“This is my first kiss in three hundred years,” he reminds me. “I don’t care what’s happening around us. I mean to enjoy it.”
When he lowers his head again, my pulse thunders. I swallow hard, expectant, though of what I'm no longer sure. Certainly not the exquisite taste of him or the way his kiss is a languid, torturous perusal, as though we've time to learn one another so intimately. We don't.
I let him try, though.
How easily I forget about the horde looking for us and instead become hyper-aware of the fullness of the wolf's lips, the lushness of his tongue as it slides across the entrance to my mouth. I let him trace every curve with precision, let him nip my bottom lip with a fang, and suck the wounded flesh into his mouth.
We both rouse and moan at the thin, metallic taste of my blood slipping between us. It’s such a small taste. A single drop. And yet it’s overwhelming, such a powerful thing to share, that my nipples harden, my clit aches, and I feel like I can soar.
Our kiss turns hungrier as he parts my lips and slips his tongue inside, stroking with silky, velvet softness. I meet him stroke for stroke, taste for taste, moaning quietly, a needy whimper. The result is Neri’s ragged growl, a sound that speaks of aching, a sound that sends a shiver through my bones and even more desire rushing to my core.
Oh, how I want to curse him back to the Nether Reaches. Because just like that, making him earnanythingwhen it comes to me is a forgotten task. Because I’m utterly, completely, stupidly intoxicated by him.
Neri slips his hand inside my cloak and closes his grip around my ribcage, his thumb brushing back and forth along the curve of my breast. Possessively, he tugs me flush against him. His body is big and warm, the hard planes of muscle a wonder beneath my roaming touch.
Slowly, he breaks the kiss and takes a harsh breath of night air.
“Convincing enough?” I ask, arching a challenging brow.
He shakes his head, a smile hidden inside his deep voice. “I think you could use a little more work.”
I close the distance between us, and when his tongue slides into my mouth, I suck, all while rubbing my fingertips down his thigh, dangerously close to something I know he wants me to touch.
“Careful, witch,” he says when our mouths separate. “I bite. Hard. And I’ll do it right here. Don’t think I won’t.”
“I’m not scared of you,” I whisper, and like the idiot I am, drag him back down, guiding his hungry mouth to mine once again, even as I hear Eryx’s mob passing by, on the prowl for a witch and her beast.
A sound more animal than man rumbles out of Neri when I flick my tongue purposefully against the sharp tip of his fang. He closes his fingers around my wrists and hooks them behind his head.
“I don't want your fear, Nephele.” Eyes shadowed with lust, he folds his arms around me and gathers me into a lover's embrace. “I want your surrender.”
He kisses me again, and it is utterly maddening. I can’t think around his gentle yet thorough invasion, the big hands cupping and kneading my ass, the rigid cock pressing against my stomach. His kiss is a slow devouring, his tongue learning me, exploring me, opening me.
And I let him.
If this isn’t surrender, I don’t know what is.
When he presses his knee between my legs and pushes my thighs apart, I don’t resist. And when he slips his hand to the gathered heat there, teasing the dampened seam of my trousers, I stroke myself against his come-hither touch.
Drawing back, he glances down between us, watching as I roll my hips to the steady tempo of his hungry fingers. I’m already clay in his hands, but when he stares into my eyes, lifts his fingers to his nose, and inhales deeply, my toes curl in my boots. I melt into him, like candle wax forced to soften beneath the growing heat of a new flame.
“You’re going to taste so fucking good, little bird.” His eyes flutter closed for the briefest moment, but his face soon goes dark with want. “I can take you right now. It’ll be a hard, fast fuck. Or we can walk back to the tor, close ourselves off in my room, and take our time destroying one another all night. Or both. Your choice.”
My heart lurches with stupid anticipation, and I swear to the gods, I am so drunk off him I could almost turn around, unlace my pants, and let him have me. A part of me wants to be just as indecent as everyone else in this alley tonight. But if we walk back to the tor, what are the chances we won’t encounter Eryx?
Still clutching his cloak, I press my forehead against his chest, trying to breathe and think and settle the fuck down. But my attention snags on something. A glint of silver on the ground.
A little puddle of aether.
The primordial substance I still don’t truly understand slowly drips from the air around Neri, settling into the cracks between the cobbles. I’m certain that is not a good thing.
Wordless, I slide my back down the wall, hands hiding down his powerful thighs as I squat to gather some of the aether under the cover of my billowed cloak. Neri would stop me if he knew what I was doing, but he’s so consumed right now, eyes wildly curious and locked with mine, especially given that I’m currently at eye level with the bulging cock straining against his leather britches.
“I have a trick to show you,” I tell him, licking my lips for the perfect distraction.
He laughs, a small, sensual sound. “Please do.”
With the aether squirming in my hand, I stand back up. Neri’s expression changes from guarded excitement to guarded bewilderment as I fold my arms around his neck and press my body against his.
