CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT #2
But the celestial trumpet loosened her up, made her limbs languid.
And she gave into it. Her pulse roared in her ears as her hips swayed and her body moved to the music, joined with it, injected it into her veins, lit her up like a candlewick, and she burned.
As she danced, she lost sight of the tent and the man’s silhouette.
She forgot everything and merely became.
Her hands on her body bordered ecstasy, but didn’t curb that building, throbbing ache, or her endless want. Her desire only worsened by the second.
And no matter how hard she fought to look anywhere else, her stare collided with Dez’s. Despite her pleading eyes, he lounged against the wall, unmoving, though his hands twitched at his sides, like he, too, ached for her.
Time stretched as she submerged in the crowd and sought anyone who would touch her. Most made her recoil, others felt entirely wrong, and her search grew futile.
Because it wasn’t them she wanted.
Then familiar fingers twined with hers, and she giggled with such joy she barely recognized the sound as her own. She spun to find those dark eyes and that flawless face she adored.
And suddenly her world righted.
Dez twirled her like a princess before he stole her away from the stage, their stares locked in a clash of honeyed gold and suede darkness.
Her cheeks warmed as he took in her bare shoulder, and her breasts trussed up in that damn corset.
At some point she’d nearly shrugged out of her dress, and her sleeves now hung limp, the rest of the sheer fabric gathered at her waist, and her bunched skirts exposed the tops of her stockings.
The backs of Dez’s knees struck a chaise, and he abruptly sat, nearly yanking her down with him. He looked up at her, gazed at her like she was the last star burning out in the night sky, and he was afraid to blink and miss it.
She didn’t know what that look meant, nor the thoughts behind his eyes.
“Dez?” His name slid sweetly from her tongue, a tablespoon of nectar. “Dezzy?” She giggled again.
Caught in this euphoric haze with her, he smiled, not sunshine, but rather heat, mischief, and a catalyst to that throbbing restlessness inside her.
“Yes, Emmery darling?” he practically purred.
Her gaze searched his face for his intentions. “What are you doing?”
He fumbled for the answer, like he was so intoxicated by her that she stole all his thoughts; a hit of a drug so potent he tasted the clouds. “Something,” he whispered from a deep chasm in his chest. “Something foolish.”
Those two words ricocheted inside her memory, and Emmery’s breath caught.
Had that vision been real all along? Had those been his words?
His kiss that now haunted her dreams? Maybe they truly had been watching some alternate versions of themselves love and pleasure each other, likely in a way they never could.
Not in this lifetime. Not in these broken bodies with these shattered souls.
But as he gazed at her like a glimpse of long forgotten hope, she thought for a single scrap of a moment, perhaps they could.
“Something that’s sure to hurt me,” he breathed, the sentiment heavy.
Emmery’s brows drew together. “I don’t want to hurt you,” she said. Her voice caressed her ears like satin, though her words slurred. “I won’t, Dez. As long as you promise not to hurt me, too.”
He half-heartedly smudged blood from the crown across his cheek as she stepped between his spread legs.
Maybe the trumpet’s influence had truly driven her to madness, but Emmery snagged his hand and studied the blood. Her mouth watered, and before Dez could speak, she drew two of his fingers coated in that rich red into her mouth and sucked.
The blood exploded on her tongue, delicious, perfect, and she squeezed her eyes closed. Dez inhaled sharply, but didn’t pull away, even as she moaned around his fingers and savoured it with a flick of her tongue.
His lips parted and something dangerous lurked in his stare. Something wicked and sinful and so damn enticing she began to tremble.
The moment she released him, he grasped her hips, and sank his teeth into his bottom lip.
Play with me, his eyes said, surely in a game she was bound to lose.
The choice hung in the air between them, her choice: to pull away from him, or finally indulge her desires. Because this was wrong somehow, but her lust-drunk mind couldn’t remember why.
He guided her down until she straddled his lap, her knees on either side of him on the leather chaise. Her blood roared like a match cast into lamp oil. Heat pooled in her belly and she craved to melt into him, to become liquid, for him to drink her in.
His fingers sank into her flesh and she rocked her hips, grinding his thick arousal against that aching spot between her legs.
Both of their breaths hitched. Her eyes fluttered closed and she sank into pure sensation as her body moved on its own accord.
