"Ravishing you." Then he bites the side of my neck, a quick scrape of teeth that sends a bolt of heat straight through me, and starts walking.
I loop my arms around his neck and hold on.
He shoulders open a door at the end and carries me into his room .
Stone fireplace wall, rough-cut granite stacked floor to ceiling, unpolished, the kind of stonework that looks like it was built by hand over weeks. Exposed timber beams across the ceiling, dark with age, heavy and honest. Wide plank floors in warm honey tones, partially covered by a thick rug the color of sand. The bed is large, low, dressed in earth tones, heavy linen and a woven throw in deep brown. A worn leather chair sits near the fireplace. Books stacked on the nightstand.
There's an order to this room that contradicts every assumption I've made about Jace. The wild card, the restless one, the man who is always in motion. This room is still. Considered. Everything in it has been chosen rather than accumulated, and nothing is here for show.
He sets me down on the wide plank floor, gently, steadying me because my legs haven't fully recovered from what happened in the hot tub.
"Stay here," he says. "One second."
He disappears into the ensuite and comes back with a towel. Large and soft,that he wraps around my shoulders, pulling it close, and then he starts to dry me.
Slowly.
My shoulders, my arms, the back of my neck where the wet hair has dripped. He pats the towel along my collarbone, down my sternum, careful around my breasts.
I watch his face while he does it. The concentration there. The slight furrow between his brows. This is where the teasing stops. This is the real Jace underneath it.
He kneels. Dries my legs, my calves, lifts each foot and runs the towel between my toes, and the tenderness of it is so unexpected and so complete that my eyes sting and I have to look at the ceiling to keep from falling apart.
"Hey." He's looking up at me from the floor, towel in his hands, head tilted. "You okay?"
I nod. I don't trust my voice.
He stands. Takes my hand and leads me to the bed. Sits me down on the edge, the linen cool and smooth under my bare thighs. He leans in and kisses me, soft and brief.
He crosses to the fireplace. Crouches in front of it, and I watch him stack kindling over crumpled paper with quick and practiced efficiency. The muscles in his back shift under his skin as he works, still damp from the hot tub, and the low light catches the planes of his shoulders, the lean definition of his arms.
He strikes a match. Holds it to the paper. Waits, patient, until the kindling catches and the first real flame licks upward, casting warm light across the stone wall.
He stays crouched for a moment, feeding the fire a larger piece of wood, adjusting the airflow, and I watch him and what I feel is not just arousal. It's admiration. Safety. The specific, grounding sensation of watching a man do something competently and without pretense, something practical and real, while I sit naked on his bed in a room that smells like wood smoke and pine.
He turns and catches me watching. The firelight plays across his face, his jaw, the sharp line of his cheekbone, and the half-smile that arrives is slower than his usual grin. More honest.
"Keep looking at me like that," he says, low, "and I'm not going to give you the rest you need."
He's still in his boxers, and they are wet and clinging, and there is nothing subtle about the shape of him beneath the fabric. He's long and thick and straining against the cotton, and the sight of it sends a pulse of heat through me that starts between my legs and radiates outward.
I hold his gaze. "Then come here."
He doesn't move immediately. He looks at me, the firelight behind him, and something passes across his face that I can't name. Not hesitation. Recognition, maybe. Like he's seeing something he didn't expect to find.
Then he walks to the bed.
I reach for the waistband of his boxers as he gets close. He stops in front of me, standing, close enough that I can feel the heat coming off his skin. I pull the wet fabric down and he helps, stepping out of them, and he is there, inches from me, hard and flushed and wanting.
"My turn," I say with a confidence I’m far from feeling.
"Maya." He touches my cheek. Tucks a strand of damp hair behind my ear. "You don't have to."
"I know I don't have to." I look up at him. "I want to."
"Then lie back," his voice has changed register, becoming rougher at the edges. "On your back. Let your head come to the edge."
I lie back on the cool linen. Shift until my head reaches the side of the bed, tilting slightly over the edge. The ceiling above me is all dark timber beams and dancing firelight, and from this angle Jace is upside down and towering and the vulnerability of the position sends a thrill through me.
