Page 120 of The Deer and the Dragon
My head spun as if I were twenty-one and had thrown back seventeen drinks on the same night. It was a rowdy frat bar where I tried to forget my life and my pain against the music that shook the walls. It was shot after shot after without the nausea, without the pain, without the regret. I didn’t care as I watched the familiar face of the clerk from the Bellfield Inn appear on the screen, knowing his presence was impossible; it was a nonsensical vision. I wasn’t interested in Anath’s angered demand for backup, in her words, in her aggression. I barely saw Astarte cross to the tablet embedded in the wall and stand in front of it to block its light, as if she were more invested in blocking me from the spell it might break than anything going on in the Venus Clinic.
Caliban’s hands continued to move over my front, exploring my stomach, my breasts, my throat, my thighs. My sighs of pleasure filled the gaps created by any concern from the others, uncaring, focused only on the one who held my heart,my body, my soul as I pressed my ass against him, feeling the member still trapped in his pants.
I reached around for him, aching for him.
Astarte covered the screen with her back as she hissed to Jessabelle, “Get up there and take care of this.”
Jessabelle disappeared in a blink.
Good. The only two I needed in the room were Caliban and me. We were owed this pleasure. We didn’t need their company.
Astarte had barely stepped away, back still to the screen in its final moments of electronic glow as I saw the silvery glint of a lasso spin above the clerk’s head. Somewhere in the distant caves of my mind—somewhere more buried than the memories of past lives—I remembered Azrames and his meteor hammer. The screen went dark as the metallic shape escaped the clerk’s hands and it launched for Anath. It blinked into shiny black nothingness just as Astarte reached us.
“Possession?” was the word I managed to speak, hips still rolling against Caliban’s.
He knew what I was asking, even if I was barely present enough to form the question.
“Yes,” he said, lips reaching the exposed line of demarcation that ran from my belly button to my sternum, separating my breasts, tracing it up my throat. “Possession,” he repeated. The word was so fucking sexy on his lips. His hands ran over me, pressing into me. He explored my body with his fingertips as Astarte joined us at the table, as if Caliban were reiterating that he possessed me, which he did. I belonged to him and succumbed fully as his hands roamed me from the fluffy exterior of robe until his hands pressed against two hard shapes in my pocket. He pressed the metallic shapes in my robe into my body with significance as he pressed his mouth over mine. The metal hurt in a wonderful bite as he pushed them into my hips. “Such a good girl,” he rumbled, lips over mine, scarcely louder than a whisper.
I drank in the praise. My hands flew to his face as I pulledhim close to me. They drifted south to his clothes as I tried to tear him free of the fabric that separated us.
“I love—”
I couldn’t finish my declaration. He bit my lip so hard I was sure I tasted blood. The words were stolen from my mouth as I drank him in, his tongue working against mine, his lips over mine, his mouth absorbing the droplets of blood stolen from my mouth.
“She’s ready,” said Astarte. “This is a greater deal that we could have hoped for.”
Maybe her words were important. Maybe they weren’t. I didn’t care.
“I know,” he said, not taking his mouth from my neck.
“She’s ready,” Astarte repeated. “We both are. Are you?”
“Do you want a third, Love?” Caliban asked.
He shouldn’t have asked. I didn’t. I didn’t want anyone but him. I said nothing as I tried to tear at his shirt again, but he snatched both of my wrists into one hand.
He pushed me down into the table until my chest, my head, my upper body twisted as it slammed against its surface, leaving him behind me. With my hands in his grip like cuffs, I was practically immobilized. I wriggled unsuccessfully, staring at the glossy surface that remained black and lifeless on the wall.
Astarte took the gasp of my impact against the table as confirmation as she came closer, shedding her white lab coat like it was a snakeskin. She turned her back to Caliban and pulled her hair to the side as she offered him the zipper. Something permeated my pleasure in a distant, foreboding way as his hands went to her zipper and began to tug.
I struggled against the table, but Caliban pushed the twist of my wrists harder until I knew if I fought against his hold, my arms would break. No, I didn’t want to share Caliban with Astarte. No, I didn’t want anyone else to experience him, to taste him. No, I didn’t want him to get pleasure from anyone else. Jealousy was stronger than the drug as I struggledto emerge from the sensual fog that smothered me. I flipped my face against the table with the tiny freedom allowed from my space.
Her dress dropped around her ankles.
No, I didn’t want to share Caliban. I didn’t want her here for this. I didn’t want—
She slipped her hands through my hair, and my thoughts melted away against the touch of a goddess. I relaxed my face into the cool table. I made an approving noise, a desperate noise for more as she ran her fingers against my scalp. I fought against theyesand thenowarring within me.
I knew she was naked between us, but as long as she continued the sensual scrape of her nails…they rained from my scalp down my back as she turned toward Caliban. I did love the sensation of her fingers… I relaxed again, wanting the tantalizing stroke of my scalp to continue. I didn’t want a break in the pleasure as each nerve was stimulated with the pleasurable chill of fingernails.
“Do it,” Astarte said, and I knew she was talking to Caliban.
Through the haze, I heard him ask me for confirmation once more. His voice was hitched with a sincerity I barely understood. I always wanted him. I wanted him day in and day out. My love life had been destroyed by my need for him even before I’d believed he was real. He was all I’d ever wanted. Yet something in his voice…
“I need you,” I said.
“Love—”
