Chapter Seven #2
And I believed him. He lowered his mouth to mine slowly, hesitantly, giving me plenty of opportunity to pull away.
Instead, I braced my arms against his shoulders and met him halfway, putting my whole body behind the kiss.
His taut frame sagged with relief, and his full weight pressed me back, hands moving to my hair again and tangling there possessively.
It was a slow kiss, an unhurried one, but the heat and hunger he’d stirred in me had never really faded, just lying in wait.
I dragged my palms down the hard plains of his body, revelled in every shudder and groan my touch elicited.
My hands trailed the ridges of each taut muscle rippling his stomach, down and down until I lingered at his belt and he caught my lip between his teeth.
“Rosie,” he groaned, so guttural I couldn’t tell if it was warning or encouragement.
My fingers curled around his buckle, clumsily working it free before he caught my wrist. He cursed under his breath, visibly torn, but his hold on me didn’t falter.
“The moment you kissed me, I had to make a promise to myself. I had to swear I wasn’t going to fuck you for the first time in a broom cupboard. If you keep going, you’re going to make a liar of me.”
His bluntness took me by surprise, and not in the way I might once have thought. The heat now curling beneath my navel had little to do with my magic.
“What if that’s what I want?”
His fingers flexed around my wrist, but he shook his head — a little jerkily, like it was difficult. I caught that hesitation; tugged on it a little desperately.
“We’re alone in the dark, for gods know how long,” I told him, voice lowering when I teased; “And I’m very punctual with my monthly tea.”
It wasn’t an outright I want you to come inside me, but he groaned at the implication all the same. And yet still, he didn’t release my wrist.
“You’re going to want a bed, Rosie. I’m going to take my time with you. Need you comfortable.”
My breath shuddered out of me, then stopped entirely when his broad hands found my waist and backed me into the shelves.
He kissed me again, all rough beard, and teeth, and soft, searching tongue.
And then I was back where we started, seated on the shelf with my legs spread around him, his hands sliding under my skirts and his mouth almost bruising on mine until I finally had to break away, gasping for air.
“If you don’t want this,” I panted, “we need to stop.”
My voice was foreign to my own ears, breathy, dark and desperate.
Caelan didn’t answer right away; his hands roamed the backs of my thighs, and when his fingers finally met the bare skin above my stockings my thighs widened of their own accord.
The way he dropped his head to my shoulder was so pained I found myself consciously slowing my breath so as not to unsettle him.
“If I don’t want this?” The words sounded like they’d been dragged out of him, forced through breathless lungs. “Rosie, I am fucking made of want.”
He took the sleeve of my bodice between his teeth and dragged it slowly down to bare a shoulder, the uppermost swell of one breast, kissing and tasting as he went.
I swallowed the moan that rose up my throat, but my magic was rising in me like a stormy ocean of flame, great waves of it crashing into my bones with every beat of my thundering heart, the same blazing pulse throbbing in my core as liquid heat pooled between my thighs.
“Caelan.”
“Can I touch you? Gods, I want to fucking touch you.”
My mind had melted and all that was left was sensation; molten magic running unchecked in my blood, waves of heat licking at my insides, Caelan and his hands and his mouth and —
I want to fucking touch you.
I nodded fervently, and his fingers on my leg flexed, barely brushing the lowest curve of my backside. Still he didn’t move.
“Say it.”
I didn’t hesitate.
“Touch me.”
A wordless groan shuddered out of him and his hands were almost clumsy in his haste, so fast at first, then slower, like his control had lapsed the moment I spoke the words he wanted to hear.
He kneaded my bare hip in one palm, the other skating up the inside of my leg until his fingers traced the inner seam of my thigh, teased at the edge of the thin fabric that clung to my skin, so slick with my own arousal it turned the blush in my cheeks to a painful burn.
I leaned in to him, trying to hide my blush in a kiss, but he drew back. His grin was sharp-edged, if a little breathless; wicked and knowing.
“I don’t think so, love.”
