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  "How could you think I would say that, Siena? Dios, I can't keep my hands off you. I wanted to climb in your hospital bed with you. If I had my way, we'd have anointed every room in this house as well as every piece of furniture. The rugs in front of the fireplaces and the floors as well. You wear those skirts and I want to lift the hem and see if you're wearing panties. If you're not, I want to claim what's mine. If you are, I want to see how sexy they are."

  "You could be a little obsessive." She couldn't keep the smile out of her voice, because really? Every room? The furniture? The idea sent a shiver of excitement down her spine.

  "You think?" He nuzzled her throat. "Get used to it, baby, because now that you're feeling better, I intend to make certain you know just how much I want you." He lifted his head again. "When you hear or think you hear something, you have to come to me, Siena. You have to get how much you mean to me."

  "You were so different, after the gunshots, I didn't even recognize you. You scared me," she admitted.

  "I wanted to strangle Drake with my bare hands," Elijah admitted. "Baby, it's going to happen. I lose my temper, but not at you. I'm not ever going to come at you that way. I'll walk away and let loose somewhere else where I know I'm not going to scare the hell out of you."

  She realized that was what he'd done. He'd taken her to the bedroom and he'd removed himself. He didn't want to scare her. He had no qualms about showing Drake his temper, but he hadn't wanted her to see him like that.

  "This is really about the things I said to you when we first came together, isn't it?" he asked softly, pushing the hair from her forehead. "You lost confidence in yourself, and I did that to you. I have to find a way to give it back to you, because there is no other woman for me. There never will be. You have to know that in your heart and soul, Siena. You have to feel that so this kind of thing never happens again. You get me? When we fight, it can't be about whether or not you think I want you. Because, baby, there's no question. You're the one. The only. There has never been another woman I let in and there isn't going to be."

  12

  SIENA sucked in her breath. He'd laid it all on the line for her. Everything about his family. His life. Maybe he hadn't touched on their future, but he told her things he'd never told anyone else. Given that to her. She needed to give him something back.

  "I don't have any confidence in myself as a lover, Elijah. None. And for you, because of the way I feel about you, I want to be able to please you. Sometimes I want to touch you, or explore, and I'm afraid I'll do something wrong." Like right at the precise moment. The slow burn that had smoldered had become something hotter. Something scorching her. Driving her. She began to feel the way she had when she'd driven up to Elijah's home for the first time. Edgy. Needy. Restless.

  Elijah groaned softly. "That's on me, baby, not you. I made you feel that way."

  She shook her head. "It's more than the things you said. I won't pretend that didn't contribute, but honestly, I was already feeling that way. I wasn't like the other girls in boarding school. I didn't look at men, not even celebrities, and want them. I didn't feel anything at all until I saw you."

  His eyes went molten. "There isn't a man on Earth who wouldn't be excited to hear that, Siena. I won't pretend it doesn't make me happy to know no other man has touched you. I want you for myself. I've never had that. Anything at all for just myself, let alone a woman. My life was never about me. It was always about the family and what I was supposed to do for it. Later it was about staying alive and keeping my sister that way. Then I just didn't give a fuck. I did what I had to do, but I didn't feel much. Until you. So you saying there wasn't another man you burned hotter than hell for, that's gold for me. That's fucking perfection. That's everything, Siena. The fact that you gave that to me, I'll treasure you until the day I die."

  She dared to run her hand up his chest, over those defined, rippling muscles. He had a chest filled with power, and it showed. She tested the feel of his hot skin, of the muscles running like ropes beneath them.

  "You said I was the worst cocksucker you'd ever had," she whispered. "I don't want to be your worst, Elijah. I want to be your best."

  Silence followed her admission. His eyes had gone all cat, dark and almost glowing. Heated. Filled with a dark lust. A terrible hunger. His hunger stirred her own rising one, so that a shiver crept down her spine and her sex went damp, clenched and pulsed, and deep inside that burn began to coil hotly.

