“Ah, gods.” He threaded his other hand in her hair, massaged the back of her scalp as she drew him into her mouth. He didn’t pull her forward or force her to take more. Just stood there while she ran her tongue against the underside of his cock, while she closed her mouth around his shaft, while she tasted him deeper.
He was salty and sweet. So hard and hot against her tongue. As she sucked, she wrapped her hands around his thighs, partly to draw him closer, partly to hold him up. He responded by pressing into her mouth, groaning long and low. At any minute she expected his legs to give out, but she didn’t stop. Because he tasted too good. He felt too incredible. And because for once she didn’t want to think. Didn’t want to worry. She just wanted to feel.
“Sotiria,” he groaned again.
My salvation.
Did he even know what he was saying? Her chest warmed, and the space around her heart filled. He’d called her that in the car. She wasn’t anyone’s salvation, since she couldn’t even save herself—but she loved the word. Loved the way it sounded on his lips. Loved that he thought of her like that, even if it was only part of some drug-induced dream.
She stroked her tongue around the flared head of his cock, then drew him all the way back in her throat. He groaned, gripped the back of her head, then released her and pulled away.
She looked up in surprise. His eyes were as blue as she’d ever seen them when he leaned over her, forcing her back on the table.
He gripped her pants at the waistband and yanked them all the way off. “Have to see if you’re wet. Need to know…”
Cool air rushed over her bare skin. She tried to sit up. Tried to tell him she wasn’t done tasting him. But he dropped to his knees between her legs, pressed her thighs open before she could stop him. Then his fingers slid along her sex, and a groan tore from her throat at the first touch.
Her head fell back against the table. She lifted her hips as his finger brushed her folds, then slid lower, inside. She moaned, nearly came out of her skin when he stroked her, when he slid out and back in again, this time with two fingers. And when his thumb circled her clit, electricity raced down her spine.
“Gryphon—”
“Gods, sotiria, you’re so wet. So swollen. You want to come, don’t you?”
Yes. Yes. Just that.
He kissed her lower belly, her belly button, trailed his mouth higher and closed it over her breast. Sparks shot from her nipples to her sex, amped her need even more. She groaned as he continued to drive her mad with his fingers, with his mouth, as she ran her hands through his short hair and pressed into his wicked touch.
“Oh, Gryphon. Yes, there. Right there.”
Electricity gathered in her pelvis, a firestorm of sensations about to explode. But just before the orgasm reached her, he pulled free, let go with his mouth.
She cried out in frustration, but he leaned over her again before she could ask why he’d stopped, captured the sound with his mouth. Then his tongue was stroking hers, his chest brushing her nipples, the tip of his cock sliding along her sex. So hot. So hard. So very close to where she needed him.
“I want to feel you come around me,” he said against her lips.
“Yes.” Yes.
She tasted desire and hunger, so much hunger it stole her breath. Wanted only to go on kissing him forever. But he pulled back from her mouth before she was anywhere near satisfied. He braced one hand on the table next to her. Used the other to grip his cock and slide it along her wetness.
A moan slipped from her lips as she looked up into lust-filled eyes fixated on only her, as she rocked against his touch. Water lapped against the hull, and in the silence between them, staring at each other as if they were the only two people in the world, that space around her heart filled even more.
“Gryphon…”
“Tell me, sotiria.” He looked down, watched as his erection slid along her wetness, circled her clit with the tip, dipped down to her opening.
Pleasure rushed through her core. She knew he was teasing her, wanting her even closer to the edge before he pressed inside. She lifted her hips, tried to show him what she wanted. When he didn’t take the cue, a groan echoed from her throat. “Gryphon, gods, I want you.”
His lips lowered to hers. His tongue slid inside her mouth just as he pushed into her body. She tightened around him, kissed him harder, and gripped his shoulders, pulling him deeper when he tried to ease away.
Not going anywhere. Not now.
She stroked her tongue against his. Lifted her hips. Moaned when his thickness pressed deeper inside.
Yes, yes, yes.
His mouth broke free of hers. “So tight,” he breathed against her cheek. “So hot and wet.” He drew back a fraction of an inch, pressed in again. “Don’t want to hurt you.”
“You can’t.” She dug her fingers into the firm skin of his shoulders, lifted again, wanting all of him. “Don’t stop. Don’t stop now.”
He kissed her once more, slid out and back in. Did it over and over, until long seconds later his hips were flush with hers and her sex contracted around his length, all the way inside her.
He dropped his head to her shoulder. His whole body trembled. While he breathed heavily against her neck as if trying to slow himself down, she closed her eyes and let her body adjust to his size. It had been so long, and he was big. But gods, he felt good. So very, very good.
But not good enough.
She lifted her hips, tried to get him to move. “Gryphon.” Kissing his ear, his jaw, anything she could reach, she hoped like hell he hadn’t just passed out. “More.”
“It’s gone,” he whispered against her neck. “I can’t even hear the buzz. Ah, gods, it’s been so long and now it’s finally gone. All because of you.”
