“Were ye now, lass?” This time, his breath brushed over the sensitive shell of her ear, sending a shower of reciprocal goosebumps flaring down the backs of her arms.
“Y-yes,” she replied on a warble. “Other similar monuments have burials in them.”
“Mmmm.” Soft lips pressed to the hollow just below her ear, before trailing down her neck. His beard provided a delicious counterpoint to the slide of his mouth.
She gasped.
Her eyes fluttered shut and her knees loosened, sinking further into him.
Only his firm grip around her waist kept her upright.
“Tell me more,” he rasped.
More?
What had she been saying?
“Uhm . . . I . . . I imagine the cairn aligns with s-sunrise during the winter solstice and—”
She broke off as he spun her effortlessly in his arms, crushing her body to his.
Helpless, her arms looped around his neck, fingers threading into his hair as if they instinctively understood where they belonged.
It was simply . . . too much. Too overwhelming.
Her mouth found his. Or perhaps he reached first?
Regardless, Chrissi nearly moaned at the contact. At the feel of his fevered lips on hers once more.
She rose upward, heedless of the ache in her ankle, eager for more, more, more—
Over the past weeks, Chrissi had wondered from time to time what kissing him again would be like.
Would it feel like kissing a stranger? Or perhaps like donning a cast-off gown, one that didn’t quite fit any longer—familiarand yet not?
But no.
Kissing Alis sent fireworks bursting behind her eyelids.
He felt like silk and electricity and happiness.
Like homecoming.
As ever with them, a simple kiss turned into three...and then twenty, lips and teeth nipping along jaws and throats.
Her body undulated, seeking somehow to draw closer to him, to subsume herselfintohim. To allow the shocks of sensation skittering along her skin to somehow merge them into one.
Her name was a litany of synonyms on his tongue: “Chris. Love. Darling.”
She swallowed them down with her lips.
This closeness could not—would not—last. It might be the last time she felt his arms around her, the approving rumble from his chest, the delicious weight of his palm skimming her spine—
Something of her desperation must have communicated itself to him.
“Hush, love,” he murmured softly, attempting to quell her urgency. “There is time. All the time.”
But there wasn’t.
