Of Alliance and Rebellion Read online

She stared at his cock so long that Max actually grew uncomfortable. “Ana,” he said, squeezing her hands. “My eyes are up here, pretty baby.”

  When she still stared, he reached for her chin and prompted her gaze upward. It clashed with his. Her eyes were wide. Max swallowed, and put the question out there. “You’re a virgin, aren’t you?”

  She did not nod. She didn’t have to. She was a fucking angel for Christ’s sake. They probably didn’t sleep around.

  He reached up with his thumb and stroked her bottom lip. “Does the sight of my—does it ... scare you?” he asked. He held his breath.

  “My reaction to it scares me,” she whispered.

  Max clenched his teeth, preparing to pull his pants aright again. But she wasn’t done.

  “I want to do so many things to it,” she murmured, running her fingers up and down the front of his thighs. Goosebumps lined his legs, and his cock jerked.

  “What, pretty baby?” he rasped. “What do you want to do to it?”

  Her eyes darted away. “It is probably wicked.”

  Oh, he hoped so. He pinched her chin until she looked back at him. “We’re done with limits,” he said to her fervently. “You want to do something to me, you do it. Standing permission, Ana, you hear me? Nothing is off limits, and nothing is embarrassing. Not between us. That’s over.”

  “I can ... touch it with my t-tongue?”

  Holy God. A fine tremor set into his legs, and he reached out and pulled her into his arms, burying his face in her hair and holding on for dear life so he wouldn’t hit the floor. “Any damn time of the day,” he said, his voice a husky rumble.

  Her hands caressed his back, her nails biting the skin over his shoulder blades just right as she dug her fingertips into him. “It is very pretty,” she muttered. “That part of you. I ... like it very much.”

  His eyes slid closed, and he tightened his hold on her body. She was wrecking him here. “It likes you very much, too,” he said. “You have no idea.”

  She began to lower, trying to go to her knees. He pulled back and gripped her by the elbows to keep her close.

  “I want to—”

  “I know you do,” he cut her off. “But, I…” His eyes roved her face—her wide-open eyes, her parted lips, the blush that tinted her cheeks. He felt himself slipping into something with her that was powerful and lasting. “Ana, if I don’t get to see your body, too, I’m not going to make it here,” he said.

  A wide grin split her face. “Truly?” she asked.

  He brushed the back of his finger down her cheek. “Truly.” Her eyes sparkled, and then she stepped away from him slightly. She reached down, grabbed two handfuls of angel robe, and pulled it up and over her head. His jaw dropped as her robe floated to the floor. “You really don’t have any embarrassment, do you?” he croaked.

  In his peripheral vision, he saw her cock her head to the side, but he was too focused on the body she’d revealed. “Why would I be embarrassed?” she asked without pretense.

  “Why, indeed?” he muttered. He’d never seen a woman look the way his Ana did. She was an Amazon, and he realized when his cock wept a drop at the sight of her that his type was Amazon all the way. Her height did her so good, with toned legs that went on for miles and a long torso that was trim and packed with delicate muscle lines. The dip that started in the middle of her stomach just below her breasts and trailed down to her belly button called to him like a Siren, and he wanted to trace this space between muscle with his tongue. Her breasts were high and perfect, tipped with nipples the palest shade of pink, and they pebbled before his eyes. He took a stumbling step forward, closing the small distance she had put between them to disrobe. His erection met her before the rest of him did, sifting through the golden curls between her legs and folding up between them to become trapped between their bellies.

  Her eyelids drooped. “Oh,” she breathed. She then writhed against him, rubbing his cock with her body. “That feels…”

  He groaned and steadied her movements by clutching both of her hips. “Too good,” he finished for her. “Oh, God.”

  She looked up at him, and their lips were so close he had only to lean down the fraction of an inch it took to taste her mouth. Her lips parted beneath his, and she flicked out her tongue, stroking before opening wider and biting into his bottom lip.

