38. Chapter 38
38
Nelle
G raysen stole the blunt from me. “Like the wine, you won’t be able to handle this.”
Stealing it back, I skipped out of reach and awkwardly lit it. Poking the air with the hand that held the blunt, thin strands of smoke coiled from its burning tip, a sweetly rancid smell perfumed the room. “I’ve had a really, reeeaaallly , shitty day at the office. I need a break from all of this,”— twirling a finger beside my temple—“going on in my head.”
I took a drag like I’d seen him do before. Too hard, too long. Doubling in half, I coughed and sputtered and hacked against the burning tickle, trying to gasp down air. “Holy shit!”
Graysen rolled his eyes at me, leaned sideways to pick up a glass of water next to a splayed book on the bedside table, and handed it to me.
Taking a sip, the water soothed the scratchy, ticklish feeling in my throat. Eventually, I could rasp out. “This seems to calm you. So why not me?”
“Take small easy puffs,” he advised, plucking the glass from my hand.
This time I did, and found that he was right. It was much easier to inhale the smoke that way. Crawling onto the bed, I sat down in the middle, cross-legged, fixing my skirt over my knees.
Graysen strolled over to the light switch and reached for the button—
Icy panic engulfed me. “Not off!”
He regarded me incredulously, as if surprised, before softening his gaze. “I wasn’t going to.”
The dread clenching my heart eased and my breathing evened out. But it was a different feeling that tied knots into my stomach—the realization that he wouldn’t do that to me so soon after my panic attack down in the catacombs. Something momentous had shifted in him regarding me .
Graysen twisted the round button. The illumination spilling from the brass chandelier above dimmed, bathing the room in a softer glow of light and shadow. “I promised you a date.”
“A date?” I’d forgotten what he’d said to my father, what had excited me earlier. A thrill rippled through me at the thought of a date with Graysen, even if it was at home in a guest bedroom. “Is this what you do on all your dates? Set the mood?” I teased.
He shrugged, turning to stride toward the tray of food sitting on the table beside the window. “I wouldn’t know. I’ve never been on one.”
“Me either,” I murmured. Learning that he’d dated no one shouldn’t have surprised me, but it did. I knew he played around. But still, he hadn’t taken a single girl on a date? Even just to get into her panties?
He retrieved the tray of food he’d gathered from the kitchen and joined me on the bed, placing it between us. He’d sourced meats and cheeses, olives and grapes, with freshly baked bread and crackers. While we ate, we passed the blunt back and forth, using an empty side dish to tap the ash onto.
“Why not?” I asked, crunching down on a cracker topped with brie.
His gaze honed on me and he appeared confused, as if I should already know the answer. “I don’t date. I don’t do girlfriends.”
“Is that because of me…us?” I motioned my half-eaten cracker between us. Because we were promised to one another and someday soon we’d be married? Something small and new fluttered inside—hope that he might say, actually, yes.
However, he shook his head slowly, squinting at me as if it was the most ludicrous question he’d ever heard. “Nope,” he replied before biting into bread loaded with meats and olives.
Those knots inside my stomach untangled and something heavy weighed me down with disappointment. Of course not—being tied to me wouldn’t stop him from doing whatever he wanted, who he wanted. Gods, I was a fool. I placed the cracker down on the tray and fiddled with the tiny pearl buttons running down the front of my skirt, no longer hungry.
An awkward silence stretched between us.
I sighed, giving him a sideways glance. “People talk, you know, on dates.” I knew it from all the books I’d read and all the TV shows I’d watched. I’d even experienced it second-hand from all those late nights I sat with Lise after she’d returned from a night out with Aldan Reska to dissect every spoken word, every nuanced look, every stolen touch.
Graysen shot me a pained expressio n
“Right, so when you said this was a date, you really meant it was a non-date,” I huffed, feeling prickly and annoyed.
He groaned, dragging a hand through his hair, messing it up. “Gods, what do you want to talk about?”
