Phoebus rakes back his hair. “Well, I’ll be going.” He rises from the bed, scooping up the book on my nightstand, then lingers there a second, his gaze skipping between Lore and me, moving the book from one hand to the other. “Off to the tavern I go.” And yet, he does not go. “You’re staying, right,Mórrgaht?” Here I thought he was hoping to cop a look at Lore disrobing, but no . . . my wonderful friend is checking that I don’t stay alone.
“I am. If Fallon will allow it.”
I roll my eyes. As if I’d send him away. Even if he was staying only to grouse about Faeries, I’d rather he do it here.
Grouse?
I smile.Let me guess . . . real kings don’t grouse?
His smile grows.
“All right, then. Have fun, kids.” Phoebus slaps a palm over his mouth. “I did not just say that. My sincerest apologies.”
“You’re forgiven.” Lore’s fingers have already started unbuckling his armor. “But only if you show yourself out this very minute.”
Phoebus scrambles away so quickly that his outline blurs.
“Must you truly frighten my friends, Lore? Can’t you settle for only terrifying your enemies?”
“I’ve a reputation to maintain,mo khrà.”
I shake my head, but a smile slinks over my lips. A smile he matches with one of his own. As his clothes drop, so does my gaze, and subsequently, the arch of my lips, because one cannot grin at a work of art. One can only gape in awe.
Lore looks as though he was carved out of the starlit rock of his kingdom—his silver scars, strikes of a chisel; his blood, veins of precious minerals; his hair, wisps of night sky; and his eyes, chips of gold. Even his scent seems to have been born from the mountain and the sky he commands.
He kneels on the foot of the bed, thick cock bobbing between his muscled thighs, straining against the air as he scales my clothed body. “Mórrígan, how I’ve missed you,” he rasps as he runs the sharp tip of his nose from my navel to the hollow of my collarbone. He trails a line of kisses up the length of my throat, each gentle peck of his mouth sparking a little moan that vibrates the darkened air.
By the time he crests the point of my chin and reaches my parted lips, my lungs burn from the speed at which I’m breathing, and my rib cage aches from the velocity at which my heart pounds. When he touches his lips to mine, I dissolve into a puddle of want.
I lift my hands and run my nails around his naked waist, luxuriating at the feel of his skin pebbling. Once I reach the base of his taut spine, I cannot decide whether to head north or south. I want to touch him everywhere at once. I flatten my palms against his flesh, dividing and conquering. One hand skims up, the other down. His muscles flex beneath my fingertips, and he groans into my mouth, deepening the swishes of his tongue.
Supporting his body on one arm, he reaches down and unfastens my pants, then shoves his hand inside my underwear. When he uncovers how damp the fabric is, he looses another groan that sounds almost animalistic.
Without separating our mouths, he plunges one finger into my heat, then draws it out.Sore?he rasps into my mind.
No, I choke out.
He soaks another finger inside of me, and a cry flees my lips, breaking our kiss. He must sense it’s a cry of pleasure because, to my absolute delight, he repeats the thrusts several more times. Once his fingers are coated with me, he slicks them over that magical nub.
Open your eyes, mo khrà, so I can see how your heart beats for me.
Through my—eyes?I’m somehow lucid enough to ask, even though my thoughts are as choppy as the waters of Monteluce.
Your pupils dilate when you desire me.
I desire him so much that my pupils must’ve flooded the whites of my eyes. My thought, or perhaps the circumference of those black dots, makes a liquid smile spill across Lore’s mouth and into his eyes.
He slows his caresses, and I pout.Lore, please . . .
Chuckling, he kisses the hinge of my jaw, dips his fingers back inside of me, then spreads the wetness to my hardened bud, rubbing and rolling until an orgasm ripples up my spine and wrenches a sharp gasp from my lungs. It’s so intense that it feels as though I’ve left my body and traveled to the farthest reaches of the universe.
When he begins to caress me again, I almost still his wrist. My flesh is so raw that his fingers feel tipped in talons, but then he slows his ministrations, and the shallow ache turns into renewed need. My fingers sink into his skin at the same time as his sink into me, playing my sensitive flesh with such dexterity that, in seconds, I am swept under again, into that place spun from sugar and sunshine where only Lore and I exist.
The male kisses the slope of my neck as he grips my pants and drags them down. I lift so that he doesn’t feel the need to shred these. Once he’s rolled them off me, and with them, my underwear, he takes his hardened length in his hand and rubs it against my wet folds.
I moan as his silken tip plows between my lips and flicks my orgasm switch. I go off. I’m uncertain which one of us is more startled that I’ve come, but Lore blinks at me while I attempt to locate my heart, which feels as though it has dissolved, because it beats everywhere.
He slams his mouth against mine.I need to be inside of you, Behach Éan.
