Where I was all soft flesh, he was unyielding muscle. Every inch of his hard masculinity throbbed against my side. I longed to feel it again so I decided to be bold. He sucked in a shaky breath, his chest rising and falling rapidly as he tried to control his response to my touch. I hadn’t expected it to be so soft yet so unrelenting—just like Emrys.
“I suppose it can be your turn now,” I said, smiling wickedly. “Touch me.”
I felt the smile in his kiss as one warm, lightly calloused hand reached out and tenderly cupped my breast. The pad of his thumb worked my nipple in lazy circles before he bent down and sucked the tip.
“Oh gods.” My hand flew up to his hair, holding him there. My breasts felt heavy, nipples pebbled, aching for more. Every pull of his mouth pulled me even further under the spell he was so thoroughly weaving over my body.
He let out a small growl, and warmth flooded my core, heating me from the inside. I became something soft, pliable, molded by his hands. The curse’s dark magic skated over my bare skin, coaxing goosebumps wherever its claws lightly raked.
It was so much pleasure, all at once, that I didn’t know what to do with myself.
I thought I’d understood desire, but those earlier ideas were mere fragments. The desire he stoked in me now was enough to corrupt the soul. To drag a person down into the suffocating darkness and cause them to abandon all shame, leaving only the relentless hunger formore.
Even breathing felt different, shallower, as though my lungs were now solely meant to accommodate the yearning that consumed me. The scent of him—aged leather, hearth smoke, and something wild—wrapped around me and sank into my skin. I wanted to smell him always, to feel him.
I hadn’t even realized my hand was still on the back of his head until he moved, trailing kisses down my belly in a line of fire. He only stopped when he reached the apex of my thighs, laving across the seam there with a slow swipe of his tongue.
The spike of pure, unadulterated euphoria it sent through my core made my entire body shudder. I whimpered, high and unexpected. Thank the gods we weren’t near any houses.
He looked up at me with storm clouds and blue lightning swirling in his eyes. So much so that I almost missed the question in them.
“Yes,” I said, without needing it asked aloud. I didn’t know what he had planned, but I didn’t care. Because I trusted him. Because I wanted him. “Don’t make me wait.”
“Anything you command.”
Still on his knees, he nudged my thighs apart with his own. Open, bared for him, I watched as he licked his lips.
His single-minded attention erased any shame or worry I might’ve had about my body. I’d been dressed and treated like a princess since arriving in Darreth. And still, I’d never felt as lovely as I did then.
He rubbed his nose in the spot his tongue had just vacated. “Did you like that?” he whispered against my overheated skin.
“Uh huh.” I’d slipped past coherence again, reduced to happy, breathless scraps and tumbling fragments of words.
And then I learned that a kiss didn’t necessarily have to be on the lips.
Within minutes, I was climbing back toward that peak only he had brought me to. He used his fingers and his mouth—circling, teasing, coaxing. He devoured me with a mix of tenderness and desperation, reminding me of our first kiss after the cave-in.
The world shrank until it was only the two of us.
“The taste I had before wasn’t enough,” he growled against me, vibrating my skin in the best way.
The pleasure that shot through my core was so intense that I bucked involuntarily. This set him to purring again and I leaped right over the edge into ecstasy. Shielding myself as a reflex, I reined in my magic to keep it from flaring outward. As I shattered, body clenching around his fingers, at the mercy of his tongue and lips, I could only breathe one word, “Emrys.”
When I finally reopened my eyes, his gaze was a burning blue flame between my thighs. I tried to press them slightly together, to quell the rising ache that had blossomed in his absence, but his hands stopped me.
“Consider me available whenever you want that again. Every day, multiple times a day. I can’t get enough.”
I laughed, still giddy from my climax. “I hope you really mean that, because I absolutely will.”
He reached out and massaged the sensitive place where arousal had slicked my thighs, gathering up the dampness in his palm. Rising to his knees, his manhood jutted out, allowing me my first good look at it.
I knew women’s bodies could make room, but looking at how big he was, I still had my secret reservations.
Then, his hand slick with my arousal, he stroked it, once, twice, barely holding back a snarl. My delicate skin quivered in time with the movement of his hand. It stoked the fire of my desire even higher, the heat melting away every last reservation.
Inching forward, holding himself up to keep his weight off me, he reached down and adjusted his sex at my entrance. “The pain though, Isca…”
Sweetly tormenting, he moved it up and down through my slick folds. I shivered beneath him as his entire frame practically vibrated just so he could hold himself steady between my legs.