  She may as well have slapped his ass. A beastly sound broke from his chest, and next he knew, he was hauling her up by the back of her thighs, guiding her legs to cinch around his waist. He began shuffling toward her bedroom as fast as the pants around his thighs would let him, and at the same time, he sucked on her neck hard enough that he knew he was leaving a mark.

  She threw her head back and the sexiest, huskiest feminine chuckle rolled out of her. “Are you trying to walk with your pants half on?” she asked, her fingernails biting into his shoulders.

  She was laughing at him. They both seemed to realize it at the same time. Her head snapped down again, and she looked at him with worry-filled eyes. “I was not laughing at—”

  “Shh.” He hugged her tighter. “This is supposed to be fun, pretty baby. Laughing is a good sign.” Granted, he couldn’t remember a time he had ever laughed with another lover, but it had always felt like it should happen.

  “It is supposed to be fun?”

  His gut bottomed out. He pressed a kiss to her chin. “Yes, Ana.” He kicked himself internally. “Believe it or not, it is.” She looked at him dubiously, and he silently promised to make sure it was nothing but fun for her from now on. He began moving again, shuffling along exaggeratedly enough to get a smile from her once more, and soon they reached the bedroom. “I’m going to lay you down, okay, Ana?” he asked.

  She shimmied in his arms. “Wings,” she said quickly as he began to lower her.

  He cursed, twisted around, and shifted his hold on her so that he plopped to the bed on his back with Anahita straddling his stomach on her knees. Her wings flared behind her, and she looked down at him. “Oh, wow,” she breathed, planting her hands on his pecs and leaning her weight onto them. “This, I like very much.”

  “You ain’t kidding.” Holy shit. He gripped her hips for a moment, then smoothed his hands up her sides and back down, wanting to touch every part of her at once, but desperately wanting to avoid scaring her.

  She arched her back into his touch and hummed. As she arched, the hot liquid center of her rubbed back and forth on his belly, and Max groaned. He wanted to raise his knees up so that he could press his cock against the firm swells of her ass, but as he tried to do so, he ran into the problem of his pants still around his thighs. “A little help, Ana,” he said, trying to wiggle his pants off. “The pants, please.”

  She twisted to her right and reached behind her to grab his pants and help him wrestle them off, but he was distracted by the flicks of muscle in her torso such a maneuver put on display. “Aw, fuck,” he breathed, placing his hand flat on her lower belly and sliding it up to her ribcage, stroking those flickering muscles.

  She sucked in a breath and turned back around to him, his pants finally on the floor. Her eyes were sparking heat. “Do that again.”

  With pleasure. He stroked her stomach again, and she arched back, thrusting her breasts to the ceiling and giving him more wonderful things to watch. With his legs free, he was able to prop his feet on the bed as he wished and move his lower body enough that his heavy erection prodded her ass. She jumped, and he wondered if he should have maybe kept his feet on the floor, but then she leaned back, her wings brushing the tops of his thighs, and ground her ass into his now-trapped cock.

  His eyes rolled back into his head, and his fingers clenched her skin where he held her just beneath her breasts. And then, like the quick study that she was, she ground forward, pressing her sweet clit into the muscle of his stomach, before sliding back, grinding against him once again.

  A very unmanly noise escaped Max’s lips, and he clenched them tight, but not before Anahita heard him and smile
d. “Like that, do you?” she asked with a teasing glint to her eye.

  Before she could do it again and unman him, he spread his palms over her breasts, freezing her on the spot. He squeezed them both gently. “Lean over, pretty baby, and kiss me.” His words were composed enough, and even contained a hint of cool seduction, but inside, every nerve ending was screaming for her to put her mouth upon his, so when she did lean in, he wrapped his arms around her back and between her wings and crushed her to his chest to plunder her mouth.

  She whimpered and met the thrust of his tongue with one of her own. Her breasts were pressing into his pecs so hard he could feel every ridge of her pebbled nipples. She began squirming in his arms, and it rubbed the slick heat of her center all over his stomach.

  He was going to lose his ever-loving mind if she kept it up.

