49. Harper
49
HARPER
H arper had been lost the moment Dimitrius had confessed his need for her—and beyond salvation the moment his hands had circled her waist and the burn of his palms had imprinted through the fabric. Her legs had buckled—and only the tree and his hold kept her standing. This was what desire felt like—a potent storm without edges or end that consumed every fragment of her. She made her choice without hesitation, and as his lips crashed into hers, the world disappeared.
She opened to his punishing request at once, and his hot, wanting tongue slid into her mouth, wrestling with hers as her hands found their way up to tangle in that perfectly coiffed hair of his, utterly wrecking him the way he devastated her. This was no gentle kiss but a battle of tongues and teeth, licking, suckling, biting, and nipping with desperation. His hands planed up her back and down again, his nails digging in with a delicious bite of pain that edged her pleasure in something even more intoxicating. Dimitrius squeezed her buttocks and groaned into her mouth, and the sound sent fire chasing through every vein until all rational thought had fled her.
Tree bark scraped down her cloak as he hoisted her up. Harper spread her legs, locking them around his hips as he held her suspended there with the strength of his rigid arms. He pinned her between the tree and the hardness growing between his legs that nestled right into her centre. She writhed against it, her core molten with need, and he rocked into her with matching demand. She wanted more. Needed more—before common sense, guilt, and shame had air to breathe and grow. Never had someone ignited such passion within her, and now she had him between her legs, the fabric sliding between them was a barrier to it all.
Dimitrius broke the kiss, his voice ragged. “You are more than I ever could have dreamed of, Harper. One kiss will never be enough. You will be my ruin.”
She groaned as he rocked his hips against her once more—and then he swallowed that groan with another kiss. But then?—
“Harper?” Brand’s deep voice rang through the trees.
She stiffened, and Dimitrius froze against her too. Her head whipped toward the direction of camp. Intense need still coursed through her—but darkness pushed in, bringing an edge of fear to the waves crashing through her. Reality. It had interrupted again. Saved her again. From the irresistible temptation before her. “I have to go.”
They were chest to chest. That need of his still pressed between her legs. And gods, she wanted more. She wanted all of it. But she pushed him back and staggered on shaking legs to the next tree, leaning heavily against it for a second to try and catch the breaths she had let him steal from her.
“Don’t. Please,” he said, his dark eyes glittering in the shadows of the trees as he followed her. “Let me take you somewhere safe.” He circled an arm around her waist, and it nearly undid her anew, but her palm upon his chest froze him.
She had to stop this. No matter how incandescent it felt—how much she now realised the power that pure desire promised—Harper had to walk away now, or she would not be able to at all. She brought a trembling hand to her gloriously swollen and stinging lips, touching her fingertips to the skin there. The ghost of his touch still burned her. The cold void of night air upon her skin felt an abhorrent replacement for his heated kiss.
“I can’t,” she whispered. “I cannot leave my friends. I cannot abandon what we must do.”
His hand slipped from her waist, his gaze searching her eyes—but whatever he found made him step back. “Please leave, or at least warn the dwarves. I cannot be any clearer. To continue spells disaster.”
“Harper?” Brand’s voice rang out through the woods—closer this time.
Dimitri cursed violently under his breath—and she felt the same wave of frustration at the interruption, but it did not sway her. “We cannot be found like this—go. Please. I will pass on your warning. That is all I can promise.”
“Be safe,” he pleaded.
She could not promise that either. Harper swallowed and turned away, before she lost the will to leave. He faded into the shadows as the glow of a burning torch through the trees grew closer. Harper stared at him for a moment, before moving toward the light, gratefully gulping down painfully freezing breaths to cool the heat bubbling inside her.