“Do you want me to keep touching you?”
“Yes.”
“Then ask me how old I am.”
I clamped down on my bottom lip, not caring about his answer, but only that he seemed to care. “How old are you?”
He didn’t answer immediately, but stroked the pad of his thumb across my naked collarbone.
I took a swift breath, then shuddering, repeated: “How old are you?”
“So shy…” He stroked across my bare shoulder bone. “I’m forty-eight.” His eyes caught mine, intense and heavy. “Am I too old for you?”
“No.”
“No?” he asked.
“No,” I confirmed.
He placed a finger under my chin, tilting it softly and breathing. “I feel it too.”
“You do?” I asked, hushed.
He nodded silently. “Yes.” His gaze dropped to my lips. “I feel you.”
I didn’t reply, struck by the way his hands on my skin felt so...natural.
He leaned close to my ear. “You feel familiar.” His fingers linked at my wrist.“Love begins with a lump in the throat…” he recited, pressing a kiss at my wrist, turning it and dotting in a slow circle.
“You read poetry?”
“No.” His beard tickled as he spoke, dotting a few more slow kisses up the underside of my arm, eye soldering mine as he did. “There’s only been one other time I felt this feeling.”
He was so rough, so warm, so sensual.
“I like the way you smell.” His words were low and quick, like he’d been holding his breath. “I like the way you look, the way you laugh, and the way you smell,” he uttered. “You’re going to destroy me.”
I sucked in a breath, the scent of him on my tongue sending tingles like waves through my system.
“You don’t even know me.”
His lips lingered at my throat. “Don’t I?”
My heartbeat hammered, the feel of his lips against my hot skin made me dizzy with desire.
I felt his ragged breath against my chest. All of him was so virile, so barbaric, so enthralling. He laid a kiss against my neck and I tilted my head, allowing him the access. His palm splayed across my back, his fingers pressing into my flesh and stealing my breath with his dominant touch.
“Look at you, so pretty in the firelight. So pretty it haunts me.” His hands gripped my arms, pulling me to him. “You’ve caged me, Petal.”
He locked my other hand with his. I let him. I would let him do anything.
“I haven't been with anyone in two decades.” He took my other wrist in his hand, turning it gently, and then pressed another kiss there. “You make me want things I never thought I’d want again.” His words burned through me like lava. “Will you have me?”
I nodded, unable to form a thought, only aware of the feeling that I knew in the marrow of my bones. I was made to be his, he was made to find me, we were made to be here together.
“If I have you,” he kissed up my other arm, “there will never be anyone else. You, Petal, are already my obsession.”
He stirred something to life inside of me with his words, the need to feel him overpowering me as he slipped his hands under my shirt and kissed his way along my neck and around my jaw.
