"What are we doing?" she asked. "Really doing. As much as I'd love to continue on this path of flirting, fucking and pretending there won't be any consequences, I'm self-aware enough to know there will be. I just can't see what they are, from where I'm standing over here in my human shoes, watching you in your fur-lined boots. I need you to tell me about the biting thing, the claiming … " The wine had loosened her tongue, releasing words she hadn't planned on speaking. She considered taking them back but what the hell. She needed to know.
"'You're right. There will be consequences. Or gifts, depending how you look at things. You'll have a responsibility to keep secrets and help keep the travelers in our territory in check. You'll have abilities and power in your own right, but the Kings rule, and it's a rule you'll have to acknowledge and submit to in public. In private … " His voice dipped. "I'll ask you to bear my young, and to do that, you'll have to accept the fact that I'll want your submission in my bed, where I'll fuck you over and over again."
He was purring by the time he finished, the sound so intimate, so close, her skin felt tight and hot, tingling with anticipation. His shameless declaration of intent to get her with child-children-didn't cool the spark that he'd carefully fanned during the weeks since they'd met. Instead, his words turned fire into a blaze that heated her core to the boiling point.
Inhaling deeply, she pulled the phone away from her ear and pressed it against her pillow. His words, his promises, were too much … and he was too far away. Too far away. She fell back against her pillows and laughed beneath her breath. To think, so recently-nearly every day since she'd met him-she'd desperately pursued every means by which to ensure the distance remained, had even attempted to widen the gap.
Now, it all seemed like so much wasted energy. Wasted time.
As the thought wound through her mind, her heart started to pound with the urgency to make up for the minutes lost. At the same time, everything inside her tensed up. Why the sudden flip of a switch from protecting herself through avoidance, to berating herself for avoiding? Staying away from Jude had been a good thing. The best thing. But if running had been best, was she now allowing herself to be seduced into the worst thing?
"No," she said fiercely. She'd already lived through the worst choices-and they'd been choices, not passive circumstances.
Just like Jude was a choice now. Although if she dug really deep into her emotions, she might find something that had simply happened.
She wasn't ready to dig yet, but she had a feeling Jude was about to put a shovel in her hands. Pre-empting him, she put the phone back to her ear. "Are you still there?"
"Always," he growled. Growled! She was so, so screwed.
"You're right, I am a liar. I need you. Can you come over?"
Outside, a car door slammed. She glanced at the phone she still gripped, only partly surprised to find the connection dead. What?
Someone was still stalking her. In her neighborhood, it was unusual enough for someone to be out on the street at this hour that the noise of a car was cause for alarm.
Heart hammering in her ears, now fear instead of arousal, Lily bolted upright and forced her feet to the floor so she could creep across the room and peek past the drapes.
Down on the street, a familiar hulking SUV hugged the curb and a masculine figure prowled across a row of empty spaces in a path headed straight for her front door. She muttered another colorful curse before racing down the stairs. Jude didn't knock but he was waiting, one shoulder braced against the wall beside the door, when she looked out the narrow foyer window. The motion-sensor porch light he'd installed spotlighted him from behind, leaving shadows along the slope of his neck and beneath his jaw. His shirt stretched taut in ways that made her mouth water and lower, the prominent ridge of his erection sent up a responding flush of heat to her pussy. Apparently, her panicked internal monologue hadn't pushed arousal very far away.
Acutely aware of her state of undress, she fumbled through deactivating the alarm system. It didn't occur to her to do anything else. Opening to him-both her house and her self-seemed so natural that she didn't stop to think about the ramifications of letting him into her house and waking up beside him in the morning.
Waking up beside him? Where had that thought come from? And why did it seem such a good fit?
Before releasing the dead bolt, she closed her eyes and drew a steadying breath. If they were plunging head first into something more permanent … into the something he'd described in so many visceral words …