“Would we not?”
“No.” He mouthed the word as if it pained him. “I would have wrapped you in my cloak once night fell, and you would have slept all night in my arms. Dreaming. And when the dawn first peered between the trees, I would have kissed you awake.”
I pressed my fingertips to my lips, lightly. “Here?”
“Yes.” His head canted to one side, but for once the gesture was not threatening, only tender. “For a moment.”
Disappointment nearly pulled my hand away. “Only a moment?”
A smile coiled in the corner of his mouth. “As delicious as your lips may be, mo chroí, I intend to sample all of you.” My pulse jumped, and Irian’s long fingers splayed over his suddenly rigid thighs. “The lobes of your ears taste like rose petals. The brush of your cheek is soft as peonies. And the hollow of your throat throbs with the rhythm of your want.”
I mapped his words onto my body with my own fingertips, grazing over my ears before trailing down my throat toward my collarbones. Irian tracked the motion like a man starved. When my thumb pressed into the hollow of my throat, he exhaled, leaning his whole spine against the trunk behind him as he kicked his long legs out in front of him. His hands flexed on the moss as if he could anchor himself in place.
“But I would not be satisfied for long. With each taste of your skin, I would only grow more ravenous for the rest of you.” Hiseyes—touched now with a whisper of gold, a murmur of blue—dropped to my chest, mostly hidden beneath the edge of my cloak and the bodice of my kirtle. “Your perfect breasts would fill my palms, and the brush of your nipples between my fingers would nearly break me. But I would master myself for all that was to come.”
My hands roamed downward, skimming over the curve of my breasts before gliding over the fabric covering my stomach. Skeins of delicious warmth followed my touch, pooling deep in my belly and coiling around my thighs. My legs fell open, and I reached for the hem of my dress, already tangling around my knees.
“Gods alive, Fia.” I hesitated, but with his hands braced forcefully in the moss, his head thrown back against the rough bark, and his eyes blown black with desire, I did not think Irian meant for me to stop. He wet his lips, even as the powerful muscles of his torso clenched beneath the outline of his shirt. “Is it not torment enough that I cannot touch you? Let me at least look at you.”
Silently, I lifted my hands back to the ties of my dress, slowly undoing them. My bodice fell away, the cool morning air instantly peaking my nipples through the delicate shift. I was flushed with want, bright with anticipation, delirious with desire. A glow rippled over me—my starshine beginning to slip. I did not try to hold it in. Slowly—painstakingly slowly—I unlaced the rest of my dress, until I was left in only my underthings. I paused, but Irian shook his head. The cut of his jaw and the hard bulge in his breeches summoned something unwieldy inside me.
“All of you.” The tone of Irian’s voice was exacting, a challenge I could not refuse.
I pulled my shift up over my head, mussing my hair. I slipped my underthings down, grazing over my thighs and calves and ankles, until I was bared to him, perfectly naked in the mossy bower, perfectly in my element. Somewhere, a bird began to sing. Sunlight touched the mist. I slid my hand down the plane of my stomach before delving between my legs. I was already wet.
Irian made a desperate kind of noise deep in his throat.
“All of me,” I murmured, “demands at least some of you. Unless you truly do wish to be teased.”
Irian hesitated, then obliged, shrugging out of his cloak, pulling off his gloves, and unlacing the front of his trousers. His cock sprang free to kiss the musculature of his torso, rock hard and gloriously long. I inhaled, drinking in the sight of him. He took himself in hand, his fingers hesitant on the shaft.
“Go on,” I commanded, as I began to move my fingers gently around the center of my pleasure. “What would you taste next?”
“You are a feast without beginning or end, mo chroí,” Irian said, his eyes roaming my figure as he deftly stroked himself, keeping time with my own movements. “Every part of you I touch, every inch of you I taste, only makes me hungrier for more. I cannot be sated. I can only devour and devour until I am glutted on you.”
Heat coiled inside me, demanding release. I slid one finger inside myself, then another, rolling the base of my hand against the tightness gathering in my belly. I watched Irian through half-closed eyes as he increased his own rhythm, his fingers pumping over his length. I imagined those huge, capable hands on me, his hardness inside me. My breath gusted fast in my throat. My skin bloomed with radiance. Woodbine and honeysuckle and musk rose burst from the dirt.
“And then?”
“When I am glutted on you, I can only seek to ensure you, too, are satisfied.” Irian’s head was thrown back; his stomach, taut; his eyelashes, casting shadows black as night over eyes as bright as morning. “And I will not stop until you are.”
“How?” The word was a breathless plea; I did not care that I was begging him. I needed him—needed this release.
“I will fill you up, mo chroí.” The words rasped out of him, insistent. The muscles on his neck corded, and I knew he was close. As I was close. So close. “You will feel every inch of me inside you. Your thighs will tremble around my thrusting hips. Your walls will tighten as you grip me. Claim me. And you will not be able to think for howcompletely I satisfy you. How fully I complete you. With the weight of my body on yours, your breath is my breath. Your pleasure is my pleasure. Your cries are my cries. And as we crest over the wave and you come around my length, it will be with my name on your lips.”
The urgent need tangling in my core reached crescendo. I came fast and hard, arching back against the moss as starlight spilled from me in a brilliant corona. Flowers tangled over my arms and in my hair, intoxicating me with their scents.
“Irian!” I cried out.
His own climax hit him like a punch to the chest. He groaned as he spasmed forward, every muscle in his body wringing taut as he caught his release in his palm. We both trembled for a few long moments with the force of our spent desire. Then Irian was crawling on all fours across the moss. He leaned over me, his face mere inches from mine. He braced his hand on the tree by my head, emblazoned now with flossy flowers and coiling ivy. His own sex dripped down his palm and made a bracelet for his forearm. I smelled him—like ice water and black metal and lightning. My lips parted. He leaned ever closer, until our mouths were a hairsbreadth apart.
My skin sang. My blood shimmered between my ears. A frisson of energy sparked between us—starshine scintillating the air. Irian winced but didn’t move.
“Do that again, mo chroí,” he growled, low in his throat, “and I do not care if it kills me. Iwillfuck you, and I will die a happy man. Do you understand?”
I laughed as sunlight crowned the trees and the mist burned away into morning.
“I understand, Sky-Sword. But I make no promises.”
