“Nice,” he hums. “Now open your mouth wider.” I oblige and his lips slant over mine, deepening the kiss. He lightly bites down on my bottom lip, and I gasp. A tug pulls low in my belly. He licks where his teeth sink into me. “Touch your tongue to mine.”
I meet his tongue, savoring, gliding my tongue along his. Our mouths mate, our kiss growing feverish, frantic, tongues wildly rubbing and moving together. I had no idea. I didn’t realize that kissing could make everything better. Hotter. More desperate. I never realized it could make the throbbing ache between my thighs so much sharper.
One moment his hands are flexing and squeezing my thighs, and then he’s maneuvered me so that I’m straddling him, thighs splayed so that my sex is exposed and flush and weeping against him.
Soon I’m rocking into him, my swollen nether lips gliding smoothly, wetly with my own juices, over that engorged part of him.
I break the kiss, gulping for air.
His mouth drags down my throat, teeth scoring the stretched lines of my neck.
“That’s it. Show me,” he growls.
I reach between us, my hand sliding between our lust-soaked bodies until I find him, encircle his cock. My thumb swipes over the head of him, finding the moisture beading there, lubricating him, and my core clenches in response, my craving for him a clawing hunger.
A shudder racks him as I guide his cock toward my entrance. My hips lift up in offering, ready to take him in, ready to sink down on top of him and feel the completeness I’ve been seeking for too long.
His hand locks on my arm. “Wait.”
I freeze over him, gazing hungrily, bewildered at his suddenly pained expression. “What? Why?”
His gaze flickers, traveling over my face like he’s starving and I’m the last morsel to eat in the entirety of this world. “I assume you have never...”
I stare at him blankly, willing him to finish, willing myself to understand.
He continues, his voice as tormented as his expression. “You were cursed for ten years. You were little more than a girl when—”
“Oh.” I nod, and then shake my head, a new kind of tension stealing over me. “That’s true. I have never, but why should that make a difference?”
“Because it will hurt, and I have no desire to hurt you.” His eyes glint fiercely, and he adds with a bleak vehemence, “Iwon’t. I came from a place where hurting others, hurting those likeyouwas the thing done. Like breathing, like...blinking. I vowed never would I do that, never would Ibethat—like them.”
“You won’t.” A whimper burns up my throat. I rock my hips, sliding myself over the full length of him, not taking him in but enjoying the deep glide of him along my entrance. It’s inconceivable this could ever hurt. Still holding onto my arm, he allows me just this...but it’s not enough. “Please.”
He pauses and licks his lips. “You’re small and untried, Arden...and very...human.”
“You’ve been with a human before.”
“That was different.”
“How?”
He hesitates. “For one thing, she was experienced.” That’s right. A widow. “And another...it wasn’t like this. She didn’t know me. Not the real me.”
Like I do.
I know him. All his secrets.
And that’s the main distinction. I know him. There are no curtains between us. I’m a human and he is not. He shouldn’t want me. But he does.
I shouldn’t want him. But I do.
Help me, I do.
As long as this spell holds me, no human can see me. But he can. Hecan, and it’s a gift I won’t throw away. This beautifulbeingsees me and wants me the way I want him, even if he’s too stubborn in this moment to let himself have me.
“It will work between us, Tage,” I whisper, desperate to persuade him. I don’t know why I’m so certain, but I am. My desire for him is an insistent thing with a mind of its own. Not having him will hurt more than having him. In this, I am absolute, and I have to make him understand that.
I grind against him. The air hisses out from his lips. His hand loosens around me, not restraining me, allowing me to continue gripping his cock. He could stop me. He could wrench away. He doesn’t. He lets me ride him, and that gives me hope, feeds my desire and resolve to have him.
