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He trailed his index finger over the Freya tat. Goosebumps rose under his touch, roughening her soft skin. “They’d say that for the same reason the meaning of the word got twisted up in the first place. A lot of men don’t like women who can fight their own battles. It means they’re not necessary.”
Her head tilted subtly to the side as she regarded him. “Yeah, that’s it. You’re an interesting specimen, Zaxxon.”
Smiling, he picked up a dark tress and let it rest in his hand. Silky and cool. “You mean I’m not like other boys?”
“Not so far.”
“Do you like that?”
“A lot, actually.”
Zaxx’s desire for this complicated, captivating woman had been a steady thump low in his gut for most of the night. Even their earlier argument hadn’t eased the ache. Now, with her in his hands, her body against his, standing beside her prettily made bed, desire became need.
He dropped her hair, skimmed his hands along her gorgeous bare arms, continuing down to clasp her hips and draw her closer. “What else do you like?” he asked in a breath as he lowered his mouth to hover above hers.
She backed off a millimeter, just enough to maintain that hovering distance, to take control of it. At the same time, her arms came up to loop over his neck and her hands pushed into his hair, her fingers weaving through the long strands until he felt her nails on his scalp. They weren’t long, but they were enough that his eyes rolled up at their sensual scratch.
“Are you asking in a general sense? You want to know my favorite ice cream flavor?” Her voice was husky and low; her breath a whispering flutter over his lips and cheek. “Or do you have something specific in mind?”
Powerful but playful. Combative but compassionate. Strong but soft. What kind of man was a match for her? Was he that kind of man?
An impulse struck Zaxx, and he chased it. “We can talk ice cream later,” he said, putting something like a growl in his voice, and forcefully claimed her mouth with his.
The intuition that had propelled his impulse had been correct; Gia responded to his taking control not by attempting to take it back, or by giving over to him. Instead, and at once, she matched him.
He leaned over her; she curved her body to fit with his. He closed his arms tightly around her sleek waist; she hooked a leg around one of his. He grabbed handfuls of her skimpy top; she closed her fingers in his hair and pulled. He covered her mouth with his own; she thrust her tongue to tangle with his. At every point her intensity met his own, and soon he had no understanding of who led whom—and it didn’t matter.
No dominance. No submission. They were equals.
Already, still dressed, Zaxx was having a top-ten sexual experience. And that was saying something; he’d been fucking regularly since he was sixteen years old.
She released her grip on his hair, dropped her hands to his chest, and pushed his kutte from his shoulders. Rather than let it drop, she kept hold of it. Keeping his claim of her mouth, Zaxx unwound his arms from her and let them fall to his sides. She drew the kutte from his arms, then tipped her head back, finally breaking the passionate seal of their mouths, and turned her head. Zaxx turned with her and watched her aim and toss the kutte to that puffy armchair. It landed gently and completely on the seat of the chair. It did not touch the floor.
Isaac Lunden’s daughter understood how to treat that leather, the respect it demanded.
She turned back to him, her ethereal eyes sparkling with lust. Her hands came to his chest; he felt her fingers curl into the neckline of his t-shirt. The sensation of her fingers, and their not-too-short nails, playing through the hair on his chest drove his teeth down into his bottom lip.
Zaxx’s father was a hundred-percent Italian—specifically Sicilian. His grandfather had been born in a little farming village in Sicily, he’d emigrated to the States and landed in St. Louis, where several cousins and other kith and kin had made a home in the neighborhood called The Hill, and he’d married a woman whose parents had come over from Sicily right after their wedding. Pop was Sicilian through and through, and he looked it—like a young Al Pacino, but a stoner nerd instead of a hotheaded badass.
That was Pop. Mom was very much not Sicilian, but Zaxx had gotten mostly paternal physical traits.
He was hairy, in other words. Not like a Sasquatch, but definitely not the sleek hairlessness that seemed to be constantly in style, the perpetual gold standard for male attractiveness: a chest like a middle-schooler. He’d done the waxing thing once, and would never do it again. He’d shaved for a while, but that was itchy and took way more maintenance than he could tolerate. These days he was au naturel, and had no further plans to be otherwise.
No matter how much effort he put into building muscle, staying fit, no matter how many cans showed in his abs or how cut his pecs were, women were disappointed by his not-bare-enough chest. Some were entirely put off.
And here Gia stood, playing with his chest hair as if she liked it.
“I have been thinking about your chest pretty much since we walked into No Place together.” Her voice was like a purr—no, it was deeper, throatier than that. Like the low rumble of a good engine.
“You have?” He’d known she was into him since she’d kissed him at the bar, but the notion that she’d been horny for him even longer, sitting over there with her vapid friends imagining what he looked like under his clothes? And that she was specifically into the thing that most women he’d been with had to overlook to find him appealing?
That was a magic powerful enough to change a man.
She plucked at the neck of his shirt. “I want this off.”
Grinning like an idiot, Zaxx reached back, grabbed hold of the cotton, and yanked it off. He sent it sailing in the direction of his kutte, not caring where it landed.
Her hands were on his chest again before the shirt left his grasp. “Even better than I imagined.” She swept her palms slowly over his pecs as if reading his club ink by touch: H-O-R-D-E in runic lettering across the widest part of his chest. Continuing her exploration, she sent her hands up to his neck, then over his shoulders, down his arms, and in to rub his belly.
