Chapter 14 #3
“What did your kiss in the tavern mean?” His eyes were unreadable and dark. “Do you know what you started there?”
“What did my kiss mean? What do your kisses mean! You always kiss me like that! You took my virginity! Sucked it right out of me! How dare—what—how—when—argh!” I gave in to the urge.
“You will need to admit me to Shatterfield when we are through. Do you test everyone like this? I’ll bet you did it to Edgar.
He seems two steps away. What’s wrong with Phineas and Frank and Vivienne and Rosaire? ”
“Nothing.” The bastard had the nerve to look amused. “And you are the only one I’ve sucked anything from.”
“The only one?” I batted him away, flustered. “No, stop looking at me like that. Do you know the people in the journal?”
He looked at the chest. “I can’t comprehend knowing any person listed within.”
“Why are you always trying to seduce me when I ask questions?”
“With you, it’s what I constantly desire. Do you not feel what I want from you even now?” He trailed his fingers along his wrist.
I shuddered as the sensation skimmed my own. “Edgar just felt someone walk his grave.”
“Edgar can’t feel this. His don’t react this way. No one else’s marks ever have.” He leaned back against the wave of the serpentine chest and worked at the buttons on his shirt, sliding one out through the hole, then another, without looking away from me.
I wet my lips. “Gabriel—”
“Do you want me, Marietta?”
“Yes,” I whispered. “But I’m scared.”
He pushed a strand of hair behind my ear, his fingers curling around the lobe. “What happens now, what happens after will always be your choice. I make no promises. I can’t. But I will never intentionally hurt you.”
“Just suck me dry?” Only levity would stop my fall.
“To some, virginity is a sacred gift. For my own reasons I do not find it such. Better quality refinement can be had between two partners with actual trust rather than investing in the overstated rituals the gilded prize. I value much more the choices one makes than the actual state of one’s chastity. ”
“You have slept with so many?”
His eyes darkened. “Not so many as I see reflected in your gaze. While I find the pleasure usually to my taste, it takes much for me to find a partner that stokes it.”
“Sable?” I had been wanting to ask that question for weeks.
He looked amused. “Your maid? No, not to my taste at all.”
But the sounds she had made, and the abundance of information he had gleaned—
“You find that hard to believe.” He tipped my chin up. “Because you think yourself ordinary.”
I swallowed.
“I did challenge you to read me, though, and you were doing remarkably well. What do my eyes say?”
Fire. Truth. Promise.
“You can read my desire. Can you trust me with your body, with your magic, with your mind?” His lips brushed mine in a fleeting touch. “You want to know why I want you.”
“Yes,” I whispered. I wanted to understand him. I wanted the comfort and security I felt in his presence. I wanted him.
“Will you trust yourself to me? Let me spread your magic?”
I just had to give up the notion that I was alone. To admit that I had given it up weeks ago. That I could give myself to someone, and know I would be caught if I fell.
To stop hiding—in defiance, in protection. Such a minor thing. Such a major thing.
“Yes.”
He peeled away my clothes, one piece at a time. His magic seeped into my skin as his fingers moved. The veins that had been stretching, growing, eagerly reached for him.
He lifted me onto the bed. Taking control, as always, teasing and taunting, pulling my strings tight, stretching my magic like he was kneading it, knowing exactly where to push. Demanding responses my body was more than happy to give. I opened myself to him.
“Just like that.” He pushed into me slowly, magic spreading with every press. “Now what do you see?”
I could barely think straight. Could barely keep my eyes open and focused.
He withdrew to his tip, making slow circles, power rolling out in waves. My hands bunched the sheets. “I see your magic.” I panted. “It’s red and gold.”
“And what does that mean?” He made a quick stab, halfway in, and my breath caught, a gurgle escaping my throat.
“Tell me, Marietta, come on, lovely one,” he coaxed. “Accept that you are desired.”
I couldn’t answer. Couldn’t.
“Accept that I want you. Someone so loyal and fierce.” He thrust all the way in, pushing me up the sheets.
My entire body bowed. My hand wound around his neck, into the silky dark hair at his nape.
He stopped moving, another form of torture.
I tried to move beneath him, but he had me pinned.
Leaning fully on his hands, the muscles in his arms bunched and tight, in total control.
“Vexing and magnificent.” He made another tortuous circuit.
I squeezed him inside me—desperately trying anything—intuitively grabbing the only physical move I had left. He stilled. I squeezed him again, and a third time, the squeezes getting weaker but my desperation growing with the magic I pulsed instead—wanting him to lose control and move again.
He leaned down and chuckled in my ear, his rotating hips making me forget to squeeze. “Naughty and divine. Accept that I want you, while you make me burn.”
A thrust so deep I felt it in my heart. Darkness, my mouth opened in a silent scream. An ache throbbed so intensely that I nearly begged. To end it. To continue. To give me more.
A tongue swiped my nipple. His roughened cheek grazed my throat, my cheek, as his lips trailed across and settled on my open mouth. My hand tightened in his hair. I squeezed him inside me.
His mouth pulled away from mine and I found myself looking into brilliant green eyes, brighter than I’d ever seen them, almost too bright to look at, no more than a few inches above my own. “What do those lovely brown eyes see?”
“Desire.” I licked my lips, the taste of him all over me. “And secrets still beyond my understanding.”
“Yes.” Magic spread. “And?”
I didn’t want to say what I saw there. It would be too embarrassing if I were wrong. “Friendship?”
Now he just looked amused.
“Companionship?”
His lips quirked. He leaned down and his breath brushed my ear as he nibbled the lobe. “Interesting. But not quite. Can you handle more?”
My heart picked up its beat. “I want to. Yes.”
“Then accept it all.” He moved, a soft thrust that lit my nerves on fire. Again, slowly and deeply, hitting a place far beyond. Cheeks aflame, throat tight, dizzy with his words and magic, a feeling of completion, overwhelming and inevitable, swept toward me.
“A rolling wave, or the crescendo of a frenzied dance?”
I squeezed again in answer, sending last gasps of magic pulsing through.
Something wild flashed through his eyes.
He pulled back and drove fast and deep. Again.
And again. Pulling at the stars on my wrist. Circulating my magic with his.
I moaned something or said something or shouted something as I went flying through the air, convulsing feverishly around him as he continued to fill and stroke me.
To complete me.
And maybe…maybe I’d gone and done the stupid thing and fallen in love.