“Hmm,” I heard. “Kavin, join her.”
The lightning through the porthole illuminated Kavin as he rose from the floor and stood at the side of the bed. “May I join you, Omega?” he asked, his voice strangely formal.
There was something I wasn’t getting. “Why are you asking like that?” He didn’t answer, and the lightning exposed a strange vulnerability in his gaze for a split second.
“I told him you had made a nest two weeks ago,” Thorn said softly.
“A what?”
“A nest.” Kavin cleared his throat. “It’s not… It’s not one now. But I can’t. No Alpha with any honor would enter a place where… Well.”
“Oh, for the Goddess’s sake, get in,” I commanded, as I watched him pitch and sway above me. I pulled the covers open, and he joined me. Our bodies together were the perfect pieces to fit the wooden rectangle of the bunk. Like puzzle pieces finding their place at last.
I let out a grunt as I felt one of Kavin’s puzzle pieces growing slightly longer against my stomach.
“Sorry,” he murmured. “I can’t help it.” His erection rubbed slightly above my core, and it felt good. Too good. My stomach clenched, and the place that had been aching the days before began to tighten again, as if preparing to launch… something.
To my great mortification, I whimpered. Kavin sniffed audibly, and I knew why. The cabin smelled like ozone and seawater, orange blossoms, apples, and green growing things.
It was my turn to apologize. “Sorry, I can’t help it either.”
“I don’t want you to,” Kavin rumbled. “It’s more than I ever dreamed—”
Thorn groaned. “Will the two of you go to sleep? No one needs to stand watch tonight with this storm.”
“Is the storm dangerous?”
“Not as dangerous as you, little queen,” Thorn said with a low snarl. I heard him rustling in the hammock, and then the creaking of the ship and the battering of the wind and waves covered every sound.
“What about your things?” I whispered in Kavin’s ear. “The lamp, the books?”
“I put the breakables in my chest.” His breath on my hair sent a sharp jolt of pleasure through me. “Locked away, they’ll be fine.”
We both waited a moment, breathing together, feeling one another. His erection continued to lengthen, and finally I couldn’t help myself. The coiling in my belly was almost painful, and the sensation of slick moisture seeping from my folds made it impossible to keep my thighs from rubbing together. The air was thick with my scent.
If Thorn hadn’t been snoring already, I wouldn’t have dared what I did next. I knew it was wrong to take advantage of Kavin, when Thorn was the one I had always wanted, but… “I can’t get comfortable. Is it fine if I move?”
“Please,” he whispered back.
I gathered my wicked courage. Thorn was just across the room, and even if he was sleeping now, he could wake up at any moment.
But he had rejected me. And Kavin was strong, handsome, intelligent, andthere, and the darkness made me bold in ways I had never been before.
I pushed my skirt away from my legs and let the heat between my thighs meet his leg. He still wore his trousers, of course, but I could feel the flexing of the muscle beneath as he realized what I had done. My thin underclothes were already damp through, but I didn’t care. I needed this.
The room swayed, and I did, too, rubbing my heat over the top of his leg, letting the friction and the pressure there begin to build to something tantalizing, and just out of reach.
I’d touched myself before, under the covers, back at the Guild. Thinking about Thorn, wishing it were his hand instead of mine, I’d felt something pleasurable, but it always faded. I could never reach whatever goal my body promised lay within reach. I’d never felt even the slightest hint of this desire for any other man besides Thorn.
But now, with Kavin’s heated breath in my hair, and my folds rubbing back and forth on his leg, the wetness there making the cloth slick enough that I could glide… Oh, Goddess. I wanted him more than my next breath, and I’d left evidence of that all over the fabric of his trousers.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, trying to pull away. But I couldn’t. His hands were on my shoulders, his other leg moving around my hip to trap me there.
“Sorry for what?”
“I… I made your trousers wet.”
“Yes.” He growled the word into my ear at the very moment he ground his thigh into my mound. “Do not stop,kralovna. I want to be soaked with you. I want to feel your slick cover my skin. Keep. Going.” His voice was a demand, almost a barked order, and I found myself obeying.
