“So leave,” I counter softly. “Go back to the window seat, or go out that door.”
He won’t, though. In the same way I’m certain something changed for him earlier, I’m also clear that nothing has—at least not in this darkness, in this bed. In this moment.
Even though he’s trying not to, he wants me.
“Sorrel.”
There’s an entreaty behind my name now, but I’m not inclined to help him out of his struggles. That’s his journey, and I can guess what it’s about. A woman he’s come to have some regard for is an entirely different proposition for prostitution than someone he just wants to have a round with.
On my side, I want him. And as devastating as the consequences will be when he leaves me, right now, I don’t care about them.
“Sorrel.”
And there it is, the sexual craving that threads through his deep, low voice.
I move my hand back where it passed over, and as I feel the contours of his arousal, he groans and arches into me, his hips pushing forward. Immediately, he falls into a rhythm with my touch, his pelvis retreating only to come forward again, the length of him too much for my hand even as I splay my fingers wide.
Nuzzling into his neck, my lips brush the beating pulse at the side of his throat. I’m well aware that I’m testing his self-control, but I’ve made my decision. He needs to make his—
Merc is on top of me in the next breath, and his mouth on mine is not gentle. As his weight pushes me down, I split my legs so that he can come between them—and he does. I feel the hard ridge of him pressing into the sheeting that separates us, searching for the core of me.
He’s riding me now, the thrusts as if he’s already inside my body, and as his tongue enters my mouth, I moan at the thought of a penetration down below. Heat gathers there, and flows throughout my body, turning me liquid—
His lips leave mine and I can suddenly breathe easier as he sits up. It’s not what I want. My desperate, fumbling hands reach up to bring him back.
As if our passion has called to the storm, lightning flares in a double strike, and the orange flash breaches the closed shutters to illuminate him. He’s peeling off the leather surcoat, his chest expanding as he removes it. Then as the thunder comes, he strips off the mesh armor underneath, and there’s a thump when the heavy metal links hit the floor.
Merc is coming back down to me as the next strike happens, and the orange flare dances through his midnight hair and his fierce features. He doesn’t lie on me, but reclines on his side, his hands going to the top of the sheeting that winds around me, his fingertips traveling the makeshift bodice and the skin that’s begging for his touch.
Stretching my arms up, I’m aware of a prickling ache from my wound, but it’s so easy to ignore. The headboard is made of wooden slats, and I grab on to them as I curl my spine and offer him what he is going to take. What he must have. In this night, we are alone not just because there is no one with us, but because this feels as if we’re out of any earthly timeline. We’re swirling in a mutual dream, even as we’re awake… the fantasy becoming a shadow reality that the daylight cannot grow, and the darkness harvests with abandon.
His fingers dip under the roll of the sheeting, and I feel him loosen the constriction. What covers me melts away, exposing my breasts to his hungry eyes as the lightning comes again. In another flicker of orange, I watch his head drop down to me, and then feel his lips on my nipple. As I cry out, the thunder consumes the sound of his name leaving my lips.
He knows what to do.
His hair spills around me, and the beads at the ends of his braids are smooth and cool against my collarbones, while his mouth latches on and sucks—and then his sword hand is on my body, traveling down my shoulder and onto my other breast. He owns me, playing me as an instrument, his callused palm sweeping to my waist, my hip, traveling back up to cup me and stroke me.
Crescent moon, he knows… exactly what to do.
Releasing the headboard, I dive into his hair and pull him hard to me. I think he chuckles, I’m not sure.
The thunder comes again.
Merc’s back lying in between my thighs now, and I’m rubbing myself on him, the core of me hungry—and getting hungrier—as the lightning flashes anew and I see him, I see what he’s doing to me as I feel it—the licking, the plying, the tugging. And his thumb, on the other side, going back and forth over my other—
The hand leaves my breast.
His weight shifts away once again, and I start to protest—but then his palm skates down the curve of my waist to the swell of my hip. Now it’s on the outside of my thigh.
Merc breaks off kissing the tip he’s so diligently applied his attentions to and returns to my mouth…
As his touch goes to the inside of my leg.
Slowly. Slowly… he rides up the soft skin…
And finds the even softer flesh that is wet for him.
He palms me, the heel of his hand pushing into me, and his fingers probe, but do not enter. For a split second, my rational side separates and tells me to be prepared. I’ve heard Sallae Mae talk to the new girls about how the first time can be painful. I wish I were better prepared. I wish I’d had sisters who could have told me how to do this, how to make it good for him as well when I touch him—