  "Baby." He nearly groaned it. His voice sounded raspy, sexy, a lure as dangerous as his eyes. "If you had ever been with a man before, you would have known I was full of shit. I nearly came in your mouth. I nearly lost all control. I don't lose control. I've never once--not once, Siena--lost it like I did with you. A man wants his woman's mouth on him because she wants it. She enjoys it. She sucks hard. She's eager to please him. And she looks at him like he's her world. Baby, you did that. I was in fucking paradise."

  He rolled over, taking her with him, so she sprawled on top of him. "But, mi amorcito, you want to practice, just so you're feeling confident, I'm all for helping you out. Have at it. Your body belongs to me, so that means my body belongs to you. I'm never going to feel another woman's hands or mouth on me, so I'd be obliged if you want to practice a lot."

  She kissed his throat and then looked up at him. "Would you have finished in my mouth? Do you like that?"

  "Dios, baby, yes. Most women don't like that sort of thing."

  "But you do?" she persisted. She drew the letters of her name on his chest with her tongue. Licking him like a cat. Tasting his skin. All that hot male skin. Her mouth found his flat nipples, sucking gently, feeling the muscles of his belly bunch, and she explored each with her tongue, outlining them.

  "I do, Siena, but you don't have to take it that far." He bunched her hair in his hand, forming a tight fist around it, pulling her head up so he could look at her. "I'll be happy with whatever you give me."

  She smiled at him and rubbed her breasts along his chest, needing the contact with all that delicious heat. The burn inside had turned to a pounding pressure, hot and beginning to spiral out of control.

  His hand tightened until she felt a bite of pain, and her gaze jumped back to his. "I've got to tell you this, so you know what I like, baby. Right now, I'm giving you this play because you need it and I'm yours, but in bed, when I say enough, I want your mouth or I want a position, anything at all, I get it. That's my way."

  She felt the laughter bubble up from some place deep inside. She didn't smile, but she held his eyes. "That's your way?"

  He nodded. Serious--very serious--which made her want to laugh all the more.

  "Another thing: when I want you, I don't care where the hell we are, I get you."

  She rubbed her palm along his flat belly, but she stayed where she was because he wasn't through. "Anything else?"

  "Just laying it out there for you, baby."

  "I have a little newsflash for you, Elijah, that maybe you aren't aware of, being all macho and scary dangerous."

  He heard the laughter in her voice and that liquid silver darkened even more, sending another thrill of excitement down her spine. She was teasing a leopard and she knew it. She liked doing it, and she was going to be doing it a lot. Just to put that look on his face. Just to feel the thrill of danger. The bite of pain in her scalp when his hold on her hair tightened.

  "Your newsflash?" He used a tone. An ominous one. His gaze narrowed.

  "You like control all the time, honey, not just when it comes to sex, and you're not all that good at hiding it, if that was your intention." She did laugh then. She couldn't help it. He might be sweet when it suited him, but his sweet included him getting his way. She would have been blind not to see that trait in him.

  "Woman, now you need to get that mouth of yours working somewhere important," he ordered, sounding irritated. "Before you get yourself in trouble."

  Laughing softly, happy, she started to bend toward his chest again. The hand in her hair d
idn't move, making it impossible. Her gaze jumped to his.

  "Kiss me, mi amor."

  She had no problems with that. The man could kiss. He could ignite fires with his kiss, detonate fireworks or even cause towering firestorms. She was all for kissing him. She let him bring her head to his, his fist nearly relinquishing its hold. Maybe she liked the way he was in control, because that burn inside burst into a roaring hunger. She felt the heat inside her increase.

  Deliberately she took her time when his fist urged her to hurry. She lowered her head slowly, holding his gaze, watching him as she bent her head to his. She'd never felt so sexy in her life. The hunger built so fast, so intensely in his eyes and was carved in the lines on his face, that she felt the intensity deep inside her core.

  She brushed her mouth over his. Once. Twice. The hand in her hair tugged hard and held her firmly in place. His mouth took over. The fire in her belly exploded, and she melted into him, her mouth devouring him, just as he devoured her. It was beyond what she remembered. She was lost in him immediately. He kissed her long. Hard. So rough it bordered on brutal. Delicious. Perfect. She felt as if fire consumed her. Raced inside of her, radiating a scorching hunger.

