He makes a barely restrained growl and releases whatever hold he has on himself. He scoops me against him and sweeps his tongue across my lips. Hands firmly cupping my bottom, I wrap my legs around his waist. I wiggle closer, pressing my breasts into him, the friction through my shirt deliciously agonizing. His hands cup me through the fabric and heat pools at my center at Anrai’s groan of approval. I cry out, alight with pleasure and power.
It’s no wonder the Covinus has decreed touch to be dangerous—it is a veritable force in itself, the way Anrai, strong and unyielding, is humbled by the brush of my skin or the sweep of my lips. And in return, the way my being unravels and then weaves itself together as something different at the feel of his hands, his breath; it is an exchange that can shake the very foundations of the world.
We stumble forward, a tangle of limbs and breath and Anrai laughs into my mouth. The taste of it is sweet and luscious and has me scrambling to get closer, to taste more. He works the clasp of my cloak, and it falls from my shoulders, but it isn’t enough. The frantic motivation to get more of his skin on mine is no longer a want, but a ravening need.
Anrai pulls his mouth away and I attempt to claw my way back to him, to draw his lips back to mine. He laughs again and the sound, so rare and precious, skitters across my skin. “I just…have you…” Though I am straddling his waist and his hands have thoroughly ravaged me, his voice is suddenly shy. I want to laugh at the absurdity, but the seriousness of his eyes sobers me. “I don’t want to do anything you don’t want to,” he finally says.
My cheeks flame as I realize what he’s asking. “I haven’t,” I profess. A thought occurs to me like a douse of icy water. “Have you?”
He nods. The answer isn’t a surprise—such things are revered differently here and Anrai is well above the Binding age, even if he was Similian—but it sends a murderous swell crashing over me nonetheless, like the dark surge of a storm.
Anrai sets me down gently, my body crying out at the absence of him. “I know things are different in Similis and I don’t want to take that lightly,” he says. His hair is mussed, and his lips are kiss-worn. He looks so torn and so handsome that I want to tackle him, to press my body against his once more until I can no longer feel myself, only the places that are nowus.
Sex is as regulated as any of our other actions in Similis. It’s only for procreation in service of the Community, but at the moment, I can’t imagine it as ever being anything other than exultation of each other. Something apart from everything else in the world, only ever ours together.
Anrai bites his lip. “I…gods, Mirren, I kidnapped you. I don’t want to do anything ever again that you don’t feel comfortable with.”
My heart swells and I wonder how I ever thought him careless when it’s clear he holds those he cares about in a place that is equal parts fierce and gentle. “I want more,” I tell him clearly. My voice is so different than it was only weeks before, but now it is more mine. It speaks my desires with no fear or shame. “I don’t…I don’t know how much. But I know that I want more.”
Anrai’s face breaks into a wide smile, beaming with wonder and gratitude. “Slowly, then,” he declares, closing the space between us. The air heats once more. “You have me. You control me. You say when it’s enough.”
He waits until I nod my agreement before leaning down to kiss me. His kiss is slow and sensuous, exploring my mouth until I am breathless, his hands splaying across my back. He hooks his fingers under the hem of my sweater, and he breaks our kiss to pull it over my head. As the cool night air rushes my bare skin, he pulls back and gazes at me, his breath a sharp inhale. It doesn’t occur to me to be embarrassed or to cover myself. At the look on his face, wondering and hungry at once, I feel cherished.
“You’re beautiful,” he rasps.
I don’t blush, only stand before him with my chin raised, because in this moment, I am what he says I am. Beautiful and strong, tamer of magic and tormented ex-assassins alike, in charge of my future.
Anrai spreads the cloak across the ground. The fabric is cool against my skin as I stretch myself out on top of it, languishing in the night’s freedom, in its power. He sheds his boots and lays next to me, his hands coming to my bare skin, his lips greedily seeking mine. His callouses scrape against my arms, leaving deliciously fevered shivers in their wake. He traces soft circles over my back, maddeningly slow and wicked in their intent.
His body trembles next to mine and I realize with satisfaction that his usual steel self-control is barely contained, that his declaration to take things slow is costing him greatly. A self-satisfied smile settles on my face but as his lips travel to my neck, his tongue flicking over the soft spot behind my ear, the smile is quickly replaced by a gasp of pleasure.
