She thought his voice sounded a little strained, but it was hard to tell. Her brain was swimming in dizzied circles and she was having trouble putting two thoughts together. Summoning the mental coherence necessary to analyze his state was utterly beyond her.
“I don’t know what you’re—”
He kissed her again, cutting off her lie earlier this time. The dizzied circles in her brain became a whirlpool. His lips parted hers, his tongue licked inside her mouth and stroked her tongue. Gods, he tasted like chocolate and whipped cream and caramel cookies and honeyed fruits... every luscious, delectable dish she’d ever savored that had left her craving more.
She almost wept in protest when he pulled back a second time.
“Try once more,” he told her. His voice was definitely rough this time.
“I don’t—”
She barely got out two words before his lips found hers a third time. It was too much. Her quavering knees buckled. She fell against his tall, hard body, helpless to refuse him any longer, helpless to deny her own desires. Her arms lifted to encircle his neck. Her fingers thrust into the silky ropes of his hair, gripping tight. She took a deep, ragged breath, then shuddered as the intoxicating taste, scent, sight, touch, and sound of him invaded and overwhelmed every one of her senses. She closed her eyes to block at least one of those senses, but that only heightened the others.
The hand at her waist slid lower. He cupped her buttocks and lifted her with effortless strength. Her feet left the ground. He pressed her hard against him, holding the secret vee of her sex against the hard, hot shaft of his. Sliding her up and down until a terrible, delicious tension twined tight inside her.
She shuddered again and arched in his arms, tearing her lips from his to cry out against the tempest of his kiss, the mad, wild sensations he roused in her body.
Her head fell back, and she moaned as his lips kissed a trail of fire down her throat. How was it possible that something as mundane as aneckcould be so sensitive? But hers was—at least to him. He did something near her ear that made her shudder and clutch his shoulders, digging her nails into his flesh.
“What are you doing to me?” she gasped.
“No more than you are doing to me,” he muttered against the pulse in her throat. His lips dipped down to the plump curves of her breasts. His teeth nipped at flesh no man had ever touched. Teasing the skin bared by her gown’s neckline, teasing more that the rich fabric still shielded. “You want me, Gabriella. Do not make of yourself a liar by trying to deny it.”
“I’m not lying,” she insisted. “I—” Her voice broke off as he whirled around, crossed the short distance to one of the grotto’s stone benches, and laid her down on the hard surface.
To free both his hands, she realized a dazed moment later as he straddled the bench and leaned over her, letting his hands roam as his mouth returned to cover hers. He kissed her into moaning bonelessness then sat back and guided her hands to his body.
“You are lying, and there is no need. You are not alone in this. Touch me,moa kiri.Can you not see—can you not feel—what you do to me?” He dragged her hands across the hard ripples of flesh that cobbled his abdomen, up to the bulging pectoral muscles, and pressed her palms over his pounding heart. “Feel how fast my heart beats. That is for you and no other. I did not understand it myself until you Called me to your side, but now it all makes perfect sense.”
Still holding one hand to his heart, he dragged the other to his face. “Do not fear this,” he said and pressed a kiss into her palm. “Do not fear me.” Then one by one, holding her slitted gaze the whole time, he took each of her fingers into his mouth, surrounding them with damp heat, stroking them with his tongue in a darkly sensual caress and voicing a stirring vow after each one.
“I will never hurt you,” he promised after releasing her pinkie finger. “I will never betray you.” Her damp ring finger trembled against his lips. “I will stand between you and all danger.” The caress of her middle finger made her breath come in shallow pants. “I will devote myself to your happiness.” Her index finger was next, followed by her thumb. “Whatever you need, whatever you desire, I will provide.” Pulling her thumb free of his mouth, he nuzzled the soft skin of her palm and licked down the soft skin of her inner wrist. “For I am yours, before all others, Gabriella Aretta Rosadora Liliana Elaine Coruscate.”
With her gaze locked to his, he said, “Claim what is thine.” His lips closed over her Rose, and his tongue swept across the mark’s red, slightly raised surface.
It was as if he’d touched her body with a whip of fire. Her Rose flared hot. Her body clenched, back arching. Lightning shot through her veins, traveling in an instant from the Rose on her wrist to her breasts and her groin. She shuddered violently, wracked with waves of intense pleasure that built and built to a terrible, ferocious, burning ache.
Dilys stared down at the Siren writhing before him on the stone bench of the grotto. She was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen, with her rich, dark, Summerlander skin dewed by the mist from the falls, flushed from the passion that left her trembling uncontrollably in his arms. Her eyes, blue as the sky and deep as the sea, were wide and dilated, brilliant against the lush, midnight frame of her thick, curling lashes. Her full, lush lips were open as she panted for breath.
His fingers slid into her hair. Such soft, silky, jet-black hair. Like waves of ink curling in the ocean’s current. His hands curved around her neck, slid up to cup the sweetly rounded contours of her skull.
The small, sweet tip of her pink tongue swept out between her parted lips, dampening the plump flesh, making it glisten. “Dilys, I-I—”
The sound of his name falling from those sweet lips made his blood go hot and his body grow rigid with desire. She hadn’t Called his true Name, not the one that would claim him, but that didn’t matter. The sound of his worldly name spoken in her husky, desire-thickened voice was like eatingarrasleaf—one of Mystral’s strongest aphrodisiacs—straight from the tree. He pulled her legs up over his thighs and yanked her groin tight against his. His mouth dove down, claiming those glistening lips in an abrupt, fierce kiss that was all wild hunger and shocking dominance.
From earliest childhood, Calbernan boys were taught to sail, to fight, and to use the sea to protect Calberna and the women in it so that one day, they could amass sufficient gold and glory to claim alianaof their own.
But there was another skill—one unrelated to war and wealth—that every Calbernan male pursued upon reaching manhood.Ililium.The study and mastery of the sensual arts.
Every Calbernan male who bore theulumi-lia—the blue tattoo on their right cheekbone that proclaimed them worthy of alianaof their own—had not only won sufficient gold and glory to honor his chosen bride, he also had mastered every possible way to drown that bride in carnal pleasure, and bring her time and time again to the heights of rapture.
Calbernan males who bore theulumi-liawere masters of the sea, masters of war, and masters of the sensual arts.
And yet now, with Summer Coruscate in his arms and the taste of her on his lips, every seductive skill he’d ever learned evaporated from his mind, leaving only the instinctive need to feed his ravening hunger for her. He wanted her naked, in his arms, skin to skin, his body sliding into her. The sweet, hot friction of sex. Claiming and being claimed. Body and soul becoming one, binding the two halves of them together for all time.
His head slanted. His mouth opened, forcing her lips apart as well. His tongue swept into her mouth, tangled with hers. Invaded. Laid claim to. She tasted of sunlight and honey and hot, elemental magic. She burned him. Scorched his soul.
He bit at her beautiful, full lips, with light, raking nips of his teeth that made the tender flesh swell and warm against him. Instead of pulling away, she matched every needy bite, every thrust of his tongue, every hungry, demanding growl, with her own passionate responses. Her slender palms slid up the bare skin of his chest, over his broad shoulders, arms clinging tight. Her nails dug into the flesh of his back, raked at him. The sting of pain—proof of her own unleashed passion—only enflamed him more.