“Forget it.” I gave him a dismissive wave of my fingers. I couldn’t be bothered with someone who clearly didn’t want to talk to me. I picked up the blunt and drew in a small lungful of smoke, blowing it out in a hazy stream.
He frowned. “Wychthorn—”
But a terrible thought had struck me. I straightened, my eyes widening, a little panicked. “What is this?” I jiggled the blunt between my fingers. It better not be any of our own strains—cannabis mixed with magic. From what I knew, our own weed was a mind-bending experience, and highly addictive, even to us. One hit and you craved it like a junkie.
“Relax,” he murmured, settling his back against the bedhead, legs spread and both knees bent. “It’s Persian Gold. Pure unadulterated weed.” He leaned over, his muscled arm flexing as he picked up his tumbler of whiskey from the bedside table, and took a long sip.
“Phew… Okay, good.” I felt better and handed him the blunt.
The high crept up on me slowly, a pleasant feeling that surrounded me with the warmth of an early spring morning, sunshine promising heat and wonder, and a little bit of blustery wind. My mind skipped about all over the place, but I felt calm and at ease, and I couldn’t stop smiling. Everything seemed crisper and clearer. Even the food tasted better.
Suddenly, I didn’t even mind being on a non-date with Graysen.
Lying down on his bed, I tucked an arm beneath my head and crossed my legs at the ankles, popping a grape into my mouth and relishing the burst of sweetness on my tongue. Graysen rose, padded over to the media system, and flicked on some music—Chromatics ‘ Shadow’ —and my foot tapped in time with the melancholy beat. The ceiling was as hypnotizing as the song flooding the room. Why hadn’t I noticed the ceiling before? There seemed to be some sort of incandescent pearl sheen to it. And then I realized the softest feeling cradled me… A cloud… I was cradled by a cloud.
Oh … it’s the quilt!
I started moving my limbs, making snow angels, luxuriating in the feel of soft fabric skimming my arms and legs. “This is the softest, cuddliest quilt ever in the entire world. It’s like a cloud,” I told Graysen earnestly as he settled himself back on the bed .
He laughed. I did too. And his laughter was like sunshine breaking through storm clouds.
“How do you feel?” he asked.
I rolled over and over and over, laughing, even when I fell off the bed onto the floor with a heavy thump and a sprawling of limbs, expelling a startled oomph . “Good. Really, really, good. I like this.”
The carpet was a downy sensation against my skin. “Holy hells, come down here. The carpet is amaaazing .” Brushing my face back and forth, the long wisps of carpet softly stroked my cheeks and nose. “ I looove you, carpet. ”
“Fuck, Wychthorn. I knew this was a bad idea.” But I heard the smile in his tone.
I popped up from the floor, resting my chin on my folded arms nestled on the side of the mattress. “Is this why you smoke?” He’d smoked a few blunts in front of me over the year.
“It takes the edge off,” he muttered, then took a drag from the blunt, blowing out a whirl of smoke that eddied upward.
I could understand why he needed that, especially after yesterday—the truck and innocents burned alive. A cold shudder ran down my spine at the memory. “So every time something bad happens…at the office? ” I smiled at my choice of word, office.
His dark eyes slid sidelong. “No. Sometimes I need to take the edge off being around you.”
The way he said it, low and husky, as if he wasn’t implying he needed the weed because he detested being in my company, but the complete opposite made my heart jolt. “As if, Crowther.” I shook my head at him. Absurd. And I burst into a chuckle.
Except my laughter died when I realized he was telling the truth. Not about me annoying him, not with that look he was giving me. It was heated. And it had warmth spiraling through my chest, spreading down, down, down, to the tips of my toes.
Graysen took another hit off the blunt. His ribs expanded as he inhaled the smoke, holding it in, before letting it stream from his mouth and swirl through the air between us. All the while, his eyes never left mine. And I didn’t think, even if I’d wanted to, I’d have been able to tear my gaze from his either.
I hauled myself back onto the bed, wondering what the hells I was doing, but unable to stop myself from crawling toward him. The low lighting carved shadows into his face, hardening his features, yet illuminating his beauty.
