Chapter 44 #2
I wanted him to look. Wanted to watch him unravel.
I stood bare in the golden lantern light, skin glowing, heart hammering so loud I was certain he could hear it in the hushed space between us.
August stepped forward—slowly, like a man in a trance, afraid I’d vanish if he moved too quickly. His eyes swept over me with reverence, drinking in each curve, every shadow.
“You're. . .” His voice cracked, broke, reformed.
He swallowed hard, Adam's apple bobbing, the struggle for control etched across every line of his body.” Christ, Lily.
You're the most exquisite thing I've ever laid eyes on. That night in the sitting room, when you dropped the towel, it was all I could do to keep from falling to my knees. You unsettle me completely. Mind, body, and soul. I cease to belong to myself the instant you are near.”
His chest expanded slowly, ribs lifting like each inhale scraped against broken glass.
“And I don’t know whether I want to worship you or run from you. Because if I touch you, really touch you, I won’t be able to stop.”
The raw honesty in his confession made my knees weak, made something deep in my core clench with want. I closed the distance between us, watching his pupils dilate as I reached for his coat.
“Then don’t stop,” I whispered against the hollow of his throat.
I stripped him slowly, savoring each reveal of golden skin. He stood before me like a God carved from marble. Lamplight played across his chest, highlighting the planes of muscle, the shadows between his ribs, the white lines of scars mapping his skin.
I traced the edge of a particularly wicked scar along his ribs. He caught my wrist—not to stop me, never that—but his fingers trembled where they held me.
Then his mouth found mine, and the kiss was reverent at first. Tender. Like he was still trying to be the controlled man his father had raised.
But I didn't want controlled.
I nipped his bottom lip hard enough to make him gasp, and his eyes went dark—pupils swallowed the hazel. His grip on my wrist tightened.
“Lily.”
“Stop treating me like I'll break,” I breathed against his mouth, running my other hand down his chest, his abdomen, lower. “I won't.”
When my fingers brushed the hard length of him through his trousers, he made a sound low in his throat—half groan, half growl.
I worked the fastenings, freeing him completely.
He was hard and wanting, and the sight of him—all of him, finally bare before me—made my mouth go dry.
I let my fingers trail along his length, velvet over steel, and watched his jaw clench, watched the muscle jump in his throat as he fought for control.
A shudder ran through him. “If you keep touching me like that, this will be over before it begins.”
My smile turned wicked as I wrapped my hand around him again, dragging my palm from base to tip. He throbbed hard against my touch. “Then maybe you should stop me.”
His lips crashed down on mine, his tongue claiming my mouth with desperate hunger. He lifted me with ease, steps deliberate even as his kiss frayed the last threads of his control.
My nipples tightened and a sharp wave of need rolled low between my legs.
Awareness flooded me all at once. Every point where our bodies touched.
Every place his hands skimmed or gripped as he moved me toward the bedroll.
I was touching him too. Touching him everywhere.
Hard-packed muscle under my palms, the heat of his breath against my skin, the wild scent of him—cedar, mossy woods and—
“God! August!”
The hard length of him pressed against my thigh as he laid me down with maddening gentleness.
My skin erupted in goosebumps the moment his mouth touched my neck.
He dragged his lips along the line of my pulse, a low hum vibrating in his chest. The sensation sank deep, curling low inside me until my knees weakened and the world narrowed to the heat of his mouth on my skin.
“Christ.” The ragged whisper broke against my skin as he pressed his mouth to the crook of my neck.
His body surged up into mine, and the sudden hardness of him stole the air from my lungs.
He rocked upward again, slow and sure, and the jolt of pleasure that followed blurred every coherent thought I had left.
I needed. . .
“August, please!” The plea tore out of me before I could stop it.
He didn’t pause, didn’t even breathe differently.
His hand slid between my thighs, fingers parting me with a certainty that stole every coherent thought.
He found my wetness at once, pressing into it with slow, claiming pressure that made my hips rise into his palm as if my body already knew who it wanted.
A sharp breath burst from me. The world narrowed to the heat of his hand, the sure way he stroked me like he had every right to. Each pass of his fingers drew me tighter against him, need curling through me in a low, helpless wave.
