He shifted closer with my exhale, his lips pressing, warm and soft—much softer than I’d imagined. He held me there, held us both, suspended in that connection, that first moment of being more than two.
I wondered how long he could endure the sweet ache of this gentleness, wondered how long I would let him hold us both in this moment, before doing my own claiming.
Just when it was too much, when he was drawing away slowly as if even the retreat of our lips was something to savor, he dipped his head again.
And this time the kiss caught fire.
A shiver ran through me—how could I be cold when I was burning, engulfed in flame—my nerves stretched and crackling, littlepop,pop,popsof pleasure snapping hard under my skin.
I whimpered and he moaned, dipping his mouth to lick my lower lip and then bite very gently there before licking again.
I wasn’t on fire, I was molten, a volcano.
I arched up into him, needing more, more touch, more. His fingers stroked along my throat, leaving mint-cool paths where his fingers had been, and he molded against me, one hand lowering so he could notch our hips together and move with me, a slow, circular motion.
My breath skipped like a stone over still water. And I still couldn’t stop trembling. His tongue slicked my mouth, already too wet, too hot. I was hungry, but the more he touched, squeezed, stroked, tugged, the more I needed.
“I want,” I gasped in between his onslaughts, the drugging nips and tastes, his tongue, teeth, mouth, the scratch of stubble on my tender skin that felt good, too good, but wasn’t enough, not nearly enough, his hard grinding body. “More,” I begged.
He groped blindly for the binds on my wrist, freed one, freed the other.
I threaded my fingers through his thick, soft hair and groped his back, the hard curve of his ass. I scrabbled to untuck his shirt from slacks that molded against his body like liquid sin.
This. Now. Here.
He twisted, skimmed his fingers under my shirt and then, gently, so damn gently, trailed the back of his fingertips across my lower belly.
“Myra,” he whispered, his head bent into my shoulder, as if he would fall apart, fly apart. He didn’t have to say anything more. I could hear the truth of his need, the truth of him, of us. Could feel it.
“Yes.”
The cuffs on my ankles melted away, and he leaned back and rucked up his shirt exposing miles and miles of deeply tanned skin I wanted to lick, bite. Then his shirt was gone. He rocked forward again, his breath catching as if he’d been holding it for hours, for days, for years and years. I spread my fingers over his chest, then down, riding fingertips over the ridges and dips of his muscles.
His skin tightened, and goosebumps rippled under my feather-light touch as he shuddered.
I wanted more of him. To know what this—what we—could be, no lies between us.
His thumb rubbed the hard round button of my jeans, pushing it through the hole until the cloth parted and he could plunge his huge hand down, inside, questing for warmth.
I moaned his name, lost to that delicious friction.
“Beautiful,” he breathed.
And then there was no time for slow, no time for thinking. There was onlyhereandnowandmore, in our desperate quest to tear away clothing as quickly as possible.
And when, finally, he drew me down to where he lay, naked and stunning and hard, waiting for me, I followed him willingly, open and needing, until he filled my body, my mind, my world.
Chapter 18
“Tell me about the cats,”I said.
“What cats?”
My head was on Bathin’s shoulder. We were naked, but the stone around us was warm as firelight and silk.
“The three strays that are following you around?”
He sighed. “Five. Five strays. I just feed them sometimes. It’s nothing permanent.”