I knew I should run away from him—flee in the opposite direction. He was the man the world’s most powerful crime lords feared. He broke them when he had to. Ended them when necessary. And here I was, hoping he wouldn’t shatter me with one wrong look, one wrong word.
Despite it all, I couldn’t resist him. The soft quilt scuffed my knees as I knelt between his spread legs. My heart rapped an excited beat to be this close to him, to be enveloped in his unique scent. I took his tumbler from him, went to twist around and place it on the bedside table, then hesitated.
Hmmm…why not? A bit of Dutch courage.
Taking a generous sip, I instantly regretted it the moment the whiskey slid down my throat and set it on fire, the taste of it equivalent to petrol fumes. I wheezed, slapping my chest. “Holy hells!”
Graysen burst out laughing. His whole body shook. Taking the tumbler from me, he drained it before leaning sideways to put it on the bedside table. Spreading his warm palm against my back, giving me comforting strokes, until I got my sputtering under control.
“Awful. That was awful. How can you drink that stuff?”
“Easily,” he grinned.
Rolling my eyes at him, I rose on my knees and raked my hands through his hair, trying to smooth away the hank of hair that dipped over his eyes. But every time, that cowlick forced the strands to flop forward again. “Stupid beautiful cowlick.”
A flash of straight white teeth as he smiled widely, practically beaming.
“You need to smile more often.” He’d smiled and laughed a lot today with me and I liked how it made me feel. Delighted and special.
“Sure, I do,” he rumbled sarcastically. “I smile plenty.”
“Not real smiles. Not like that one.” I tapped his mouth. “You’re mostly smirking or it’s a cold smile, promising violence.”
He gave a surprised huff of laughter. “I guess I do.”
Sitting still, he let me play with his face and hair. Didn’t protest, or shove me aside, like I thought he would. Just sat quietly as I investigated him. The hand holding the blunt rested on his knee while his other hand grazed down my spine before settling on my waist. His thumb brushed back and forth in a lazy motion, and everything inside me suddenly narrowed on that touch that had flames licking my nerve endings.
I could feel his intense gaze as it slid over my features to sharpen on my mouth, and the desire rolling from him in blistering waves scorched my flesh and sang to my soul. I tried to push aside the questions that bloomed in my mind and wouldn’t go away— What was going on between us? Where was this all leading ?
Taking a deep breath, I refocused on his face. Freckles were scattered across the gold-kissed warmth of his bronze skin, reflecting his Brazilian grandmother's ancestry. I marveled at the smattering of darker freckles and the thick eyebrows with a scar that ran through the left and bisected it. Long eyelashes fringed obsidian eyes. And his eyes weren’t pure black. A sprinkle of golden flecks surrounded the pupil, and a thin band of gold circled the outer iris. And that nose—straight, imperious. Yet, when I drifted my fingertip along its bridge, I felt the faintest bump. “Your nose was broken,” I said, surprised.
“Quite a few times. Kenton.” His breath skated across my lips, reminding me how close we were to one another. I could lean forward and kiss him if I wanted. Gods, I wanted to. I really wanted to.
He shifted slightly. The mattress dipped with his movement as he pincered me gently with his thighs. Letting let go of my waist, his touch languidly drifted up and down my side. I chewed the inside of my mouth at the alluring, erotic sensation.
Holy Skalki, that feels good.
What the heck were we talking about?
I cleared my throat, blinking. “Your brother? What did you do to piss him off enough to break your nose?”
“The usual. Getting too mouthy. The guy has a fucking stick up his ass. No sense of humor.”
As I traced his mouth, I discovered a tiny white scar on his upper lip before I swept my touch across the plane of his high cheekbones. His bristly five o’clock shadow prickled my fingertips as I ran them along his jawline before coasting down his throat where ink coiled in shades of black and gray.
I shook my head. So, so wrong for one person to be this beautiful.
Graysen frowned with curiosity. “What?”
