“Am I?” He pulls back to look at me, and his face in this light—amber eyes blown wide, hair dark with water, the composure completely gone—is the most unguarded thing I’ve ever seen. All the layers stripped away. Just him. “I’m not entirely sure I am.”
I pull him back in.
His hands slide up my ribs, thumbs brushing the undersides of my breasts through the wet fabric clinging to my skin. I arch into the touch, and the sound I make echoes off the grotto walls.
“Can I—” His voice cracks, trying to find the right words. “I need to see you. Can I?—”
“Yes.” I’m already helping him pull the ruined shirt over my head. “Gods, yes.”
The cold air hits my bare skin for half a second before his hands replace it. Warm. Reverent. Mapping every inch like I’m a text he’s been waiting centuries to read.
“Beautiful.” The word comes out rough, nothing like his lecture voice. “So fucking beautiful.”
His mouth follows his hands. Collarbone. The curve of my breast. When his lips close around my nipple, I cry out, hands fisting in his wet hair.
“I’ve thought about this,” he confesses against my skin. “Every night since the venom hit, you left for the Unseelie Courts and I nearly sob. “The data is even better than my projections.”
“Are you—” I gasp as he switches to the other breast. “Are yougradingthis?”
“Peer review.” His teeth graze my nipple just hard enough. “Exceptionally rigorous methodology.”
“I hate you so much.”
“Your body says otherwise.” His hand slides down my stomach, fingers tracing the edge of my waistband. “May I?”
“Finnian, if you don’t touch me in the next three seconds, I’m going to?—”
His hand slips between my thighs, and the threat dies in my throat.
“Oh.” His voice goes reverent. Wrecked. “Oh, you’re?—”
“Don’t say something clinical right now or I swear to the old gods?—”
“Wet.” The word comes out like a prayer. “You’re so wet. Is this—all of this—for me?”
“Yes.” I push against his hand, desperate for friction. “Please. Finnian,please.”
His fingers find my clit and my vision whites out.
“There.” He sounds like he’s discovering something sacred. “Right there. The exact pressure that makes your breath catch.” He circles again, adjusting based on my response. “Noted.”
“Stopnotingand?—”
He slides two fingers inside me.
The moan that rips out of me echoes through the grotto. His palm grinds against my clit while his fingers curl, finding the spot that makes my knees give out entirely.
“I’ve got you.” His other arm wraps around my waist, holding me up. “I’ve got you. Let me feel you fall apart.”
My toes curl as he gently massages that specific bundle of nerves.
“Come for me,” he murmurs against my ear. “I want to feel it. I want to memorize exactly how you sound when you shatter.”
I shatter.
The orgasm crashes through me like a wave, and I hear myself crying out his name while his fingers work me through it, drawing out every aftershock, wringing every last tremor from my body.
When I can see again, he’s watching me with an expression that might destroy me.
