Page 86 of Too Cursed To Kiss
“You do? Great, what are they?” He raised the glass to his lips. I wondered if he tasted the same thing I did.
“First, safe-sex, and that is non-negotiable—and the glasses come off.”
“Not yet. Tell me your other rules, first.” The rolledRtremored deep inside me as he sat on the edge of the bed and took a sip of wine. The angles of his face. His long neck, inky hair, and dexterous fingers. There was an elegance about him that I’d never seen in anyone else. He finished the wine and scooted back to the headboard, propping himself up on the pillows. The bed frame was elaborately carved with beasts that were a cross between a gargoyle and a lion.
Patience was a virtue I didn’t have, but he was waiting formy rules. My heart pounded. What exactly were my questions? That was the problem. I wasn’t about to have sex with a human, and maybe I wasn’t even human. Wald’s eyes followed me as I paced the room, deciding what level of insanity I was entering.
“If we—” I nodded at the bed, “Then will it hurt you? I meanyoucan’t die ormeagain, and you’re still cursed, right?”
He tipped the sunglasses down and glowing gold gave the answer. “But what about the touching part? Won’t it escalate if we do stuff?” My chest was as tight as a new wire on a guitar. It was hard to breathe with the drop-dead sexy bastard lying on the burgundy coverlet with his muscled chest gleaming at me. All I could think of was sex, and I needed to have his answer first. The leather pants hugged his lean stomach like some vampire rock star. Smooth and waxy skin beckoning in its paleness.
“You’ve changed. I don’t know why, but I’m not questioning whatever Agatha has done or who you are, but you are different somehow. When we kiss now, I feel no drain, so I’m certain that when we fuck I will not die. But I don’t really care. It will be worth it.”
I inhaled and stopped pacing at the foot of the bed.
He patted the mattress, beckoning.
“But you could still be hurt by us being together?”
“No. I don’t think so, and as I said, that is my risk to manage, not yours.”
“Uh, no. That is our choice together, or this is not happening.” I waved my hand as if drawing a line between us.
“If there are any issues, I will tell you. You can have anything and any way you like.” His voice was low and plush as the rub of a cat. He smiled with wide tight lips, the sunglasses obscuring his real expression.
“First, the sunglasses come off.”
“Fine,” he said, removing the mirrored shades with a fluid sweep of his hand. He folded them and set them on the antique night table beside him. “There. Now, come over here.” He patted the pillow.
I swallowed. “First, show me your true form.”
He sat up. “No.” His yellow eyes narrowed. That commanding essence of him turned the massive room into a closet. His cologne or musk scented the air with leather and cloves.
I leaned against the bedpost. “I can use the door anytime.”
He made a sound. I guess you could call it a growl, but it turned my insides to jelly.
This was going well. He plucked the sunglasses off the night table, putting them back on with a calculated slowness.
It was my turn to growl. “Goddamn it. I said I want those off.”
“All deals are off. I do not agree to your last term.”
“Really? You’re going to be prudish?”
“My true form is daunting even to those of our kind. In my true form, we could not make love. It would not be physically possible.”
“What?” I yelled, not even able to fully wrap my head around what he was saying.
“I am large, giant-like you would say, in my true form. I would be physically incapable with your natural smallness, your humanness.” The S’s extended in their hiss of an accent. The effect heated parts of me that didn’t make my thinking clearer.
“Oh,” I replied, my eyes widening. Somehow him being impossibly big was sexier than anything a man had ever saidto me. It terrified and disgusted me equal parts and enticed me to explore it further. I’m unhinged. What can I say?
“You know what you said makes no sense. If you can’t show me your true form, then we couldn’t do the deed in the first place, right? Or can you have sex in your altered form? And now that I’m not human, if that’s true, then don’t things change anyways?”
“What did you think? That it worked like the movies? That I would turn into some creature when I climaxed or something?”
“Well, actually…”
