Chapter 50 #2
He worked at her throat until she felt the bruise begin to bloom under his mouth, until her breath was coming in small, uneven catches, and only then did he ease back enough to set his lips against the mark, gentle, almost reverent, as if to seal it.
She came back to herself in pieces.
Her pulse. The column at her back. The vine somewhere near her shoulder. The cool of the night air against the wet place his mouth had left. The mark.
He was scent-marking her again.
He had done it only the night before last. She knew enough now to know it was not needed again so soon.
A Sídhe mark endured. What he had left on her in the spring would have held through the tribunal and long after.
There was no practical need for this—for her to be backed against a pillar in the dark, his thigh between hers, his mouth at her throat as though once had not satisfied him, as though he meant to return to the same place again and again until her body kept the memory of him for weeks after.
The thrill of it went through her so sharply that it nearly hurt.
When he lifted his head to move to the other side, she caught his face in both hands and pulled his mouth to hers.
She kissed him hard. Harder than the kiss in the square had been, because there was no city watching now, because there was nothing to be careful of, because her throat was burning and her body was burning everywhere else and she wanted him to feel what he had done to her.
His mouth yielded beneath hers. The sound he made seemed to vibrate through his chest more than reach her ears, low and rough. His hand tightened at her waist before sliding lower, gathering silk as it went, gripping the curve of her hip.
He ground into her.
Once. Slow. So she felt the full force of everything he had been holding in check that evening. Felt what her running had done to him. Felt, at last, the thing she had been chasing without quite knowing. Her head fell back against the column on a sound she could not have stopped if she tried.
He did it again.
And then—when she was well past breath, past thought, past anything but the column at her back, and the heat of him at her front, and the bright hot ache he had built between her thighs—he pulled away.
Reynnar's forehead came to rest against hers. His breath uneven against her mouth. His hand was still at her hip, still holding her there, his thumb stroking across the silk. His eyes had gone black. There was no amber left in them.
“Let me taste you, Eilíara.”
It took a beat for the meaning to reach her. At first her mind went somewhere else—that he meant her mouth, that he was only asking for another kiss, and some startled, dizzy part of her almost smiled at the absurdity of his asking when he could have bent and taken that much without protest.
Then understanding moved through her.
Her breath left her.
Oh.
Her hands, still cradling his face, stilled. When she lifted her eyes, she found his gaze already on her, watching the realization take hold. The patience in him was the same he had shown her at the spring—no less wanting for being restrained, no less dangerous for being gentle.
No one had ever kissed her there before.
The bond caught the thought before she could pull it back. Recognition flashed across the distance between them, quick as a spark. His breathing shifted. Something darkened in his expression, deepening slowly.
Still he did not urge—he only waited.
The colonnade had gone still around them. Somewhere beyond the pillars, water moved in the fountain with its low continuous song. Her throat burned, and all at once drawing breath seemed far less simple than it ought to have been.
His thumb moved again at her hip. Almost idle. As if he had all night, all his life to wait for her. His forehead was still against hers. His mouth was a hair's breadth from her own.
“Eilíara.”
Her name came from him low and roughened, and the sound of it moved through her like another touch, pooling deep and aching in her belly.
“Look at me.”
Only then did she realize her eyes had drifted shut.
When she opened them, the bond between them lay wide and humming, stripped of every remaining pretense. He could feel her wanting it; she knew he could.
She ran her tongue lightly over her lips.
His gaze dropped there at once.
“Yes,” she said.
It came out as almost nothing. A breath. A scrap of sound. But he heard it.
He kissed her with a thoroughness that left no room for thought. His tongue brushed hers as one hand cradled her jaw and the other drew her against him once more. The column was cool at her back. He was everywhere else.
Then his mouth left hers and moved lower.
Her throat—the mark again, kissed softly, almost like a promise. The hollow at the base of her neck. The bare line of her collarbone where the dress left her skin uncovered.
He took his time at the dip above her breastbone, breathing her in, his mouth open against her like he was tasting the heat coming off her skin.
He went lower.
He sank to his knees.
The sight of it was its own undoing. His hair fell forward as his hands traveled the silk of her dress, palms flat and unhurried, tracing the curve of her hips and the line of her thighs through the fabric as he descended.
When he looked up at her from the floor of the colonnade, something in his gaze nearly took her legs out from under her.
He pressed his lips to her stomach through the silk.
Just there. Just that.
The warmth of him seeped through the thin fabric of her dress, lower than anyone had ever touched her before, and she felt it everywhere—in her throat, in her wrists, in the soles of her feet. Her head fell back against the column as the rest of the world drifted away.
Then Elara gasped, and the world came rushing back.
Her eyes opened.
And found Ivan.