Psy & Changelings 11 - Tangle of Need

been strong enough to handle her. Now, she was with a man who not only didn’t have a problem accepting her strength, but who was also strong enough to overpower her in every way that mattered to a changeling.
    Panic burned her gut like acid.
She
was the one who had always been in control, the one who could stop things before they went too far, before they pushed her too deep into painful emotional territory. “I changed my mind,” she said, her tumult a smoldering blaze inside her skin, swamping all rational thought. “We need to break it off.”
    Releasing her nape, Riaz began to stroke his hand through her hair again, slow and easy and unmistakably, unbearably possessive. “I can scent your panic.” A kiss on the mark he’d made when he’d bitten her. “Talk to me about it.”
    She couldn’t do it, couldn’t expose the naked, vulnerable girl inside the skin of the woman. However, when she went to turn her face away, he lifted his body off her. Another kind of panic stung her, the sense of loss devastating. But she was being turned onto her back before she could react, Riaz’s heat covering her once more as he brushed her hair out of her eyes with his free hand, his other one braced by her head.
    “I saw a cactus in the desert once,” he said, his voice low and deep and a hum over her skin. “Called Queen of the Night. It had this exquisite creamy flower, and the scent, it intoxicated my wolf. But it only opened at night—you had to be patient to see it.” Eyes of beaten gold. “I’m very patient.” Suckling her upper lip into his mouth in an unexpected kiss, he tore her T-shirt on one side with his claws and—holding her gaze—shaped his hand over her bare rib cage.
    Shivers raced over her frame. She tried to arch into him, sliding her hand around his body to push up his own tee so she could touch the hot, muscled skin of his back. “Please.”
    But he shook his head. “Sex is easy.” He rocked against her, the hot steel of his erection pushing against the slick, needy flesh between her thighs. “I breathe your scent and I’m ready.”
    “Then why are you doing this?” she whispered, one hand fisting against his chest. “Let’s keep it easy, as it was.” No demands, no expectations, no heartbreak. Because she’d been wrong—she wasn’t braveenough to chance more scars, more bruises. Not when this time around, she knew the agony would be so much worse.
    Her wolf had never adored Martin as it adored the black wolf with the golden eyes.
    Leaning down until his face was a bare inch away, his breath hot against her skin, Riaz said, “Because it’s too late for that, and you’re not the casual type. You never have been. Just like me.” Crushed rocks and broken glass in his voice.
    It was instinct to curve her hand over his nape, to pet him as he’d petted her. He let her touch him, let her claim skin privileges that were becoming ever more complicated. She’d thought she’d figured everything out in Venice, but tonight, what he’d done, it had touched the secret, idealistically hopeful part of her she’d allowed no one to reach for so long, it was a forgotten memory. The fact he’d already done so, when their relationship had hardly begun, it had her stomach in knots, her heart thumping against her ribs.
    And then there was his dominance.
    He spread his hand on her throat just then, curving it in a gentle hold. “What’re you thinking that’s got your wolf so wary?” he asked in a low murmur, rocking once against the molten heat of her.
    She twisted up in instinctive response, had the pleasure of hearing him hiss out a breath between clenched teeth. But though he stroked his hand down to lie possessively over her unfettered breast, he didn’t take the next step, the one that would’ve left them tangled and sweat soaked. “I got used to bending,” she admitted, fighting her pride to expose what a fool she’d been.
    “With Martin. I had to bend to make him happy.” It had taken place so slowly, she hadn’t understood the corrosive ugliness of what was happening. Small things, she’d thought, things that didn’t really matter—after all, the man had risked everything to save her life. Until she’d realized she’d begun to bury Adria to please Martin. “He was nowhere near as strong as you.”
    Riaz snorted. “You’ve been busting my balls since the instant we met—I sure as hell don’t think you’re suddenly going to flutter your lashes and simper at my