“Daenae,” he said. Quietly. “Daenae look away.”
She looked at him. He looked back.
Something shifted, settled, the way things settled when they stopped needing to be managed.
He kissed her throat, the line of her collarbone, the curve of her shoulder.
Ava’s breath stuttered as he pinched her nipple, rolling it between his fingers before his mouth closed around the other.
The wet heat of his tongue, the scrape of his teeth, it was too much and not enough.
Her fingers clenched in his hair, holding him to her as he suckled, his free hand sliding up her thigh, bunching the fabric of her skirt higher. When his fingers found the damp heat between her legs, she jerked, a broken sound escaping her.
“So wet for me already, just how I like ye,”he murmured against her skin, his fingers teasing her slit through the thin linen of her undergarments.“Drippin’.”
Ava’s face burned, but she couldn’t deny it.
She wasaching, her folds throbbing with every slow circle of his fingers.“Noah, please.”
“Please, what?”His voice was a dark purr, his fingers finally hooking into the waistband of her undergarments, tugging them down just enough to bare her to his touch.
The first brush of his calloused fingers against her slick folds made her tremble.“Ye want me inside ye?”
“Aye,”she gasped, her hips lifting into his touch.
He groaned, his mouth crashing back onto hers as his fingers slid through her folds, gathering her wetness before pressing two thick digits inside her.
Ava cried out, her nails digging into his shoulders as he curled his fingers, finding that spot deep within that made her see stars. His thumb pressed against her clit, rubbing in slow, deliberate circles.
“That’s it,”he growled, his lips trailing down to her breast again, his tongue flicking over her nipple.“Take what ye need from me, Ava.”
She was past shame, past thought.
Her hips moved in frantic little rolls, her breath coming in ragged gasps as the pleasure coiled tighter, her muscles clenching around his fingers.“I’m close.”
“Nae yet,”he ordered, his fingers stilling just as the climax threatened to crash over her.
Ava whimpered in protest, her body trembling with denied release.
Noah chuckled darkly, his breath hot against her ear.“Nae until I’m inside ye.”
Before she could protest, he easily lifted her, one arm under her, much like how he moved Esther’s books off chairs to claim the seat, and then carried her to the bed.
She had a brief, vivid thought that she was going to have to revise several of her early assessments of this man. Then she stopped thinking entirely because his hands were at her waist, and his mouth was at her throat, and thinking had become essentially impossible.
She pulled at his shirt, and he let her take it, and she had a moment. Looking up at him in the firelight, the breadth of his shoulders.
The furs were soft beneath her back as he lay her down, his eyes never leaving hers as he stripped off his léine, revealing the broad expanse of his chest. Muscles carved from years of battle and labor, a smattering of dark hair trailing down to the waistband of his kilt.
Ava’s mouth watered. She reached for him, her fingers tracing the ridges of his abdomen, the faint silver of a scar just above his hip.
Noah hissed as her touch dipped lower, her fingers brushing the hard length of his manhood through the wool.
“Careful, lass,”he warned, but there was no real threat in his voice, only need.
She wasn’t careful.
She palmed him through the fabric, feeling the thick, heavy length of him, the way he pulsed against her touch.
