Page 6 of Bombshell

“You’re a million miles away, Lass,” Dallan’s voice brought me out of my morose thoughts as he gently pinched my chin and guided my gaze to his again. “And now I need you to focus on me before my feelings get hurt.”

Dallan’s hips pushed forward, reminding me of exactly what I needed to focus on.

It was easy to compartmentalize when I was busy collecting ink, but as soon as that was done Dallan always made sure that the ‘benefits’ part of our relationship was completed to the fullest.

The motion brought a moan to my lips before I could catch it and I watched his eyes crinkle with mirth as he moved above me.

Without the ink extraction to distract me I could feel every ridge on his cock and see the way each thrust sent different colors shuddering underneath his skin.

Dallan always filled me to the point of overfullness, stretching me around him and making sure it was hard to think of anything else.

“Wait—” I managed to gasp, my scalp tingling as my vines snaked around my back and down to his waist, and contrary to my words, they began to urge him on. The traitors.

“No,” Dallan told me simply with a shake of his head, reaching up to run a finger down one of the long green appendages tethering us together. I could count on one hand the number of people I let touch my overly sensitive vines like this, and none had ever been buried inside of me before. “You don’t really want me to wait, do you? At least these are honest.”

Dallan dropped his face close to mine, the tentacles lining his jaw gently caressing my face as our eyes met—gold to green—and he grinned before pressing his lips to mine again.

He didn’t even have to speak after that, what he desired for me to do next abundantly clear as his hips slammed roughly into mine and the tips of his fingers gripped my sides in an almost bruising grip.

Come for me, Lass.

The words rang in my head as if he’d said them out loud.

My eyes rolled back in my head as I felt myself clamp down and come, a muffled shout leaking from in between our joined lips.

My thighs joined the vines wrapped around his waist, drawing him further into me as I felt him spill deep inside and my vision swam before going black.

Later, though I wasn’t sure how much later, I came to with my ear pressed into Dallan’s chest and I was listening to the dual heartbeats of his two hearts while he traced patterns into my skin.

At some point during my little nap he’d pulled my dress from my body and had also disrobed himself, so our naked bodies were pressed into each other as we lay in my bed… breaking my second rule for our time together.

Sleeping in my bed with Dallan felt nice—too nice—and it was a boundary I’d put in place early on.

We didn’t sleep over at each other’s places. Dallan was always supposed to leave and go back to his little grotto that lay underneath the shop and I stayed in my apartment above.

“What are you still doing here?” I asked after blinking away the rest of my grogginess.

There was a pause and I could practically feel Dallan’s discontent at my words as he shifted underneath me. “You were sleeping so soundly I figured I’d let you rest and then we could go for another round. My ink glands still feel pretty full.”

His words were so logical that I nearly fell for them, but then I tilted my chin up to look in his face and I found a softness there that was jarring.

It made me want to kiss him and agree.

But then I reminded myself that we weren’t real lovers—just business partners. Just how we’d been for the last forty years and how we should be for the next forty.

Using his chest, I pushed myself up into a sitting position and frowned down at him. “Dallan…”

He cut me off, catching my free hand and pulling it up to his lips. “Effie, when are you going to realize that there’s more to this than a business-with-benefits relationship. I’ve been patient with you but you and I both know you’re myAnam Ca—”

I slipped away from him and to my feet, wrapping one of the soft blankets around my body as I held a hand up to stop him from saying it. “You should leave, I’ve got a long night of ink enchanting ahead of me. We can collect the rest later.”

Dallan looked like he wanted to argue, the muscles in his arms tightening as he gripped the sheets before throwing them aside and giving me a full look at his naked body as he rolled out of my bed and started to dress.

Dark splotches of discontent gathered along the pale green expanse of his skin, almost blacking out the tattoos that covered nearly every inch of his body as he pulled on his pants, the tiny little wings hanging from his back—completely vestigial and incapable of flight at this point—twitching with the strength ofhis emotions as he kept throwing glances over his shoulders at me.

But I wouldn’t let myself give in no matter how much I wanted to.

Truthfully, waking up in his arms had filled me with a warmth I so rarely allowed myself… which was exactly the problem.

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