His gaze flicked down to my hand. “I did.”
“You hesitated as if you didn’t want me to see it.”
“I wasn’t sure what you would make of it. Of my desire to be marked by you as much as to mark you as mine.”
Something in my chest tightened so sharply it almost felt like grief. He carried my mark over his heart simply because he wanted to.
I kissed him again before I could think too hard about what that meant.
He caught my waist and rolled us, pulling me over him so I sat astride his hips. His hands spread across my thighs slowly, reverently. No matter how gently he touched me, the strength in his arms and shoulders was on display in his rippling, lean muscle.
“You are staring,” I murmured against his mouth.
“You are beautiful,” he said immediately, as though it offended him that I had not already accepted this as fact.
I laughed softly, and he smiled. Gods, that was dangerous to, that he looked pleased every time he managed to make me laugh.
My fingers traced down his chest again, over hard muscle and warm skin and the sigil itself. The wishflower. The shovel. I might have failed in the one thing that he had brought me here to do, but he still wore my mark.
Fear’s hand slid into my hair, thumb brushing my cheek as he watched me too closely. “What are you thinking?”
I should have lied.
But I was tired of lies between us.
“That no one has ever chosen me the way you do.”
His eyes darkened; something raw crossed his face so quickly I almost missed it.
“Cara,” he said quietly. He didn’t call me Never this time; there was not his usual teasing in his voice. He pulled me down into his arms as if he could not bear the distance anymore.
The kiss deepened, slower now, less frantic, and somehow far more dangerous for it.
He stripped my clothes off with gentle hands, slow and worshipful, pressing a kiss to every inch of exposed skin.
I ran my hands over the hard planes of his shoulders as he teased the tip of his cock around my clit, my body tightening with need.
My breasts felt full and heavy, and I reached for them, massaging them myself, my nipples peeking between my fingers, so that I could watch the way he focused on me, the way his breathing altered.
“You have the most perfect breasts, and I love the way you touch them.” His hand moving his cock against me becamerougher, needier. “If I didn’t need to feel you around my cock, I’d want to come across them..”
I gripped his shoulders and dug my heels into the soft bed, tilting my needy, throbbing clit up to meet him, trying to force him inside me. He grinned at my desperation, but it was only a quick flash before it was replaced by the same wild need that I felt.
He held himself still for me, his hand gripping his cock, and let me slowly raise myself up to sink into him. I pushed up hungrily, feeling him stretch me, feeling it hurt, and I did not care one bit.
He bit off a groan, and then he was moving, pressing himself down into me. I collapsed into the bed and let him take over, his body braced above mine, his cock pumping into me over and over. It still stretched me, but it felt so good, too.
He said softly against my cheek, “Good girl. That’s my girl.”
He rolled his hips at the end of each stroke, his cock hitting something deep inside me that turned the world around us into a blur of pleasure, and turned my body to liquid heat. “Fear,” I whispered, my hand on his neck, and he leaned forward and kissed me.
I moaned into his mouth, overcome by his heated body against mine, the sense of being wrapped in his warmth inside and out. I turned my face and kissed his cheek, then found the hollow of his throat.
My fingernails sank into his skin as I came closer and closer to the edge. He didn’t seem to notice. “You are so perfect,” he murmured. “So beautiful. Come for me, Never.”
He sounded so fervent, so certain, that for once in my life, I could believe I was beautiful, I was perfect. I wanted to stay in this moment forever.
My legs locked around his waist, my body pulsing around his as he murmured more sweet nonsense into my ear about howgood I was doing, how perfectly I was taking his cock, how much he adored me.
