He grasped her hand, sweeping it away from his heart and placing a kiss on her palm, then on her wrist above her pulse.He scattered kisses up her arm and across her collarbone, each one tickling, each one spiraling heat into her belly.Lower.
She raked her nails across his skin, her growing need demanding more of him.
Everywhere.All at once.Impossible.But she needed it.
She gasped when he moved like a fish darting through sun-lit waters to straddle her hips and chain her wrists together with one hand.He pressed them into the mattress above her head and looked down on her like a conqueror.His eyes glowed with hungry delight.Possession, too.
“You think you have me, Diana,” he said, each syllable rolling low and languid.
Ah, her expression must mirror his own.“Don’t I?”
For a moment the hunger melted, the delight dropped, leaving a face of masculine beauty that was… ravaged.By need.By fear.“I am not a man who likes being caged.”
She pulled against his hold on her wrists, and he released her.The first thing she did with her freedom?Drag her fingernails down the outsides of his massive thighs.His expression—unsure, out of control—it poured power into her.“Why would I cage you?”
He threw his head back and laughed, the confidence returning like a victorious warlord.And with nothing but a shake of the head he curled over her and placed a hot kiss in the valley between her breasts, cupping one in each hand.“Perfect,” he muttered.“I could not have designed a more perfect woman had I tried.”
His caresses were making her frantic.She wiggled and rolled her hips, bit her bottom lip but somehow managed to say, “Have you tried?”
Beneath a laugh, he answered.“Of course not.”
“Pygmalion, you know.If there was an iron goddess roaming the streets having been shaped by your hands, I’d want to know.But you alchemists are so secretive.”She grumbled the last bit, and it broke off into a noise of disapproval.He’d frozen for a moment.“Temple?”She lifted onto her elbows, pleasure fading.“There’s not an iron goddess is there?”
He cupped her cheek, shook his head.“I cannot breathe life into metal like that.”
“Oh, good.”She wrapped her hands around his neck.“Continue?”
He kissed her forehead then pulled away slightly to study her.“Even if there were such a creature, she would not be real, not really.And you”—he kissed the tip of her nose—“are so very real.”He kissed each cheek.“You choose to be real.You have the power to change any and everything about yourself, but you do not.You could cloak yourself in illusions, but you do not.You could have found safety in them, disguising yourself and going where you pleased to escape your cousin.But you did not.It was riskier to hide as yourself.”
“It never occurred to me to use a glamour to hide.I could not control it then.”
“I’m glad.I would not have found you otherwise.”
“I could hide well enough now, though.With a glamour.”
“Don’t.”A warning in his voice.
She touched his cheek with the pads of her fingertips, lightly.Rough and warm.“I will not.Besides, you would be able to find me.You’d see through the glamour as easily as you did tonight.”She shivered.No matter what she did, he would see her clearly.Always.
“Remember that.”He dragged his lips down her belly, pausing to place a kiss at her navel, to dip the tip of his tongue inside for the smallest taste before roaming lower.Lower, until his warm breath cascaded across her sex.
She shivered.
“I want to taste you here.”
“I want to taste you, too.In a similar location.”
His muscles bunched.“Fuck, Diana,” he hissed.
“If you would slide back up, I could reach you better.There.”His shaft, that object of fascination.She’d not spent nearly enough time exploring it.He moved too quickly for her to catch, playing her body like an instrument only he had a talent for.
He muttered another curse, his body leaping to life now, muscles shifting and flowing like a roaring river, like iron liquid hot.“You make me lose control.And yet here you are, calm as a summer day.”He moved as quickly as molten iron, taking her breath away and whispering against her ear as his hot body pressed against every inch of her.“I want you wild and wanton, Diana.”His hand was on her breast again, his ring brushing her nipple.
She cried out, pleasure rolling through her.
“Yes,” he murmured, gaze hot, “Just.Like.That.”
Wild and wanton.Yes.Transfiguring into something else.A desperate thing, and cunning.Needy.She lost control of her body as he drew circles round her nipple with his tongue, teased it with his teeth, his other hand kneading her breast, that ring a scorching brand against her skin.Where it touched her, it changed her, driving her pleasure higher, stripping her until nothing but her connection with her husband remained.So very new.So very potent.When the ring brushed over her nipple, she screamed.
