I decided to help with his shirt, tackling the tiny buttons under his chin and working my way down them with lightning speed, only pausing once they were finished to run my gaze across his chest and abs. “How are you real?” I asked, feeling dazed myself. Every muscle was taut and defined. He looked powerfully strong and trim, the firelight casting each curve and dip in sharp relief.
His expression was almost bashful. He wanted to cover himself back up. My mind flashed back to how he had immediately donned his shadow cloak the day Helda had arrived at the gate while he was chopping wood. I wondered briefly how hard he was fighting against his instinct to cloak himself now in front of me and smiled. “Victor, this is… How are you so muscular?” I knew he was a guardian of some kind before I met him, but in the weeks I’d known him he hadn’t seemed inclined to exercise for the sake of it.
“Physical combat training is as important as magical,” he murmured and raised a single shoulder in a self-conscious shrug before scooting back toward the headboard, then gesturing with a finger for me to join him.
Hell yes it is, I thought to myself, climbing onto the bed after him and trying hard not to drool on his abs. He guided me onto his lap after propping the pillows against the headboard and leaning back on them, and I lifted my wings to give him room to draw his knees up behind me to support my back. He watched me with bedroom eyes as I hooked the pads of my fingers into his collarbone and then dragged them softly down his torso, feeling the muscles under his satin skin and the faint smattering of hair that dappled the middle of his chest and stomach.
I didn’t ask, I just took. My eager little fingers savored every inch I could touch. I watched his stomach flex and his shoulders bunch. His pectorals couldn’t be real. They had to have been sculpted by God himself. I’d never seen anyone so well built, so starkly handsome, so beautifully masculine. Somine.
He must have seen the possessive gleam in my eye, because he released a shaky breath and raised a hand to touch my face, gently tugging me toward him. His mouth met mine in a tender kiss, his lips parting the smallest amount, and when the tip of his tongue grazed mine, it was so hesitant I had to fight back happy tears. He was such a conundrum. Deadly, powerful, gentle, shy.
I kissed my way down his jaw and nipped at the side of his neck, finally giving in to my desire to test the firmness of the muscles here with my teeth. Suckling and kissing my way down his throat, I enjoyed seeing the way his delicate, pale skin marked up with every bite. How long would the marks last? I felt like I was claiming him for anyone else to see. We already had our binding marks, but some long-buried instinct made me want to do this thoroughly. How many places on his body could I mark as mine with tongue and teeth and lips? I locked my mouth onto the muscle at the base of his neck and lingered there, sucking lightly, and the groan he released waselectric. His hips tilted in search of mine, and my nipples tightened as I arched to press them into his chest.
“Come here, Angel,” he breathed, touching my elbows with the tips of his fingers and directing me upward with the lightest pressure. I pulled back to look at him and his gaze was feverish as he looked at my body. “Take this off.” His voice was rough as he stared at the straps of lace that arched over and around my breasts.
I reached up to the tiny hook on my right side and unlatched it with one hand, letting the lace and flowers fall away.
His exhale came out in a gust. After a moment of silence where he didn’t appear to breathe at all, he said, “That too.” He indicated the bottom portion with his chin as he gazed at the straps around my thighs and ass. The embroidered purple petals afforded me virtually no modesty anyway.
I unhooked that too, and the pearls and petals slid to the bed.
“Thank you,” he whispered, ever polite, and the gentle pressure from his fingertips on the backs of my arms directed my chest up to his face. He didn’t ask, but he also didn’ttake.Not like I had. His hands were feather-light on my skin, completely opposite of my greedy little paws that claimed and cupped.
His lips, too, became the faintest pressure on the inside of my breast. His hot breath was a stronger sensation than his touches on my skin. “I love the noises you make,” he told my breast as I arched against his mouth seeking more contact. I realized I was panting just as heavily as he was. The more I pressed, the more he took, and when I shifted so that my nipple was in front of his lips, he fell on it like a man starved, licking and suckling until I was writhing against him with my grasping fingers in his hair. His own fingers never increased their pressure, simply guiding, directing, keeping me where he wanted me, but always as light as a breath. His mouth and my body writhing against his was all the sensation I was able to focus on. The slightest pressure directed me upward again, and I pushed up to only my knees until I was kneeling over him as he kissed his way down my ribs, down my belly, until he reached the juncture between my legs. “May I kiss you here?” he asked, his eyes flicking up to meet mine.
