“Please,” I sign against his chest.
“Mmm, patience.” He lowers his head and sucks my nipple into his mouth, all while stroking his thumb over the little bud that makes stars explode behind my eyes.
Gods, I’m already so close.
Before I can reach that pinnacle, he releases my breast and takes his hand away. I almost grab his wrist and draw him back to me. But I become entranced by the shape of him in the dim light, the lines of his muscular form outlined by his starlights’ amber glow as he slips his fingers into his mouth and slides them back out.
“You taste so fucking good,” he says, and every inch of me burns.
Alexus kisses me, sharing my taste. With his tongue moving in soft, sweeping motions, he pushes his fingers back inside me and leans into me, over me, using the weight of his body to push me down to our bed of fur. He doesn’t stop touching me until he fits himself between my legs.
He smiles and lifts his chin like he did the other night, and his power shimmers over my skin, a trickle of heat in my veins. The orbs drift closer, illuminating our nakedness.
With a beguiling glint in his stare, Alexus shifts his weight to one arm and skims his fingertips over my bared torso—from the hollow of my throat, between my breasts, down my abdomen, to the mound of my sex. I can’t hold back the shudder that quakes in my bones as he grips me between my legs.
His voice is honey tongued as he runs his rough hand over my body once more. “I need to see you. Need the image of you naked and writhing beneath me seared into my memory.” Using a deft touch, he traces the witch’s marks blooming over my hip, winding around my navel, dancing up the curve of my waist, flaring across my ribs. “Gods, you’re so beautiful, Raina.”
My breasts grow heavy and tight as he teases my nipple between his fingertips. That same sensation from earlier returns, a vibration radiating from his touch.
I cover his hand with mine and give him a curious stare. All of this is so new.
“Energy,” he says. “Almost as good as tangling our magick.”
To prove his words, he licks a tantalizing path up the swell of my breast, swirling his tongue around my nipple, sending a restless ache straight to my clit.
We haven’t tangled our magick since Winterhold. There’s too little privacy for all that entails, especially now that his magick has returned. We could set the wood on fire for all we know. But that there is more than the combining of our magick, is difficult to grasp, even though I can feel this trace of his power. That he can gather energy from the ether and use it for destruction one minute and for pleasure the next is nothing short of baffling.
When he lifts his head, hunger glimmers in his green eyes. “Hard and fast or deep and slow?”
He asks this question each time.
“Both,” I sign.
He groans from low in his chest. “I was hoping you’d say that.”
Turning his attention between us, he fists his cock, long and rigid, and with cruel precision, rubs that wide tip against my clit. I’m not sure why I don’t expect it, but that concentrated energy from before vibrates from his flesh, the sensation echoing through the most sensitive part of me, robbing me of breath.
On the edge of a ragged inhale, I push up on my elbows. Alexus smiles that knowing smile, and then, by the light of his magick, we both watch as he glides his swollen tip up and down my slit, his pulsating head growing slick with my desire.
“Just a taste of magick,” he says, teasing me with a trickle of power, rendering me near mindless.
I drop my head back, fighting the urge to squirm against him, all while trying not to die from bliss as he plays. If this is just a taste, what in gods’ stars am I in for? I already want him everywhere. In my hands. Between my legs. In my mouth.
Everywhere.
My desperation gets the better of me. I lift my head and let my hips fall into his rhythm, greedily stroking his length. He lets go of himself, eyes focused where our bodies touch, and a restrained groan rumbles inside his chest.
“You are the sweetest torture, Raina Bloodgood.” A curse falls from his lips as he leans down and circles his tongue around each of my nipples, flicking the tender tips until another tingle shoots straight to where he grinds against me.
I fall back to the fur, and he follows, sucking my pebbled nipple deeply. After a drag of his teeth, he bites into the soft curve of my breast, sucking there as well. A sensation builds, reaching that delicate and addicting line where pleasure meets pain, a line I grow fonder of by the day.
Keen to have him inside me, I run my nails over his muscled back, down the sleek curve of his long spine, and urge him closer. Beneath my touch, chills rise across his skin.
“I mean to make certain that you remember this.” He brushes a warm kiss over my rune, then over the skin between my breasts. “That you remember what it is to be mine.”
As if I could forget. Alexus Thibault has marked me in more ways than one.
My rune comes alive, throbbing with passion, lust, need. Alexus doesn’t hold back, letting me experience everything he feels in this moment. Admiration. Longing. Even that tender affection he’d hidden before. It’s overwhelming, enough that tears well.
