She nodded.
“Are you sure?”
She nodded again.
“Then let’s see to your cave, shall we?”
He lowered himself onto the floor and pushed apart her knees. He raked his fingers up her inner thighs before spreading her secret parts. This time, he didn’t touch the place she ached. Instead, he heated her skin with his breath. Then, as she was absorbing the sensation, he whisked his tongue against her cleft.
Some sound passed her lips—His name? A gasp? She wasn’t sure. Her lips rounded in shock. Not done?Of coursesuch a thing wasn’t done.
Then again…bliss.
She closed her eyes, giving herself over to a feeling like none she’d ever known. Softness. Wetness. Heat. All of it, captive pleasure delivered with hungry abandon.
She grasped the coverlet, squeezing as he invaded her with only his mouth. Her heart—her body—her desire—everything blended into one. Then, they balled up, tightened, and spread roots, as if she were a vessel that had become too small.
She’d been terrified of bursting. But when the time came, she didn’t resist.
Pieces of her fanned out into the room—little sparks of fire that streaked and crackled, fizzed and burned, until they melted into passion-scented quiet, leaving her wrung out, fully spent. And her liquid limbs and her distant breath were all that remained.
He braced himself on her knee and rose.
“Don’t go.” She reached out.
“I’ll be back.”
That, she didn’t trust. She grabbed for his arm.
He swiveled back and held his hand against her cheek. “Iwillbe back, that’s another promise.” He kissed her brow. “I just…I need to take care of this. I hurt. I just have to—”
“I can help, can’t I?” Her gaze sunk to his cock. “I can touch you. Touching will help you the same way it helped me, won’t it?”
His gaze narrowed. He made a low sound in his throat. And in her boneless, open state, she moved toward him, unhurried but willing.
This time, she took his cock into her hands without asking.
…
By St. George’s bloody dragon, her touch felt inspired. So wrong—he was just about the furthest thing from divine—and yet everything he’d been dreaming about and more.
He’d wanted to restrain her and then ravish her until she was nothing but a quivering mess. He’d wanted to breach her maidenhead, to make her the first one, the only one, who’d ever bleed around his cock. And, right now, he wanted with a desperate, heated, burning need—to place that cock in her mouth.
He forced himself to breathe. He wouldn’t, of course.
Bad enough he’d nearly frightened her to tears.
Bad enough he’d brought her to a shuddering climaxwith his tongue.
Bad enough he’d sneeringly called her wanton…and she’d liked it.
He was no longer angry…just helpless.
He’d done everything short of walking out to deter Julia. He’d desperately tried to prove that, of all things enormous, lavish, and incomprehensible in this world, he was not something she should want. If he seized her, rent her, claimed her, the way she insisted she desired, he’d bring nothing bright, good, or worthy to her uncorrupted world.
That wasn’t the way these things worked.
Instead, like Persephone, she’d end up cloaked in his endless shadow.
