Chapter Twenty-Three #2
He twisted his lips, clearly fighting off a smile. “Oh? And which bits are those?”
“Your chest,” she pointed out. “Some of it. I think I expected … hm. More hair?”
He gave an affronted gasp, reaching up to open the collar further, revealing a few thin spirals of dark hair dotting the center of his chest, over his heart. “There’s plenty of hair!”
“Mm,” she said, her eyes falling to it, surprised at the tone of muscle that banded over his narrow frame. “Indeed. But you are elegantly adorned, not covered with a thick pelt like the sailors.”
“What sailors?!” he demanded, making her giggle again, her fingers curling over her bottom lip and between her teeth.
“May I see more?” she asked, curled and shy and utterly transfixed by the state of him there, holding his robe open at the chest like a warrior in a fresco. “Please? And I will also have more of your confessions, even if you insist on stifling your … erm … crudités.”
“That means ‘vegetables,’ not ‘crude words.’” He chuckled. “Shall I withhold both?”
“If you must,” she said with an exaggerated sigh, making him laugh this time, his head shaking. “But if you are nervous, I do not wish to press. Despite your thousands of former lovers.”
“Seph,” he said seriously. “Hundreds, at most.”
“Dozens,” she returned. “Were you shy for those dozens?”
“Well, no,” he said, releasing his lapels with a huff. “But I wasn’t in love with any of them, was I?”
She froze, the impact of what he’d said thrumming through her bones like the strike of a gong.
He went still too, that mark of heat on his nose and cheeks deepening another hue of reddish pink. And then he straightened, lifting his chin in defiance. “Was I?” he repeated firmer—but softer too.
“No,” she answered. “No, you weren’t. Because …”
“‘Because’?” he pressed, taking a step closer, the robe sagging where he’d pulled it apart, revealing more of his flesh, down over the taut bundles of muscle in his abdomen and the dip of his navel, entrancing her gaze with every new inch.
“Because,” she said, swallowing to attempt to get moisture back into her throat. “Because we have only ever loved each other.”
He was quiet for a moment, watching her, waiting until she raised her eyes to meet his, blazing now in place of that emerald-green glint. “That’s right,” he said softly. “That’s exactly right.”
His hands moved down to the sash holding the dressing gown together and pulled the knot free, watching her closely all the while. He let the fabric sag down over his bare shoulders, over the light freckles on his biceps, dotted over the indents and swells of the muscles he hid there.
His ribs swelled into view as he breathed, his forearms exposed as he shook the sleeves free, and finally, carefully, and excruciatingly slowly, he peeled off the remainder of the fluffy fabric, letting it collapse in a puddle on the floor.
Seph told herself to breathe. She hadn’t realized her fingernails were digging into the soft skin of her bottom lip, hadn’t realized her lungs were aching with how shallow their use had become.
And even as the awareness of that tickled somewhere at the back of her mind, she could not find it within herself to acknowledge either thing just now.
Breathing, especially, felt unconscionable.
She grazed her eyes down the full view of him, over the dips of his hipbones and the dark hair trailing sparsely down below his navel, then thickening and curling there at the crux of him.
She knew she was staring. Ogling, truth be told, but she had never seen anything quite so powerful or so beautiful as Rhys Caradoc, free of anything to dim his glow.
He was hard for her, thick with want and flushed just as richly as that blush that had covered his nose.
She wanted to touch him. To experiment with holding the weight of his arousal in her hand, of touching and stroking it in such a way that it might make him feel as weak as she did just now, from simply the overwhelming eroticism of seeing him this way.
He stood for her, unmoving as she took in as much as she wanted. He only twitched, very slightly as she moved her legs out from under her, and pushed herself to stand. His eyes followed her, but otherwise, he remained still, with only the firelight casting shadows and movement around his form.
Seph approached him tentatively, her hand reaching out with a little tremble to touch his face again, stroking along the line of his cheek and jaw.
She inhaled deeply, her fingertips trailing lower, over the cords of his throat, the lines of his collar, that little spray of curling hair over his heart.
She watched his muscles bunch and quiver as she stroked the warm skin above them and listened to his breathing, which stuttered and quickened as she explored, marveling at the strength he kept hidden from the world, wired and wrapped tightly around his slender frame.
She stopped with one hand pressed flat against his stomach, feeling it rise and fall beneath her palm, and looked up at him, at his eyes, at his mouth. And she managed to whisper, “Do you want to see me too?”
He drew in a breath, sharp and greedy, until his ribs creaked, then nodded sharply—and only once.
She had, of course, expected that his answer would be yes, but even so, she was suddenly flooded with heat and the batting of nervous wings against the hollow of her throat, like the very air she breathed had turned into a chorus of uncertainty.
Still, she would not leave him alone in this. She would not do that to him again.
Her fingers filled with fabric, rucking and twisting herself out of the well-worn pajamas and sending the purple and green birds on the linen into flight as she discarded the garment on the cushions next to the fire.
She’d kept her eyes averted, had not been sinuous or seductive in the disrobing, and was almost afraid to look at him again, especially after his own performance had been so very seductive.
She stood, wrapping her arms around her bare middle, one crossed over the other, and gave herself a little squeeze as she studied the floorboards between her toes.
His shadow fell over her feet and his hand came up to cup her chin, lifting her face to the light.
She was kissing him again before she’d even processed the change, her arms winding around the delicious heat of his shoulders, their skin pressing together in a dizzying collision of sensation and satisfaction.
He walked her backward until their thighs brushed the tightly tucked coverlet on the feather bed, and only then did he pull back from their kiss, stroking the long strands of golden hair from her face and brushing it back over her shoulders, the tips tickling at her bare ribs and elbows.
“You are perfect,” he said without sparing a single glance at the nudity just below her face, his eyes seemingly satisfied to remain locked on to her own. “You are beautiful.”
She smiled, leaning forward to nip at his bottom lip, the flats of her hands sliding over his chest, and whispered, “Stop reading my mind.”
It got a grin out of him, a wide, sparkling grin that lit his features like a hooded lantern.
He slid his fingers down the naked curve of her back, over the silken sheen of her hair and down the curve of her bum, until he was holding her tightly to him, ensuring she could feel every possible inch of his body against hers.
She looped her arms around his neck and tugged him, pulling them both backward onto the bed with a bounce and flurry of gasping giggles, amidst the fluttering sheets and fire-warmed blankets.
Her legs slid along the bare lines of his as he descended onto her mouth, his hands continuing to explore the dip of her waist and the swell of her hips, until the giggling dissolved into something deeper and quieter, something primal and hot and demanding.
Something had made Seph believe that when one entered the throes of passion, all the world and its context fell away, leaving nothing behind but pure animal instinct and drive.
Perhaps it was that way for others, but she found that beneath him, with the heat of his skin sliding along hers, and the clever movements of his fingers in her hair and on her flesh, and the tang of his mouth and tongue against her own, she had never been more keenly aware of Rhys than she was just now.
She had never seen him half so clearly nor needed him half so close.
“I have imagined you like this so many times,” he murmured against her cheek, nuzzling into her hair as he kissed along the line of her jaw. “I have dreamed it and mimed it and more. This is better, Seph. It is so much better.”
She nodded, gasping as his fingers brushed over her bare breasts, his kisses trailing down her throat as his arousal pressed urgently into the soft give of her thigh. He rocked his hips as he moved, little gasps of pleasure escaping him between his leisurely kissing and tasting of her throat.
She could feel the dampness he’d alluded to, just at the end of his cock, warm and slick and seeming to exist only to make his ministrations more pleasurable and easier to access. It was making her vision blur, just feeling this precursor to the movement of joining.