  His hand in her hair loosened, and she kissed his chin, along the hard sweep of his jaw and that bluish-black stubble she loved. Down along his throat. Her hands joined her mouth in her exploration, smoothing over his hot skin, loving the muscles she found there.

  Elijah lay still, but she felt his pulse jumping and the tension gathering in his body. He liked control, but he was giving it to her. She loved that and she planned on taking her time, mapping his body--the body that belonged to her.

  His fingers sifted through her hair, and he trembled when she licked over his nipples and then sucked gently.

  "I've spent my life alone, Siena. Dreaming about you. About a girl I saw with hair down to her waist, hair I wanted to see spread across my pillow and feel sliding over my skin. Knowing what I was. Knowing I didn't deserve her and I never was going to deserve her."

  She looked up at him, her eyes meeting his. "Don't, Elijah," she warned, and dropped her head to nip him in the belly. He had more than a six-pack. She didn't think that was possible, but he had more muscles in his abdomen than she could conceive. She didn't know it if was the leopard in him, but if it was, her leopard had shortchanged her.

  He ignored her caution. "You gotta know, baby. You have to see exactly what you mean to me. Those eyes of yours. Dios, mi amorcito. Those eyes. I dreamt about your eyes. I love looking into them. I knew I wanted to be looking into them when I made you come apart. You have no idea how many times I jacked off, thinking about your lush body and those fuck-me eyes of yours. My dream girl. Still can't believe you're here in my bed."

  She loved that. Loved it. She loved that he thought those things about her. The sincerity rang in his tone. Her leopard heard it and she heard it and knew he was giving her the truth. She smoothed her hands down his thighs, felt the muscles there tense and shudder beneath her wandering fingers.

  "I'm big, baby. Always feels like I'm too big when I get inside you. Stretching you. Does it burn, I wonder. And then I can't think anymore because you feel so fucking good I can't breathe. You do that to me, Siena. I can't get air in my lungs because you grip me so tight and you're scorching hot. Strangling me. Milking me. I feel that. Fucking paradise, baby."

  She lifted her head, not to look at his face, but to examine the beautiful, perfect portion of his anatomy he was talking about. He was big. Intimidating. He looked all man, just like his face and body. Nothing soft about Elijah. He was hard and unashamed about it. She curved her palm around the thick shaft and one by one added her fingers to form a fist.

  His cock was long and thick and pulsing with heat. With life. It jerked in her hand and she leaned down to breathe air over the flaring head. Her tongue tentatively licked along the shaft and settled just beneath the crown. His breath exploded from his lungs and she nearly pulled back, afraid of doing something wrong. But then he was talking again, his voice so rough with need, she knew she was on the right track.

  "Alone all my life, even in the midst of my family, baby. Couldn't show my sister affection. Hell, couldn't show a dog affection. They use that shit. After a while you don't feel anymore, you train yourself not to. You do what you have to do to survive and then you wake up one morning knowing that's all you're doing. Existing. Surviving. No reason to live. You got nothing, and you're ashamed of what you are because all the good in you has been siphoned out. You're left with what you are when you look in the mirror. What you see. And baby, what I see isn't good."

  She hated that he felt that way about himself. Hated it with every breath in her body. She needed him to know he was more than what his family had taught him to believe he was. She saw so much more in him. She always had. She saw the good.

  She closed her mouth over that pulsing, velvety head and sucked hard, her fist tightening around the thick shaft because his hand curved around hers and clamped down. It was sexy. Hot. His hips rose just a little. Just enough to know he liked what she was doing to him. A low groan escaped his mouth. Guttural. Sexy.

  "Then you see her driving up in her convertible, sexy hair, fuck-me eyes, body made in heaven. She looks at you like you're the only fucking man in the world. Those eyes. Looking. Seeing something else beside a killer. Seeing a man. So hungry for him. You know you shouldn't touch that. You know, but there she is. The damn world right in front of you. Making you see yourself as a man, as something worthwhile, not the fucking killer they shaped you into."

