She nearly choked on the thought. “Jak!”
“Tell me, star,” he murmured, “are you wet? I bet you are.”
How did he know? Probably her face revealed everything.
“You don’t have to show me anything,” he coaxed. “Watching your face would be enough.”
“I am not doing that,” she informed him, not crisply, but at least with some backbone to it.
“Have you ever?” he asked, his voice a sensual sound that went straight to the part he was talking about.
“What?” she nearly stammered in her shock.
“Touched yourself. Made yourself come. Parted the slick folds of your—”
She clapped her hands over her ears and squinched her eyes shut, feeling childish but also pushed past bearing. The worst part was, she couldn’t stay that way. After a few minutes of pretending to have her head in the sand—and a few more of wildly considering shifting into a bird and flying out the carriage window—she finally peeked at him. Maybe he’d be asleep. Didn’t men fall asleep after? If not from that, then the healing should have done it.
But no. He watched her, wicked mischief glinting in his eyes. “Still here.”
She dropped her hands. “I’m not discussing these things with you.”
He cocked his head, as if listening for something more than her words. “It’s nothing to be ashamed of.”
“I’m not.” She sounded entirely too defensive.
“You watched me come all over myself,” he pointed out, that wicked smile playing on his lips.
She pinned him with a furious glare. “You are enjoying teasing me.”
He grinned, putting his hands behind his head and kicking his long legs out. She tried very hard not to look between them. “Yes,” Jak said with satisfaction. “I am.”
She groaned and raked back her hair, then remembered she had it braided back for fighting. It was matted and wet with unmentionable substances. Wonderful. Her mother would have a fit to see her. “Why?” she demanded.
Jak quit playing around, sitting up and leaning his forearms on his knees, that sexual intensity in his expression again. “I want to be with you, Stella. If I can’t touch you, then I can at least talk to you.”
“I don’t understand.” Though maybe she did. She rubbed her thighs together, and he noted her movement, steepling his index fingers against his lips.
“If I could touch you, my star, I would tease you past endurance,” he said, his voice as caressing as if he’d touched her indeed. “I’d start seducing you with occasional touches. Nothing too intimate. All publicly polite. My hand on the small of your back. A brush of my fingers against yours as I handed you something. And you’d wonder if they were accidents, but they wouldn’t be. I’d go slow, so I wouldn’t frighten you. Just little caresses, until you began to look forward to the next one, began to yearn for the feel of my hand against yours. And when I kissed you for the first time…” His voice lured her in, painting pictures that seemed to hang in the air between them. Not pushing into her mind, but offered for her viewing, if she cared to look. In that image, Jak drew her into his arms, bending to brush her lips with his, sweet and tender. She found herself pressing her fingers to her lips, imagining they were his. Jak’s intense eyes focused entirely on her.
“When I took you to bed,” he continued, “I’d undress you as slowly as possible, kissing every fingertip of your beautiful skin. You think I’m teasing you now. This is nothing to how I’d torment you, caressing, touching, tasting until you couldn’t hold still. Until you were begging me to let you come. But I wouldn’t. Do you know why?”
“No.” Her whisper barely had any sound, but he knew.
“Ask me.”
“Why wouldn’t you?” she asked, feeling like she was dying to know.
He smiled slightly. “Ask it with all the words.”
Her face flamed, but she had to know. “Why wouldn’t you let me come?”
“Even if you begged me.”
“Even if I begged you.”
“Because, my shining star,” he said in a lower voice, “I’d make you wait, make us both wait, until I was inside you, fully immersed in you, touching you inside and out, so we could come together.”
A ragged groan sounded in her ears, and she realized it came from her own throat.
“But you can come now,” he crooned, a demon tempting her beyond rational thought. “Put your hand between your legs and climax for me. You know you want to. You need it. I can see it in your face.”
She did need it, because she also couldn’t do this. “I can’t.”
“You can. It won’t take much.”
“No.” To prove it, she uncoiled her legs, sitting up and smoothing the leather over her thighs, even that caress tingling. Her sex felt swollen to bursting, and she crossed her ankles firmly, pressing her thighs together. “I’m not going to touch myself while you’re watching, Jak.”
His gaze caressed her, as if he could see through her clothing. “All right. Then when you make yourself come tonight, you can imagine me watching you. Better, imagine that it’s my hands, my mouth on you.”
“I am not going to do that.” She couldn’t look at him, feeling scalded inside and out.
“Stella.” He waited for her to meet his gaze. When she did, he didn’t smile, his eyes sharp as a hawk’s. “Yes, you will.”
~ 7 ~
She didn’t do it. Though not because the thought wasn’t plaguing her.
By the time they reached the Cliffwalk Inn, it was well into the evening, and despite the desolate landscape and icy weather, the place was nearly full. Fortunately there were two rooms available—the expensive ones, which they could afford and which fit their cover story of being wealthy young nobles on a travel lark—so the girls shared one and the boys the other.
“I’m sorry you and Astar have to be apart tonight,” Stella told Zeph as they all settled in.
Zeph rolled her gorgeous eyes. “I can live without him for one night.”
Making a snorting sound of disbelief, Gen remarked, “That remains to be seen.”
“Ha-ha.” Zeph shifted, briefly becoming a small cat, then came back in cozy lounge pants and a draping shirt. “It wouldn’t have been fair to cram five of you into one room, even if I were thoughtless enough to make Lena endure Rhy’s company for that long.”
“I could handle it,” Lena replied, a bit terse. “You all shouldn’t have to walk on eggshells because of us.”
“Being considerate of you doesn’t mean we feel tense,” Stella reassured her, following Zeph’s example and shifting into sleeping clothes. She was frankly just as glad not to share a room with Jak, even with the others present. Though he would’ve been perfectly circumspect, she wouldn’t have been able to shake the excruciating awareness of him. She simply had no practice at this. Now that Jak had opened that door between them, his presence was like being near a lighthouse, the bright light of his attention flashing with distracting regularity, coloring everything with his personality.