Velvet Haven

like this form of interrogation,” he said before he caught her nipple between his teeth. Carefully he bit down, just enough to arouse, not hurt.
    “You haven’t asked me many questions.”
    His palm skimmed down her belly, and she felt the heat of it burning her skin. “I don’t need to ask questions. I’m being given all the answers by your body.”
    She shivered, turned on by his words and by the path his hand was taking. “No questions? Are you sure you don’t want to know something?”
    He glanced up and smiled wickedly as his hand crept lower and lower. “Maybe one.”
    “And that is?”
    “Are you wet for me, Mairi?”
    Persistent. She’d give him that. “Why don’t you see for yourself?”
    His hand slid slowly down, the heel of his palm fitting over the mound of her sex, his fingers slowly parting her folds. “Slick. Hot. Wet.”
    Her lashes fluttered closed as he delicately touched her, tracing her folds. She tried to concentrate, to learn what she could, to try to make sense of something incomprehensible. “So are you and Cailleach . . . you know . . . together?”
    He smiled while his finger continued to play. “No. Not in that way. My turn.” Slowly he circled her clitoris with his thumb. “Do you want my mouth on you here, Mairi?”
    Her hips arched up, meeting his stroking finger. She’d love nothing more, but if she allowed him that, she’d never have this conversation with him. “Tell me about Cailleach.”
    “First tell me you want my tongue on your pussy.”
    “Yes,” she said on a husky sigh. “God, yes.”
    Leaning down, he spread her folds and covered her sex with one slow swipe of his tongue. “She is a goddess. Her element is air. She commands the winds and the Summerlands.”
    “Is she beautiful?”
    He rubbed his cheek against her inner thigh. “Not like you. No one compares to you.”
    She melted. Truly turned into a puddle at those words. “And you’re her . . . what?”
    “Consort.”
    “Do you love her?”
    He looked up at her, holding her gaze. “I do not.”
    She nodded, relieved, and ran her hands over his shoulders. “The sword on your back? It’s an amazing tattoo.”
    He lowered his head, then placed a kiss on her core. “That is not a tattoo.”
    “What is it, then?”
    “It is a brand.”
    Mairi gasped. “Who branded you?”
    “I offered Cailleach a sacrifice so that my uncle could abdicate his throne and be with the mortal woman he loved. The sword is the emblem of her curse upon me.”
    “Oh, no! That’s terrible. What kind of curse?”
    “Mmm,” he mumbled. “You taste so sweet, Mairi, you don’t know how sweet. I need more of you on my tongue.”
    She pulled his hair as he tried to go down again. “Bran! Tell me.”
    He groaned. “A mortal-needing curse.”
    Suddenly Mairi’s stomach fell to her feet and she wanted to press her thighs together, but Bran’s massive shoulders prevented that. “As in you need mortals how?”
    He closed his eyes as if not wanting to look at her. “I need the sex of mortal women so that I can exchange their pleasure with energy to make magic.”
    Her thighs tried to clamp shut, but his palms stopped her. “Open.”
    “Why? So I can be your personal lightning rod?”
    He glared at her. “So I can pleasure you as you desire.”
    “So that’s what it was all about, then? You needed me the other night to get off so you could strengthen your powers?”
    “Mairi,” he whispered, “it wasn’t like that.”
    “Really? You mean you saw me and it was love at first sight? Or was I looking desperate enough that you thought I’d just fall at your feet?”
    “You don’t understand—”
    “I do,” she said, shoving him away from her. “Your mortal-needing curse was calling and you saw me, so you decided I’d do. Then you got what you needed and you performed some damn magic spell on me that made me forget nearly everything and then you walked away.”
    She expected to hear him deny her words. But he didn’t. His silence told her everything she needed to know.
    “And that’s what’s happening now, isn’t it? That’s why those . . . things on your body move when I touch you. I’m right, aren’t I?”
    “No.”
    “So you’re not getting any energy from this . . . exchange?”
    “I am not thinking about magic, Mairi. I’m thinking of you, and getting inside you.”
    “You’re using me.”
    “Perhaps in the beginning I sought to. But I didn’t—”
    She snorted and shrugged into