“You won’t hurt me. You’ll let me do this, you’ll let me give you all the pleasure I know how to give, and then you’re going to return the favor. And we’re both going to love every. Single. Minute.” She leaned in and kissed his mouth in punctuation with the last three words.

“Oh, I doona doubt that, Kat lass. No’ for a second. I—” Ahnvil stopped before saying he loved every single thing about her. Love was a very strong word to use, and a man shouldn’t use it lightly. He didn’t want to lay false groundwork, giving her ideas about the future that just might not be possible. The future was a dark, murky place. He didn’t know what he would have to offer her in it. He barely knew how to keep himself in the present from day to day. So much of his life came out of the past. Out of his mistakes and misfortunes. Out of his hate and his anger. He wasn’t even sure he would know how to give a lass things like love and contentment. Didn’t one have to be content before one could offer it to someone else?

Oh, but she was tempting him with far better things then contentment, he thought as she drew down the zipper to his jeans. She reached with strong little hands to push his pants down off his hips. He felt her nails scraping gently against his skin as she bared his backside and then his thighs. His erection had fallen free of the denim and, as she worked his jeans free, her body brushed against him again and again and again. She dropped to her knees and guided his feet free of his pants. He was forced to bear the gorgeous sight of her in that submissive serving position. Then she looked up. First into his eyes and then at the jutting length of his erection. She reached out and touched gentle fingertips about midway along the shaft, then drew them slowly down and then back up the length of him. It was nothing, a touch of so little consequence, and yet it made him tighten and harden even more. He had to touch himself, to squeeze himself as though in warning, to try and control the intensity of his reaction. If the lightest of touches could spin him so out of control, what would the feel of her kiss do to him?

“No. Let me,” she scolded him softly, taking his hand and drawing it away. Then she imitated the touch he’d used, squeezing him at the base of his cock.

“Jesus,” he groaned, his hand feeling lost in the open air until he finally rested it atop her head, his fingers burrowing into the dark roots. Be gentle, he warned himself. Doona hurt her.

She was, he decided, the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. Not just because of what she was doing to him, but because she was genuinely beautiful, with her bourbon eyes and her mink-colored hair, her berry-red lips and lightly freckled pale skin. He was glad she couldn’t be touched by the sun. He wouldn’t trade her porcelain prettiness for all the world.

She wrapped her hand fully around him, drawing up to her fullest height on her knees. But their heights were so disparate that she could not reach him. All he would get was the feel of her breath washing over him. Slowly, allowing her to continue to keep him in her wee hand, he knelt down, his knees spreading wide on either side of hers. She smiled at him and he thought he might die from the way it made him feel. He felt suddenly invincible. Oh, he had learned what it meant to feel invulnerable as a powerful Gargoyle, but with the smallest of courtesies she made him feel that he was able to conquer worlds. She leaned forward drawing him up to her lips. At the last moment she stuck out her tongue and touched it to him instead of just kissing him with her lips. Light exploded into his vision and he was convinced the only thing possibly better was when he was deep inside of her.

She slowly licked him, as if he were a piece of hard candy, and everything in his body grew tenser and tighter as pleasure washed over him. His hand in her hair fisted against her scalp, crushing strands into submission. It was an attempt to keep himself from pushing her forward in an endeavor to hasten her torture to a better point of pleasure. But he didn’t want to make her do anything before she was ready. Not when everything was so new and he didn’t yet know all of her boundaries as a lover. But he was learning more and more as every second ticked by.

She licked him down to the base of his shaft and then back up several times, each stroke bringing more nerves alive than he’d ever realized he had. Her tongue toyed against the head, sweeping away the welling fluid that seeped from it more and more with each passing moment.

“Gods above, Kat lass, you’re killing me.”

That made her smile with an unholy satisfaction. And that made him all the more impatient to have her. He was just about to grab her and throw her to the floor when suddenly she opened her mouth and took him inside with a sweep of her tongue.

Had she said spectacular? It was stellar. Utter nirvana. Now he knew he had never felt anything like it in his life. What made it so different? What was it that brought him to his knees even though he was already kneeling to her?

Kat. It was all Kat. She was beyond everything a woman should be. So brave in the face of what she had thought of as a crippling disease, making her way in the world as best she could when the world looked at her with cruel, judgmental eyes. She had hidden away to protect herself, and yet it was a defiance, too. A way of saying she could live her life on her own terms and screw what everyone else thought.

And yet he knew she thought she was weak. That she had let them win by forcing her to run and hide. He saw it differently. Very differently. And her bravery and brilliance was just as bold as the way she held him in her mouth.

“Kat … oh, my sweet Kat, you have tae stop,” he groaned, as she worked him into her mouth again and again and yet again. “You’ll have me spending in another minute and I want tae be inside you when I do.”

She responded by moving quicker, taking him deeper, sucking at him a little harder. Now both of his hands were clutching into her hair and in spite of himself he was beginning to thrust up against her palate more and more with every second.

“Kat, I’m going tae—” He was going to come. He knew it with barely an instant before she made it happen. He roared out with pleasure, letting go of her so she could move free of him if she chose to. But she did not. She took everything from him. His seed. His pleasure. His sanity. He was humbled by it, even as he was drained by it. He was sucking for air, barely able to keep upright on his knees as she pulled away from him at last. He nearly fell over at the sight of the bright satisfaction in her eyes. She was entirely pleased with herself, and had every right to be.

He reached for her, turned her onto her back on the floor, threw a leg over her, and went nose to nose with her.