“I’m pretty certain I never mentioned this. At least, not out loud.”
“Give me her name.”
“Lore, she doesn’t matter.”
“Anyone who hurts you matters a great deal to me.” He sets his long fingers on either side of my rib cage and, thumbs pressing into the twin runnels framing my abdomen, his hands climb back up the length of my torso, halting beneath my breasts.
“You make me feel beautiful. Shouldn’t that be all that matters?”
His pupils shrink in their metallic pools. “I’ll let it go this time, but if anyone ever makes you feel less,mo khrà, I will ruin them. With or without your consent.”
“I doubt anyone will dare. You are quite fearsome.”
He smiles as though that was the greatest compliment I could’ve ever paid him. “Now, where were we? Oh yes, I was going to use this marvelous dress”—he lowers his lips to my collarbone and licks a line from one end to the other—“to fleece you of more sweet nectar.”
Fifty-Five
As his mouth kisses one sensitive nipple, his hands seize the stretchy sides of my bodysuit and tug them up. I hiss as the fabric quarries my intimate lips. He lifts his head to peer up at my crimped brow, his breath warming the coolness of the kiss he applied to my pebbling flesh.
He pulls on the suit again, and the fabric moves against my wet flesh, digging against the throbbing nub. He presses an open-mouthed kiss to my other nipple, then flicks the tightened bud with his tongue, stealing a ragged breath from my lungs.
My hands land in his silken locks just as he begins to rock the fabric. When he flicks his tongue against my nipple, more air hisses between my clenched teeth.
“Lore,” I gasp, tugging on his hair to drag his head away before he can bruise my too-sensitive flesh. “I’m not sure I like my breasts touched.”
He lifts his head and kisses the bone between the swells of creamy flesh. “We can explore that some other time.”
“Thank you.” I must be close to my monthlies because I feel like weeping that he listens to me.
“Please never thank me for listening to you, Little Bird.” He kisses my mouth with such tenderness that a tear spills over and beads down my cheek.
When it hits our joined mouths, a rumble forms in his throat and his fingers close so hard around my bodysuit that he yanks it against my crease, all but lifting me off the floor. I suck in a breath at the sharp burn that he follows with a frenzied seesaw that hitches up my pulse.
I will murder Dante.
After you murder my clit?
He stops so suddenly that a yelp tumbles from my mouth.
Don’t stop.
I feel his brows bend as he tentatively starts using the fabric to titillate my skin again. The rhythm soon makes my head fall back and my back bow, and I’m reminded of when he started a fire, clicking and rubbing those two stones together. He’s kindling a fire now, inside of me, igniting flames that scamper into my stomach and billow up my spine.
“Santo Caldrone, Lore . . .” My lashes flutter closed against my cheeks. “What are you doing to me?”
Waiting for your body to put out the fire.
“Wh-what . . .?”
He gently releases the sides of my dress and smooths the material along my hips. If he plans on hooking the straps back onto my shoulders and calling this a night . . .
Laughing softly, he plunges one hand through the part in my skirt and palms my sex. “What a good little bird. So drenched.” He caresses me over the fabric, and I mewl because I want more friction, more, more, more. “Shall we take this off?” He must’ve grown his talons because something bitingly cold and sharp shears the sopping textile.
And then Lorcan Ríhbiadh, master of the skies and rightful King of Luce, drops to his knees and takes both my hands from where they lay restlessly at my sides and carries them to his head. “Hold on to me,mo khrà.”
I fist his hair just as he seizes the sheer black material and tears the front clean off the bodysuit, leaving me standing in nothing but a stretchy black scrap of fabric that sits around my waist like a maladjusted garter belt adorned with a tail.
Talons retracting from his fingertips, he grips one of my knees and hooks it onto his broad shoulder, atop the leather cuirass he still wears while I wear close to nothing. I list, clutching his hair so tightly I worry I may rend it like he rent my gown.
