Chapter 12 #2
My grin surfaced fully. The look on his face was worth every reckless impulse that had gotten me here: that raw, wrecked disbelief, like he couldn’t quite believe the words were real.
I sat up and reached for the waistband of my loose-fitting pants.
The fabric was thin, worn soft from weeks of wear.
I hooked my thumbs under the band and shoved them down my thighs in one smooth motion.
The air in the room was cool against my bare skin, and I felt the intensity of his gaze like a physical weight as I kicked the pants free and tossed them somewhere behind me.
I pushed against his chest, and he rolled to his back. His shoulders met the bunk. His head tilted back, exposing the column of his throat, the ring of scars catching the pale light from his markings.
I swung a leg over and settled across his hips. His eyes went wide. The silver of his irises flared bright enough to cast shadows across his cheekbones, and his hands found my waist, resting there with a reverence that made my chest ache.
“Quin—” His voice cracked on my name.
“Shh.” I pressed a finger to his lips, and his mouth against my skin nearly undid me. “Don’t worry, I’m driving.”
I found the hem of his kilt and eased it up, my fingers trailing along the hard ridges of his thighs, feeling the muscles jump and clench under my touch. The fabric was light, almost insubstantial, and it slid upward without resistance, bunching at his waist as I pushed it higher.
And then there he was.
I’d felt him through the fabric, but feeling and seeing were two entirely different experiences, and the sight of him nearly knocked the air from my lungs. My core wept anew as his thrumming erupted into vibrating thunder that shook the room.
He was enormous. Thick and rigid, the shaft was a deep, flushed blue that darkened to navy at the root, and ridged with subtle bands of texture that I could feel even before I wrapped my hand around his girth.
The head was swollen and slick, glistening, and as I watched, small arrow-shaped ridges at his base rose and went taut.
My belly clenched so hard it was almost painful.
I wanted him. I wanted him in a way that bypassed thought entirely.
Vennox watched my face as I watched my hand, and I felt his entire body shudder when I guided him to my core. I dragged the engorged head through my folds once, twice, feeling him shudder beneath me.
And then the world tilted.
One moment I was above him, my hand guiding him through the slick petals of my sex, and the next he flipped us.
The bunk groaned beneath the shift of weight.
I was on my back, and Vennox was above me, his massive frame filling the space between my thighs, fluid and predatory, his eyes dropping to where I was spread open for him.
The silver of his irises went incandescent, the pupils dilating until there was almost nothing left but dark, burning hunger, and he just… stared.
The intensity of his gaze was tangible. I could feel it on my skin, tracing every line and curve of me.
My face erupted into flames, the flush climbing from my chest to my cheeks with embarrassing speed.
I’d never been consumed by someone’s eyes alone.
My thighs tried to close on instinct, a reflexive curl of embarrassment that had nothing to do with desire and everything to do with the sheer, naked vulnerability of being studied so intensely.
“It is my turn to look at you,” he said, catching my knees before they could meet.
His hands were warm, his grip gentle but immovable, and he eased my legs apart with slow, deliberate pressure that left no room for modesty.
My face burned hotter. I opened my mouth to make a sharp remark, to deflect, to rebuild the carefully constructed walls around my heart.
The words died before they reached my tongue.
His fingertips skimmed the inside of my thigh, a touch so light it was barely there, and then moved higher, tracing the curve of my hip, the dip of my waist, the flat plane of my stomach, raising every hair on my body as they went.
Then his questing fingers found the soft swell of my mons and traced it with a reverence that made my throat close. Not groping. Not grabbing. Mapping. Learning the terrain of me with the kind of focused, unhurried attention that a cartographer gives to uncharted land.
Fire and ice, his fingertips were cool against my burning flesh. My hips curled as his thumb traced the line of my folds with agonizing slowness, parting me to his hungry view. A moan erupted from me as the cool air of the room hit the wetness leaking from my aching slit.
“Quin.” My name came out as a breath, barely voiced. “You’re so beautiful.”
He said it like looking at me was a privilege he’d been denied his entire life and couldn’t quite believe he’d been granted.
His luminous gaze tracked every movement of his own hand, watching the way my flesh responded to his touch, the way my folds glistened and parted, the way my body bloomed for him.
The embarrassment burning through me didn't vanish so much as it was consumed.
Eaten alive by an instinct far bigger and hungrier, one that didn't care about modesty or dignity or any of the human constructs I'd been clinging to.
His thumb circled my entrance, and my hips lifted off the bunk, chasing the contact, and the sound that escaped me was not one I recognized.
One thick finger pressed inside me, drawing a moan from somewhere deep in my chest that I couldn’t have suppressed if I’d tried. He pushed deeper, slow and careful, and my inner walls clenched around him, welcoming him inside.
He withdrew with the same agonizing slowness, and I watched, dazed and aching, as he lifted his hand between us. His finger glistened in the pale light, coated in the evidence of how badly I needed him.
His silvery gaze held mine as he brought his finger to his mouth and slid it between his lips, cleaning every trace of me from his skin. The low, guttural sound that emerged from him was a whip of fire that lashed across my sex.
“Oh god,” I whispered. My voice was wrecked. Gone. Reduced to something barely human.
He pulled his finger free with a soft, wet sound. Chest heaving, the rigid length of him strained against his kilt, mere inches from where I ached for him to fill me.
“Vennox,” I groaned. “Please. I need—”