“I swear, my arm is fine. Look.” She pulls off her thin shirt.
My mind blanks, because her breasts are unbound and her pink nipples puckered. It takes great effort to pull my lascivious stare to her limb.
The instant I ascertain her skin is unscarred, my attention rears back to her bared breasts. As my fingers scale her abdomen to mold one globe, her stomach contracts, and my balls lift.
I wait for her eyes to fasten to mine before I finally…finallylean over and slick my tongue over her.
She shakes, rattling like Serpents apparently do. When I strike her clit, she gasps and her pupils flood her violet irises. Though I do want to make her come again, I want to draw this one out, so I lick down her sex until I’ve reached that opening my cock is just weeping to penetrate. I jam my tongue inside. Her scent grows sweeter, her breathing harsher, her eyes shinier, her pulse hastier.
She tunnels her fingers through my hair, croaking, “What are you doing to me, Vizosh?”
Hopefully, I’m ruining you for your mate,I think as I lick my way back to her clit, which I circle a grand total of three times before sucking it into my mouth and eliciting a climax that has her gasping my name.Only fair when you’ve ruined me for all other women, Isla Ríhbiadh.
A long, long while later when she can barely stand, I pull my head out from between her legs and carry her to the bed.
“Your trousers,” she purrs sleepily.
I smirk. “As much as I am dying to get inside you, I think I’ve wrung you dry of both energy and juice.”
“Did you truly use the wordjuice?” she asks around a giggle.
The sound swaths both my dick and heart.
“I did,” I confirm, as I tuck her under the sheets and climb over her, before settling on my side.
She rolls onto hers. “That was the single best oral stimulation I haveeverhad. I’m going to be dreaming about it for as long as I live.”
Her compliment shouldn’t irk me, but it chafes some rudimentary part of my ego that wishes no other man had kneeled where I just kneeled and lapped where I just lapped.
“No need to dream when you’ll have my tongue at your disposal.” She smiles, but then her smile quivers when I punctuate my promise with an: “Always.”
She strokes my cheek and then she’s breaching the stunted distance between our bodies to kiss me. The meeting of our mouths is slow and sweet—a dance of tongues, a caress of lips, a graze of teeth.
Before I abandon all my restraint and clothing, I scoop up the book and pick up where Lachlano left off. Isla laughs as I read. We are three chapters in when her laughter drifts. She’s fallen asleep. I gently close the book and set it on the nightstand, and then I brush the tumble of black locks away from her serene face, careful not to wake her.
Gods, she’s beautiful. A Cauldron-sent angel come to deliver my soul and heart from damnation.
As I climb off the bed, I find myself rubbing at my chest, at the scudding muscle that beats hard enough to bruise. My obsession is fucking frightening. Where has my common sense gone? My willpower? My staunch independence?
I roll my lips that still taste of her. My cock swells instantly. I back up, then pivot sharply and all but lunge into my quarters through our shared doorway. A pit stop by my bathing chamber later doesn’t make me feel any calmer.
When I meet up with the various members of my government, my mind feels effervescent. Half in my War Room, half back in Isla’s bedchamber. If any of them notice, they don’t say anything.
For tedious hours, I discuss resource allocations, trade profit, and valuate crop yield. And then I call in my engineers to deliberate the ruined train track segments and their opinions on the construction material Eponine sent from Nebba. It’s the wee hours of the morning by the time I call it a night, or rather, a day, and head back upstairs.
I find Isla bent over her desk, quill scratching at a little booklet. Since she hasn’t yet sensed me, I lean against the doorframe separating our chambers and observe her. She’s so deeply concentrated that she’s nibbling on her lip while carving her hand through the long black locks that curtain her face.
Her neck snaps straight. And then her face spins toward me. She plops her pen back into the inkwell and stands. “You’re back.”
Although she doesn’t punctuate her comment with an exclamation point, her expression smacks of contentment.
My heart twinges with relief that the way I’m feeling isn’t one-sided. “I am.”
“Have you gone to bed yet?”
“No.” I push away from the doorframe and walk over to her.
“You need to rest.” She meets me halfway.