I wasn’t going to say it. The guy had a big enough ego and I wasn’t about to inflate it further. My gaze dropped to his hand resting on his bent knee, and I fiddled with the thin leather straps and silver chains that bound his wrist. It was safer to change the subject. “When was the last time you slept?” He hadn’t last night, nor caught any today.
“Two days ago.”
I glanced up, stunned. “You’re an insomniac?”
A light shrug of a shoulder. “I’ll probably go under in the next day or two.”
“For how long?”
“If I’m left undisturbed, most of the day. ”
I couldn’t wrap my mind around it. What would it be like not to sleep? To be awake for hours and days on end? And yet he seemed fine. He didn’t appear as if he were sleep-deprived. “Have you always been that way? Unable to sleep?”
He shook his head.
Pinching the blunt from him, I dragged in a lungful of sweet cigar-tainted smoke. “Did something happen to you—”
He cut me off with, “No.” His tone was sharp, too sharp, and I took his denial for what it was—a lie.
I flipped through my memories, sorting through everything I knew about him. I didn’t know he was an insomniac. “Does anyone else know? The Heads?”
“Only my family. A close friend. And now you.”
Happiness blossomed inside my chest—he trusted me enough to share this about him. I couldn’t stop the smile. His gaze slashed to my lips, lingering there before slicing back up, and the impact of meeting desire-darkened eyes made my breath catch.
It was too much. So I dropped my gaze, only it strayed across the expanse of his powerful chest, and I greedily eyed the white t-shirt straining against his broad upper body. Beneath the stretched fabric I could make out the ridges of ruined skin, and curiosity begged me to ask, “Can I see?”
Graysen tilted his head, his eyebrows nudged together, not understanding.
I pointed to his chest. “Your brand. House Crowthers’ insignia.” I’d missed seeing it last night when I’d confronted him after discovering he’d acquired the guest bedroom next to my own. There was also a small, devious part of me, eager to see him shirtless again.
One side of his mouth tipped up, a dip of the chin—a yes.
Tucking the blunt into the corner of my mouth, like I’d seen countless actors do in movies, freed up my hands so I could pull Graysen’s t-shirt up. The backs of my fingers grazed along hard muscle encased by silken skin. A thrill rushed through my veins when I caught the twitch of muscle and the throaty moan he tried to stifle.
Graysen took over, tugging the hem of his shirt up with one hand, but he didn’t remove it, instead holding the bunched material near the base of his throat. Reaching forward, he plucked the blunt from my mouth, taking a hit as he leaned back against the headboard to allow my gaze to roam leisurely over his torso.
A shooting spark of arousal carved downward to spear through my core. His face was beautiful, his physique perfection.
Holy, holy, holy hells—he’s finely cut .
There seemed not an ounce of fat on him. All muscle and golden skin. His tattoos scored across most of his chest and twined up one side of his throat to his jawline. The whorls of ink curled over both shoulders and downwards to a full arm sleeve on the right, while the flames and Ukkenskrit tales reached only as far as his left bicep.
But it was the brand that ensnared my attention.
My gaze gobbled up every detail of the insignia of his House.
Ruined flesh was raised over his heart. It was a brand of a wyrm—a scaled serpentine creature. Its long, coiled body concealed elegant wings on its sides, while it extended its talons and fangs. The wyrm’s detail was a little rough, not neat and precise like it had been created professionally with a laser. No, this was done with an iron brand dipped into fire and pressed against flesh.
“Did it hurt?”
“Like a motherfucker. I almost passed out.” His free hand returned to my side, his fingers splayed wide and curving about my hip. I swallowed, my blood heating. His touch was a brand on my skin.
My fingertips skimmed the scarred flesh of a wing. He grunted and his pecs flexed as my fingertips traced around the coiled serpent’s body.
“They’re territorial, obsessive, and greedy,” Graysen shared. “When they want something, they pursue it with single-minded determination. Claim it. Mark it. And they mate for life.”
