My bedroom is dark save for the slashes of moonlight across the hand-tufted wool rugs that dapple my smooth stone floors and the lone candle bleeding firelight beside my bed. All the other candles Phoebus lit have puddled on their brass holders.
I’m glad for the darkness, for the light reveals all, and there’s much I’d prefer Lore not to see yet—the first, being the slenderness I’ve acquired; the second, being the blush smothering my face.
“I love when your cheeks pinken. Especially when I’m the one to paint them that color. As for your body, Fallon”—he tugs on my hand, twirling me into him, then settles both hands on my hips—“I’ve been painfully attracted to you since before Mórrígan decided that I, a man with a heart of steel and talons tipped in blood, could be worthy of such a sweet mate.”
My chest tightens at his declaration, yet I roll my eyes. “Please. I’m many things, but sweet isn’t one of them.”
He slides one of his hands to the small of my back while the other travels toward my front, circling my thigh, leaving behind a ring of frost that grows hot in his wake. His palm lifts until only two fingers remain in contact with my skin. He walks them toward the slit in my skirt and kicks it open.
I drop my gaze just as his hand penetrates beneath the black chiffon. A heartbeat later, the same two fingers that parted my skirt settle over the taut opacity shielding my most intimate region.
I hold my breath, waiting to see and feel what he does next. In some recess of my brain, I think I should touch him as well, but I’m loathe to lose what little pressure he exerts on my center.
His fingertips curve around me, stilling on where the fabric is embarrassingly wet.
He leans over until his mouth is flush with my ear. “There is no greater turn-on than to feel your body priming itself for mine.” As he hooks the damp fabric, he licks up the shell of my ear toward the naked gold hoop.
My lungs are so cramped and my heart so wild that when his cold knuckle connects with my heated flesh, a tremulous moan escapes my mouth. One that turns into a choked mewl when he closes his fingers around the crotch of my bodysuit, driving his knuckles into me.
“I cannot decide whether to snap the fabric or use it.”
I imagine he means to sop up the additional wet coursing from me.
“And deprive my mouth of drinking from you?”
Oh.
My.
Gods.
Between his dirty confession and the slide of his knuckles, the whole of me burns as though lit from within. How can he keep alluding to wanting to put his mouththere? He surely cannot desire such a thing.
“I desire nothing more.”
“Why?” I choke as his knuckles crest higher, hitting a particularly tender part of me. “Why would you want to dothat?”
He stops teasing me and straightens to peer down at me. “Mo khrà, whywouldn’tI want to do that?”
“Because . . . Isn’t it”—I wrinkle my nose—“foul?”
“Foul?” He pivots his hand, extends one finger, and dips it into me.
The shock of the intrusion is quickly replaced by a delicious fullness. My lungs seize, and his name leaves my mouth on a gasp. He tows his finger out and, at the very same time as he noses the column of my throat, he sinks his finger back inside my heat. A full body shudder takes ahold of me and doesn’t let go.
“You’ve already ensnared me, Behach Éan. But rattle away.”
“Is that—is that why—I’m shaking?”
“It is,mobahdéach moannan.”
Mo badock meanan.“What does—that mean?”
“My beautiful mate.”
When he removes his finger, it feels as though I’ve lost an essential part of myself. The sensation of emptiness only worsens when he releases the fabric he pulled away from my flesh and it settles against me with a snap.
My frustration must score itself across my face because he murmurs, a lilt to his tone, “What an impatient little bird you are.” He raises the fingers that were on me—inme—to his mouth, extending his middle finger, the tip of which glistens as though he’s dipped it in honey. When he laves it clean with the flat of his tongue, I can hardly draw breath.
