Chapter 19 #2
My hands moved over his chest, first with desire, then with purpose I did not want to acknowledge.
I felt the rapid beat of his heart beneath my palm and the living heat of him under soaked fabric.
I wanted, horribly, to press my ear there and listen.
I wanted to bite into that warmth and see if it would spill into me.
I wanted to crawl beneath his ribs and make a home in the red machinery of him.
I needed him.
And I needed the thing in his pocket.
My fingers slipped inside his coat and my companion moaned, shoving harder and sending another image through me so vivid I tasted blood.
Cold stone at my back. His body a furnace against mine. A small luminescent flower pressed beneath my ribbon, its tendrils seeking entry. My own hands parting flesh to make room for root to burrow beneath—
I shuddered violently.
His hands tightened. “You are freezing.”
“So warm me,” I whispered, my voice a husky sound I did not recognize.
I kissed him again before he could draw away, before concern overtook whatever desire had seized him. I kissed him because I wanted to. I kissed him because the voice wanted me to. I kissed him because the heat of his mouth made the dead parts of me feel alive.
My hand found the folded cloth in his pocket, and I unwrapped it, distracting him with the heat of our passion.
The moment my fingertips brushed it, relief and euphoria tore through me like a starving root finally meeting water after a season of drought.
The combined heat of his body and the plant rushed up my arm, spreading through my chest, and for one radiant instant every cold, rotting part of me remembered what true warmth felt like.
Yes, the voice breathed, reverent now. Yes. Take it.
My fingers closed around the specimen, and it slid easily from his pocket.
His mouth moved to my jaw, the heat of his lips searing the hollow of my throat just above the green ribbon.
“Camellia,” he breathed against my skin, my name almost pained with a grief I did not understand.
His hand slid from my waist, his fingers brushing my nipples through my dress. I sucked in a breath, the sensation sending hot pleasure through my body and tension coiling between my thighs.
Do it. Take what is mine, the voice demanded.
His hands worked the laces on the front of my dress expertly, my breast freed from their confinement.
Cool air caressed my hardened nipples and his mouth closed over one—the warmth of his tongue contrasting the temperature so sharply that I shivered.
A whimpered moan escaped me as his teeth grazed one, then the other, teasing and giving each equal affection.
His hand moved down my waist, gathering the hem of my dress to my hip, revealing exposed skin beneath.
I held onto the vine in one hand, my other trailing to the front of his trousers, wrapping my fingers around the hard length of him that pressed against the fabric. He groaned against my breast, a curse escaping his lips as I stroked him slowly.
He parted my thighs, fingers slipping into the wet heat pulsing with a need I had been unaware of until he touched me. He stroked and teased until my breath became shallow and broken, my pulse raging like wildfire pumping through my veins.
He slid one long, elegant finger deep inside, then another, moving until the pleasure was unbearable. I cried out, and his mouth immediately found mine again, swallowing the sound to keep as his own.
“You must be quiet,” he murmured against my lips, his fingers leaving me before his hand shifted between us. Fabric rustled, then he maneuvered our position, leaning against the wall and lifting me against him.
The thick length of him pressed against my entrance, teasing for the briefest moment before he filled me so completely that the air left my lungs.
He stilled, waiting for the tension in my body to ease before he began to thrust, his hands firm on my hips as he buried himself deeper and deeper until the pleasure built to an unbearable sensation.
I clutched the vine in my fingers, nails digging into the soft flesh of the tendril, my other hand gripping his shoulder as I begged him to ease my torture. “Please… Please, Nicholas…”
His tongue tangled with mine in response, a deep guttural moan exhaling from him.
His hand slid between us, his thumb finding my need and stroking as he drove himself harder and deeper inside me.
I moved against him, desperate to mold our flesh and entangle my decaying roots to his so that we bloomed beautifully as one.
I shattered. Wholly and completely. My entire body breaking and trembling as wave after wave of ecstasy filled my veins. I cried out his name, clinging to both him and the vine for dear life, his own release following.
My companion exhaled its own pleasure as my fingers stroked silk-soft petals.
His mouth found the curve of my jaw, trailing kisses along the line of bone. “Is this what will bring you back, Camellia?” he breathed, the words so soft I was not sure he had spoken at all, each one reaching for a place in me my mind refused to let him touch.