The little tease. Her teeth scraped gently, adding a sharper sensation, but no less pleasurable before her tongue laved over it again. He couldn’t stand it. His cock was throbbing like a wound, his scrotum tightening, pulsating with the need to release the built up sperm. Beneath the head of his erection, the barb flexed, desperate to lock inside the hot depths of her pussy as he spilled his seed. But not yet. He wasn’t ready to come yet. He wanted to feel her mouth again. Hot, liquid fire, her tongue a stroke of seductive agony. Taber lifted his hands to her head, fingers spearing into her hair, gripping the silken strands, relishing the dominance of his hold on her. He stared into her challenging gaze, his own narrowing as the man willingly gave over to the animal in that single, undefined second. She was his mate. She could challenge him, tempt him, but he was too close to the edge for her teasing little games now. The flare of excitement in her gaze and her expression assured him that it affected her just as deeply.

“Suck it.” The hard growl accompanied the slow slide of his cock back in her mouth. She enclosed it firmly, willingly, though she strained against his hold just enough to satisfy the need he had to maintain the edge of dominance.

She moaned again. The sound echoed around the portion of his erection trapped within her mouth, causing the entire shaft to pulse, the hidden barb to press closer to revealing itself. Spearing shards of pleasure shot into his balls as the muscles of his abdomen clenched in spasmodic reaction. Sweet heaven. He fucked slowly into her mouth, holding her hair in a firm grip, relishing the snug drag of her lips, the flickering whip of her tongue. And all the while he watched her. Watched her eyes darken, her cheeks hollowing out, her lips sliding over his cock.

“Oh yeah. There you go, baby,” he groaned as he rocked slowly back and forth, every muscle in his body tightening as he fought his release. “Suck it, Roni. Suck it deeper, baby.”

He pushed back, filling her mouth, fighting not to breach her barrier of comfort in taking him. Her tongue flattened further along his cock, rasping tissue so sensitive he wanted to roar with the pleasure of it. Her moan of protest as he slid a bit too far had him pulling back in regret. She could take more. He knew she could. God help him, he needed her to.

“Breathe through your nose. Relax.” He panted roughly, staring down into her wide eyes, gauging if it was fear or excitement lighting them. He prayed he was right and it was excitement. He felt the hot depths of her mouth relax marginally, her tongue losing a bit of its desperate tension.

“Yesss,” he hissed in pleasure. “You can take more, Roni. Just relax, baby. Relax.” He slid slowly inside her mouth as he chanted the word to her.

She took the smallest amount more. Enough to have him shaking, shivering in quaking pleasure as he watched his shaft sliding into her mouth. God, how much more could he stand?

“More.” His demand was rough, rough enough that for an immeasurable second he fought the need rioting through him.

Then he sank in further, nearly to the convulsive swallowing at the entrance of her throat. There he was.

God yes. That was it. He couldn’t see his cock fucking into her mouth now, but the sensations of it were so extreme he decided he could do without it.

He rested his head on the back of the couch, fucking her mouth with short desperate strokes as the suckling moist sound of it enclosing him had him groaning with each breath, fighting his orgasm with everything inside him.

“Roni,” he whispered desperately, unable to hold back the words, the sensations tearing through him.

“God, yes. Suck it. Suck me, baby, just like that.”

He could smell her heat now. She was so aroused the sweet, earthy scent of her lust wrapped around his senses, drowning him in it. Her moans were another caress on his cock. Her fingers gripping him, stroking the shaft, were pushing him past his limits of control. The barb was a fierce, agonizing throb that he knew he couldn’t hide forever. But not yet. He didn’t want her to know. Didn’t want to chance her fear and disgust.

“Enough.” He pulled her back, ignoring her protesting cry, fighting his own need to surge back inside the exquisite heat. The moist clamp of her mouth was paradise, but he knew it was one he could not yet fully enjoy.

“Taber.” Her voice was a thready, needy sound that had his erection twitching in barbaric demand.

“Fuck me, Roni.” She was kissing his abdomen, her tongue licking as he held her back from the surging strength of his cock. “Now. Damn it, I can’t wait, baby…”

He pulled her back into his lap, spreading her legs over his, lifting her, holding her close, then pushing her relentlessly down onto his raging cock.

“Ah, God.” His cry joined hers as he worked the thick shaft into the ultra tight recess of her blistering pussy. “Hot. So hot. So sweet and slick.” He pushed deeper, holding her as she arched in his arms, fighting to take more, her cry echoing through the dim room. Her cunt was a vise of slippery, flexing, torturous pleasure. The muscles clamped on him, fighting to accept him, to relax around the girth spreading them apart. Nothing had ever been so erotic, so filled with lust and tempestuous sexuality.

“Take it,” he growled, pressing her closer, feeling the protesting tissue grip and convulse as she fought to accept him. “All of it, Roni. Now. Take it, baby.”

He thrust harder inside her, spearing into her, feeling her pussy part, take, accept, until he had buried every throbbing, desperate inch of his cock inside the fist-tight grip of her suddenly shuddering, exploding cunt.

It was too much. Too much heat, too much need welling up inside him, tormenting him. He heard his own cry shattering the air, felt the emergence of the barb, the scalding pulse of his semen, and died in her arms. There was no other way to explain it. His soul exploded with the tip with his cock, spewing out an emotion, a need, a compulsive hunger as thick, hot and life-giving as the semen winging its way to her fertile, hungry womb.

