Chapter 21 #3
This time, both his brows rose. “So if I talked to your neighbors—Ashika and Monica, correct?—they’d disagree with Farhanah’s assessment?”
“No, because they’re kind.”
“So are you.” The pad of his thumb glided over her jaw, and his gaze swept over her face with rapt, heated attention. “You’re also lovely as a sunrise, but that’s just a bonus.”
With that one look, that one quiet remark, the intimacy of their conversation abruptly got channeled in a new direction. And thank goodness for the shift, because she couldn’t handle any more sincere but entirely unearned compliments.
His thigh nudged higher between her legs, and her body melted into his.
“If you can sense my emotions…” She sucked in a shaky breath. “Then you know, Hugh. When we’re together like this, you have to know.”
His clasp on her hip tightened, turning possessive. “How you feel?”
She nodded absently, fixated on the quick flick of his tongue as he wet his lips.
“Maybe not everything.” His internal furnace had been stoked again. When she shuddered in pleasure at the searing heat of his skin, he hitched her even closer. “But enough.”
“Then why didn’t you touch me sooner?” She didn’t mean to complain, but her pregnancy hormones were driving this train now. Toot-toot, all aboard. “I’ve wanted you since the moment I saw you in that glorious crop top.”
His lips curved into a small, wry grin. “I feel obliged to point out that touching you didn’t actually take me very long. You arrived at my door yesterday morning, honey. Less than twenty-four hours later, we were in bed together and I had my hand inside your pajama pants.”
A blunt line of firm, hot pressure had formed against her hip. His own evidence of need.
“That said, feelings aren’t consent, and not all desire is welcome or voluntary.
” High color glazed his angular cheekbones, a contrast to his cool, steady words.
“Until and unless we clearly establish permission for me to touch you under specific, predetermined circumstances, your emotions cannot and do not offer me any additional physical or emotional rights.”
“That’s…” She had to smile too. “That’s a very lawyerly way to put things, Hugh, but yes. You’re right. I retract my objection, Councilor.”
“Your emotions have given me a great deal of hope, though. Even if I haven’t always acted on them. Also…” He pressed a brief, firm stamp of a kiss on her mouth. “Also a great deal of joy, because I return them.”
She beamed at him, pleased. “Really?”
“Really.” His thumb swept a repeated arc over her hip, slow and mesmerizing. “I liked you even back at the academy, Gwen. I was attracted to you. I simply thought you’d never want to see me again after what happened during the test.”
“Part of me didn’t want to,” she had to admit. “But that changed after a while. I’d see your name in the news, and I’d wonder how you were. Whether you ever thought of me.”
“I never would have guessed that, Gwen.” Sincerity lit his melting-amber gaze. “I couldn’t imagine a universe where you’d want to date the demon who’d refused to bend the rules and offer you a second chance. But believe me, I wish I’d known.”
Now that they understood each other better, wasting this rare, quiet moment of privacy and peace would be a travesty, would it not?
“Let me be clear, Hugh. If we ever find ourselves alone and on a comfortable piece of furniture”—she paused to reconsider that stipulation—“or even a well-padded rug, and you can sense that I want you?”
He was holding his breath as he waited for her to finish. Holding her body plastered to his. Holding her stare too.
“I’m all yours, Hugh,” she told him. “You have blanket permission to touch.”
It was a bald, unadorned declaration of her desires—and with anyone else, admitting something so private would embarrass her. Leave her red-faced and fighting the urge to hide herself away and protect her tender feelings.
But she didn’t need to be an empath to recognize Hugh’s reciprocal desire. She trusted him to be careful with her heart and her body, whether or not she could logically justify having such faith in him. And if she was wrong about him? If he disappointed her?
Well, she probably wouldn’t live long enough to regret her misguided choices.
“I have blanket permission to touch?” When she nodded, he released her hand. Slowly trailed his knuckles down her throat and across her flushed upper chest, his eyes still on hers. “To kiss?”
“Yes.” She barely recognized her own voice, low and breathless with want. “Please.”
His head bent, his open mouth dragging up her throat, and she trembled against him.
“May I lick?” Each word was pure heat against her sensitive, shivering skin. “Bite?”
She tangled her fingers in his thick, soft hair. “Whatever you want to do. However you want to do it. As long as I can touch and kiss and lick and bite too.”
“Matching blanket permission is…” His tongue flicked against the crook of her neck, and the edge of his teeth grazed the goose bump–raised flesh there. “Hereby granted.”
“Oh, good,” she said, then grabbed hold of his horns and rolled on top.