“I can’t.”
He sobbed, and she felt horrible for pushing him. Her hands went limp, and he gently redirected them atop his knees. Through the fabric of his wool pants, she couldn’t feel much, only a hint of a raised suture. She pushed her palms higher on his thighs, waiting for him to protest. When he didn’t, she leaned over and moved higher, until her thumbs rested near his hip joints.
“All right, but will you let me touch you through your clothes? You made me feel good a few nights ago. I want to make you feel good too.”
He was silent for a long minute, and Seraphina felt him tremble under her warm palms. Inside him, his insecuritiesbattled with his need for intimacy. They kept calling him creature. Briar had called him “that thing”. None of them saw the truth of him, that he was a human being with human longings.
“It would be unfair to you,” he murmured.
“No...” She palmed him through the thick fabric and felt him grow under her grip. “It’s what I want. It will make me feel good too... To know that I can make you feel good.” She rubbed him up to the tip, then back down to the base, where she found his round sack and squeezed tentatively. “Only if you want it...”
“I do.” He let out a shuddering breath, his cock hardening and twitching, letting her know what she was doing to him. “If you’re certain...”
“I am.”
She scooted closer to him on the bed, using both her hands to feel and rub the length of his erection. He leaned back, bracing himself on his hands as he let her explore him. The fact that it was through his pants was bothersome and frustrating. Seraphina licked her lips and wondered if he’d let her do more if she phrased it right.
“Do that again,” he whispered.
She inclined her head. “What?”
“Your lips... Lick your lips again.”
She smiled. His eyes were trained on her face, of course. Her tongue darted out, and she made a show of licking her lips slowly, wetting them, leaving them glistening for him to look at.
“I could do that...” she started, gripping his cock more firmly. “If you let me, I could lick you here.” She swiped her thumb over the engorged head, and he bucked his hips. She felt the dampness that was starting to form there. “Your body may be covered in stitches, but this part of you shouldn’t be, right?”
“Seraphina...” It was a plea and a warning.
She pressed her thumb against his slit, and she could swear she felt him gush.
“There’s one,” he said, voice low and careful. “It runs along... the underside...”
Her mouth hung open in shock. “How? Rune, what happened to you? Who did this to you?”
“I don’t know. Maybe one day I’ll find out. Somehow. I’ve thought about it, and I’d like to know, I think. But I’m not sure where to start looking. Because I don’t know... what I’m actually looking for.”
“I will help you.” She pressed herself closer to him, her fingers inching toward the first button of his pants. “No one says we can’t do two things at the same time. We can seek revenge and answers. And when you find out, whatever it is, I won’t care then, like I don’t care now. Nothing will make me change my opinion of you. My feelings for you...”
“Seraphina...” Now it was a plea and nothing else. Pure, raw, hinging on a prayer. “You can... Please...” He gasped when she undid the first button. “Only if you want...”
She fell to her knees on the floor and positioned herself between his legs. She shrugged off her cloak and pulled her dress over her head, suddenly feeling hot with so many layers on.
“I want to taste you.”
It was a promise to him, to her, to Briar, and to everyone who’d called him and would call him a creature and a thing. A promise that she would always choose him.
Chapter Twenty-Five
When he started with the compliments, she knew his grip on propriety was beginning to slip.
There were two stitches. One encircled the base, most of it hiding underneath the sack. Seraphina felt it under her fingertips as she massaged his balls. They tightened and drew up when she pressed the flat of her tongue to his slit to taste the beads of liquid gathered there. She traced the rough suture with the tips of her fingers, and Rune pulled back slightly. She felt him tense up, but before he could change his mind and potentially stop her, she sucked the throbbing head into her mouth and swirled her tongue underneath the crown. That earned her a low moan and a thrust of his hips.
The second one ran along the underside of his cock, like he’d said. It started from under his balls, connecting with the first stitch, and ended under the mushroom head. She was pressing her tongue against that point just now, testing to see what it did to him.
She’d never done this before. Truthfully, she didn’t remember ever wanting to do it to a man, not even to Matteo. Maybe because his purist upbringing would’ve kept him from letting her anyway, so she hadn’t thought about it.
Rune, with his tenderness, eagerness to please her, and fear that she might reject him, made her want to explore things she’d never imagined herself doing. After all, she’d been brought up into a purist family as well, though the second she’d renounced those values, she’d dived into everything that represented their opposite.