Then everything dimmed. Sound fell away. Light thinned. It was only me and him. And a flicker. A shimmer.
Silver and gold threads rippled into existence above us, unfurling like an aurora brought to life—beautiful, impossible, achingly intimate.
They drifted in slow, deliberate sways, as if aware of us.
As if watching. One brushed along his shoulder, and I saw it: the shiver that cut through him, the taut pull of something inside him straining against invisible chains.
He kissed his way down my body with devastating focus, murmuring my name against my skin like a prayer, a promise, a claim he barely managed to contain. Heat followed every kiss, every breath, every soft scrape of his lips.
When he eased between my thighs, he looked up at me with a hunger so raw it made the world tilt. Then he lowered his mouth and pressed that first kiss to where I ached for him most.
The threads above us pulsed—bright, alive—and the whole world seemed to inhale with me.
“Beautiful,” he breathed against my center. “So damn beautiful.”
The first sweep of his tongue had me crying out, hips bucking shamelessly against his mouth.
A groan rumbled through him—as if he were the one receiving pleasure—and his large hands gripped my thighs, holding me steady.
He licked deeper, slower, learning me with every stroke.
Every gasp. Every helpless whimper that fell from my lips.
Still controlled. Still measured.
“August,” I sobbed, fingers tangling in his dark hair. “Please—I need—”
“Let me worship you as you deserve.” His mouth was hot against my sensitive flesh, and pleasure spiked through me.
It was exquisite torture.
Too exquisite. My senses twisted in on themselves—my ears buzzing, my legs trembling so badly I couldn’t feel my feet. I didn’t know if I was unraveling or ascending. Maybe both.
“You don’t know,” he breathed, lips brushing my center, “how long I’ve dreamt of tasting you. . . how long I’ve kept myself from this.”
Another slow kiss. Another shudder from him.
“I would’ve lost myself,” he said, voice thick with hunger, “if I’d let myself want you the way I do. Yet, here I am anyway, completely lost in you.”
The truth in his tone hit me harder than his touch. It wasn’t just desire—it was need. Starvation. A man who’d denied himself until the moment he broke.
And he was breaking for me.
The lantern beside us flickered violently, the flame guttering low as if the threads were drawing all the light to themselves. In the sudden dimness, they blazed brighter, silver and gold radiance casting wild, shifting shadows across the tent walls.
“Tell me what you want,” he growled.
“You,” I breathed. “I want you.”
His control shattered like glass.
He surged up my body with a snarl that sounded more animal than man, pinning my wrists above my head as his mouth crashed against mine. This kiss wasn't gentle. It was consuming, desperate, all teeth and tongue and barely leashed violence turned to hunger.
“You want me?” he growled against my lips, and nothing of his careful control remained. “You want to see what I am when I stop pretending to be civilized?”
“Yes,” I gasped. “God, yes—”
He claimed my mouth again, harder this time. His other hand—the one not pinning my wrists—slid down my side, over my hip, gripping hard enough to bruise. Possessive. Claiming.
The threads multiplied, wrapping around us in a cocoon of light and magic.
They bound my ankle. Curled around his throat.
Tightened like silk ropes holding us together.
Another wrapped so tight around his forearm I saw his muscles flex against it.
The magic was almost too much, pleasure and pressure blurring together until I couldn't tell if I was gasping from him or from them.
He positioned himself at my entrance, the thick head of him nudging against my slick heat—no hesitation, no warning, no space to think.
Then he thrust.
A single driving stroke that slammed him fully inside me, filling me in an instant.
I screamed.
Not from pain—there was none. Only a fierce stretch, a fullness so complete it stole every ounce of air from my lungs, and a surge of energy that ripped up my spine in bright, stuttering bursts.
It felt like my body detonated around him, pleasure and magic flaring at the same time until everything inside me went incandescent.
The threads reacted violently.
Silver and gold burst outward in a blinding shockwave of light, then whipped back around us, binding tighter, pulsing hard enough to rattle the lantern hook above our heads.
August froze.
Every muscle in his body locked, trembling with the effort not to move. His head fell back, throat bared, jaw clenched so tight I thought it might crack.
“Christ—” he choked, the word torn from him in a ragged gasp.
Just that one sound, raw and shocked, sent another wave spiraling through me.