“Christ, yes!”
With a growl, he sucked her clit, working her harder and faster with his fingers and tongue. Then sealed his mouth over her clit and tugged.
She cried out, her orgasm crashing over her.
Panting hard, Ash stared at him, still wedged between her thighs. He pressed soft kisses along her inner thighs, his silver hair loosened by her hands, his burgundy eyes dark with desire. Right then, he was the epitome of a predator. It was dangerous and thrilling all at once, and she wanted more.
“Better?” he rasped, his voice like miles of gravel.
Ash swallowed hard. How the hell did he know she’d been strung so tight?
She nodded. “Let me take care of you?—”
A smile tugged at his sinful mouth, his lightly tanned face a little flushed. “Vixen, watching you come apart is all I need for now. Have your swim. We must go soon. The others await.”
He kissed her inner thigh again, then waded off, stepping on the shore, water dripping off his clothes as he disappeared around the boulders.
Ash sat there, trying to make sense of what just happened, not that she regretted anything. While he had easedherraging needs, what about him?
She swept back her damp hair with shaky hands, then slipped back into the water and grabbed her soap to finish her bath.
As she climbed out, she sighed. No clothes.
Carefully, she made her way around the rocks and found him standing near the edge of the rippling lake, his clothes already dry, cloak on again. Once dressed, she tied the laces of her boots as the question burned in her mind. “Why?”
He turned, so impossibly beautiful and equally remote once more. “Like I said, the claiming mark does that—stirs up sexual needs.”
Of course. He was just reacting to the bite. A biological imperative; nothing personal. She couldn’t forget that, could she?
Even as satiation still hummed through her, hollowness crept in, leaving her utterly alone. The bite on her neck throbbed, as if to remind her it meant nothing beyond safety.
She rose, put on her coat, and pulled the hood up. “I’m ready.”
As he crossed to her, Ash picked up the pack and hooked it on her shoulder. He drew her close, and she shut her eyes, not looking at him, as he dematerialized them.
They reformed somewhere on a slope, among enormous chunks of rock as if a mountain had exploded. Ash stepped back. In this part of the world, night had settled. Silver-barked trees loomed overhead, their pale canopies letting in cold moonlight through the sporadic gaps in the mist.
The sprawling town of Duskscale lay in the scooped-out foothills below. Buildings with rugged, charcoal roofs and darkened walls looked as if the last eruption never quite stopped. Smoke from slag-braziers drifted between crooked eaves.
The hum in the town as people went about their business drifted in the air.
Race stood near her, but unable to bear his closeness, Ash sat on a rock and waited, her mind churning, her body wound up tightly again.
Christ, this was ridiculous. Sexual attraction was one thing—instantaneous and usually gone once eased. But this pull between them—no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t seem to shut it off.
With Paul, while she liked him, it had taken several weeks before she’d even agreed to go out with him. With Race, she’d lost all rational sense.
“Ash, about what you said back at the cave?” he said, pulling her attention to him. “Before I marked you. There are a lot of things you have wrong?—”
“Like what?” The words were out before she could keep her defenses up and tell him to forget it, because dammit, a deeper part of her had to know.
“About not wanting—” His mouth tightened, his expression switching back to a mask. “The others approach.”
Wanting who? Me?
Disappointment flaring, Ash glanced at the foothills as three figures climbed up the slope toward them.
“All set,” Attor said, stopping near a looming rock opposite them. “Got us a few nights at Talonhold House.”
