He runs a hand along the edge of my jawline. “I never asked for this. But I am asking for you.”
I take a hard look at his face. There are those eyes, the ones from a fever dream. I don’t think I’m ever going to be able to sweat him out. “You don’t need to ask. I’m already yours.”
He kisses my temple, the corner of my mouth, my achingcollarbones, the side of my rib cage. He rucks up my nightdress, exposing my legs. He kisses the bony joint of my ankle, my knee, the jut of my hip bone. Up and up, higher, to the place where I am aching for him.
“Ivy,” he whispers against my skin.
I tug my fingers through his dark hair. “Emmett.”
I pull his body closer to mine, needing to find friction, to feel him.
I’ve never experienced wanting like this. I understand now what true desperation is, what could lead someone to trading away parts of themself. Emmett could ask anything of me right now, and I’d give it without hesitation.
His hands rake, white hot, down the length of my bare spine, each vertebra under the pads of his fingers. He sinks his teeth down hard enough to sting at the soft spot between my neck and shoulder, then soothes the wound with gentle licks from his tongue. His mouth trails up the column of my neck to the shell of my ear.
“Do you want to stop?” he asks against my unbound hair.
“No. I want you.”
He pulls back to look at me. We’re both breathing heavily, and something wordless passes between us.
“I’ve never wanted anything more than the way I want you.” He sighs.
I roll, now on top of him. I need to look at him like this, eyes blown out with wanting, hair a mess all over the pillow. I lower myself down onto him, sinking until we meet, completely. His eyes close in bliss, and I tip my head back, just letting myself adjust to it. “Ivy,” he whispers. I don’t even know if he realizes he’s talking out loud. I rock against him, agonizingly slow, but it doesn’t soothe the aching, it just drives us both deeper into this frenzy.
Emmett pulls my nightdress off in one fluid motion and cups my breasts with his hands, covering them completely. “Ivy, Ivy.”
There’s just searing need and Emmett everywhere. I drag my hands across his chest, through his hair, taking him, and this throbbing, yearning feeling, again and again. I push up on my knees, and then down until we find a rhythm together. His hands are needy, touching everywhere, and I arch against him. I’ve never been more exposed, but I feel the safest I have ever felt within the walls of this palace.
He’s done this before, even if I haven’t, and I have the vague sense that it should bother me. But we’ve never done this with each other, so it’s new all the same. In every gasp and touch, there is discovery.
He looses a breath and maneuvers me under him. He moves against me, in me, our hearts beating wildly in sync. Finally, he shudders, and we both shatter, fully and completely. The feeling consumes me until I am on fire, burning with him.
For a moment, all we can do is look at each other, panting and starstruck.
I love him. I’ll tell him later, when I can catch my breath.
He pulls me against his sweat-slicked chest and brushes my hair from my eyes. “Are you all right? I didn’t—”
“I’m perfect.”
Emmett smiles down at me, heart-stoppingly handsome. “You are.”
Emmett holds me for a while, but I don’t have long; the footmen will be searching for me and I can’t let them find me here.
I look at Emmett and imagine a life in which I could have been his. But that’s not the life I’ve found myself in.
It’s time. It has to be time.
I slide out of the warmth of his bed, and I want to steal one of his sweaters, but I can’t. Bram can’t know I was here. He can never know what happened tonight.
Emmett watches as I walk across the room to gather my nightdress from where it landed on the floor. “Ivy?”
“I can’t stay,” I whisper back. I pray he just lets me leave. One more look from him and I’ll break.
“Bram.”He says the word like it hurts him.
“Bram,” I say. “I should go to him, now before we’re found out.” Here it is. Plan B. I must hope he cares about me enough to elope. He told me he’d do anything for me.