Desperate to tether herself to something, to not float away in this swelling, pounding pleasure, she braced her hand on his chest. His thorns sliced into her, but she barely felt it against his touch and the glowing, raging fire inside her.
Dez clasped her wrist and brought it to his face to survey the damage. He tsked under his breath as warm blood ran down her palm.
“Careful, angel,” he hummed. He held her gaze as he dragged his tongue up the side of her hand, lapping up her blood as she had with his.
Lightning pleasure spiked her veins, and she whimpered, his mouth so soft and warm and perfect. He moaned against her aching flesh.
Then his lips were at her ear. “If your blood is that unfathomably sweet, how does the rest of you taste?” A lazy, drunken smirk tugged at his mouth. “Look at you. You have this entire room falling to their knees, and yet, it’s my lap you’re in.” Where you belong, hung in the air unsaid.
This time when he gripped her hips and she rolled against him, a desperate whimper slipped from between his lips.
She wanted to memorize that sound. Wanted to paint it on her skin and carve it into her bones.
Never had she seen him so unravelled. It tightened a coil inside her, a spring ready to snap, because seeing him so undone by her was cathartic.
“I—I want…” she started, but sensation and desire muddled her mind, and she couldn’t translate what her body screamed into words.
His hand cupped the back of her neck and pulled her to him, her brow braced against his. Her vestige swelled for him.
“Tell me what you want, Emmery.” Her name was both a prayer and a confession on his lips. He breathed her in, savoured her, as if he thought she would pull away and he bided his time, stole every second, and collected them while he could.
She inhaled the scent of cool mint, her blood, and a hint of vanilla from the trumpet on his breath. Held it inside herself. Wanted to taste it.
Wanted it everywhere.
Her sledgehammer heart shattered all her walls, and instead of telling him, she showed him.
With a sharp tug, the remaining buttons on his shirt popped open. She swallowed hard as her fingers found the smooth skin over his waistband and she traced her fingers along it. She followed his thin trail of hair until her fingertip dipped beneath, as his had in the bathing room mere hours ago.
A small, wicked smile claimed her mouth as Dez gasped like she stole his air, as if he was truly dying, and she was his merciful demise.
“What are you doing to me?” he whispered. His nose tenderly skimmed hers, as if she was precious, beautiful even. “Don’t you know how long I’ve been bleeding out for you? But I handed you the blade, didn’t I? Guided your hand to that weak gap between my ribs.”
The sliver of space between their lips became agony—a prison wall separating hands, an ocean dividing land, a canyon severing voices, real, audible, and tangible, yet always too far away.
Always beyond their reach.
She needed more. She needed him to stop torturing her and give her what they’d danced around for months. What had strained and bent, until it inevitably snapped.
Everything around them faded to a dull hum, the lights, the music, the people, until only they existed. He took her face in his hands, and his fingertips skimmed her birthmark, tracing it like a work of art.
“I’ll never ask again,” he murmured. The fraction of space narrowed as she sank into him, bowing like a sail caught in the wind and he was her horizon. “But please, Emmery, put me out of this misery.” His thumb caressed her bottom lip in a request. A question. A plea.
Because Destonne was begging for her.
Something he claimed he would never do.
And as she leaned in, drawn to him like gravity to earth, oxygen to flame, a force so inevitable, and dangerous, and so damn explosive they both should have been afraid, he eagerly met her halfway.
His lips brushed hers in a whisper of a kiss, pillowy soft like in her dreams. Perfect. Emmery trembled beneath his hands, and answered with a breathy sound as every cell in her body vibrated, crying out for more.
He pulled back, fear woven through his gaze. Dez gave her time to retreat, and forget this ever happened. To forget he ever placed his desires in her hands to see if she would hold them. But hadn’t she placed hers in his, too?
When she didn’t pull away, he plucked each pin he’d carefully secured into her hair and tossed them aside. Plink, plink, plink—they hit the floor, until her locks tumbled down her back. He wove his fingers through it and tilted her face up to his, his other cupping her cheek.
Anticipation inflated. Neither of them breathed as he drew her to him.
The second kiss was hardly gentle.
Months of longing packed into one embrace, and two halves became whole as stars burst behind Emmery’s eyes.
Between his flawless lips and the taste of icy mint, she unravelled like the threads of her soul sprang free and found a new home.
And for a man who claimed abstinence, his practiced kiss made her knees impossibly weak.