He pushed up on his hand, and for the first time since she’d known him, his eyes were clear. Clear and beautiful and focused on her. Surprise flickered in those blue pools. Surprise, mixed with relief and need. So much need, it shot straight to her heart.
“Sotiria…”
His mouth closed over hers with such force, it drew a gasp from her lips. She lifted to meet him, wrapped her arms around his shoulders as he drove into her again and again, as his thrusts picked up speed. As her release barreled closer with every glide and pull and stroke and plunge.
She had no idea what he was talking about. Didn’t know what was gone or what buzz he could no longer hear. All she knew was that he needed her. That whatever had scared her in that statement before now rocketed through her chest and clamped onto her heart like a vise.
He dragged her up from the table so she was sitting on the edge. She wrapped her legs around his hips, took him deeper. He cradled the back of her head with one hand and slid his arm around her waist with the other as if trying to get even closer.
“Sotiria…” he mouthed against her lips.
She answered by kissing him with all she had in her, tightening every muscle. And when he groaned, when he grew impossibly hard, when she knew his release was consuming him, then she let go. Electricity raced down her spine, exploded in her pelvis, arced out to every nerve ending in her body, blurring her vision, stealing her breath, draining the strength from every single muscle.
Her body quaked against his as she held on, as she struggled to breathe through the aftershocks. Against her, he began to relax, but his heart still raced just as fast as hers. And she loved the strong, steady thump so close to her own.
It had never been like that for her. Never as good. Never as hot. Never as soul-shattering as this had just been. She closed her eyes and rested her head in the curve between his neck and shoulder, tried not to read too much into what that meant. Tried not to laugh at how quickly things had changed.
“I…” he managed in a raspy voice, his sweaty chest rising and falling with his fast breaths. “Go
ds, that was so much better than I imagined.”
A smile twined across her lips. Just the fact he’d imagined, that he thought of her…No one else ever did.
His legs buckled. He slipped from her grip. She tried to grab him but was too limp to stop him from going down. “Gryphon!”
“Mae—”
His arms tightened around her, but all that did was drag her down with him. She landed with a grunt against his chest. His head cracked the bench on the opposite side of the small space. Panic replaced pleasure as she quickly pushed up. “Gryphon?”
He blinked twice. A dazed look passed over his face. One that definitely wasn’t rooted in drugs. Or sexual gratification.
Oh shit. “Gryphon?”
His eyes rolled back in his head. His hands fell from her waist, landed against the floor of the boat with a thwack. Then his head lolled to the side and stilled.
And in the silence that remained, all she could think was Holy gods, I just killed him.
Chapter Fifteen
Titus crossed his arms over his chest and watched as Lena, one of Nick’s healers, flashed a light in the redhead’s eyes where she sat on the exam table.
“Do you have panic attacks often?” Lena asked, studying the female’s pupils, then feeling her throat.
“Sometimes,” Natasa answered, those green eyes of hers flicking in Titus’s direction, then quickly away. “I’m claustrophobic.”
A trickle of irritation rushed through Titus. It was more than claustrophobia that had sent her into a panic attack. But just what, he didn’t know. All he’d managed to get out of her on the way down to the colony’s clinic were more lies that she’d known Maelea before, from Seattle.
Who the hell was she? What did she want with Maelea? And why the hell couldn’t he read her?
“Well.” Lena dropped her hands, stepped back. “You look pretty good now. Heart rate’s normal, lungs sound okay. You have a slight temperature, but it’s not high enough to worry me. If I were you, I’d take it easy for the rest of the day and try to avoid confined spaces.”
A weak smile spread across Natasa’s face. Her lips were plump and pink, her teeth white and very straight. A blush ran up her cheeks, making that flame red hair of hers look even redder. “Okay.”
Lena moved to the sink, washed her hands, and reached for paper towels as she turned. “And you, big guy. How are you feeling?”
Titus dragged his attention away from Natasa and looked toward the healer.
“Yes, you,” Lena said with a chuckle when he didn’t answer. “You’re sweating.”
Titus swiped at his brow, looked at the moisture on his fingers. Yeah, he was sweating, but not from his injury anymore. He could feel his body healing. In another day he’d be totally back to normal, thanks to a blessing from the gods. All the Argonauts healed fast. But this sweat had nothing to do with what had happened to him. His gaze cut to Natasa again, who was now watching him with careful and very interested eyes.
No, right now he was sweating because the redhead was throwing off heat waves he’d have had to be blind, dumb, and deaf to miss. All of which he was definitely not.
“I’m fine,” he said, dropping his hands, eager to change the subject. Whatever she was, he didn’t want to discuss it in front of Lena. “So she’s good to go?”
“Yes.” Lena tossed the towels in a recycle bin. “If anything else happens, Natasa, just come right back down and we’ll take a look.”
“Thank you,” Natasa said.
Lena cast a speculative glance between the two, then stepped out of the room and closed the door at her back.
The paper on the table crinkled as Natasa began to climb down. “Well, I guess that’s that.”
“Not so fast, female.”
Her hand froze against the table. Her eyes lifted to his. A curly lock of hair fell over her brow just before fire flashed in her emerald eyes. “I already told you why I was looking for Maelea. I think we’re done here.”
