Page 99 of A Lady’s Guide to Fae Kings

She stopped, her knees brushing his.

“Are you feeling shy?” he murmured. Even now it seemed too unlikely that a man such as Lachlan, ruthlessly beautiful and clever, would want her. “Do you need me to talk you through it? Is that what you want? What you need?”

She swayed closer, enthralled by the deep caress of his voice, the flickering light on his jaw, his throat, the muscles of his forearms shifting under the skin. Everything about him.

“Answer me, wisp, or this ends right here and right now, with you squirming helplessly, prettily, but ultimately unsatisfied. Wet and hot but still unsatisfied. And that would be a crime.”

She swallowed. “Y-yes.”

“Then claim your throne.” He tugged her down, quick as ice cracking. His gaze was hungry, devastating. “Ah-ah,” he said, turning her around so that she faced the fire burning in the air instead of him. “You’re still training, aren’t you?”

He tugged her back against his hard chest, draping her legs on either side of his. He widened her thighs so that she felt deliciously wanton. He dragged the hem of her skirts up and up and up, still murmuring in her ear, pinning her to his hard heat. “I told you it would never be enough. The taste of you, the pretty noises you make—just for me. Isn’t that right, wisp?”

She nodded, gasping when he slid his fingers between her folds, a drag of his thumb over her bud. He slid a finger closer, just barely inside her opening, and she fluttered around him. Her thighs trembled, spread wider by his demanding stance. “Lachlan.”

“Do you need more, wisp?”

The fire moths flashed over the pools in every shade of blue at the center of a candle’s flame. One of them burned too hot and disintegrated into ashes, but the others danced like will-o’-the-wisps. “Please.”

“So polite,” he said with a hum of approval.

He slid his finger farther inside her heat and she arched back with a gasp. He stroked again and again, thrusting slow and deep until the tension shimmered in her core. The moths burned bright as stars, but nothing else burned with them. She was flushed but not dangerously so. Sparks did not lift up out of the grotto to nibble at the trees. Lachlan did not pull away, fingertips singed.

The pleasure of that, braided with the pleasure he called from her body, was nearly too much. His hand closed over her throat, an anchor to the sensations rushing through her. Fuel and shelter both. His breath was ragged in her ear, pushing her closer and closer to release. And then that deep, commanding voice, gentle and stern and quiet. “Burn for me, love.”

She burned.

She trembled against him, pleasure coiling and coiling within her.

He kissed her temple, hands stroking down her sides, closing around her waist. He turned her around so she faced him, her thighs bracketing his. “And now without looking,” he demanded. “Eyes on me. Only me.”

She had never controlled fire without seeing it, without focusing her entire being onto it. She felt for the familiar, comforting glow of her moth, for the sparks of magic she had fed into the fires. The connections, the links, the conversations. The power responding to her.

“As soon as you give me permission,” Lachlan continued, ruthlessly, “I’m going to be so deep inside of you that the only fire you’ll feel is the fire burning between us.”

Pippa gripped his shoulders hard, pressing herself against him, rubbing over his hardness until he sucked in a groan. “My turn,” she said before kissing him deeply, licking into his mouth even as she reached between them to close her fingers around his cock. The way he jerked into her hand before stilling himself with a hiss of pleasure thrilled her. It made her slicker and wetter and needier than she had known she could be. She stroked him until his eyes drifted half closed and his breath turned ragged.

Then she dropped to her knees in front of him.

He stared down at her with a savagely muttered, “Fuck.”

It sounded like poetry to her. A sonnet would have been less beautiful than that single uttered word, ripped from his lethal control. Snow drifted around them, sparkling. Pippa smiled.

Lachlan groaned. “Wisp.”

She leaned forward and licked him in one long swipe, then another, swirling her tongue around the swollen head. He bucked once, gripping the arms of the chair until the wood creaked with warning. Firelight danced over the planes of his face, but it did not frighten her. Not with the desire and the need she could read there so plainly.

She took him into her mouth and sucked and sucked and sucked. She used her tongue on the underside, swirling lower, then higher.

Flames danced over the starlight waters of the pool and frost reached for her across the ground. Lachlan panted his pleasure, wrestling her for his control. “Pippa, damn it.”

She sucked once more, hard, and then released him. She might not know exactly what she was doing, but she was very well read. She blinked innocently. “You don’t like it?”

His eyes glittered, ice and frozen violets. “Testing me, wisp?”

“Seems only fair,” she returned with a grin, before taking him into her mouth again.

He cursed again, impossibly hard between her lips.

When he suddenly reached down and plucked her off the ground, she gave a mew of protest. “I wasn’t finished.”

“You’re right about that,” he promised. His skin gleamed with the faint glow of the Fae, the sheen of exertion. She wasn’t sure if Fae even sweated, but she had not known they could be so wild-eyed, either. Lachlan looked ready to devour her.

And she was more than ready to be devoured.

Gone were the silky seduction, the games, the training. It was only frantic, nearly clumsy hands pulling at clothing. She was on his lap again, fitting the head of his cock to her opening. He speared up into her heat or she sank onto his hardness, or both. It only mattered that they were finally joined, finally moving together, meeting thrust for thrust. His palms flattened on her spine, holding her up. She tilted her hips, chasing the sparks. Moaning, they came together so hard that Pippa saw stars.

When they both pulled back to blink at each other, steam curled around them, fires burning, snow gathering, frost blooming. He grinned against her mouth. “Well done, Miss Cavendish.”

“That’s Lady Thorn to you, professor.”