Chapter Twenty

“When are you going to tell me what’s wrong with your cock?” The lazy tone of Roni’s voice didn’t fool him for a minute. He could hear the steely determination in her voice that had marked more than half his conversations with her over the years. The word “cock” whispering so seductively from her lips had that particular portion of his anatomy twitching in interest.

“Hmm, you didn’t seem to think anything was wrong with it when you were screaming and clawing at me earlier,” he grunted as he glanced down the line of his body, frowning at it in disapproval, as though that would somehow ease the effect of her words.

“Don’t try to distract me, Taber.” She was draped halfway across his chest, her breath a warm caress against his skin, stirring senses better left resting for the time being. He had hoped to still this conversation for a while yet. He could pretend male outrage, he figured. It wasn’t every day a man was accused of having a problem with that particular portion of his anatomy. But he had a feeling Roni wouldn’t be fooled. His instincts warned him to step lightly where this subject was concerned, or at least in his deliberate attempts to avoid it.

“When are you going to go to sleep?” he mumbled, ignoring her question as he lay back on his pillow and closed his eyes, determined to sleep himself.

“You didn’t answer me.” Her voice was reflective, the very softness of it warning him that soon it would breach the anger point.

Her fingers danced over his chest, her nails scraping lightly, the pads of her fingers feeling, he knew, the tiny hairs that covered his body. Nearly invisible, soft as down, the light pelt was yet another reminder of his DNA.

Taber opened his eyes, staring at the ceiling as he breathed in deeply. How many years had he longed just for one day to forget who and what he was? Yet the knowledge was always there, never far enough away to give him the ease he often prayed for. And now, Roni needed answers, which he was more than reluctant to give her just yet. He didn’t know if he was ready to face the possible consequences and her horror of learning just how closely he resembled the animal his genetics had been mixed with.

“I know I didn’t answer you,” he finally said softly, curving his arm under her body so his fingers could play absently with the long waves of silken, golden hair.

He loved her hair. It was thick and soft, curling gently around her shoulders and framing her heart-shaped face seductively. He noticed with distant amazement that it was rather comforting to smooth it between his fingers, to feel the cool, gentle weight of it.

“Are you going to?” Taber glanced over as she sat up in the bed, pulling her hair free of his fingers as she tucked the sheet around her until she could shield her full, naked breasts. His lips quirked at her modesty. He knew every inch of her body, yet still she would blush the prettiest pink if he saw her nude while not engaged in their lusty play. The pressing subject of her sudden need for answers weighed on him, though. Answers he had no intention of giving her yet.

“Let it go.” He sighed deeply, moving to rise from the bed. Dammit, he wasn’t sleepy. He was fooling himself thinking he could rest now. “I need to check security outside…”

“You’re avoiding the question now, Taber,” she snapped, her eyes glittering with blue fire as he glanced back at her.

She sat on her knees, watching as he moved to the bottom of the bed. He was more than aware that by refusing to answer her, rather than feigning ignorance, was a dangerous proposition. He could avoid her questions, but he’d be damned if he would lie in response to them. He had little else to give her but honesty, in those areas where he could answer at all.

“Guess you’re right.” He shrugged, trying to appear unconcerned, to hide the aching loneliness that rose in the pit of his soul.

She had every right to know the answer, and yet, he couldn’t bring himself to say the words, to explain to her the animal that found such satisfaction in the tight depths of her rippling pussy.

“And you think you’re just going to walk out of here with no explanation?” she asked him, her voice rising with anger and an edge of hurt.

Taber stared back at her, steeling himself against her pain. She needed so much more to hold onto than she was being given, and he knew it. Everything in her life had been stripped away from her in one blow. Her home, her job, a chance to be free and safe, and he couldn’t even give her answers. There was no fairness in it, and yet neither could he bring himself to fix it.

“Let it go, Roni.” He padded to the bathroom door, intending to pull a change of clothes from the walk-in closet in the other room.

As he reached the bathroom door, with no warning whatsoever, the shattering of a crystal bowl from the nightstand had him stopping in disbelief. The dim lights of the room gleamed dully on the crystal shards, mocking him with his belief that she would have allowed him to walk away so easily. If nothing else, his Roni could be a tempestuous little spitfire. Had she been Feline, she would have made a perfect wildcat mix.

“You leave this room and I’ll take your head off with the next one,” she snarled. His cock leapt to life. Taber glanced down at the heavy erection with a sense of resigned amusement. It said a lot about a man who got a hard-on from such an event. It said even less about him that his female’s rage could trigger it. Damn. He wanted nothing more than to turn around, go back to that bed and fuck her silly. His skin itched with the need. In a single second every cell in his body was screaming for hard, driving sex.

He turned back to her, watching her broodingly as he crossed his arms over his chest. Her gaze flickered to his erection, and damned if she didn’t blush again. That added color only seemed to make him harder.

She had moved from the bed. In one hand she clutched the sheet to her chest, in the other she held the matching bowl from his nightstand. Evidently the state of his arousal held no bearing on her determination for answers. It figured.

“You know, those came with the house,” he sighed, nodding at the small, decorative item. “I imagine they cost quite a bit.”