Read Online Hotter Than Hell by Kim Harrison, Martin H. Greenberg - Free Book Online Page A

have never been held in such a way. Never been touched so gently. It startles me.
    “You need to leave soon,” he rumbles. I try again to see his face. Nothing. I reach for where his jaw should be, but I find the mask instead. My fingers glide along a curving horn, wicked and cruel.
    “Why?” I ask, then forget my question as his large hands trail up my sides, beneath my shirt. I am surprised at the pleasure I feel; even more, when my own palms glide down his throat to his chest. There is cloth over his groin, but nothing else. So much skin.
    He swallows hard. “You do not want to become trapped here.”
    No, I do not. But that does not stop me from inching up his body, savoring his long lean muscles, touching him with my hands, gentle and curious. Curious about him, about myself.
    “What are you doing?” whispers the Minotaur hoarsely.
    “I don’t know,” I admit. “I don’t know about any of this. Except, I am here…and I want to know
you
.”
    “Then know me,” he murmurs. “Be the first to try.”
    I hesitate, listening to the echo of his words, his pain. Something comes over me—the darkness, a cocoon—and within it I find myself a stranger, as strange as this man who calls himself Minotaur.
    Magic,
I think.
Dreams and magic.
    I touch him. The pulse of his throat is quick, his hands raw and hot. When he turns us on our sides the sand is gritty and soft, climbing into my clothes, rubbing my skin. I am blind in the oubliette, but my fingers are not, and I find again his jaw, his lips, and press close enough to taste his breath, to taste him.
    I kiss the corner of his mouth. I capture his sigh with another kiss, this time on his bottom lip. The edge of the mask rubs against my cheek and brow; bone and hide protrude over the Minotaur’s nose. More wolf than bull, I imagine.
    I stroke the hollow of his throat with my finger. “Who did this to you?”
    His chest rumbles. “I am the child of a queen, but made out of wedlock and a bastard, still. To protect herself, my mother made a bargain with her lover to hide me away so that her husband, the king, would never know of her betrayal. It was done as she asked—the king was gone away to war. Though as such things happen, upon his return he discovered the truth. The king was a sorcerer, and my mother’s choice to deceive him…poorly conceived.”
    I try to make sense of such a story. “So you were alone, then? No one cared for you?”
    “I had a tutor, an old man who raised me. A nursemaid, too, though she was taken from me when I had no more practical use for her. A good woman. I learned not to miss her.”
    “And this?” I tug gently on a horn.
    “An act of power,” says the Minotaur grimly. “And fear.”
    He rolls me on my back before I ask another question. His mouth hovers over mine, hands cradling my face. He kisses me. It is a deeper kiss than what I gave him, and I am taken off guard by the slow heat of it, the pleasure. I am unfamiliar with intimacy, but my body responds as though born to it. I rise up against the Minotaur, clutching his back.
    He tugs on my nightshirt—we part long enough for him to drag it over my head—and then I have no time for fear or regret as he strokes my breasts, fingers sliding over my nipples, at first tentative, then with more confidence. I moan against his mouth, hooking my leg around his waist, rubbing against him. I am wet between my thighs, pleasure clenching in my gut like a delicious fist.
    The Minotaur overwhelms. I could not fight him off even if I wanted, and I do not. I have been alone too long, and this—no matter how strange—is an opportunity not to be lost. I might hide from the world, but I am a survivor—I take what I need, what I want, what I desire. Only, I have never desired this. Not until now.
    His loincloth strains hard between my thighs. I writhe, savoring the luscious friction of his erection stroking my own wet heat. I reach down to touch him. His skin is soft and hot, throbbing,