Anrai covers my body with his, the weight of him solid and delicious. His bare chest presses against my breasts, a mirror of the way we lay after I stabbed him. Electricity coursed through me even then, but now, the heat of his skin seeps through mine, warming every part of me and pooling at my core and I writhe beneath him, desperate for more friction.
“What do they teach you about this in that infernal country of yours?” His voice is a wicked breath against my throat and his gaze is scorching as he watches the way my lips part in bliss as he runs a hand between my breasts. I arch my neck, craving more of him.
He pulls away so that his lips linger just beyond my reach, and I realize he’s teasing me. He won’t continue until I answer him, arrogant ass. Determined to unravel his self-control, to make him as wild as I feel, I press the length of my body closer. His muscles tighten beneath my fingers, and he lets out a soft hiss as I push my hips against his. Heat blazes between us as I feel the effect I have on him, hard and aching. All thoughts eddy from my head and I no longer care who’s winning or losing, only that the aching at my core is satiated.
“They teach us…” I begin, breathless and panting, “the mechanics of it.”
Anrai smiles against my throat, and I cry out as he nips at the sensitive skin and then soothes it with a swipe of his velvet tongue. “The mechanics,” he muses, kissing along my jaw and running his tongue along the edge of my ear. I can feel every muscle of his chest, lean and strongly coiled, and with each of his movements, I feel as though I will leap out of my skin. I squeeze my eyes shut, almost unable to bear the piercing waves of heat that course through me but unwilling to give them up.
“I suppose it’s like your books, isn’t it?” he says, and I dig my fingers into his back to keep him from pulling away. He moves to the other side of my neck, sucking at the point where it meets my shoulder until I am panting. “All business and no pleasure.”
Feverish and wanting, I urge him closer. He obliges with an infernal laugh that skitters down my spine. “It seems your education in pleasure has been left entirely up to me.” His hands move down my body, cupping the weight of my breasts in his hands. I moan as he flicks his thumb over one tip, followed by the other. “And since we’ve already covered literature…”
His mouth replaces his hands and I cry out in pleasure, feeling as though I’ve come apart. He flicks his tongue over each tip, before sucking them into the warmth of his mouth. Greedy and wanting, I writhe beneath him until we are both gasping. His eyes meet mine with a searing gaze as he kisses his way down the soft swell of my stomach, languishing attention on the rise of my hips. His face reflects mine, frenzied and ablaze, as he swipes his tongue along the waistline of my leggings. “More?” he asks, his guttural voice sweeping across my skin like a lick of flame.
My voice is lost, so I only manage a fervent nod. With deferent hands, Anrai slowly peels the leggings off, first one foot and then the other. I shiver as the prick of the cool night air and the exquisite heat of his touch war with each other over the exposed skin of my legs.I am bared. Only to you.
As his reverent gaze sweeps over me, I think how true it is. He knows the least glimpsed parts of me, inside and out, and he accepts them all. He saw me when everyone else wished me invisible, my dark depths and my shallow pools, and never once flinched.
“I’ve wanted to do this since the first moment I saw you,” he says, settling himself between my legs. “I wanted to touch every part of your skin,” He runs his hands gently up the length of my thighs, over the curve of my hips. He kisses the backs of my knees, running his tongue over the sensitive skin of my inner thighs until my blood courses like lava and I am whimpering. “But mostly, I wanted to taste you. I’ve driven myself mad wondering what you taste like.”
I twist beneath him, unsure of what I’m even after, only knowing that it’smore.More touch, more ache, more ofhim.Finally, he settles his lips at my center, the part of me that yearns, soft and blazing. He growls in approval, the sound wicked and delicious. I throw my head back in pleasure, coming apart as he kisses me gently, his lips worshipful and his tongue wanton.
“Gods, your taste,” Anrai moans against me, the scratch of his stubble against my thighs and the reverberations of his words almost too much to bear. “you’re even more luscious than I imagined.” He runs his tongue up the length of me, before circling it around the bundle of nerves at the apex of my thighs.
I moan, thrashing against him brazenly. My magic rises to the surface of my skin, as if Anrai is the one that commands it, the master of both my power and my body. It circles in time with the movements of his masterful tongue, until it is just as heated as we are, with the strength of a summer hurricane.
