And Desmond. I could feel him. The warmth of his body against my legs, and his palm on my back. His fingers…
“Oh,”I breathed as he stroked faster, circling. Teasing. He was diligent, certain of his task, and in no hurry, and yet I groaned, squirming with impatience. Arching toward him, too ravenous to be humiliated by the exhibition of my own need.
“More,” I demanded in a husky voice I’d never heard before. A voice I’d had no idea my throat could produce.
Desmond groaned. His fingers plunged inside me, and his groan deepened into an inarticulate plea.
Then, suddenly, he was gone, and I was left panting, arching toward him. I started to rise, and his hand landed firmly on my spine again. “Don’t…move,” he growled.
I heard the rustle of fabric, and suddenly he was back, his fingers stroking again. Teasing. Testing. He exhaled, a strange, needy sound, and his fingers were gone.
He slid inside me slowly, steadily, and for a single second the world seemed to still around me. As if all of existence had been distilled into this one moment. This one sensation.
Us.
In that moment, I was satisfied. Fulfilled, in a way I simultaneously craved like a habitual dependance and yet could not remember ever before feeling.
In the next moment, I was entirelyunsatisfied.
“More,”I demanded again, pressing back against him. And with a moan, Desmond began to move.
His hands curled around my hips, guiding my movements until I understood—until my body remembered what my mind could not.
He gasped as I clenched around him, clutching the table. Arching up. Grinding back against him. Try though he might to take it slow, to draw pleasure out, my body would have none of it.
I needed something—I neededhim, now—and it did not take long for him to understand.
He moved faster, stroking into me over and over, bruising my hips on the edge of the table, pushing me closer with every thrust. We raced toward a crest building quickly, mercilessly inside me, and yet the peak remained brutally out of reach.
“Please,” I groaned, frustration rivaling my arousal, and Desmond bent forward. His hand snaked around the front of my thigh, and with his next thrust, he stroked my tenderest, most aching bit of flesh, drawing a groan from deep in my gut. Altering my understanding of the sensations building within me.
My body clenched around him, and my breathing hitched. My very existence narrowed again to a single point of focus as pressure—pleasure—built toward a blistering peak, and then suddenly…
A single, infinitesimal point of ecstasy abruptly exploded into a million sparks burning brightly, followed by another wave of sparks, and another, and another, each pulsing within me even as the next burst forth.
My cry echoed through the room.
Desmond leaned over me, thrusting deeper, harder, even as his hand clamped over my mouth.
I bit his finger, still riding out the explosions, and he grunted as he released into me.
For a moment, we both lived in a still, quiet moment of post-release, a cluster of damp flesh and pounding hearts. Tangled clothing and gasping breath.
Then Desmond stepped back, and air cooled my overheated skin. He perched next to me as I lifted myself onto the unused workstation, primly tucking my skirt around my legs. He stroked damp hair back from my face and leaned forward to murmur something I could not clearly make out. But it sounded a bit like “You are a burst of light in a dark room.”
I considered asking him to repeat it. To clarify.
Instead, I leaned back so I could see his face, searching it for something I might recognize. Any hint that I should have seen before, that any of this was possible. That Desmond Gregory, the distinguished Alchemary researcher, the surrogate older brother from my childhood, could also be this man.
This explosiveforce.
Looking at him from this close was a blistering sort of intimacy unlike anything I’d ever experienced, including the act we’d just shared. The brown of his irises was shot through with bright copper striations, which seemed to flicker with the lamplight.
He blinked lazily. He was not smiling, but he wasn’t scowling either.
He looked…exposed. Vulnerable.
I leaned forward, and he leaned in to meet me. “Again,” I whispered in his ear, and Desmond laughed, a deep, throaty chuckle.
