“Why did you do that?”
“Because my tongue was jealous of your fingers.” He carries said-fingers to his mouth and sucks on them.
When his pupils flood his irises, I ask, “Do I taste like the others?”
“What others?”
“I imagine you’ve had many others.”
“Not in the past five centuries. I don’t recall their taste, nor do I want to.” His timbre is gruff, as though the subject irritates him.
“Do I taste like past-me?”
“You taste like my mate.”
I believe he’s saying that to settle my qualms that my Serpent scent might not be as appealing.
He plants his palms on either side of my head and bends over my body, taking my mouth in a kiss that tastes like, I suppose, me. His tongue sweeps, his beard chafes. Although that spot between my legs was enthralling, so are his kisses. I scrape my nails over his shoulders, causing his skin to break out in goosebumps. Because he likes it? I pull away to ask.
“I fucking love it,” he growls, half in Crow, half in Shabbin.
I smile and scrape more of his back, any place I can reach, which soon becomes only his corded nape as he travels down my body, suckling on my nipples before attending to the puckered areola surrounding them.
“These are called nipples.”
My cheeks lift with another smile, another blissful breath. “You taught me that already.”
“That’s right.” He glides lower, stopping only once his head’s leveled with my center.
Bracing himself on his forearms, he thumbs apart the plump flaps concealing my shiny trench. “These are called the labia or lips or nethermouth.” When he runs his thumbs down their underside, my body jerks. “Or you can simply refer to them asminefrom now on.” He smiles.
This time, I’m the one incapable of bending my lips.
I gasp when his thumb circles the first puckered hole. “This is your vaginal opening, the place in which I will be sheathing my cock for as long as I have cock to sheath.”
“Why wouldn’t you have cock to sheath?” I croak, my voice coming out in bursts, because he’s dipped his finger inside and is gyrating it as though to widen the hollow. “Are you afraid someone may slice it off?”
“No. That isn’t one of my fears.” He glides his wet finger to the next hole. “I might penetrate this one eventually as well.”
I hope he means with his pinkie because there’s no way the cock I spied when I healed him will ever fit inside.
“Some females are quite partial to rectal penetration.”
I’m tempted to ask if I was once partial to it but decide I don’t want to know what old-Daya was like. I don’t want him to start comparing me to her and find me lacking.
He rests his cheek on the inside of my thigh as he guides his finger back out and up. When he hits that tiny hooded bead, Iflop back and gaze at the stars beyond the glass ceiling. “Great Mórrígan, how I’ve missed you,moannan.”
The Crow word for mate makes my heart ache because what if I’m not? He says he’ll still want me, but what if he doesn’t? What if it’s the resemblance to the Shabbin Princess he loved and the possibility that we might be mates that powers his hunger?
“Look at me.”
I stare at his ghostly reflection that’s blurring from my sudden surge of panic.
“Not at my likeness in your skylight, Daya. Atme.”
With a swallow and a quick bat of my lashes, I stare down the length of my abdomen. Of course he spots the unnatural luster of my eyes. Of course he doesn’t mistake it for anything other than what it is. He reaches for my hand and twines our fingers.
“You and I, we start here. We start now.”