  She broke the kiss, whispered his name, and kissed the corner of his mouth, his cheek, his jaw. By the time she nibbled on his neck, Max could no longer hold back his groaning. He let his hands drift over the lines of her back, brushing the feathers his fingers found along the way, and dug his fingers into her ass to press that molten place between her thighs more firmly against him. When he gripped her hard and rocked her hips so that that place slid along him, she gasped into his ear and stiffened in his arms before moaning his name.

  Hearing his name on her lips did something to his heart. He flexed his fingers and moved her on him again, and this time, she followed his lead and canted her hips in his hold in such a way that when she moaned again, he joined her. The play of muscle beneath his fingertips was going to be the end of him.

  “Pretty baby,” he rasped into her hair, “keep doing that.” He’d meant it to be an instruction, but it came out more plea than anything.

  She continued to nibble on his neck, and when she moved her lips upward to pull his earlobe between her teeth, he tilted his head to the side to give her better access.

  She was rubbing herself on him faster and faster, and by this point, his dick was throbbing so painfully, he was worried that he was going to come, and soon. He was not ready for this to end. He was preparing to use his grip on her ass to slow her down a bit, to draw things out, when she repositioned herself. Suddenly, all of that slick heat that had been sliding along his abs was now on his cock.

  She was sitting on him, his dick folded up and trapped between his stomach and the outside of what he could already feel was the sweetest place in the world. He bit out a low, quick curse and internally begged himself to behave. To not move the slight amount needed to slide into her.

  She pressed her forehead into his shoulder and dug her fingernails into his biceps. “I can feel your heartbeat,” she moaned. “You are so hard. And hot.” She made the same sliding motion she had been doing against his stomach, but this time she was riding his dick.

  As she sucked in a breath, Max panicked. “God, Ana,” he groaned, tightening his grip. “Stop.” His voice cracked on the word. “You have to stop.”

  He could feel his orgasm climbing up his cock. She felt too good.

  She paused and raised her head. “Stop?” she asked. “Oh, no,” she said, her eyes widening. “Please no.”

  Max gritted his teeth, the muscle in his jaw ticking. “I can’t ... not be in you if you keep…” He closed his eyes and opened them again helplessly, words escaping his grasp.

  “In me,” she breathed. “That is bad?”

  Oh, God. “It’s ... not something ... you can take back,” he stuttered, swallowing down the lump in his throat that came with the realization that she was acting as though she would allow him inside her body.

  He so desperately wanted to be inside her body.

  She looked down into his face, her eyes tracing his features—scar included—before returning to his eyes. “I will not want to take it back,” she said gravely.

  He held himself back. “Your Fall?”

  Her eyes grew dazed. “Oh,” she said. “Children come from this.” She spoke the words as though she had just comprehended this most fundamental law of nature.

  Another laugh percolated. He’d never fought laughter so hard in this decade, and it was while he was in bed with a woman. Never would have guessed. “Yeah, pretty baby, they do.”

  Her brows drew together before her face relaxed and she grinned down at him. “You have things to prevent children, though, correct?”

  A pang hit him in the chest. “Not on me,” he said. Yeah, that was stupid, he thought to himself as he made a mental note to stock up on condoms. A previous conversation with Eli about the importance of protection between Impulse mates flickered through his mind. “Unless…” Wrapping his arm around Anahita’s waist, he leaned far over to his right to pull open the drawer of the nightstand. The lamplight flickered off of a roll of shiny foil packets. “Oh, God bless everyone,” Max muttered as he snagged the roll and pulled it close enough to tear off a square with both hands.

  When he looked at Anahita again, she was staring at the foil square in his hand with a furrow between her eyebrows. She looked so curious, he wanted to crush her to his chest again and kiss her until she was breathless.

  “That prevents children?” she asked.

  He nodded. “Know how it works?”

  She shook her head.

  “Want to?”

  In answer, she reached out and plucked the condom from his fingers and flipped it over on her palm. “I will need to, will I not?” She raised her eyes to his. “For the future.”

  Max’s stomach clenched. Two warring responses battled for supremacy inside him. One was borderline panic: the future? The other won. “Only if we’re talking about with me, pretty baby.”

