He laid me on the bed with uncompromising tenderness. Then he kneeled at my feet and watched me, gaze tracing my neck to my breasts which heaved with every breath, the tight laces of my top feeling far too restrictive.
Slowly, he shrugged out of his jacket. In one smooth motion, he pulled the tunic over his head.
I greedily drank him in. His dusky nipples. The smattering of dark hair across his chest. The small white scars that peppered his brawn and strength. The reminder of the dark past he didn’t allow to swallow him.
I lifted to my elbows, needing to kiss him. One hand landed just below my collarbone and pushed me back down. “Not yet.”
Did he mean to torture me? Or perhaps himself? His length strained against his trousers, and while I didn’t know much, I knewthatonly happened if he wanted me in the way I wanted him.
“Eyes on mine,carella.” The deep command made my skin prick with awareness, the sensation only increasing when he came to kneel above my hips, his knees caging me in.
“I want to see you, and I want to touch you,” he said. His fingertips landed on my waist. “May I?”
I nodded, maybe too enthusiastically.
“You know I like words,” he admonished.
“Yes,” I whispered.
Those fingertips dragged up my sides, to the lacing at my breasts. I stopped breathing.
“And if that word turns to ‘no,’ you will tell me.”
I couldn’t imagine a world in which I would want to.
Especially when the backs of his fingers brushed across the swell of my breasts. They might have trembled beneath him. He gathered the ends of the lacing, which were tied in a bow, and undid the knot with a firm pull.
I thought he might draw it out, turn me into a puddle of need. But his patience seemed to vanish, and he smoothly undid the laces. Lifting my shoulders, he pulled the top over my head, laying me bare before him.
Only then did the vulnerability kick in.
Not because of him, but because I’d never exposed myself to anyone before.
I was so new to this, so terribly unequipped for the territory we were wading into. My arms twitched with the need to cover myself.
“I don’t remember telling you to release your eyes from mine.” The low timbre sent my doubts scattering.
“You called me bossy earlier, but that title belongs to you,” I nervously whispered.
His lips pulled into a cocky smirk. “I’m Princeps,carella.”
I followed his command and looked at him, at the raw blend of heat and reverence with which he studied me. His expressionmade me feel like…like I was giving him a gift. Like I was something to be cherished.
“I’ve told you that you’re beautiful,” he said with utter sincerity, “but you’re beyond that, Etarla. I only wish I was as good with words as I am with knives, so I could find the right ones to give you.” He touched me then, his hands as reverent as his gaze as they glided up my waist. My ribs felt fragile beneath the heated span of his palms. “But since I cannot find those words, I’ll simply have to show you.”
He leaned down and kissed me, one arm braced on the bed beside my head, the other traveling to my chest to praise my flesh like he’d done once before. Only this time, he didn’t stop. Not as he kneaded and pinched and drew moans from my mouth, which he swallowed with his own. Not when I ground my hips into his. I did not know what I sought, only that I needed relief from the tension building between my thighs. Needed to be closer to his heat, his encompassing strength.
His lips replaced his hand, kissing the curve of my breast on a path to the tight bud at its center, the scrape of his whiskers on my skindivine.My back arched from the bed when he brushed against the eager peak.
A smoky chuckle vibrated across my skin and curled in my belly. “Something you enjoy,” he hummed, dragging his lips across the sensitive bud again.
My back bowed, nerves desperate for more attention, even as embarrassment snaked through the cloud of pleasure. “Too much?”
He answered with a light nip to the side of my breast, eliciting a sharp gasp from my throat. The tiny bite throbbing, I stared at him, wide-eyed.
“Consider that your warning. I have no tolerance for anything that implies you are short of perfect, particularly in my bed.”
I blinked. “This is my bed.”
