“God, Calliope,” he muttered against her skin. “I could spend the rest of my life here.” His hand cupped the other breast, thumb teasing, dying for every sound she gave him. “Sweetest bloody punishment I’ve ever delivered.”
She arched, laughing breathlessly, tugging his hair. “You call this punishment?”
He lifted his head just enough to growl. “The night has only just started.”
His hands dragged down to her breeches, working with more urgency than skill. He cursed, low and vicious. “These damn things.”
“I quite like them,” she teased.
“I don’t,” he ground out, yanking at the stubborn cloth until he could shove breeches and drawers beneath together down her hips. He hated that his brothers had seen her in them as well. Several times now.
She lifted her sweet derriere, wriggling to help him work them down. Her boots made it clumsy, however. Muttering another curse, he rose to his knees where he straddled her, and twisted around, tugging at the leather until he got one off, then the other, tossing them aside before stripping away the last of her clothes in one rough sweep. This was not the polished seduction she deserved. Just raw, desperateneed, and while he knew she deserved so much more than this, Maxen didn’t know how to be anything else. Fortunately, his luck must have been great in his past life, for this brilliant woman didn’t seem to mind. “There,” he said as he twisted back to her. “No more damned barriers.”
“Now you.”
“Happy to oblige, love.” He tore his jacket from his shoulders, flinging it carelessly to the floor. Then he dragged his shirt over his head and threw it aside.
Her gaze locked on his chest in fascination. Something tender, hot, and dangerous to him. He paused before the corner of his mouth twitched. “Go on. You’ve already touched them.”
She did. Her fingers traced the ridges, featherlight, and his whole body jerked as if she’d struck him. Breath slammed out of his lungs, chest drawing tight.
Had anyone ever touched him like this?
No. But then, he’d never revealed these scars to anyone but her.
Heat ripped through him, violent, scorching, worse than any blade he’d ever taken when she levered herself up to place her lips over one particular scar just above his breeches. His heart thundered. God help him, he wanted to snarl, to shove her away before she saw too much, but he couldn’t. He couldn’t move at all.
“Christ, Calliope, careful.” If she kept looking at him like that, touching him like this, she’d undo every last bolt he’d hammered into place.
“How did they happen?”
“War.” Probably not the kind she’d imagine.
She scoffed. “I should have known better than to ask.”
His gaze pinned her. So bloody beautiful, her throat and body bared, her eyes on him as if he were worth looking at. He reached for the flaps of his breeches, jaw clenched, breath sawing, every nerve near to breaking. “I need to remove my—”
“No,” she breathed, catching his wrists, eyes gone dark with urgency. “No time. I need you now, Maxen.”
God save him.
The words punched through the last splinter of discipline. He fumbled the buttons and shoved the breeches over his hips, his cock freed, heavy, aching, and throbbing with the same need that wrecked him. But as much as he wanted her, he couldn’t just mount her and have his way like a rutting dog. He lowered himself between her legs, lips scraping down her body until his mouth hovered over the place he wanted most.
She gasped, sharp and breathless. “Maxen, what are you—?”
Her words cut off just as he sealed his mouth over her core, claiming her there just as ruthlessly as he’d claimed her lips above.
Her cry nearly made him explode there and then, her taste burning into him like fire and absolution. He gripped her thighs harder, holding her to him, refusing to let her escape the truth of what he was giving her—the truth that he could worship, that he could destroy, and that she held the power of it all in the palm of her hands.
That she owned him.
Body and soul.
His thumb traced her nub while he pushed a finger into her, and her body answered him like the tides answer the moon, and the sound she made drove him to the cliff edge. And God help him, he would take it all, every gasp, every shiver, brand them onto his soul until he was ruined beyond saving.
But he was just a damn man.
He nearly lost it when she cried out his name, or perhaps it was snapped as a curse, he couldn’t tell at this point. He could hardly hear anything other than the pulse in his damn cock threatening to explode. He clenched his jaw and forced his mind elsewhere. Horseflesh, the stallion coming up for sale in a month. Anything to keepfrom spilling like a green boy.
