What is he talking about? At the moment, I couldn’t even count to eight?—
“How do I help you finish first?”
The list. He’s asking about the list.
Thank heavens I got drunk and added that one.
Our conversation that day in the garden comes flooding back. “I thought you had helped females spill many seeds.”
Eager hands cup my chest while he trails kisses along my collarbone. Nipping. Licking. Sucking. “That was another lie. I have never been chosen.”
All the women in his clan must be fools. Their loss is my gain.
Parting my knees, I turn so my back is pressed to his chest and urge his hand between my thighs. His thick fingers glide lower, finding my center. “Stroke just there,” I say. “Not too hard. Just like that.”Justlike that. My head falls back to his shoulder, and I lose myself to every delicious sensation.
“So slick and wet,” he murmurs.
“That’s what you do to me.”
His hand stills as he blinks down at where his green skin butts up against my tanned thigh. “Me?”
Why does he sound so shocked? “You were just licking and kissing me. What did you think would happen?”
“Me,” he says again, a slow smile creeping across his lips. A flash of sharp teeth. Dark eyes crinkling at the corners.
I nod.
His fingers move faster against me, and I lose myself to his frantic rhythm. To his wonder. To the heady feeling of pleasure coiling low in my belly. Tightening.Tighteningand...
Shattering. Exploding. Sweeping me away.
He nudges my knickers aside, teasing his fingers against my opening, a throaty growl rumbling from his chest. “I can feel you pulsing.” His strokes turn slow. Lazy. “You are the most glorious female.”
Maybe we don’t need to work on his compliments after all.
Turning my face into his neck, I press a kiss to his thundering pulse. “Looks like you can mark number eight off your list.”
His body vibrates with his chuckle. I register his stiffness against my backside. Every glorious, rigid inch. When I reach for him, he catches my wrist with a shake of his head. “Not this night.”
“Why not?”
“The nettle stings . . .”
Bollocks. I completely forgot about the damn nettles. “I’m sorry, Maddox.”
“Why do you apologize for giving me the best day of my life?”
“The best day?” Really? “You were stung by thorny nettles and then almost swept away in a flood and drowned.” I’d hate to see the man on what he considers to be a bad day.
Maddox smiles and then kisses the tip of my nose. “The only flood that swept me away this day is yours.”
31
Maddox
“I am in love with Nia Quill.”
— Maddox Finch, A Realization
