He lifted his head, his cheeks flushed and eyes glassy. “I want…” His voice was hoarse. “Can I see you?”
She didn’t hesitate a second, tugging her shirt off and letting it fall to the floor. The blankets pooled around her waist, and Morgen stared at her with wide eyes, his gaze sliding slowly over every inch of her. His lips were parted. his chest rising and falling in quick succession. She thought she might have shocked him by moving so quickly.
Finally, he touched her again, splaying his hand over her sternum. She wondered if he could feel just how hard her heart was beating.
“You are so singularly beautiful,” he breathed, and she shivered. “It’s a little overwhelming.”
Heat rose to her cheeks. “You did see me nearly naked in the pool the other night.”
He shook his head and muttered, “That damned shift was in the way. I swear, I’m going to burn every last one of those.”
She opened her mouth to tell him he was being ridiculous, but then he sucked on the scar at the base of her neck, where he’d bit her after their wedding. She cried out in surprise as a shocking bolt of pleasure raced down her spine. When he swirledhis tongue over the same spot, the sensation intensified again, and she gasped, “Wha—What… Why does that feel likethat?”
He did it again, ignoring her question, instead asking, “Do you think you can come just from this?”
“I don’t know—Oh gods.”
She fisted her hands in the material of his shirt as another wave of that confusing, blinding ecstasy spread low in her belly and all the way to her center, the ache nearly painful. Maybe shecouldcome from this. Maybe she was nearly there.
He lifted his head slightly, and when he spoke, it was barely a whisper against her ear. “I want you to do this to me next.”
He bit down softly on the scar.
Her head emptied.
She was reduced to nothing but sensation and a wave of overwhelming pleasure she hadn’t even known was possible.
The feeling was violent. Demanding. Destructive.
She almost thought for a moment she was dying. But if this was death, she wanted to die a thousand times more, and she wanted Morgen to be the one to do it.
When she came back to awareness, she was panting against his shoulder, shivering with tiny aftershocks. For a split second, she had the urge to do exactly as he’d said, to bite him and taste his blood.
Toclaim.
“Do it,” he rasped, his hand fisted in her curls, tugging just enough to make her feel it without hurting her.
“I shouldn’t?—”
I don’t give a fuck about what we should or shouldn’t be doing.
Even down the pathway, his voice was breathless. She straddled him and let herself graze her teeth along his heated skin, but still, she fought the growing need to mark him as he’d marked her.
You’re not thinking straight.
He looked her straight in the eye, letting her see every raw emotion laid bare on his face when he replied in a place that was for them alone.I never am around you.
Maybe his words should have given her pause. Theywerea reminder that, though their marriage was a farce, the feelings between them were very real, even if neither of them liked to acknowledge it. What they were doing now wasn’t just about her safety or even his political maneuvering, not anymore. Perhaps it never really was.
Before she even really knew she was moving, her teeth sank into his skin. Color and light exploded across her vision when she tasted his blood, fleeting images flashing before her eyes.
Two daggers. A familiar voice whispering, “Together?”
Drops of blood in a pool; a ceremony. “Great and terrible things lie ahead…” An orchard of trees and an angry roar.
A blaze.
Endless darkness.
