It took Asher several minutes before he headed back into the house. Naomi met him with a relieved gasp when he opened the bedroom door and told her everything was okay.
“What happened?” she asked, seeking the shelter of his arms. “Was it . . . was someone outside?”
“It was nothing.” He pressed a kiss to the top of her sleek black hair, hating himself for how easily the lie slipped off his tongue. “Probably just a coyote nosing around where it doesn’t belong. Don’t worry. If it comes back, I’ll deal with it.”
CHAPTER 15
He had insisted that everything was fine, but for the rest of the night Asher seemed distant, his attention remote. Naomi couldn’t penetrate the shadows that shuttered his handsome, troubled face. Nor did he allow her to.
He deflected all of her questions and allayed her fears with reassurances that he would let nothing—and no one—ever get close enough to do her harm. He didn’t have to say the words for her to know that Slater and the dangerous men who served him were foremost on his mind. Asher’s concern was broadcast in his grim silence, and in the soldier-like way he prowled the house, an air of coiled readiness rolling off him in waves.
It was only when he took her to bed a few hours later that she felt him return to her completely. Naked beneath him as he brought them both to a staggering release, she had watched his dark blue eyes burn with desire for her and hisglyphsdance with color on his gleaming skin. Feeling him move inside her, his powerful strokes obliterating everything except pleasure, there had been no room for doubts or worries about Slater and whatever might wait for her outside the shelter of Asher’s arms.
He woke her in similar fashion that next morning.
With sleep still clinging to her and her body lax from a blissful exhaustion, Naomi moaned as she felt Asher’s mouth kissing a warm path over her belly and then down onto her hip. His breath fanned hot against her sex as he nipped and teased her mound.
When his tongue cleaved into her seam and found her clit, she arched up on a hissed gasp of sensation. She opened her lazy lids, catching her bottom lip with her teeth as he began to kiss and suckle her in earnest.
“Asher,” she whispered, already panting, melting for him all over again. “Wait. Let me clean up before you—”
“Lie back.” His gaze smoldered as he glanced up at her. With one big hand splayed across her stomach, he used the other to hold her in place beneath his mouth. “I want you just like this. I like tasting myself on you and knowing this is all mine to enjoy.”
He dipped his head back down to her as he spoke, lapping at her with unabashed carnality as he held her gaze. He caught the tight bud of her clit between his teeth and flicked his tongue over it, dizzying swirls that had her practically clawing at the sheets.
“Oh, God,” she whispered, shuddering in response to every wicked stroke. “So good.”
He groaned a low rumble of approval, rewarding her with another long, shameless lick into the cleft of her body. Flames danced along her skin as she arched into him. Had she ever felt so wanton before? She knew the answer, because she had never wanted any man the way she burned for him.
Her thoughts scattered as he continued to torment her with his tongue. “You’re driving me mad, Asher.”
His low chuckle vibrated against her tender flesh, but he showed her no mercy. Her orgasm shimmered at the edges of her consciousness, just out of reach. And he knew it, dammit. He knew exactly how to play her body and he was proving to be a master of control.
“Oh, fuck . . . let me come,” she snarled at him, not caring how ravenous she sounded. It was too late to pretend she was anything less. When they were together like this, she had no defenses. She simply wanted him. Needed the pleasure only he was able to give her.
His fingers closed over her thighs and spread them wider, his hands as rough as his tongue was gentle.
She shivered as he pulled back and his warm breath washed over her.
“You’re so beautiful here,” he murmured, his voice an unearthly rasp. “Silky soft. Sweet and hot. Who needs food when I have you to feast on?”
Gone was the tentative teasing now, in its place pure hunger as he ate her alive, licking and sucking, sending pulsing waves of heat from her fingertips to her toes.
She moved her hips against his mouth with abandon, the ache in her belly spreading and growing, deepening into a need she couldn’t contain.
“Please, Asher,” she begged, catching his thick brown hair in her fists as shudders rippled through her core. She wanted to make it last, but the pleasure was as sharp as a knife now, and she was balanced precariously on the edge.
“You want to come, baby?” His low voice taunted her senses, his mouth still moving relentlessly over her inflamed flesh. His tongue dipped inside her and she groaned. “Come for me, Naomi. Give it to me now.”
She couldn’t hold back her release if she tried.
Her back bowed as he thrust two fingers deep into her body. The sudden invasion combined with the ecstasy of his clever tongue as he worked her clit in magical circles was more than she could withstand. Her climax built and swelled, until all she could do was cry out his name as she toppled from the precipice.
“Asher.”
Blood rushed to her head and light exploded behind her closed eyelids at the tremors rocked through her in an endless wave of release. Her bones were liquid, her limbs weightless. Her nerve endings had become electrified, her senses shimmering like tiny diamonds behind her closed eyelids as she held him tight against her with one hand, riding the crest of her orgasm to the very end.
It should have wiped her out, the intensity of how hard and how often he’d made her come since that first time they’d been naked together. But being with Asher did something wild to her. It had unleashed a craving that only seemed to deepen every moment she was with him.
