Immortal (Fallen Angels #6)(13)
Author: J.R. Ward

Pausing at the bottom of the stairs, she wondered what he was doing in that bedroom of his. The only way she was going to get an answer was by finding out for herself—and how embarrassing would it be to barge in on him changing his clothes … making his bed … folding his laundry.

Yeah, ’cause he had time to worry about those last two.

Besides, like they’d do anything other than rehash the convo they’d just had?

As she stayed where she was, an inner part of her pointed out that there were, in fact, other things they could do—things that were tied to that light in his eye. Hell, maybe it was time to lose her virginity. And assuming that was true … she could not think of a single man, living or dead, who she’d rather give it to than Jim.

“Shit,” she whispered.

Chapter Six

Jim was hard as he shut himself in his room.

And not as in hard-headed. Hard of hearing. Hard backed.

Slamming the door, he leaned back against the damn thing. Bam … bam … bam … The sound of his head hitting the wood was like the heartbeat in his cock.

As he looked down at his hips and measured the tent his erection had made in his sweatpants, he thought, Man, this was too fucking true about him. Back in his old life, when he’d been deep into black ops and working as an assassin overseas, this would happen to him. Keyed-up, going into crunch time, his blood would be running high, his aggression spiked—and he’d inevitably need to burn some of the energy off.

And not on a treadmill.

But FFS, you’d think with the way he’d spent the night with Devina, this wouldn’t be a problem.

Shutting his eyes, he cursed as another round of images assaulted him, pictures of him fucking that demon twelve different ways to Sunday all but blinding him. And then he saw Sissy … standing on that porch … staring up at him like …

Like maybe she knew he wanted her.

The very male-est part of him was totally prepared to test that theory out on the horizontal. Yeah … in spite of the fact that he needed to stay the fuck away from her, his conscience and his higher reasoning were more than ready to take a quick vacay just so his small head could get the job done.

Great. Good thinking, right there.

Abruptly, he remembered that picture he’d seen of her at her parents’ house, the one where she’d been on the sidelines of some game, her eyes narrowed, her body curled and tensed like she’d wanted to spring forward into the action. Her long blond hair had been pulled back, her face had been clear of makeup, and the other people in the background had been student athletes just like her.

She’d looked her age there.

Downstairs on that porch? That had been a woman. Not a girl.

Frankly, he wished the grown-up divide hadn’t been crossed—because retaining it would have been enough to keep him in check. He’d always been into full-on women; he liked sex hard and raw, and that required someone with backbone and passion. Some little chippie with strawberry lip gloss and Hello, Kitty sneakers really, totally wasn’t going to fucking do it for him.

He would really have preferred Sissy stay on that side of the line. Trouble was, courtesy of her trip into Hell, her eyes were now devoid of any semblance of youth, her soul having aged in Devina’s wall, tempered into steel by the torture and the pain. She was no longer that field hockey player with her friends, hyped up on a game played on high school grounds.

She was a woman.

And this was a problem.

Damn it, he’d had such good intentions. Ever since he’d found her bled out in that bathroom, his only goal had been to get her safe—and he’d checked that off his bucket list by making that potentially devastating bargain with Devina. Except what exactly had it gotten Sissy? Out of the demon’s wall, sure. But now, all she had was a job combing through an impossible book, looking for a way to get him to and from Purgatory.

Meanwhile, he was upstairs with an issue that, all things considered, he was going to have to cure with his left hand.

“Goddamn it,” he breathed.

Shifting his eyes over to the messy bed, he remembered Devina lying on it, clothing herself in Sissy’s flesh, hitting him up for sex. That had been his fault. He should have put up multiple protection spells back when they’d moved in.

Then again, if the demon had been able to make it through one, maybe the whole more-is-better thing wouldn’t have worked, either.

Shit, how had she pulled that infiltration off? he wondered.

Sliding down until his ass met the floor, Jim propped his elbows on his knees and thought about the many and varied ways a guy could get himself into trouble when he thought with his little head instead of his big one.

And what do you know, the stretch of the sweatpants across his hard-on made him roll his hips—and not because the shit hurt.

I guess I don’t expect you to enjoy it, how ’bout that. Or are you going to tell me men can get it up even though they’re disgusted by someone? Didn’t think the anatomy worked like that—then again, I’m a virgin, right. So what do I know.

“Fuck me…”

And that was the problem, wasn’t it. Sissy was right: Men couldn’t get it up if they weren’t into the sex. Unfortunately for him, he didn’t necessarily have to like what was happening to get aroused—it was kind of like stabbing your enemy. You were juiced going into the deed, and satisfied when it was over. But that wasn’t the same as “enjoying” something.

Somehow, he doubted these subtleties were the kind of thing Sissy needed to hear about. And he was equally certain that his cock didn’t give two shits about them.

It knew what it wanted.

He shifted around again, that rasp across his dumb-handle making him grit his teeth and hiss. And for a split second, he couldn’t help but go back to that moment when Sissy had been begging him to kiss her—

All it took to reel shit back in was remembering that it hadn’t actually been her.

Annnnd all it took to crank things up again was remembering how she had looked at him down on that front porch.

Another hip roll to relieve pressure just ramped him even more. And before he knew it, instead of heading downstairs and seeing what he could do to help with that forty-pound book, his palm was in fact getting into the swing of things.

Or the stroke, as it were.

What the hell else could he do? The damn erection showed no interest in deflating—and even if he did a tuck-up, he had Jon Hamm proportions, so it wasn’t like that was a good enough camo job.