“They’re gone now,” I said with a pinch of sadness. “All died out.” I’d come across that in the history books I’d read in my family’s library.
“No. A few still hibernate deep in the bowels of the earth.”
I glanced upward, astonishment expanding through my entire being. “How do you know that?”
“My ancestors tamed wyrms. Used them to hunt for the Horned Gods. Battled alongside them. But we freed the last of them after the Final War.”
Excitement raced through me to think that wyrms still lived.
When I took a really good look at everything together—the naked flesh of the wyrm brand surrounded by inked flames—it appeared as though wyrmfire had scorched half of his body.
“It’s beautiful,” I murmured, tracing a lick of fire across his pecs, feeling his muscles ripple with the feather-light stroke.
“You’re beautiful.”
Beautiful?
My shocked gaze snapped up to find him staring at me, his eyes gleaming with lust. My heartbeat stumbled. I’d never been called beautiful before.
“That’s the weed talking.” I cursed myself for the flush that heated my cheeks.
Embarrassed, I shoved against his thighs and squirmed backward across the bed, trying to hide the pleasure I felt from him saying I was beautiful.
Graysen dropped his t-shirt and the fabric slipped back down to hug his chest. Leaning sideways, he placed the nearly cut blunt on the plate scattered with ash. “Oh, you’re a thorn in my ass, but it doesn’t make what I said untrue,” he answered with a small smile, before lunging so swiftly I didn’t see it coming. He grabbed hold of my ankle and jerked. I fell backward with a startled shriek as he yanked me along the bed, my skirt riding up my thighs. He pulled me between his parted legs—now laid flat on the mattress—and I pressed my bare feet against the bedhead on either side of his body.
My heart drummed a frantic beat.
Holy Skalki, what the hells is going on?!
Am I ready for this?
Graysen encircled his hands around my hips to pull me in even closer. My knees bent to accommodate the shift in proximity. I was exposed like this, in more ways than just my panties on show. I was made vulnerable to his gaze as he took a long, leisurely look over every curve of my body.
A glint of amusement sparkled in his eyes as his hands lightly skimmed down my thighs.
I didn’t know what amused him.
Me, was it me?
Was he silently laughing at me? Mocking me?
He tsked. “No dagger tonight?”
It had been unconsciously done, leaving that dagger on the bathroom floor with the burned, shredded dress, not taking it and strapping it to the outside of my thigh like I did every single time we’d been in one another’s company.
Maybe this was what I’d wanted all along. Him.
He pushed my skirt up further. The cottony material gathered at my waist. A square-tipped finger traced the scalloped edge of my white panties. He growled, “Virginal white. The best kind.”
The words were a sensual stroke on the place he almost touched and I chewed back a traitorous moan. An inferno of heat exploded in my very center, spreading out like shockwaves. Dampness slicked between my thighs, wetting my panties. I realized in sickly, sweet horror, he’d be able to see how aroused I was. He could scent it too .
Graysen stared as if he’d never seen underwear before. “Fuck, I think I’ll come just from touching your silly, practical panties,” he muttered, easing a fingertip under the scalloped band.
I squirmed a little as his finger lazily skimmed beneath the edge of my panties, gliding ever so slowly to my inner thigh.
Hells! Fucking hells!
Everything was focused on that scorching touch.
Seconds, hours, perhaps it took an eternity for him to reach that place no one had ever touched before. And just as he was about to touch me there, he glided that finger back up to the curve of my hip and rested his hand there.
I was wound so tightly, I didn’t know if it was utter relief I felt or disappointment.
Shit, I’m disappointed.
I was also almost jumping out of my skin with giddy need as his thumb started making delicious tiny circles on my inner thigh, each sweep moving closer and closer to my core.
He hitched a leg up and rested his forearm on his bent knee. His eyelids grew a little heavier, his smile a little lazier. “Unbutton your dress,” he said softly, still caressing my hip with his hand.
My eyes flared wide. “Pardon?”
His thumb was now brushing back and forth along the scalloped edge of my panties. Panties which were pretty much soaked under that touch.