Feisty. Now that the panic attack had passed and she was no longer surrounded by the Argonauts—who, Titus knew, were designed to be damn intimidating—she was regaining some of her spunk. Which he liked. Way too much.
“Not quite.” He took a step closer. Watched as she leaned back and her eyes widened with surprise and…awareness. “You still haven’t told me what you are.”
Her gaze slid from his eyes to his lips, where it hovered. And if he hadn’t known better, he’d have thought she was holding her breath. “I’m no one you need to concern yourself with.”
“Oh, I think you are.” He moved a fraction of an inch closer. “I think there’s something about you that very much concerns me.”
She pressed a hand against his shirt. A hand that was warm and soft and sent tingles all across the flesh beneath the thin fabric. A hand he suddenly wished was pushing against his bare skin, so he could feel that high all over again.
“Move back, Argonaut.”
Her push had no power to it. Didn’t even budge him. And her eyes couldn’t seem to leave the vicinity of his mouth.
“Or what?”
“Or—”
His cell phone rang, and the sharp shrill dragged his attention away from her and down to his pants pocket. Her hand immediately dropped from his chest, chill air replacing the warmth of her skin, irritating him more than he liked. More than was rational.
“Skata.” He pulled his phone out, pressed it to his ear, but didn’t move far enough back that she could get away. “What?”
“T? It’s Orpheus.”
“O?” Shit. “Where are you? Did you find them?”
Reading thoughts over wireless cell-phone signals was a hell of a lot harder than in person, so he had to wait for Orpheus to tell him whatever was up.
“No, but what we found isn’t good.”
“He wouldn’t have left it like this,” Skyla said in a muffled voice somewhere in the background.
Titus’s brow lowered. “What’s going on? Why are you calling me and not Theron?”
“Because I don’t want Theron to know what we found. Titus, man, someone killed a handful of daemons. Clean cuts. Knew what they were doing. Looks like a pro job. But they left the bodies on the side of a road here in western Montana.”
“Decapitated?”
“Yeah.”
“Shit. It has to be Gryphon.”
“If I call this in to Theron or Nick, they’re going to assume it was Gryphon. And if the Council finds out he’s not covering his tracks…”
Titus didn’t want to think about what the Council of Elders would do if they found out Gryphon was violating every Argonaut code ever established. They already hated the Argonauts. This wouldn’t go over well politically in their realm. Especially not when the Council already thought Gryphon was damaged goods thanks to his stint in the Underworld.
“Gryphon would have covered his tracks,” Skyla said in the background, louder this time.
Titus wasn’t so sure. He’d seen what Gryphon had done to those daemons in that village. Skyla hadn’t been there, but Orpheus had, which was why O was calling him now. O knew Gryphon wasn’t thinking clearly. And if he called this in to Theron, Nick would catch wind of it. And then their chances of getting to Gryphon before Nick’s men would drop from slim to fucked.
“I’ll come to you. What are your coordinates?”
He waited while Orpheus gave him their location. “It’ll take me a few minutes to bounce back to Argolea and then to you. Any sign of them?”
“No. But someone knocked over an army surplus store in the town behind us. Took both men’s and women’s clothing, weapons, handcuffs, and survival gear. And they stole a car.”
Shit.
“They could be anywhere by now,” Orpheus added.
And therein
lay the problem. Along with what the hell Gryphon planned to do with Maelea whenever he got wherever the fuck it was he was going.
“Stay put. I’ll be there in a minute.”
He clicked off the phone and moved back from the table.
“What’s happening?” Natasa asked.
He looked her way as he shoved the phone back in his pocket and noticed the curiosity and concern across her face. If she did really know Maelea, he didn’t want to be the one to tell her her friend was likely being held hostage by a psychotic Argonaut.
“How did you know Maelea was here? You said you knew her from Seattle.”
“I…” When she looked away from his eyes, he knew she was about to lie. Forget reading minds, he was a pro at reading basic body language, and hers was suddenly screaming Busted! “A friend told me.”
“What friend?”
“No one you know.”
She wasn’t going to cough it up. And he didn’t have time to try to pry it out of her. “Where would Maelea go if she wanted to disappear?”
Natasa’s eyes finally met his. Shimmering, gemlike eyes he knew he was going to have a hard time forgetting. “I thought that’s why she came here.”
“No, she was brought here, and not willingly. Where would she choose to go if she could?”
“I don’t know. She has property in Seattle and up on Vancouver Island. But I looked in both places before coming here. She wasn’t at either location.”
No, she hadn’t been. She’d been here at that point. But if Gryphon was using her to escape, he could force her to take him anywhere. Both locations were long shots, but they were options, if Gryphon’s trail kept leading west.
“Stay put in the colony,” he said as he moved for the door. “We’ll finish this when I get back.”
Fire flashed in her eyes as she climbed off the table. “We won’t be finishing anything, Argonaut. This conversation’s over.”
Humor curled one side of his mouth as he turned the knob. “I don’t think so, female. I have a feeling this, whatever it is, is long from over.”