Free Taboo (A Tale of the Talhari Book 1) by Heather Elizabeth King Page B

light came to them from the lamps outside. And the moon was full and shinning into the bedroom.
    His lips were close. The brush of his chest against hers made something inside her want to give way.
    “I don’t believe in love,” she said at last. “I don’t think it’s real. People say they’re in love all the time when all they really feel is lust.”
    “Pretty cynical for someone your age. You must have an ex.”
    “I have the ex to end all exes. Self-absorbed, superficial, arrogant. He always said he loved me…it took me five years to figure out I should be listening more to how he treated me instead of what he said to me. He liked the way I looked and he liked the thought of being with me, but he never really saw me. Sometimes I doubt he even liked me. Five years I wasted.”
    “But that doesn’t mean love isn’t real. It just means you loved the wrong person.”
    He ran a finger down her spine as he spoke, making her shiver with pleasure.
    “You like that?” he asked.
    “Yeah. He never did stuff like that. He never touched me.”
    “How is that even possible? You’re beautiful.”
    “He liked being touched and massaged and stroked, but he wasn’t interested in giving intimacy.”
    His fingers fluttered up her spine, over a shoulder, then down her back. “Doesn’t sound like a very smart man to me.”
    She smiled. “I wouldn’t have thought you the type to be a flatterer.”
    His teeth flashed and he laughed. “I’m not. I’m being genuine.” He ran his fingers up and down her back, making her shiver all over. “What happened?” he asked at last.
    “I got smart. Realized I was wasting my time with a man who could never love me and could never give me the things I needed in a relationship.”
    “Like what?”
    “Companionship. An honest to goodness interest in me as a person, not a superficial interest in how I look. I want true love. I’ll die for you, love. Ride or die, love.” She laughed again. “My life is so boring compared to yours. Here, you’re telling me about killing vampires and learning how to use a sword. All I have to talk about is my ex-boyfriend.”
    “I have hundreds of years of living on you.”
    His hands moved up into her scalp, rubbing and stroking until she groaned.
    “For that sound alone I’d touch you,” he said, laughing. “You’re ex is a twit.”
    “I think I was the twit for staying with him for five years.”
    Subtly, he moved closer. She could smell the minty scent of his shampoo, feel the brush of the hair on his legs when he tangled them with hers. His touch was an aphrodisiac. Everything about him was an aphrodisiac.
    “What about you?” she asked. “Have you ever been in love?”
    “Once.”
    “In all these years, only once?”
    “I don’t love easy. Like you said, people proclaim love at the drop of the hat, but I don’t think they have an inkling of what love is.”
    “Was it before you became Talhari?”
    He shook his head. “After. She died…at the hands of a monster.
    “I’m so sorry.”
    “I’ve hunted him. I’ve hunted him for seventy-three years. When I find him, I will kill him. Slowly.”
    She swallowed. “I’m sorry. I can’t imagine how that must feel for you.”
    “She was like you, constantly running toward danger. She could never have been made Talhari because she didn’t have any usable gifts, so eventually it would have ended for me in heartbreak, but we could have had more time if she hadn’t been so impulsive.”
    “Is that why you get so angry with me, my impulsiveness reminds you of her?”
    “I don’t want to see you get hurt.” He pulled her toward him, no longer going for stealth. “I don’t want to talk anymore.”
    His lips were on hers. The movement so sudden she hadn’t had time to prepare herself. But she didn’t mind being unprepared. Not for this.
    She pulled him closer, gliding her hand down his spine then squeezing his ass cheeks.
    Groaning himself, he deepened the kiss, then rolled