He peeled it up and up and up, his blistered knuckles scraping up the seam of my ribs, the knolls of my breasts, the hollow of my bones, raising pockets of fire over my damp skin. My shirt ended up on top of his.
His gaze, which had remained on mine, wandered low, taking me in one curve and goose bump at a time. “Perfect. Exquisite.” He skated his calloused palms over my skin, and I shivered. Bringing his eyes back to mine, he rested his hands on my waist and drew me close, my nipples hard, his pecs harder. “Amara Wood.”
“Yes?” I croaked.
His hands moved again, tracing each one of my fluttering ribs. “When we get out of here, will you go out on a proper date with me?”
Yes,I screamed but said, “It depends.”
His thumbs perched on my nipples, and I let out a little mewl. “On what?” he shot out gruffly.
How I enjoyed incensing him. “On who breaks us out. If Joshua’s the one—”
A storm blew across his face, lit him up with such animosity I worried Remo would seed the Neverrian soil with the Daneelie’s ashes the second we made it home.
“I’m kidding.”
He let out a low grunt like he wasn’t sure that I was.
I kissed his sandwiched lips, pried them apart. Slowly, his anger receded, his lips softened, and his thumbs stopped pressing my nipples as though trying to turn them inside out. One of his hands spiraled up to the back of my head while his other ventured south, his fingers gliding under the waistband of my belted shorts, coming to rest on my bare ass.
He gave it a possessive squeeze. “Lawfully, you’re already mine. You do realize that, Trifecta? Mine,” he repeated, walking me backward.
“You sound like a caveman.”
“Perhaps because I am a man inside a cave.” When we hit the wall, one hand cushioning the back of my skull while the other pillowed my tailbone, he asked, “May I get rid of your shorts?”
“I don’t know, can you?”
His lips curled against mine, and then the hand on my lower back grabbed on to the stretchy sleeve stuffed through the beltloops and shoved it, and my shorts, down.
A fevered rush of blood raced around my bared body, doing zilch to warm me up. “I guess you can.”
Pleased, he took a step back. I started to cross my arms, but he caught them and pressed them apart. “Let me look at my wife.”
My heart stopped. “I’m not your wife.”
“You will be.”
I hiked up an eyebrow and skewered him with a look. “Oh, really?”
“If you think I’m letting Josh or anyone else near that Cauldron when it reappears, you’re highly delusional. There will be an electrified laser fence.Anda fleet of armed guards, all of whom will answer to me.”
“Sounds like a lovely ceremony.”
That just made his eyes sparkle more wickedly.
“Are you sure you want this, Remo? That you wantme?”
“I’m a thousand percent sure.”
“You can’t be a thousand percent sure. That doesn’t make any mathematical sense.”
“You really are a math fiend, aren’t you?” His mouth lowered to one of my breasts, and he struck a peaked nipple with his tongue, causing pleasure to swell my veins.
“You swear you’re not settling for me, because”—I gasped as he blew on my wet skin, before kissing his way to my other breast and flattening his tongue there—“because you feel like”—I held my breath, let it out, held it again, moaned—“like you should?”
He released my nipple with a pinch of teeth and rolled his neck until his head leveled on mine. “Like I should?”
