And still the length and thickness of his sex grows. And grows.
“My veil stays on.”
That’s the last thing I say. I suddenly can’t breathe, but in contrast to my earlier panic, this suffocation is sweet. Behind my sternum, my heart skips beats, then thunders.
“Just a kiss.” Now his deep voice is a purr. “With your veil… still on. Yes, that’ll be fine.”
He falls forward, and just when I think he might land on his face, his hands flatten and his palms catch his weight on the tunnel’s stone floor. Then he prowls toward me in a crouch, his long, black hair hanging down, those braids swinging freely, his massive shoulders larger than ever before.
“Are you going to eat me,” I whisper.
“Yes. I am.”
Good. I want to be consumed. There’s lightning in my veins, a heady combination of fear and desire—except I’m not ready for all of him, not yet. Still, he’s so big, and we’re alone down here. I don’t think he’ll take what I’m not offering, but I don’t know that for sure. I’ll find out, though.
Right now.
We are face-to-face, separated only by the shift of linen. I can smell the leather and that spice of cedar coming off of him, and the scent kills the mold and mud in the air. My stare stays on his mouth, but I can feel the heat in his scarred gaze, the raw sexual need.
He tilts his head, and as he does, the beads at the end of the braids that frame his face make a chiming sound.
“Give me your mouth,” he growls.
With a surge, he comes at me, and his lips find my own without any searching, homing in even though surely the veil conceals most of my features—
Everything fades away. The tunnel, the deadbalas, our situation. As something warm and soft brushes back and forth over my mouth, the world is reduced to him. To us. To what this leads to, surely as a landslide rakes down a mountain, taking all with it. I tremble with a sudden, clawing need, the core of me opening as if he’d finished the job with his britches, and was lifting my skirts to get at my sex with his own.
When Merc eases back, I’m not sure whether time has stood still or a thousand years have passed.
I want more. Yet he just stays where he is.
Until he backs off to his previous spot.
He’s brooding as he stares at the torch.
Oh, no. He didn’t like it.
With a curse, he eases to one side, and shoves a hand at his hips as if he’s rearranging something that’s been caught in a crease. When he resettles, he clears his throat.
“What’s wrong?” I ask roughly, my breath tight.
“I’ll still do the job.” His words are gruff. “As I told you, I’m heading to the Badlands anyway.”
I touch my mouth through the damp veil and can still feel his lips.
Before I can ask him what’s wrong, he leans back against the tunnel wall, extends his legs, and crosses his arms and his ankles. I know that he’s closed his eyes by the stillness of his body, and risk a glance at his face.
With his lids down, I can finally take my time studying him. His forehead is broad and his brows have no arch to them at all, just two straight lines from the frown that breaks across the bridge of his straight nose. His cheeks are well-defined, the hollows under them valleys before the cut of his heavy jaw. There is no shadow of a beard, and I dip down to the neckline of his shirt. It’s too high to see if there is dark hair on his muscled chest.
I refocus on his mouth, the lower lip so much fuller, the upper marred by a tiny scar at the bow on the top. It’s a scratch that healed into a barely noticeable line, something so much less than what injured his eye, and I wonder how many other wounds of varying severity have left their markings on his skin—
“Sleep if you can,” he orders me. “When the torch is almost out, dawn will be close by, and I’ll try again.”
I feel deserted in his silence, only the fiery chatter of our tethered flame and the drumbeat of the incessant dripping from the ceiling entering my ears.
But that isn’t all I hear. In my mind, his voice is on repeat:I’ll still do the job… I’m heading to the Badlands anyway.
One kiss and he’s released me from our arrangement.
