Chapter Twelve #2
“Did something happen?” I finally called.
The plank slammed behind him with a force that reverberated a little, and I looked up to catch him scowling as he stalked over. He stopped behind me and his arms snaked around my middle, tightening as he buried his face in my shoulder.
“Bad day.”
I reached back to smooth my fingers through his hair, and felt his breath slow where his chest pressed into my back.
“You’ll find him,” I soothed. “You will.”
He huffed something unintelligible into my shoulder, but before I could ask, he’d shifted his focus, lips trailing coarse, bristled kisses up my neck. I tilted my head to give him better access, humming as I tangled my fingers deeper in his hair and smiled a little dreamily.
“Thought you were grumpy?”
“Not with you.”
“Thought you were going to bed?”
“Only if you’re coming with me.”
His lips were distractingly light beneath my ear and I made a noise that might have been a groan if it weren’t so breathy. I knotted my fingers tighter in his hair, gesturing vaguely around at the mess with my free hand.
“Caelan, I have so much to–”
“It can wait,” he murmured against my skin. “It can. Fuck it, I’ll get up at the rooster’s crow and do it all for you, I swear. Please, Rosie.”
The desperation in his voice did something funny to my lungs, all the air evaporating to be replaced with pure Flame.
The thought that he needed me so badly he’d plead and bargain for it, not a hint of shame.
He didn’t miss the catch in my breath at his plea, and I felt his own breath huff out in a dry laugh where his chest pressed against my back..
“Should’ve known you’d like it when I beg. Wicked little thing.”
His arms loosened around me, hands finding their way to my waist, smoothing slowly down my sides. His voice lowered, lethally soft.
“I can beg, Rosie. It comes so fucking easily when I’ve spent the whole day thinking about you. You’re all that kept me going, d’you know that? The thought of coming home to you, and your touch, and your heat.”
The way he said it, gritted between his teeth, hands raking hard over my hips to twist my skirt in his grip, I understood that he was talking not only about my Flame but that slick heat between my legs where an insistent pulse was already building.
His teeth grazed my throat with barely contained hunger, and honestly, he had me.
I would have given in right then and there.
But I was far from disappointed when he kept going.
“I’ve been waiting for hours,” he groaned. “And all I want, Rosie, is to make you come on my face. Is that so much to ask? Come on my tongue, then my cock, and then wherever the fuck else you want. As long as I get to watch.”
He kept one hand twisted in my skirts, fingers inching more and more fabric into his grasp until cool air kissed my knees.
His other hand flattened to my stomach, drawing me tighter against him as his teeth scraped lovingly down my throat and closed on my shoulder, stinging just a little. Just enough.
“Fuck,” was all I could manage.
The hand twisting my skirts finally disappeared beneath them, and I arched back into him when his fingers trailed up my thigh and passed, light as a breeze, over my throbbing centre.
I’m not sure which of us shuddered when the pad of his finger brushed over the wet fabric veiling my clitoris.
Caelan groaned in my ear, sounding so pained I could almost believe I truly was the one doing the teasing.
“Please,” he said, guttural and utterly broken, hardly forming sentences now. “Fuck, Rosie, please. Let me. Been so patient.”
“Yes,” I breathed.
He released me so fast I had to catch myself against the bar as he dropped to his knees and flipped my skirts up over my waist.
He didn’t even wait to get my undergarment off before diving between my thighs, kissing and licking greedily through the fabric before he tried to roughly yank it down and succeeded only in ripping it off one side.
Neither of us spared a moment to mourn the ruined piece.
His mouth was on me once more, hands tugging my hips back, my knee finding purchase on a shelf to give him better access as he dragged his tongue clean through me and I moaned.
So loud, in fact, that it actually shocked some sense into me.
“Caelan.” I stiffened, then immediately melted and gasped at the next warm sweep of his tongue – but all the same I managed to choke out; “We can’t do this here.”
“Beg to fucking differ.”
He didn’t even bother to come up for air, his rough voice muffled between my thighs in a way that sent a delicious rumble coursing through me.
My breasts pressed against the bartop, nails digging into the wood, and I clung to the counter through wave after wave of shuddering, building heat, fighting to stay upright on my rapidly weakening knees.
“Well,” I gasped, “as long as you’re still begging.”
At that, he laughed his beautiful thunderclap laugh, and the vibration humming through me was even more intense, my knees buckling even more violently.
He caught me by the hips, not to steady me, but to spear me on his tongue.
And when I cried out this time, I could not spare a single thought for where we were or how loud.
Because it was not only my moans ringing the empty tavern – it was Caelan’s muffled groans, the indecipherable praises he tried to lavish on me as I writhed against the perfect wet friction of his warm mouth and his rough beard.
I was coming undone so rapidly it was dizzying.
Caelan wasn’t coaxing my pleasure with the same assurance and precision he normally did – wasn’t playing my body like an instrument that sang only for him.
There was a messy desperation in the way he devoured me, his fingers sliding broadly over my throbbing bud, his tongue lapping in long, devouring strokes that made a mess of my thighs.
And for some reason his eagerness and that unfamiliar edge of vulnerability made my Flame – made me – all the more feral for his touch.
My climax slammed into me, sudden and consuming as a fiery explosion. Or perhaps it was a fiery explosion, with the pleasure detonating from the point where Caelan’s lips had squeezed closed over my clitoris, sucking hard.
All too soon, the heat of his mouth was gone and I cried out with reproach – but then he was on his feet behind me, fingers tight around my hip to pin me in place, the unmistakable sound of his belt snapping free.
“We’re not done,” he rasped, and he notched his thick length between my thighs.
And when he thrust into me, an unearthly sound ripped free from my throat. I was still convulsing from the inside, still riding the wave of my last orgasm even as the next began to build and I thought I might even have been sobbing with the overwhelming pleasure.
“We’re never done,” Caelan panted, hips snapping faster already. “I could never have enough of you.”
“Never,” was all I could manage, that one word spilling out on a breathless cry.
Heat rose around us in spiralling, serpentine flames that had my vision shimmering.
The countertop was burning and the air around us crackled and roared.
Caelan released my hips to curl a hand around my neck, guiding me up and against his chest as his other hand slid around my front to find its way between my legs – and then his fingers squeezed gently around my throat.
The roaring flames around us waned to a golden simmer as he trapped the air in my lungs, starving my magic for just a moment, just long enough for clarity to cut through the lustful fog of my ever-climbing Flame.
Sensation rushed in to replace it – the feel of Caelan’s fingers slick between my legs, his warm breath on my cheek and the perfect, excruciating drag of his cock over the most glorious spot deep inside me.
Faster and faster he moved until he drove himself impossibly deep with a long guttural groan, spilling his heat inside me to replace my own.
Then he released my throat, and breath and Flame rushed me as one. Rushed to ignite all those new and highly combustible sensations until I was screaming, coming again, even harder this time, magic spiralling outward like it could illuminate the whole world.