Page 22 of Phantom’s Mate

Maybe all he could do was be here.

He dipped his head, kissing the tears away. “Sshh,” he said again. “You’re not alone. I’m right here. I’ll stay with you.”

Her eyes flew open and she raised her face, her gaze meeting his. He saw the awareness of who he was and where they were flash into her face, but she didn’t pull away. “You’ll stay for a while?”

She looked so soft, so vulnerable, something broke inside Nick. None of this was fair. Fucking death wasn’t fair, and he was tired of it. Tired of seeing her in pain. Tired of being dead, of being on the outside looking in, of pretending he had a life.

“I’ll stay as long as you want.”

She wrapped her arms around his neck, and his lips crashed into hers.

Chapter 11

A wild hunger rose up in Nick, as if the loneliness he’d felt for so long had become a creature of its own, desperately craving warmth and affection.

He felt the same thing in her as she pressed against him—pain and anger and frustration battling with her innate sweetness.

He kissed her deeply, as if he could pull some of that pain into himself, keep it from twisting her beyond repair.

His hand had slipped under the blanket, his palm sliding from her waist to the curve of her hip. She was warm and alive in his arms, and he wanted to drown himself in her.

Brittany shoved the blanket aside, wrapping herself around him, her hands up underneath his shirt.

He could make it disappear with a thought, but he let her pull it over his head for the sheer pleasure of being undressed by a woman.

It had been so long, and he’d thought he’d never feel that again.

Never feel any of this again.

She pulled him even closer, winding one arm around his neck while the other splayed across his back. At the touch of her bare belly to his, skin to skin, she let out a groan.

His panther responded with the tiniest of growls.

He raked his hand through her hair, concentrating on drying it as he went, so it tangled in his fingers like silk threads.

The whole time his mouth was on hers, exploring her with his tongue, drinking her in with deep kisses.

His dick was hard and tight, pressing against his jeans. He wanted her naked, to cup her breasts and suck her nipples, feeling her moan, but the vision of that sexy-as-fuck bra had been tantalizing him since the first time he saw it.

She straddled his lap and he gently grabbed the hair at the nape of her neck, arching her head back while he trailed hot kisses down her throat, giving her a tiny bite right where the pulse beat.

So strange to still have a pulse, to still have blood pounding through their veins. Life.

Brittany gasped and moaned. It all felt so real, like still being alive. The taste of her, the scent—there was no way anything he invented in the spirit world could ever come close.

Even heaven couldn’t hold anything more amazing than this.

He dropped tiny kisses on her chest, the tops of her breasts, dipped his tongue in her cleavage. He could see her taut nipples through the sheer lace panels in the cups of her bra, and he teased them with his tongue—first one, then the other.

He sucked each one into his mouth, knowing his tongue against the fabric was making it more sensual for her.

Still supporting her with one hand, he unlaced the bra with the other, licking and kissing each half-inch of skin as it was revealed. When it was undone and she’d shrugged it off, he tongue-kissed each nipple again before pulling her against him, reveling in the feel of her naked skin on his, her softness crushed against his chest.

“Mmm. Skin,” she murmured. Her lips moved across his shoulder and up the side of his neck. She found a sensitive place just below his ear that no one had ever found before, and circled it with her tongue. When he let out a soft moan, he felt her lips curve in a smile before she gave him a tiny love-bite right on the same spot.

His dick swelled even further, and he heard her soft, mischievous laughter as she moved her hips against him.

“I see the bad angel likes biting,” she said.