Chapter Thirty-Two Lavender Sheets #3
“Please,” she panted. “Please, please, please.”
He added a second finger, watching her hips move against him.
Her vision blurred, and the hand that was not inside her slid up over her chest. It was startling how quickly she surrendered, and no doubt a source of endless satisfaction for Caelan.
Normally, it took her a while to find release, though she didn’t think Caelan would have minded waiting for her.
When it rolled through her, his arm banded across her waist to hold her there.
In her hoarse cries, she realized too late that she had said his name.
“Now you’ve done it,” he said and kept going, not stopping even when he’d worked her through the final throes of it. Her eyes went wide and she keened as he worshipped the oversensitive skin. Voice like gravel, he said as he looked up at her, “You are stunning.”
This time, he luxuriated, hands digging into the tender V of muscles on her waist, bringing her to the edge again before he retreated to softer movements and started over, tormenting her with pleasure.
“All-Gods, Caelan.”
When he finally allowed her that second release, her legs went limp.
Caelan gently lowered her to the floor of her closet atop a pile of sweaters, setting her thighs on either side of his shoulders and tugging her hands from his hair to lace them with his own, barely allowing her to crestfall before he kept going.
She stopped seeing her closet, the bathing chamber, the candles all around them.
She saw only those gold-flecked eyes above the juncture of her thighs.
By the time another release twisted down her spine, tears were blurring her eyes. She screamed, squeezing his hands and lifting him with her as she bowed off the floor, begging him with words of nonsense—for more, to stop, for things that didn’t exist.
Caelan pulled back at last, letting her limp legs fall to the bed of clothes, and moved slowly up her body, kissing the contours of her stomach and chest before he cupped her face to kiss her, thumbs sliding over the dampness on her cheeks. He waited for her breath to return to normal.
“If you don’t take me to bed this instant,” she panted, “I might actually kill you.”
“Wouldn’t be your first attempt.” With a dark laugh, he swept her into his arms and carried her to her room, laying her down gently on the silk sheets. “Stamina, thief.”
She wanted to return everything he’d given her and then some, but when she reached for the band of his pants, he took her wrist and kissed the inside. “If you put your mouth on me, this will be over before it starts.”
She grinned. “Stamina, fire fingers.” When he gave her a warning look, lips still glistening with her release, she pressed her own together.
Watching her face while she watched him, he loosened the fastenings on his pants and let them fall to the ground.
Reya had once stolen a sculpture from an estate in the North End; its gallery had been full of centuries-old busts and statues, all men and women in various states of passion and undress, perfect specimens of the body.
Caelan looked like that, she decided, only better.
He was so beautiful she couldn’t stand it.
Reya swallowed the knot in her throat, and when her eyes found their way back to his face and saw him smirking, she lifted her foot to kick him in the chest. Cocky bastard.
He caught it, grinning like he wanted her to try again, and lifted it over his shoulder, kissing the inside of her ankle, then the back of her knee, before dragging his mouth up the plane of her body and back to hers.
“Do you take a tonic?” he asked, nudging her nose with his, and she nodded, grateful that he’d stopped to ask. She might have forgotten to protect herself. Though, she knew the responsibility of that question belonged to them both.
She ran her fingers through his hair and searched his face as he settled between her thighs. “You said that when you saw me in the Bear and the Bard the night we met, you should have known then. What did you mean?”
Looking for all the world like he’d burn it to the ground if she asked, he bent her knee and lifted it around his waist, guiding himself into her slowly, carefully, never taking his eyes off her face. “I should have known you were mine.”
She gasped at the fullness, and he nipped at her jaw. “Make that sound again.” She wanted to deny him, but when he retreated and rolled back into her, she did, summoning a groan from him that she loved just as much.
Only when he was fully seated did he stop to take several deep breaths, as if to pull himself together while he let her adjust, before moving his hips in time with hers.
So careful. But she wanted him as lost in her as she was in him.
So she took his face in her hands and kissed him with all the fire he’d brought to life inside her.
His chest rumbled almost menacingly, and he cupped the back of her neck, holding her there as he began to move.
Stars above.
Reya’s head tipped to the ceiling as he said into her ear, “I could drown in you for days.”
“Do it,” she panted, pretending just for a moment that he wasn’t leaving. “We can do whatever we want. You and me.”
He lifted her hips to such a perfect angle that she cried out. Sweat beaded on his brow, dripping onto her own. Her thighs began to tremble, and then she lost all semblance of control.
“Please,” she all but screamed into his mouth. Caelan pinned her wrists above her head in a way that she loved, driving himself into her hard and deep, until someone was going to have to pry them apart because she was never giving this up. Giving him up. It was too good. Too right.
Never halting his movements, he watched her face as she finally accepted the release he’d demanded from her and shook his head like she’d given him some kind of undeserving honor.
“You are everything.” He swore, calling out to the All-Gods and moving them both across the sheets as he fell over the edge alongside her.