“Your. Dress. Unbutton. It.”
“I-I—”
Suddenly it was too much, too intense.
What the hells am I thinking?
I’ll never survive Graysen Crowther!
Bunching my muscles, I pushed my feet against the headboard, using it like a springboard to propel myself away before levering up on my elbows to scurry backward like a crab across the quilt-covered mattress.
Graysen moved fast. Impossibly fast. And I found myself trapped beneath him and unable to move. He stretched his body long, hovering over the top of me, his hands braced on either side of my head. He didn’t lean down to kiss or even touch me, but he was so close he may as well have been.
Heat and hunger swirled in the small gap between our bodies. Desire thrummed against my bones and my dark power stirred, breathing outward as gentle as a spring breeze to ruffle his hair and tease my own. Blood pounded in my ears in time with our matching heartbeat.
“Don’t think.” His mouth chased my lips as I tilted my head, blinking slowly at his eyes, gone as velvet-dark as his voice. “Stop thinking, little bird. I can see that clever little mind, freaking out—”
“But, I—”
One eyebrow rose. “I want to see.” He gestured to his chest. “Fairs fair.” Drawing closer, firm lips pressed a kiss against my throat and the words vibrated against my hot skin. “Just don’t think.”
Graysen reared back to sit once more against the bedhead with an expectant expression on his face.
Maybe it was being stoned, wrapped up in that cozy, hazy world that finally gave me courage, but I thought it was more him, his commanding authority over my body that had my fingers drifting to the neat row of buttons running down the bodice of my dress.
What the hells am I doing?
Don’t think, don’t think, don’t think, just do it…
He tipped his head back, resting it against the soft leather bedhead. His eyes had gone half-mast, and he gnawed on his lip, sucking on the plump flesh with teeth and tongue as he watched me slowly unbutton my dress.
It was mesmerizing watching him watch me. Not once did he glance up and meet my gaze. Everything was fixed on my fingers fumbling with the tiny pearl buttons. I went even slower to see what he’d do, and he let out the rawest, deepest groan I’d ever heard. “ Fuuuck, little bird, you’re killing me here. Put me out of my misery.”
He lifted his hips and eased his sweatpants down his thighs. I caught a glimpse of his erection stretching his boxer briefs taut— Holy Skalki, he really is massive —before he fisted his cock under the soft fabric.
All I could do was stare, wide-eyed, as his hand languidly moved up and down as he stroked himself.
“More… More little bird…” he growled.
The fourth button popped open, the fifth, then the sixth, before I tugged the material aside to reveal my bra. Nothing special, simply a pure white cotton bra with a tiny pink bow right in the middle. A flush stole across my cheeks. Why hadn’t I worn something silky or lacy? But I didn’t own anything of the kind.
“Show me… I want to see how perfect your tits are.”
I bit my lip .
Should I?
Shouldn’t I?
“Do. It. Now.”
I peered at him beneath my eyelashes. Because it felt safer to do that. Shadows of lashes keeping him at a distance. My fingers worked on their own accord, following his curt demand, slipping under the straps, unhooking them from my shoulders. His fist pumped a little faster as I rounded forward to unsnap the bra and ease it off. With my breasts freed, I suddenly couldn’t look at him.
I heard his breathing hitch.
No one had ever seen me naked, apart from my mother and sisters, our shapes similar in the fact we were all women, but so different from one another. What would he like in a woman? Curves, definitely. Smooth, silky bodies, polished and oiled and glistening. An ass he can grab. All defined by one word—sexy. It wouldn’t matter how tall or short, or what kind of hair or eye color they had, or where they came from in the world. They’d all be sexy.
Not me—I knew nothing about seduction—which was glaringly obvious in the awkward way I lay with my hands clasped together, looking everywhere but at him.
This is crazy.
I don’t know what I’m doing.
I’m not ready for this.
I should…? Fuck it. Run, run, run!
And I ran like the coward I was.
