Orios brightens, reaching out a broad hand. “Come then, my love.”
Solena finally smiles as she steps away from me. “Very well.”
She touches my shoulder as she passes, a brief reassurance, before ducking beneath Orios’s arm. He holds the door open, impossibly gentle for a man his size, and she rises on her toes to kiss his cheek. He’s carved from granite, but I swear, he melts under her touch.
The door clicks shut.
Only Daed and I remain and the heat, thick and consuming, growing heavier with each breath that stretches between us.
I try to hold my focus. I really do.
I trace the sigils along the curve of his neck, the lines steady and precise, even as ink drips and mingles with the sweat slicking his skin. Still, his eyes never leave me, dark, smoldering, relentless. The kind of stare that strips me bare.
Where his thumb once brushed my thigh, now his whole hand slides over it. Slow. Firm. Circling. Drawing me closer.
He inhales, growls in his throat, rumbles in his chest. His lashes flutter at whatever he scents in me.
And then he guides me between his legs.
Even when he settles me on his thigh, I keep going, determined to finish what I started. Even as he fists the fabric of my gown, dragging it higher inch by inch, until it pools at my knee. My breath shudders. I gulp.
His hand slips beneath the fabric.
At last, skin meets skin.
And he pauses.
His eyes locked on mine, asking a question without words.
I say nothing.
Not because I can’t.
But because I don’t want to.
The needle slips from my hand, forgotten, as my arm drapes over his shoulder. He pulls me into him, his lips hovering at my neck, his breath warm, heady, before his mouth finally presses to my skin.
I exhale, eyes fluttering shut, and thread my fingers through his hair, dragging my nails gently against his scalp. Daed kisses me slowly, each press of his mouth soft and sure, his tongue tasting the sweat beading along my neck.
My chest rises sharply, breath catching when his hand travels higher along my inner thigh, slow, slow, until he finds the heat of me. I gasp, unable to stop it, hips twitching at the first teasing stroke of his fingers.
The sound I make, a soft whimper, pulls a growl from deep in his throat.
I fist his hair tighter when his kiss deepens, hungrier now, tongue sweeping against my neck as he presses a finger into me. My spine arches against him, a moan escaping, desperate and shameless.
His other arm anchors me, wrapped tight around my waist, holding me flush against him, denying me even the smallest escape as I squirm in his grip. His touch is possessive, his mouth relentless, and the way he groans my name against my skin sends shivers down to my bones. I feel it everywhere. In my veins, my nerves, every trembling inch of me.
Then he slides another finger inside, and I can’t help the way I grind against his palm, riding the pressure, the pace. I’m straddling his lap, gown rucked up around my hips, my breath ragged. His kisses trail down my neck, across my collarbone, lower, until his mouth finds my nipple through the thin fabric. His tongue laps at it, and when his teeth graze over me, a gasp bursts free from my lips.
His fingers work inside me, firm and coaxing, while his mouth toys with my breast, and the tension inside me coils tighter, higher. My hands tangle in his hair, gripping hard, pulling him closer. I roll my hips shamelessly, chasing the friction, the heat, the sweet ache.
The ship rocks beneath us, the floor groaning in rhythm with my gasps. I hear the ocean lapping at the hull, the creak of timber, everything outside us swallowed by the storm rising inside me. His fingers move with perfect purpose, his mouth devouring me, and then my body seizes, back arching as the wave crashes through me. I bite my lip, trying to muffle it, but the moan escapes anyway. Long, low, broken. My head falls back and I shake with the release, shivering against him, undone in his arms.
My hand falls back on the table, tipping the cup of ink, sending it spilling onto the floor.
“Oh no,” I gasp, stumbling back from him as the inkwell tips. Black ink blooms across the floor, dark and slick, sliding between my toes like cold blood.
“It’s fine,” he says, voice rough with need. “I’ll clean it up. But if you don’t get back here right now, it will be the end of me.”
