Chapter 206: Don’t Look Down**

Jack looked at her for a long moment.

Then he stood. His chair scraped back on the tile. He kept her fingers in the towel and drew her up with him.

With his free hand he slid Ivy’s card between the pages of the notebook and shut it. He dropped the notebook in the drawer beside the sink and pushed the drawer closed with his hip.

He walked her to the back door and opened it.

Cold rolled in over her bare feet. The yard lay dark and silver with frost. In the middle of it stood the big tree, black and bare against the sky.

The air nipped at her legs. Blair hugged her arms.

Jack’s eyes went down to her bare knees. Then he bent, hooked an arm behind them and lifted her against his chest.

"Hold on."

She wound her arms around his neck.

Black wings swept open behind him. He took two steps across the frost, and the ground fell away.

Wind tore her hair back. Her stomach lurched. She pressed her face into his collar while his wings beat once, twice, three times and carried them up into the branches.

He set her down on a broad limb close to the trunk. The bark was rough and cold under her thighs. Far below, the kitchen light made a pale patch on the frost.

His wings folded and vanished.

He sat with his back to the trunk, took her by the waist and pulled her into his lap.

She landed astride his thighs. The T-shirt rode up to her hips. Under it she was bare, and the cold found her skin. Her face burned.

Jack’s hands settled on her hips. Then he leaned in and put his face in the curve of her neck.

He stayed there.

His breath went in and out against her throat. His shoulders were rigid under her hands. His wrapped hand pressed flat at the small of her back and held her against him.

Blair’s heart pounded.

She put her fingers in his hair. It was cool and soft. She stroked it back from his temple. Then again.

His breath shook on the way out.

She kept stroking.

After a long time, he lifted his head. His crimson eyes were nearly black. They dropped to her mouth.

Blair leaned in and kissed him.

His lips stayed still under hers for one beat. Then they parted. His breath caught, and he kissed her back, his mouth opening against hers, his tongue sliding over her lower lip and then inside. He tasted of whiskey. His hand came up into her hair and tipped her head where he wanted it, and he kissed her harder, until a small sound broke out of her throat.

He swallowed it.

His hand slid under the hem of the T-shirt. His palm was hot on her bare thigh. It moved up over her hip, along her waist, over her ribs, and closed over her breast. His thumb dragged across her nipple.

Blair gasped into his mouth. Her hips rocked forward on their own.

Jack pulled back an inch, breathing hard. He shook the towel loose from his other hand. It slid off his fingers and dropped away into the dark.

The cuts in his palm had closed to thin pink lines.

She took his hand in both of hers and pressed her lips to the middle of it.

His fingers curled against her cheek.

Then that hand went down between her legs.

She was already wet. He found it out with one slow drag of his fingers, and a low sound left his chest. He circled her clit, light, then firmer. Her thighs shook around his. She grabbed his shoulders.

"Professor..."

"Look at me."

She looked. He watched her face while he pushed one finger inside her, then two. He curled them. Her mouth fell open. He kept his eyes on hers and moved his thumb over her clit, and every stroke pulled a whimper out of her.

Her hands slid down his chest to his belt. They shook on the buckle. She looked up at him through her lashes.

"Can I?" she whispered.

His jaw worked. He nodded once.

She fumbled the belt open, then the button and the zipper. He lifted his hips off the branch and shoved his trousers down. His cock sprang free, thick and hard, and she wrapped her fingers around it. He hissed through his teeth.

"I have nothing with me," he said against her mouth. "I’ll pull out."

"Yes, Professor."

He drew his fingers out of her. Both hands took her hips and lifted her. She held on to his shoulders, and he guided her down onto him.

The stretch stopped her breath. She sank lower, an inch at a time, until he was all the way inside her. Jack’s head fell back against the trunk. His throat moved. A rough groan came out of him.

She held there, shaking.

His hands stayed on her hips, and they trembled. He let her set the pace.

She rocked once. He made a broken sound. She did it again, and his forehead dropped onto her collarbone.

"Don’t stop," he said into her skin.

She rose and sank. Slowly at first. Then faster, her knees braced on the bark, his breath hot and uneven against her chest. He pushed the T-shirt up and took her nipple in his mouth. He sucked, and she cried out into the dark.

His thumb found her clit again.

She looked down at him. His eyes held hers, dark and desperate.

The heat coiled tight in her belly. His thumb circled. She came apart on him with a sharp cry, clenching around him, her nails in his shoulders.

Jack’s control went. He gripped her hips and drove up into her, hard and fast, and the branch shook under them. Frost shook loose from the twigs and fell. His breath tore out of him against her neck.

At the last second he lifted her off him. He came against her bare thigh with a raw sound into her shoulder, his arms locked around her.

They stayed that way a long time.

His face stayed in her hair. His heart thudded under her palm and slowly calmed. Blair rested her cheek on his shoulder. Out past the rooftops, the edge of the sky began to gray.

Jack lifted his head.

He wiped her thigh clean with the hem of his shirt and tugged the T-shirt down over her hips. He fastened his trousers. Then he gathered her up and stepped off the branch.

The wings caught them halfway down. He landed on the frost at the foot of the back step and set her on her feet.

He held her face in one hand, his thumb along her jaw, and looked at her.

Then he let go and stepped back. His wings opened. Three beats carried him up over the roof, and he was gone into the gray.

Blair stood on the step with her arms around herself.

The towel lay in the frost under the tree. She went and picked it up.

In the kitchen she rinsed it at the sink until the water ran clear, wrung it out and hung it back on the oven door. She swept the glass off the table into her palm, found the shard on the floor and dropped them all in the bin. She wiped the whiskey off the table. Then she drank the rest of her water.

She opened her door.

Daemus lay curled around her pillow. When she slid in beside him, he let go of it and pulled her back against his chest.

"Where’d you go?" he mumbled.

"Water."

He hummed into her hair. His arm settled heavy across her ribs, and his breathing slowed again.