Chapter 20
Celeste
Mymouthdroppedopen.Was this something he’d read about in one of his books? This seemed like advanced—
He inhaled deeply, his nose barely bumping the mound of my sex, and lust lit his eyes. There was a curiosity and a confidence in them when he looked at me next that helped to soothe my nerves.
“Okay,” I choked out. “If you want—”
But he was already nuzzling at my inner thighs, and I had to brace my hand on the headboard above his head at the sensation. His nose tickled my mound as he inhaled again and pressed gentle kisses there before trailing his fingers around the tops of my thighs to my opening. “Can I touch you here with my fingers?” he asked, raising his gaze again to meet mine through his inky eyelashes.
“Yes,” I breathed.
Still, his touch was gentle. He directed my thigh over his shoulder and then parted my opening with his thumbs, holding it open as he kissed methere.His hot tongue darted out before I was ready—far less tentatively than it had inside my mouth—and slipped right through the seam of my folds. I squealed and nearly jumped out of my skin, and felt his mouth curve in amusement against my opening as his tongue flicked out again and again, laving my clit and slipping past it to dip into my opening. A hot swirling sensation like he was licking a lollipop was quickly followed by him pressing his lips around my flesh and suckling. It was the filthiest kiss I’d ever had in my life and all I could do was hold on to the headboard with both hands and whimper as he alternated between swirling and sucking.
He increased the pressure of his tongue until I was seeing stars, one hand bracing my weight on the headboard, and I realized I’d moved the other—it was gripping his hair with my nails in his scalp. I was desperately grateful that there was no one else in the keep to hear the high-pitched noises falling out of my open mouth. The leg I was kneeling on began to shake as I gave into the lustful urge to rub myself against the increasing suction and pressure of his mouth, until he finally gave in and caught my thigh in a tight enough grip to keep me up, holding it against his chest to keep me upright. If he was concerned that I might not want this, the vice-like hold I had on his hair was surely enough to mollify him. He was meeting every rock of my hips with a hot thrust of his wet tongue, and I suddenly came so hard I think my heart stopped. I know my brain did. My neck and chest flushed hot as I began to convulse inside. Every muscle in my body locked up as I orgasmed, arching over his head and desperately trying to be gentle with his face. Fierce aftershocks hit me multiple times as he continued to lick and kiss me, until finally I had to pull away and beg for a reprieve. He seemed reluctant to let me go.
“Hm. Does that count toward kissing practice?” he asked crisply after I collapsed back against his thighs, my knee slipping off his shoulder, my head propped against his bent knees.
“Yes.” I was still shivering with aftershocks. I would agree to anything he wanted right now. I couldn’t even chastise him for the mildly smug look on his face. He wasn’t quite smirking, but you could tell hewantedto.
He surveyed his handiwork as I lay cradled against his thighs, my wings spread haphazardly on the bed, his eyes practically smoldering as they roamed over my body. “I think I like you like this.”
“I think I like me like this, too,” I said, my words slurring as if I were drunk.
“Shall I ‘service you’ again?” he asked, with humor in his eyes and a hint of laughter in his voice, then leaned down to press another kiss to the top of my breast.
“Yes, but not like that,” I told him, getting my knees back under myself and pushing up to a sitting position so I could lift up enough to open his trousers. His abs tightened as I worked open the button below his navel, but he kept his gaze on my face. “Is this okay?” I asked him when he lifted his arms away to give me room to work.
“It is,” he confirmed quietly, his eyes still hooded and his breathing picking up again as he lowered his arms to the bed. He gripped the blankets on either side of his hips as I tugged his pants down.
Here is the pink skin I’d been looking for, I thought with a smile, remembering my childhood daydreams about a pink-skinned fae prince. My daydreams had nothing on this, though, and my grin faded before I quickly forced it back. At a glance, his cock looked too large to close my hand around it—which was intimidating to say the least—and much longer than I had been expecting. I’m not even sure what I’d been expecting, but I tried not to let my surprise show, lest he change his mind and decide I wasn’t well enough for this after all.