I scowled at him, and his grin went impossibly sharper, scar stretching taut. He trailed one finger over the soaked front of my undergarment, tracing the shape of me through the cloth until I was whimpering pitifully.
“Since we’ve established no-one can hear us,” he said softly, “I want every sound for my own. I want to know if you’re going to moan for me. Beg me. If your breath speeds up when you’re getting close. What it sounds like when you come.”
I made a soft, breathy, completely unfamiliar noise and Caelan gave a dark chuckle right in my ear.
“There we go.”
And as though I’d answered a question, he promptly slipped beneath the band of my undergarment and slid two fingers slowly down my slick, aching centre.
His touch was so unexpected, such delicious relief that my body arched against him and he had to grab my hip to keep me from falling off the shelf.
“So perfect,” he said, on broken breath. “So gods-damned wet.”
I didn’t know which of us was panting like that.
My Flame was rampant, the roar of it so loud in my ears it was hard to focus on the gruff, coaxing words Caelan was murmuring as he explored me.
Yes, and That’s it, and Gods, Rosie. His fingers traced and teased, eyes heavy lidded but fixed determinedly on my face as he pored over my every gasp and sigh, cataloguing them until he found a rhythm that drew a pleading moan from so deep in my chest it dragged out another burst of Flame alongside it.
His grin flickered in the sudden burst of light, and he pressed his face into the crook of my neck so I could feel the shape of it against my skin before he kissed my throat.
“Like this?”
I wanted to tell him how adorably pleased he sounded with himself, but that’s not what came out.
“Like that. More. Oh gods, don’t stop.”
His snarl of satisfaction made me shiver head to toe, despite the renewed heat of my Flame, glowing brighter in every nerve ending the more he touched me. The hot fluttering low in my belly was growing almost forceful, my core desperately tightening around something that wasn’t even there.
“I need–” My breath failed as another wave overwhelmed my core, and I tried again. “Oh gods, I want –”
I grabbed his wrist and tried to guide him down, but he wouldn’t have it.
“Tell me,” he said roughly, still stroking and teasing even as he resisted my grip. “Want to hear it.”
He didn’t let up that perfect rhythm or pressure, so it seemed entirely unfair that he expected me to string words together. I tried anyway, swallowing and gasping, making several attempts before I finally managed to whine; “I need you inside me. Please. Please.”
“Fuck.”
He didn’t waste a moment, sliding two thick fingers into me and hissing appreciatively when I immediately clenched around him.
His thumb took the place of his fingers, sliding over my slick and sensitive bud while he pumped in and out of me.
My hands curled into claws on his shoulders, and I was writhing, moaning with an abandon that was entirely new to me.
This was all new, the potency of each sensation and especially the effect on my magic.
During sex, my Flame was normally curled up in my chest, perhaps glowing a little at most, not racing along my skin, igniting me right down to the ends of my hair; not making a fucking pyre of my body.
It was almost alarming, and even as the blinding pleasure ratcheted up and up, even as I urged him on with his name on my lips, I was terrified of what might happen when I reached the edge I was blazing towards.
Caelan was still watching me so closely, lips parted around his ragged breath, but something must have shown on my face because a frown creased his brow before he leaned in. He took my lip between his own, then dragged it through his teeth.
“Tell me,” he gritted out; demanded, before he released my lip.
“Worried,” I gasped.
“About?”
“Magic’s acting up. Might set you on fire?”
He just laughed, and his pace shifted, fingers moving faster inside me, the wet noise of him entering my body again and again as obscene as it was utterly devastating. My moans bordered on sobs, overlapping the low words he spoke in my ear.
“Then I’ll burn, Rosie, and I’ll love every fucking minute of it.”
That fear was apparently the last tether holding me back, and at his gruff reassurance and the relentless pace of his hand between my legs, I shattered so suddenly I couldn’t stop the scream that rose with the final exultant burst of my Flame.
I came and came, freefalling within myself to meet the rising height of my magic. And when Caelan finally gave in and kissed me, I clung to him, moaning into his mouth with each shudder that ran through me, each stroke of his tongue keeping pace with the slowing thrust of his fingers inside me.