Zoe as he always had. Loving her, she thought numbly as his mouth found hers, and not what she could do… what she had done, and would do yet. No, this night was all about being cradled and cherished by the only man she'd ever taken into her with no ulterior motive outside of giving as good as she got.

Which is what she did now.

Humanity hadn't stolen her agility, and when he swung her to her back, her legs whipped up and around his waist. His response, to grind against her, was automatic, as was the moan coaxed from his throat and into hers. Problem was, she was still clothed—they both were—so many of the soft growls and needy whimpers that escaped them both in the next few seconds were driven in part by frustration. The rest were spawned by sudden sensations—a palm cupped just there when her simple cotton shirt was finally lost, a hunger emphasized by the bite above the breast, a surprised laugh at the responding pinch. And a slow melt into the heat of each other's flesh as the rest of their clothes fell away.

Zoe had dreamed of this moment, and these sensations for too long to rush. She arched against him whenever she got the chance, but kept it light and unhurried, just a caress of thighs, a skimming of skin, a slow glide from her belly to her thighs to show him she was already wet and ready for him. That she'd been ready for years now, waiting even as duty had kept her away.

One didn't need supersenses to quantify need, and Zoe felt Warren, too, straining to stay himself. He slowed his hands to a languid caress even as the need to race along her sides made him shudder. He tasted her with breathy and heated lips—not just sampling, but drinking her in like her skin was a sweet liquid and vital to his very existence.