Falcon (Kindred, #5)

TWELVE-2

“Maybe,” she said. “Maybe it is gratitude that you saved me, but don’t you see I’m not the only one who’s been locked in a cage? Zave, you can’t live like this forever. It tears Bess apart. Thad worries for you. Even Brodie and Zara—”

“You don’t know them.”

She could sense how he was struggling to restrain the emotion he’d tried for so many years to rid himself of. “I know that after your parents died, Brodie was your lifeline, the only one you trusted. I see the way you talk to each other. You have trust deeper than most brothers would. Maybe I don’t know him and Zara well, but they have each other and they’re in love. Anyone can see that. He lost his parents, too, but he doesn’t punish himself like you do.”

“What do you think is going to happen here?” he snarled, lunging forward a step. “Think I’m going to suddenly agree with you, start smiling and laughing and going to the office every day? Is that what you want?”

“No,” she said. “I want you to accept me. It’s a first step.”

“I can’t do that. I can have Thad take you to Brodie’s—”

She wasn’t going to let him shut her down when progress was so close. “No. I only deal with you. That was our agreement.”

“That was made before everyone decided you joining the team was a good idea. I don’t even talk to Zara, and I’ve known her for months. What would make you think I’d talk to you?”

Because all throughout the meal, she’d felt him watching her. Devon tried to be covert about looking at him, but he wasn’t nearly as subtle. He stared at her eating, watched her lift her water glass, examined the nuance of her smile, and scrutinized her hand that lay on the table.

“Because you noticed me,” she said, moving in close again. “You told me you noticed me at the auction.”

“You were n***d,” he said, and though he plastered his face with disgust and kept his tone cold, she shook her head.

“That didn’t arouse you. There’s no way you could be surrounded with pond scum like that, watching me be led around like an animal, and be sexually excited by it.”

“Maybe I was.”

“If that were true,” she said, taking her hand to his cheek, and once again, he grew rigid. “Why did you tell me we’d never kiss again? If you wanted me, why wouldn’t you be doing everything in your power to have me?” He tried to move his face from her hand, but she put the other on the chair he’d been leaning on, meaning if he wanted her to move, he’d have to touch her. “I know I’m not in your league, that’s not why I’m trying to reach out.”

Touching him wasn’t meant to be a s****l advance. She didn’t bat her eyelids or rub herself all over him. She was trying to remind him what a simple human connection was, what it felt like to have someone, to have skin touch his skin.

She kept going. “I want to be your friend, Zave. Not because of the Kindred, not because of the gifts, but because it hurts me to see you in pain.”

Swatting her hand away from his face, he gave the other a shove, and marched away from her. “I did notice you,” he said, turning his chin down and his head to the side while keeping his back to her. “I knew I was there to purchase you. I’d seen your picture. Knew all your stats. But when they led you through that door, something snapped. I was so angry to see the way they treated you that it took everything in my power not to leap onto that stage and rip every one of them apart with my bare hands.

“It can’t be easy to see what they do.”

“No,” he spat the word loud and strong, making her jump. “No, that’s not it. I’ve seen them treat women like s**t. I’ve seen innocents thrown to the floor and kicked like dogs. I’ve seen those bastards spit in women’s faces. I’ve seen the most horrific things, things that would make you weep. But you... when I saw him yank on that chain connected to your neck, I began to think of ways I could take him apart. I wanted to grab the chain off him, wrap it around his throat and squeeze the life out of him.” He ran a hand through his hair in a gesture that was anxious and completely out of character. “And I’m not the killer in the family. That’s not my purview.”

So, she was different, but he didn’t seem happy about that and didn’t understand it.

“And that’s why you’re trying to push me away now?” she said. “Because you’re worried that reaction means something?”

“It does,” he said. “I don’t know if it means something about you or about me. But it means something.”

“That you might be attracted to me? Or maybe that you’re getting past your need to be alone and could be ready to seek out something more with a woman, any woman? Could be I was just the one to cross your radar first.”

His hands curled into fists at his sides. “I haven’t been with a woman in a long time. I haven’t looked at one and felt anything for longer than I can remember. Maybe it was s****l, or maybe my subconscious was trying to tell me something.”

So all she’d done was cause more confusion in his life, and this was a man who’d admitted to craving order and logic. And here was Devon, a variable that he couldn’t label.

“Bess said you carried me up to the room,” Devon said. “You didn’t always put this wall between us.”

“It’s easier to relax in the company of a woman who’s unconscious,” he said. Some might think that statement sinister, but she was sure she heard an attempt to joke.

“I want you to kiss me,” she said, after about a minute of silence.

“I can’t,” he breathed.

“I don’t understand why, but I won’t force you,” she said, still aware of the enormous gulf between their social levels. She came from the ocean trenches while he’d always existed in orbit. “But that doesn’t mean we can’t be friends.”

