Free Free Fall by Carolyn Jewel Page A

shiver of arousal.
    “Hey,” he said in a low voice. “I told you. That’s not necessary.” He fingered the next button of her blouse, a motion that forced her to drop her hand from his chest. “You know it’s true. Stop fighting it. You know we’ll be good together.” He reached around her and unfastened her hair clip, then ran his fingers through it. “There,” he said softly. “You’re not the ice queen anymore. Not that I don’t like that, but you’re even hotter like this.”
    His hand curved over her thigh, and she looked down. His fingers were long with blunt but perfect nails. They weren’t manicured, but his nails were strong and even, without a single blemish. His hand was not soft or gentle-looking. Her breath got short when he moved his hand to her bare skin underneath her skirt. She sucked in air as he searched higher.
    He looked human, but he wasn’t. Not at all.
    He reached the top of her thigh, and she spread her legs enough for him to cup her. No one, no one ever had touched her there without her being emotionally shut down. Such a casual touch, a gentle pressure and then his finger sliding along her there, pressing against her underwear, and she was nearly out of her mind with the tension.
    She blocked it out. All of it. The surge of desire. The tension. Everything receded into frost.
    “Don’t do that.” He curled his other hand around her head and pulled her toward him. “I want to make you come so hard you scream my name.”
    She met his gaze, with the swirling colors drifting through the black. “I don’t know how.”
    “We’ll practice. Until you get it perfect.”
    He kissed her. His mouth touched hers and there was no pain streaking through her head, no loss of connection with the physical world, no taste of bitter metal. She couldn’t remember what it was like to kiss a man like this. There was tongue involved again, and she was melting.
    He pulled back, but his hands stayed where they were, one on her thigh, the other at the back of her head. “That was nice,” he said. “Really nice. More?”
    “How do you do that? Keep me from reacting to you?”
    He set himself to unbuttoning her blouse. “This form looks human. I’ve been passing for years. But I’m not human.” He grinned at her, so cocky. He touched the middle of his forehead. “We can fuck like bunnies and nothing happens except one of us gets tired. And it won’t be me.”
    She laughed at the absurd image. Her fingers gripped his arm, and his smile was slow and wicked.
    “I need your permission for this.”
    “Why?”
    “I don’t want to run afoul of the warlord who controls this territory. There’s rules about how things have to happen when a human knows what we are. If I wanted to, I could take control of your mind. I won’t do that. But the risk is there.”
    “Possession, you mean?”
    “No. But I could do that, too. If you gave permission. But that isn’t what I want from you.” He leaned in and licked the side of her throat. She held back a groan. “What I want from you is hot sex. You and me naked and maybe”—he drew back and tapped the side of his head—“a little of this going on. If you say it’s okay.”
    She nodded. “Informed consent.”
    “Say the words.”
    “It’s okay.” She breathed in and lowered her defenses.
    “Relax.” He pressed his finger to her forehead.
    “I can’t.”
    “You can.” His eyes changed color. Not black but bronze and gold. “Anything you want.” He curled his hand around hers and brought her fingers to just beneath his lower lip. She picked out her reactions, examining each one. The heat that transferred from his hand to her fingers, the anticipation of his muscled body and what his bare skin would feel like. The way her body quivered with want. He whispered, like smoke and whiskey. “Any way you want it.”
    The tension in her weighed down her eyelids so that she could only open them slowly. When she did, he was staring at her chest