No one had ever cared so passionately about him. “My fierce, courageous Ivy,” he said, slipping his hand from her hair to her nape. “Will you kiss me again?”
Her lashes fluttered, her cheeks coloring, but she drew her eyebrows together in a severe vee. “Don’t avoid the question.”
“Was it a question?” Moving his thumb over her skin, he said, “Anything you want, you can have. I have no defenses against you.”
Ivy’s throat moved as she swallowed. Remembering how her skin had felt under his lips that night when he’d indulged himself so selfishly, he bent down and tasted her. Cream and salt and Ivy. He wet the flesh, sucked, felt her pulse kick.
Her pleasure intensified his, the psychological dissonance no match for the power of it. The brain was an elastic organ, and his had begun to learn that emotion wasn’t the enemy. Especially when it brought with it such exquisite sensation.
“I want to explore every sensation with you,” he said, taking another taste before he raised his head. “I want to crush the softness of your na**d body under mine, want to learn how to touch you so you’ll make tiny sounds of need, want to feel your fingers curling around my penis while I put my mouth on your ni**les and suck.”
Vasic’s bluntly sexual statements made the place between Ivy’s thighs liquid, heat uncoiling slumberously through her veins. “I”—she coughed to clear her throat, her breath shallow—“I want to do that, too. All of it.”
He squeezed her nape. “Kiss me,” he repeated.
Ivy licked her lips, slid her hands up to his shoulders, and confessed. “I don’t know what I’m doing.”
“Neither do I,” he responded, the glittering silver of his eyes on her mouth. “Arrows learn by repetition and practice until the basic skill is honed, at which point we begin to specialize.”
The words should’ve been dry, but they made her br**sts swell, her ni**les so plump and tight the lace of her bra became abrasive. Because he was talking about repetition and practice when it came to intimate contact. Kissing. Touching. Sex. Her lips parted and he lowered his head.
“Do it again, Ivy,” he murmured, his breath mingling with her own. “Repetition—”
“And practice,” she completed, and brushed her lips over his.
Again and again and again. It felt better each time. Especially since he was holding her so firmly against his body that her br**sts were crushed against the hard muscle of his chest. Ivy inwardly cursed her sweater, her coat, even her bra.
Then Vasic said, “I think I understand the mechanics,” and gripping her jaw with his free hand, angled her head, and placed his mouth over hers.
Her lips had been parted to ask him something—she didn’t know what—and so the kiss began far more intimately than any of the others. And it only grew deeper from there. Vasic didn’t hold back. No, her Arrow did as thorough a job of investigating kissing as he did of any other operation, his touch confident as he changed the angle by minute degrees to find the perfect fit.
Then he did, and it felt wonderful.
All hot and wet and delicious in a way she’d never imagined.
Making a needy, hungry sound, she wrapped her arms around his neck. The action made her ni**les rasp against the lace of her bra, his hair raw silk in her grasp and his body a rigid wall that somehow fit perfectly against her own.
God, she liked kissing.
When Vasic broke contact, his forehead pressed against hers and his breath jagged, she caressed his cheek, kissed the clean-shaven smoothness of his jaw. Never had she felt so alive, so pleasured. But below that was a sexual hunger brutal in its ferocity, hard and dark . . . and then she knew. It wasn’t her desire she was sensing. It was his.
Body melting even further, she kissed his jaw again. “I’m picking up your desire. Do you mind?”
“No.” He kissed her again on the heels of that statement, one hand on her lower back, the other on the side of her neck.
Then he licked his tongue against hers.
Her brain exploded.
Ivy wasn’t sure she had a rational thought in the hot, tangled minutes after that. She copied his action, found it made him crush her even closer, the hard ridges of his body digging into the softness of her own. Hot, ragged breaths, voracious mouths, strong male hands on her skin . . . Ivy became a creature of pure sensation.
It was the blare of a siren on the street that jerked them to their senses. Staring at Vasic, Ivy found the breath to say, “I want to try everything on your list.” Only with her Arrow could she be this bold; only with him could she strip herself to the skin and feel utterly safe.
His hair a little tumbled from her touch, he took her hand. “We’ll begin after the reconnaissance.”
• • •
FIFTEEN minutes later and Ivy’s heartbeat had calmed enough that she could take in the street around them. She couldn’t help but feel a teensy bit smug—the first time she could recall feeling the emotion—at the glances they attracted from other women and the occasional man. Vasic got what she thought of as the “sigh” look, the one that indicated a melting in the bones, while Ivy was the recipient of pure narrow-eyed envy and good-natured grins that said she’d done well.
Yes, she thought, she had. And Vasic’s looks had far less to do with that than the strong, loyal, courageous heart of the man hidden behind the Arrow.
Vasic wasn’t the only male in the party who drew attention. Rabbit didn’t like the leash he had to be on in the city, but he was well behaved, and when an elderly human lady stopped to gush over him, he took the praise as his due. Quite unlike the far larger male by Ivy’s side, one who noted everything but seemed affected by none of it.