  A slow smile started to spread on her lips, and before they could both examine their words any more closely, Max reached out and grabbed her hips, lifting her up from him for only as long as it took to sit her on his thighs. His erection lay heavy on his belly right in front of her, and he pulled the foil packet from her hand and held it up for her to see. Her eyes were riveted elsewhere. “Ana,” he said, fighting back a smile. “My eyes are up here.”

  Her eyes snapped up, and she raised one brow. “I like looking at it,” she said unapologetically.

  A quick burst of air that sounded like a chuckle passed his lips. “Business first,” he said, waving the condom. He went through the process of opening it and placing it with exaggerated moves, and once he began rolling it down his length, she slapped his hand aside and took over. He grunted as her fingers moved over him.

  When he was covered, she looked back at his face. “I can put you inside me now?” she asked, raising her brows.

  Max choked a bit before his throat relaxed enough for him to suck in a mouthful of air. “Um, you ... want to be on top ... or... ?” Okay, man, get it together. He just ... hadn’t expected her to be so confident. Or so ready. Or so take-charge.

  She tilted her head to the side. “Should I be somewhere else?”

  He shook his head. “No,” he said, his voice cracking. “Top’s good.”

  She stared at him, then she straightened. “You are nervous,” she said.

  He groaned and scrubbed his face with one hand. Jesus God, Max, who’s the fucking virgin? “It’s just ... been a while for me, Ana. I don’t know how to do this with you.” He looked up at her. “I mean, we’ve spent most of our time laughing and talking about condoms. It just feels ... a little unromantic ... or something.” As soon as he heard himself, he wanted to kick his own ass.

  Anahita frowned. “I liked the laughing.”

  “I ... actually, I did, too,” he muttered.

  Her lips scrunched over to one side, and she propped her weight up with her hands on his hip bones. “Romance,” she said, seemingly to herself. Her shoulders and wings drooped. “I do not know romance.” She looked dejected; his heart cracked a bit. “I am not good at this either, am I?”

  He jerked himself upright and wrapped his arms around her, crushing her chest against his and pressing her he
ad into the space between his shoulder and neck. “Stop that,” he said, more to himself than her. “You’re good at this. You’re really good at this,” he said while thrusting his still aching cock into her firm belly. “It’s me who’s not doing good right now.”

  He pulled back from her slightly, and she met his eyes with those big blues he was learning to love so much. “I mean ... look at me, Ana.” He gave her a little shake when her brows drew down in obvious confusion. “Look at my face. My looks. And look at yours! You fucking take my breath away every time I glance at you! I just ... ” He broke off with a curse and stared over her shoulder at the wall. “Why would you even do this with me?”

  Her cool fingers pressed into his cheeks, and she drew his face around until he was forced to look at her once more. “You never speak about yourself this way again, Max. And I mean never.” Despite her words and her tone, her thumbs stroked his jawline. “It makes me angry, and I do not like to feel that emotion.” She gave his head the same shake that he’d given her when he spoke moments ago. “I look at you and my entire body aches with wanting you. Did you know that?” She shifted in his lap, and he could feel the wetness between her thighs. “I grow drenched with needing you here.” She shifted again, and Max gulped as his fingers dug into the fine muscles of her back. “I long to know how you feel inside of me more than I long for my next gulp of air.” She leaned down until her words brushed against his lips as she spoke. “I want to taste you. Everywhere. To wind my fingers through your hair and pull your face between my breast. My thighs.” Her lips parted, and she seemed lost as she gazed at his lips with her brow furrowed, her eyes desperate.

  Max’s arms began to shake. “On second thought,” Max rasped in a hoarse voice, “you do the romance thing pretty damn well.”

  Her eyes rose to his. “I do?”

  “God, yeah,” he breathed. He wound one arm up between her wings until he could palm the back of her head, and then he pressed her down until he could claim her mouth with his. He slid his tongue into her mouth, and she moaned around it and kissed him back with all of the exuberance with which she approached everything in the bedroom. It took mere moments to get him back to the point of being breathless and desperate for her, and if the harried breathing he could hear and feel from her were any indication, she was right there with him.