“To what?” Ved asked after too long a silence. He was laid out on a wheeled flat board, the control table hiding his upper body from view.
When she didn’t answer, he rolled out to look at her. His abs and pectorals tensed with the movement, showing her so much of his form he may as well have been topless. “You would leave me without the knowledge of what Nolan did?”
“I can’t finish,” she rasped.
His eye shields flashed, and she wondered if he was looking at her heart. Would it betray how she felt? She surreptitiously brought the novel up to shield her chest.
“In this book and in the one you used as a weapon, they mention thiskissingmany times. I do not understand it fully.”
She imagined he was looking at her expectantly. Did Xaal not kiss? She supposed if they indulged in casual encounters, they would have to keep their helmets on even during intimate moments, sincethey only showed their faces to their mates and closest friends. But was he purposely torturing her? Or did he not realize what he was asking?
“You are tense, Isobel Nott, and your heart is beating rapidly,” he purred.
“You’re teasing me for your own enjoyment,” she said with narrowed eyes.
He placed a fist over one heart. “I would never do that. I am an honorable Xaal, but I must know what Nolan did, and what this kissing is.”
“It’s improper,” she managed. “To discuss. With you.”
He sat up. “I do not understand all these rules. You can’t be touched or talk about intimacy, but you have to bind yourself to a male, and your males can’t even hunt well,” he grumbled. “Have you not been with anyone in such ways? What keeps you from doing so? Is it a matter of honor? Are you being monitored?”
Isobel frowned even as her face burned hot. It wasn’t that shecaredabout the rules, she broke plenty of them, but speaking about intimate things with a man—of this planet or any other—was beyond anything she’d ever done. It certainly didn’t help that, every time she read an SV book now, she was reminded that in three months she would be doing some of these activities with Richard. Though with far less passion.
“No one is watching us.” She swallowed hard and swore she saw Ved’s eye shields glow orange. “And I have not been with anyone intimately,” she responded, only because he deserved to have answers to his questions given the amount she asked. “There are no laws, exactly, it is more left to society to weigh and judge. If it was found that a gentlewoman had relations with a man she wasn’t wed to, she would be ostracized. It would ruin her reputation and her family’s. And not only is it taboo for a woman of my station, but I have never met a man that I would want to…”
“Kiss? Let them grab your waist and…” He prompted, gesturing to the novel.
Her gaze flicked to the book, then back up to him. A defeated sigh passed her lips. “Must I?”
“Vay. It would please me to know what Nolan does next.”
She cleared her throat and found where she’d left off.Ved’s gaze was intense, and she felt it on her like an invisible touch.
His hands wrapped around her waist to lift her up. Charlotte twined her arms around his neck and her legs around his torso.
His time away from her had only intensified his need for her.
“Take me,” she pleaded.
Isobel paused again, unable to go any further.
“And does he?” Ved asked in a low voice that had something fluttering deep in her core.
She nodded curtly. “And they lived happily ever after,” she rasped, closing the book with a snap.
He tilted his head slightly, and she was suddenly aware of her body—the stays that seemed tighter, her pebbled nipples, her shortened breaths, something hot coiling low in her stomach. Could he see all of that? Somehow sense it?
The sound that came from him was a growly, hungry thing—the depth of which sank straight to her core.
Something told her he could.
She squeezed her thighs together, willing her body to behave. To not betray her. But she was no longer in control of it. The charged silence between them was a catalyst of its own. She wanted to leave and move closer to him at the same time. Her gaze drifted down his dark mask, his thick throat. Down his defined body. Her lips parted with her shallow breaths before she realized what she wasdoing.
Blazes.Her eyes snapped to his mask again. For once, she was thankful she couldn’t see what expression he made beneath it.
“You surprise me every day, Isobel Nott,” he finally said, breaking whatever shared spell they’d been under. “Did you like this book?”
The intensity was still a living thing between them. “Yes,” she mustered. “This one used to be my favorite before the pirate novel.”
