“Well?” I raise an eyebrow. “You heard him.”
Orion’s grin turns feral.
“Yes, my queen.”
63
Orion
The bedroom smellslike pine smoke and her.
I lay her on our soft furs and her hair spills pink and green across the dark wolf-pelt. A single vine slips out of the strand at her temple and curls toward my wrist like it’s checking I’m still there.
“I’m here, Thorn.”
Her smile is loose. Her eyes are completely green. She’s still loose-limbed from the forest and the taste of her is still on my mouth and I know the second the others scent it because Kieran’s exhale goes tight behind me.
“Move,” Kieran demands. Cold rolls off him in a wave that raises the hair on my forearms, and where his shadow falls across her bare thigh the gooseflesh rises in a clean line.
He takes her jaw. Tilts her face up. The kiss isn’t gentle. His thumb presses into the soft place under her ear and I watch the silver-blue at his wrist pulse once against her skin before it bleeds gold-green down her neck where her own magic answers.
She makes a sound I’ve never heard her make before. Not a moan. A swallow, half-caught, like he stole the breath she was about to use.
Finnian moves to the dresser, lights the candle there with a flick of two fingers, and the scent of beeswax and something he keeps in a vial only he knows the name of curls into the room. Citrus and old paper and the bitter green of crushed stems.
Interesting choice.
“Where did you start?” he asks in that deep register that rarely comes out during daylight hours. And I’m not afraid to say it makes my cock pulse.
“In the dirt. Against a honey tree. She came so hard the tree bloomed.”
His pupils dilate. I watch it happen. Then he licks his lips as though he can taste her in the air.
“Take off the rest of it,” he tells me, eyes on her. “I want to see what he did to her.” I think he says that to Kieran but honestly who cares.
I find the seam and tear.
The dress rips in two pieces. And I nearly die right there.
Her pale skin looks porcelain in the light. Her nipples hard and begging for my lips. Her breath heaves in and out, in and out. And her knees. Well, they part perfectly, showing us how wet she still is and ready. The bite I left on the curve of her shoulder is dark plum already, the shape of my teeth still readable in every indent.
Ash gasps against Kieran’s mouth.
Finnian’s breath catches.
“Orion,” Finn grumbles.
“Mm.”
“That’s going to bruise for a week.” He hisses. But I don’t think he’s mad, I think he wants to make his own.
“Good.” He laughs and crosses to the bed, joining us.
The candlelight slides over her like it can’t help itself, pooling at her collarbone, in the dip of her sternum, between her thighswhere she’s still slick from my mouth and the pine pitch from where I gripped her hip is smudged dark across the bone.
I forgot to wipe my hand.
It’s the most pornographic thing I’ve ever seen.
