Free Lords Of The Dark Fall - Fabian by C A Nicks Page A

somewhere between laughter and disbelief. “What makes you think I want to lie with you?” she said without turning around.
    “Your body talking to mine.” He moved closer, enough to invade her personal space. Tig shivered visibly. Fabian lowered his voice to a deep bedroom rumble. “You wore the gown so I would notice you. To arouse me? Is that not true?”
    Tig absorbed the blow, shook off the embarrassment. Turned to face him; he already knew she wasn’t a coward. Brush in one hand, the other hand on her hip, she said, “Did it work?”
    He moved closer. Not touching. Yet. Pointedly, he glanced at his crotch. “It worked. It’s working.”
    Tig kept her gaze studiously above his waist. “Which is what I should be doing. Working. Hal took most of my current stock. Need to replace it.”
    “It can wait.” Coaxing would succeed, to a point. Tig, he suspected, was stubborn enough to refuse simply to retain the independence she’d fostered so fiercely. “I’m injured, and I haven’t had a woman in a thousand years, which probably means I’ll last barely an hour.”
    “An hour?” Tig mouthed the word, more to herself than to him. A shrug of indifference followed the brief look of awe she’d been unable to hide.
    “Hardly adequate. But I think you will find that even my worst is more than you’ve ever had.”
    Tig leaned the broom against the wall. “When did you get to be so modest?”
    “I don’t believe in modesty,” he said, taking her words as a cue to further the dance. “There’s no shame in two people finding relief when they need it. Even now your body is preparing itself for me.” He leaned close, his lips barely brushing her ear. “I can smell it on you. It’s making me hard as an iron post.”
    He withdrew. Her turn to move and by moving, give her consent. He tried to match her indifference, but the heavy throb of his loins was impossible to ignore. Mind and body were slipping smoothly towards a single thought and goal. Release.
    “So, you make me horny? Look at you, Fabian. What woman wouldn’t want to jump your bones? Just because I want to, doesn’t mean I should.”
    Bravado with a deep blush. A beguiling combination. “It’s here for the taking. You need only step over that imaginary line you draw for yourself. Have you ever attended an orgy? Immersed yourself so deeply in decadence, that you lose all sense of who you are?”
    “Once.”
    Her reply surprised him, pleased him. His cock strained painfully against the confines of the pants. “Then you know what bliss there is in forgetting and simply being.”
    Tig’s gaze slid below his belt. “I do. I also know that it makes the remembering all the more painful. At some point you have to come back, pick up the threads and keep going.”
    Fabian crooked his fingers, the slightest beckoning motion. Tig hesitated and then nodded, giving herself permission to move. She touched the splint holding his arm. “You have only one arm and I have a split lip. How is this going to work?”
    “Like this.” He pressed a light kiss to the unblemished corner of her mouth. Took her hand and guided it to his erection. “Be gentle with me, as I will be with you. I think that’s what we both need right now.”
    Tig’s fingers twitched. Fabian pushed into her hand. “You’re a silver-tongued rogue,” she said and began a slow stroking that sent his temperature soaring.
    “I know,” he gasped. “And you’re an enigma I mean to unravel, very slowly.”
    Tig’s eyes clouded. “Don’t promise things like that. This doesn’t mean anything. It’s just stranger sex, nothing more.”
    He understood and felt an odd pang of regret that he would not know this woman as he wanted to. When he returned home, she could not follow. He almost stepped away, then. Once they did this, he would be forever left wondering how much more there could have been between them. But who would step away from such clever little hands?
    Tig looked as stricken as