I shouldn't have been turned on by the way his eyes roamed over me, the way they heated as they looked at my breasts.
"I thought you said you didn't fuck him," Drex said, making my body jerk at his sudden touch. Right at the top of my breast.
My gaze shot down, seeing his big hands on my soft flesh, touching two small scars over the swell of my breast.
Fang marks.
"I didn't," I insisted, taking a deep breath. I tried to tell myself it was to steady myself for the admission. But I knew it was because I wanted to expand my chest, to push my breast against his warm palm. "He took whatever advantages he could," I told Drex. And, okay, fine, maybe I took another deep breath. And maybe the cold in the root cellar was hardening my nipple against his hand. And maybe as he realized this, Drex's inhaled breath shook in his chest.
"Noticed that trait," he agreed, gaze on mine, his eyes blazing. They almost seemed slightly redder in that moment. But, no, that made no sense. "How's your back?" he asked, making the desire dissipate immediately at the mention of the humiliation and pain I'd been put through the night before.
"I... I don't know," I admitted. The pain of the enthrallment had overtaken me entirely. And then the drugs had done their job to numb any pain I might have felt from the paddling.
There had to have been damage, though. I'd remembered feeling the trickle of blood as Irina led me outside.
"I should check," he told me, moving his hand away, but I could have sworn his fingertips brushed over my nipple for a second before he dropped his arm. "Come on," he demanded, reaching for my arms, pulling me to my feet. "Can you stand?"
I couldn't exactly feel my legs very well, but they seemed to be doing their job regardless.
"Yeah."
With that, his hands went to my hips, sinking in a bit as he turned me to face the dirt wall. His hands slid behind me, settling just above the barely-there waistband of my thong.
A low, growling sound escaped him then. Angry. And it should not have sounded as sexy as it did. Still, I felt a tightening in my core at the primal sound of it.
"Is it bad?" I asked.
There was another of those growls, but lower, as one of his hands moved, slipping down, gliding over the side of my ass. Then, I kid you not, under it. Like, the man was cupping one of my ass cheeks.
I felt like my system short-circuited at that moment. Desire pinged off of sleepy nerve endings. It burned in my core. It made a deep, aching pain start between my thighs.
There seemed to be no stopping the whimper that escaped me as my body arched back into him.
Drex's hand slipped to my thigh again as he sucked in a deep breath. "You don't want to play with me, Nova. I'm not a good man. I won't turn you down because you're traumatized or grateful or because you're riding the tail-end of that drug cocktail."
"I... I didn't ask you to turn me down," I said, leaning more of my weight into him. "You're so warm," I mumbled as his fingertips dug into my hipbone hollow. I'd almost gotten cold to my iron-deprived coldness, the way I never truly felt warm. Especially around the vampires who were always cold.
I wasn't sure of the last time I had a man against me and felt warm.
"You're naked," he mumbled, his breathing getting faster, more ragged.
"Yeah," I agreed, closing my eyes, letting the heat of him seep into my skin, warm the insides that felt frozen for years.
"Nova..."
"Yeah?"
"You keep making those noises, and my hands aren't going to stay where they are," he warned.
Had I been making noises?
Maybe I had.
What could I say?
He felt good.
Was it the whirlwind of events from the night before, his warmth, the fact that he saved me or the drugs? I didn't know. Probably a mixture of all of that.
But he just felt good.
It had been so long since anything had felt good.
I must have made another sound without realizing because that growling noise escaped him again as his hand moved, pressing between my thighs without warning, making a choked moan escape me.
"What'd I say?" he mumbled as his finger started stroking my clit through the thin material of my panties.
I couldn't help it—I didn't want to—my hips started to rock with his motions, shamelessly begging for more. Which he seemed all too willing to give me. Selflessly. Even as his own erection pressed into my butt.
"Come, Nova," he demanded, voice rough.
And after just a moment more of coaxing, I was helpless to do anything but.
"Good," he praised as the pleasure coursed through me, a warm blanket of good feeling I so desperately needed after so long without. "Put this on," he said, even as he reached to grab a t-shirt, shoving it down over my head, before I could even think straight again. I sagged back against the wall, arms limp by my sides.
"Come drunk, huh?" he asked, smirking, proud of himself.
"I think that was better than the drugs," I admitted as he grabbed my wrist, pulling up my arm, and forcing it through the hole.
"Careful," he said, giving me a wicked grin as he put the other arm through, then yanked the front of the shirt down. "You'll give me ideas on different types of pain management," he said, holding up a pair of thin red sweatpants. "Everything looked like it would fall off of you," he explained. "These at least have a drawstring."
I was acutely aware of one thing as he lowered himself back down on his knees to slip one of the cuffed legs around my ankle, and that was that his face was directly in front of my sex.
My mind flashed with images of him leaning forward, running his tongue over me, giving me another world-erasing orgasm.
He got my other leg in the pants, but seemed at that moment to sense where my thoughts were going.
Because his head angled up toward me. His eyes danced. His mouth open. And then his tongue emerged. Just for a second. But long enough for me to learn something else about this man—this demon—that I was going to be in very close proximity with for the foreseeable future.
He had a forked tongue.
And my body had all sorts of ideas about what he could do with it.
Chapter Six
Drex
I was not a good man.
Hell, I wasn't a man at all.
It wasn't often I felt the need to actually work to curb my nature, to change the way I interacted with women.
Why, then, hadn't I shoved my face between her thighs and licked her pussy when she'd made it clear she was interested in the idea?
Why hadn't I bent her forward against the dirt wall and planted my cock deep inside her when I knew she wanted that too?
Yeah, those were good questions. Ones I couldn't stop turning over in my mind after I finally got her dressed in ill-fitting clothes that nearly made me forget about the body underneath.
Not even trying to focus on the drive was helping. Because the damn woman was wrapped all around me. Her legs on the outside of my legs. Her arms wrapped tight around me. Her scent fucking everywhere.
I swear my cock was straining against the tight material of my jeans for the majority of the ride that day.
It wasn't until I felt her hand move up, tugging at my beard—a code I'd told her before we left to use if the pain was coming back—that my focus managed to slip to something else.