A snarl ripped from my lips as he doused the last torch, throwing us into sudden darkness. He met it with a low chuckle. I pouted my lips out even though I knew he couldn’t see them. How dare he steal away my last good look at him? I couldn’t havehim tonight, but at least I could sear his body into my memory so I might have pleasant dreams.
My eyes adjusted quickly, made as they were for seeing in the dark. But my mind struggled to make sense of what my eyes communicated. In front of me, directly by my bedside, was a wall of hard muscle.
Garrick hooked his thumbs into his breeches and pulled them down.
I swallowed so that I would not start drooling.
Then, to my utter and complete shock, he reached for my hip.
“Alize is right there!” I hissed, certain she could hear me even from the other side of the room.
“Move over, witch.”
He did not wait for me to comply, sliding my heavy body over as if it were nothing and climbing into the bed behind me.
“If this bed collapses down on top of me, I will eat your bonded. I don’t care how disgusting humans taste.”
I shivered at Isanara’s threat. Or maybe it was the warmth of Garrick’s breath against my ear as he settled in behind me. Or his cock stroking against my backside. Fucking gods. He wore nothing but his linen shirt, and with the buttons undone, he might as well have been wearing nothing at all.
I shivered again.
“Do you need me to warm you up?” Garrick breathed into my ear, his lips brushing against the shell.
One arm slid beneath my head, creating a little pillow and tucking me in tight against his chest. But the other one… wicked, hateful man. It slid around my stomach, drawing circles around my belly button and caressing the soft rolls. I was so wet that soon the entire temple would be able to scent me—humans and fae alike.
“We are not alone,” I said as quietly as I could manage, hoping the thick furs would muffle the words, if not the sound.
Garrick answered by sucking my earlobe into his mouth. “Then you’d better be quiet.”
I opened my mouth to protest, then slammed it shut again when his hand slid down my stomach. He paused to tangle his fingers in the dark forest at the apex of my legs, drawing tiny circles that tickled and teased.
I was going to die. For the first time in my life or death, it was not the frost that would be the end of me, but the heat. Holding in the reactions he drew from my body was torture on a level I’d never experienced, not in four hundred years.
Desperate to relieve the pressure, I slid my own hand back over my hip to his harder one. If he could torture me, I could certainly return the favor.
But he pushed my hand away before I could curl it around him. “Not now. Tonight is about you.”
“You are being ridiculous.” I could feel how hard he was—like the fucking stones that had been hewn from the mountains to build the walls that enclosed us.
My legs pressed together, eager for that hard length of him inside of me. But it was his hand that slid down, urging my thighs apart. He lingered for a moment, stroking the insides of my thighs beneath the blanket. I’d been with many men and women over the centuries, but none of them had ever shown such reverence for my body. Garrick touched the parts of me that I’d never considered to be erotic—my soft stomach, my thick thighs—with as much interest as my breasts or pussy.
My hand began to tremble. I dug my fingernails into Garrick’s hip to steady myself. This time, he didn’t push me away.
He nipped at my throat. “Be a good girl and keep your hands right where they are.” Then he plunged a finger inside of me.
My back arched, hips driving into him. Gods, he was so hard. My mind could hardly process the heat of his cock pressedagainst my back in tandem with his thick finger stretching me. No matter how I moved, he was there.
There was no way I could keep myself contained. Alize was doomed to hear every sound. I refused to let myself think about Isanara. Hopefully, she was blocking me out, if that was even possible.
Garrick cradled my hips within his own while his finger set a steady, rhythmic pace. I’d admired those fingers for months. I knew their girth, the competent strength in every inch. When he pressed a second one inside of me, the darkness around me exploded into stars.
“Garrick,” I groaned, turning my face down into his bicep to stifle the sound.
He took that as an invitation to press his lips to the nape of my neck. “Has no one ever worshipped you, Koryn?”
My answer was another helpless mewl swallowed by his thick muscle.
No—that was what I would have said if I were coherent enough to form words. No one had ever worshipped me like this. At best, sex had always been an exchange. At worst, my partner found satisfaction while I took care of myself or fell asleep disappointed. But Garrick did worship me, every single part.