  She couldn't stand it. His voice was so raw with truth, with what he believed of himself and of her, and he made her out to be something so special, so perfect to him she wanted to cry. Instead she did her best to show him what he meant to her. That she'd dreamt of him. Of being with him exactly like this. In his bed. Giving him something special, a gift from her to him.

  "Dios, baby. That's right. Right there. Fucking heaven. I knew you'd be heaven. That mouth of yours."

  Her gaze jumped to his face. He was staring down at her, his eyes hooded. Sensual. Filled with lust and something else entirely. Something warm and soft and beautiful. Her heart nearly stopped beating and then began to pound. She didn't stop, her mouth moving on him, her tongue sliding up and over him. Dancing. Licking. Mouth engulfing. All the while she looked into his eyes.

  His breath exploded out of him. His face darkened. He was beautiful. Gorgeous. Hers. Power was a heady thing, and she knew she was getting to him. His voice changed subtly. That smooth, velvet rasp became a little more hoarse. A little harsher.

  "I know better. I know you're too damned good for me, but there you are. And I'm not man enough to send you on your way because you're the reason I survived that shit. You're the reason I stayed alive and protected my sister. You're the reason, Siena."

  Her heart beating hard, melting at the things he told her, she sucked hard and fluttered her tongue against the underside of that crown. His breath left his lungs. She heard it as her tongue swirled, shaping him, caressing him. Exploring. Taking her time.

  She moved over him now, body undulating restlessly, making its own demands, her breasts sliding over his thighs, the hair rasping against her nipples. Her mouth worked him. She was intimidated by his size and tentative at first about trying to take him deeper, but he let her do all the work, set the pace, and he never pushed her.

  His hand left hers to settle in her hair. She liked that. Liked that he loved the silky mess she could never quite keep under control. She found she liked her mouth on him. The way he tasted. Hot. Masculine. Salt and spice. Maybe it was the leopard in her, because she hadn't thought she would enjoy giving him pleasure unless she was so wild she was out of control, not like this, a deliberate seduction, but she did.

  Watching him watch her as she took him deeper was just plain erotic and sent little streaks of fire darting to her sex. Damp, liquid heat pulsed between her legs. The burn was so hot now she began
to lose her own control. There was nothing tentative about the way she used her mouth or her hand on him. The way her other hand strayed to his balls, rolling gently, loving the velvet feel of him.

  Part of it was the things he told her about himself. He made her all the hotter, and she knew he had managed to distract her from being self-conscious or afraid of doing something wrong. How could she do anything wrong when he was baring his soul to her? Telling her what she meant to him. Letting her know she was his everything?

  He groaned. His hands tightened in her hair, the bite of pain sharp. His hips jerked, pushed his cock deeper so that he touched the back of her throat. A thrill shot down her spine. He looked lost in the sensations she created. The look on his face was more than enough for a reward. So beautiful. So masculine. Lines of pleasure carved deep, so sensual and just plain hot.

  There was no denying she felt incredibly sexy. The burn in her sex had gotten out of control, the tension coiling tighter until she thought it was possible she could have an orgasm just watching his face.

  "Baby," he groaned softly. "You're about done."

  She loved when he called her that. But she wasn't about done. He was thicker. Harder. Longer. A treat. Hers. She clamped down tightly with her mouth, hollowing her cheeks and using her tongue. He was a man who had never had love. Never had care. He had given himself to her, and she wanted him to know she could take just as good care of him as he did her.

  His body shuddered. "That's it. Come here to me."

  She wasn't through. She loved what she was doing. She loved how it made her feel to bring that look to his face. She loved that she could give him so much pleasure. He took care of her, saw to her every need, and she was determined to do the same. He needed it. He needed to know that to her, he was worth every second she spent bringing him pleasure.

  He reached down and caught her beneath her arms and hauled her up his body with his enormous strength. Before she could protest, he rolled her, her back to his front and then rolled both of them, so she ended up belly down in the bed, his body covering hers. He sank back on his calves, caught her hips and yanked her to her knees, one hand sliding up her back to settle between her shoulder blades. He pushed her head to the mattress, holding her still with one hand.