“You don’t get it.” Pivoting, that scowl was back on his face. “You have to go to Rave’s.”

“Why?” she demanded. Infuriated and hurt, she strode towards him. “Why are you so determined to toss me away like trash?”

“Because I want to kiss you!” he shouted, and the sheer volume stopped her in her tracks. “Because I’ve held you in my arms, shy. I’ve carried your lifeless body through the halls of my sanctuary. I’ve lain you down in my sheets and let your hair run through my fingers. I’ve tasted your lips, the softest, sweetest, most tempting lips I’ve ever been close to. Since that first moment my fingertips touched your body, I’ve been hounded by thoughts of sliding myself inside you to sate the desire that won’t stop throbbing through my veins! The sound of your name echoes in my ears. My mind pulses when I think of your scent! And every morning, I wake up solid as f*****g concrete thinking of your body, lying so close to mine!”

To say she was shocked was an understatement. “You... you want me?”

“For years I’ve fought to keep control, I promised myself I would never, ever indulge in unhealthy obsessions again. I spent too many years drowning in decadence and selfish depravity, thinking only of myself, of the next thrill. I was the most important thing in my world. I thought I was the most important thing in the universe.

“I treated everyone like crap. Stepped on people who wanted to help me. Laughed in their faces when they offered support! My parents died hating me, and I’m sure I hated them. I had never faced up to my responsibilities in my life. All the money, the firm, the products, it all meant nothing. They were so disappointed in me. I disgusted myself, shy, I couldn’t look at myself in the mirror. I still can’t.”

Gritting his teeth, he leaned down, getting into her face and blocking the faint light in the room. “I am the monster! And you should be afraid of me. You’re not safe here. You’ll never be safe here, not because they out there will get you,” he said, thrusting an arm towards the window. “But because I”—he smacked his palm on his chest—“am hanging on to my control by a motherfucking thread.” Bringing his thumb and index finger up to her face, he held them an inch apart. “I’m this close, shy. This f*****g close to...” He sealed his lips and a growl heated his throat. “I don’t dare leave my f*****g room while you’re here, shy.”

“Zave—”

“You want to know why I was standing outside your room that night? Because I couldn’t stay the f**k away. Because I knew you were here, in my house, sleeping in one of my beds. And I couldn’t stop myself from getting as close to you as I could. Next time, who knows? You could wake up under me.”

A pulse of pressure went through her body, and while his words left her stunned, the first thing she became aware of was the tingling building in her core. Devon wasn’t afraid of this outburst, of this man. She was in awe. She was enchanted. She was in heat.

Grabbing his face, she didn’t ask his permission. Leaping from the floor, she forced him to catch her. When their mouths clashed, she coiled her legs around his hips and compelled his mouth to take her tongue. She’d never been a bold lover; she’d blushed when he used the word “sex.” But he was so attracted to her that the man of infinite control couldn’t hold it together around her.

He didn’t seem to be objecting to her brazenness, the embrace of his arms got smaller and he didn’t allow her tongue to be in control for long. He pushed her own back into her mouth, urging it down, flicking it up, moving it to the side for him to lick the roof of her mouth and her teeth. Zave kept her guessing about his next move. All she could do was react to his movements that were meant to excite and entice her.

That stimulation grew when he bent, and she clamped tight around him because she didn’t know what he was going to do with her body until her back landed on the dining table and with his feet still on the floor, he remained bowed over her. Taking her hands from around his neck, he pinned them onto the table at the side of her head. Locking their fingers together, their mouths remained entranced by their mating.

The rest of her body felt neglected. It ached for his touch. She tried to arch her breasts into him, but his body, his strength kept her flat on her back. Taking her heels to the edge of the table, she opened her legs wide, doing her best to work from side to side, trying to feel if his frenzied state equaled hers.

But he was so much taller than her that all she could do was rub herself against the ridges of his abdomen, which in itself was enthralling. The suction of their mouths broke in time for him to kiss her jaw. She couldn’t breathe right. The sound of her panting was violent to her ears; she’d never been so blinded by overwhelming desire before.

When he kissed a spot under the curve of her jaw, just where it met her neck, she yelped. Instinct forced her chin higher to let him lick her throat. Biting her lip as he got lower, she couldn’t wait for him to reach her chest. She wanted to beg him to hurry and go faster, to take her here and now like this, in this place he’d been so sedate only an hour before.

Now he seemed enflamed and feverish, and this was how she wanted him, out of control, emotional, embracing the truth of what was inside instead of trying to deny it or being ashamed of it. She heard nothing but the rush of blood in her ears. Zave must have heard something because in one abrupt move, his lips disappeared, and although his grip on her hands didn’t disappear, he pulled them down to her sides, allowing him to rise.

Noticing that he was focusing on something to the side, she twisted her head up and around, and that was when she saw the agog Bess just inside the door. “I’ll be going to bed now,” Bess said and backed out of the room, one careful step at a time.