I twisted around, accidentally kicking up and catching him under the chin—hearing the oomph , his startled curse—as I leaped off the bed and scrambled for the adjoining door. I was yanking it open when his voice boomed, “WYCHTHORN—GET YOUR ASS AGAINST THE WALL!”
I froze.
Shit, shit, shit—
“Wychthorn,” he growled.
Slowly, ever so slowly, I inched around.
Graysen stood on the bed. He’d tugged his sweatpants back up, but they were slung low on his hips, and his obvious hard-on tented the fabric. Cocking his head to the side, he plastered a delicious smirk on his mouth that practically promised I was soon to be separated from my panties. He boomed again, “I SAID—ASS, WALL, NOW!”
And gods help me, I did. I jolted under that authority, pressed my ass up against the wall, and clutched my dress tightly to my chest. There was a reason why this man got away with his surliness, why even the Heads of Houses silently deferred in his presence.
He jumped from the bed—a heavy thud on the carpet—and he sauntered toward me at a slow, measured pace, practically burning the gathered fabric from my breasts with his heated gaze. Dark eyes shining with a wicked promise met mine, and crackling energy sparked a fiery line up and down my spine, making everything taut and loose all at once.
I was actually glad to be pressed up against the wall to have it support my quivering body.
Graysen leaned a forearm above my head and bent so we were eye to eye. Close enough that we shared breath. Close enough to hear the thunder of my heart. His gaze briefly dropped to where I squeezed my arm around my breasts, desperately holding the parted dress together. His smirk grew more wicked, and my panties pretty much incinerated.
Godsdammit!
Raising his other hand, he waved two fingers at me. “My two friends here want to meet your G-spot,” he said, winking.
My mouth fell open and my eyes flicked wide. My gaze darted to his fingers, back to him, back to his hand.
Oh…my…gods…
He pursed his lips together, tilting one corner up slightly. Then he cupped those two fingers, those two friends of his , beneath my chin, lifting upward to close my gaping mouth. His thumb brushed along the seam of my lips and his voice lowered to a rumble. “This is happening, Wychthorn. You will be coming all over my hand and screaming my name. We can do this here. Up against this wall. Or you can walk your pretty, sassy ass back to bed and get comfortable. Your choice.”
My mouth was dry and my tongue sluggish, but I managed to push out, “I-I don’t want you.” I lied, horribly. It had stuttered from me and sounded more like a question than a declaration.
He smiled. “That scent of yours says differently.”
Gods, that smile. That damn cocky smile!
I hissed out a breath of annoyance. How could anything be private any longer? He could scent my arousal. Taste my lies. But that annoyed hiss turned into a choked moan when his cheek, dusted with stubble, raked along my own and he gently nipped my earlobe. His hot breath teased, “You want me, little bird. You want me to sink into you and I will. Not tonight. But sometime soon, you can have your wicked way with me. Willingly. Gladly. I’ll fuck you right into nirvana.”
I laughed, a little brittle and too loud. The guy had a ridiculous ego.
But when his lips kissed a sensitive spot just below my ear, my laughter sputtered out.
Holy hells, who knew that spot could make me moan and squirm? I threaded my fingers through his black mane to pull him closer so he could kiss and lick and suck until I was writhing, my hair mussed from being rubbed against the wall.
He pulled back to look at me, and his mouth leaving my body made me groan in frustration. I don’t know what he saw—me probably a panting mess—but he liked seeing me this way. Satisfaction gleamed in his dark eyes.
His intense gaze trapped mine and as I stared, mesmerized by the endless depth of his inky irises. I felt his fingertip blaze a trail of scorching heat down my throat, slip into the dip at my collarbone, before sliding along the valley between my breasts. “Tonight, I want to kiss you here.” And he drew his hand across my body, skimming from hip to hip, with his fingers spread wide and brushing so close to my clit that his intention was obvious.
Hells!
Want spiraled up my chest, teasing my breasts and hardening my nipples. Making my toes curl into the soft, plush carpet.
Yes, yes, yes…