He swept my hair to the side, twisting it in his hand and pulling my head with it, opening my neck to his biting kiss. The heat of it dripped into my core, driving my hips into his as I pushed up to my knees in the cool grass. My fingers slid down his shoulder, across the thick patterns of his Leihaniian tattoo, smooth and hard and decadent under my palm.
Without a word, he unbuckled his baldric and sword, carelessly tossing it away from my frame, then lifted my dress over my head. The woolen fabric fractured into a rumpled gray pile, leaving me bare and exposed in the wind. My nipples pebbled, goosebumps erupting across my skin, but he met them with his mouth, banishing them with the furnace of his body and scrape of open-mouthed kisses down the scope of my rib cage.
“Please,” I said again as he took a nipple into his mouth, the only thing I could muster under the toxic song my muscles danced to.
“Keep saying that word.” Teeth dragging over the rosy peak, his hand skirted up my sternum to wrap across my nape, hard and confident—luxuriously sure of what he wanted from me.
Mihaunaand back, I wished I could steal that from him.
I’d bathe in the soft waters of his surety. The pureness of it, the calm and never-wavering faith in his desire for me. To never have to weigh outcomes, never forfeit want for fear.
The subtle threat of the permanency acorda-cruorbrought with our joining whipped in the back of my head. It wasn’t thetime or place to mention it. Not with our bodies building with fire, searching for the relief of each other. But I had to tell him. I had to give him the choice.
I stopped his hand with my own as he reached south of my navel, panting softly under his gaze. The burning stare of a man drowning in his own thirst.
I swallowed hard. “Once you take me, there’s no going back.”
“I don’t want to go back,” he rasped, his voice full of granite and wild need. It almost knocked me off balance, hearing his words as they sank into my flesh. His bare chest vibrated against mine, rumbling under the surface of my thoughts.
“You have to be certain. If you take me now, you can’t change your mind. You—”
“Leihani,” he said, and the word sent jolts of swirling flame straight to my middle. Leaving the burn between my legs scorching with anticipation for him to say it again with lips blurred against my flesh. “There’s nothing in the three continents I’ve ever been more certain of. You’remine.”
Under my hand, his thumb flicked over the corner of my hip bone, the movement shifting under my curved palm. Slowly. Tentatively. Waiting for me to stop him. But I didn’t. My eyes locked into his, unable to move until I felt him stir, fingers denting my flesh as he grabbed on and pulled me closer. The delicious bite of it made me reach for his tie-strings, freeing the knot of his pants with a small pull.
My heart thundered in my chest, pounding into my fingertips.
“Areyoucertain,” he asked, though it was more demand than question.
I ignored the wisps of hair that invaded my eyes and cheeks, still damp from the rain, and nodded slowly. “I want you.”
Kye joined his hands at the small of my waist, bending me back until my spine sank into the warm caress of my woolen bedroll. Pants abandoned, Kye propped my knees upright,opening me for him, staring down at me. His mouth parted, his crescent scar stretching as his lips curved into a smile.
I started to bring my knees together, and he stopped me with a firm grip on my thighs. “Don’t move,” he ordered. “I want to commit you to memory.” Thumb drifting to my center in a lazy circle, he coaxed pressure onto my skin then withdrew, leaving me shivering from the ghost of his touch. “Say that word again.”
I closed my eyes, shutting out the stars as urgency cut through the radiant clash of my own heartbeat. “Plea—"
The word collapsed over my tongue, shoved aside by a gasp that wrought my jaws apart as his warm mouth engulfed my skin. He swirled dripping heat into my core, testing the boundaries of my center, then clamped his lips over me as he pulled me into his mouth.
My hips followed the resounding pull of his tongue, rising and bucking as he pulled away to score me with his thumb again. “Fuck, Leihani,” he groaned. “Don’t move.”
Breath ragged, I tried to calm the jolts of fire in my bones. But he lowered his face between my legs again, his breath soft and moist as he teased me open, and a river of impatience knotted in my heels, driving my hips to meet him once more.
He chuckled darkly into my thighs, his hand spreading over my navel. He knew he had me—knew I was close. Every sweep of his fingers opened my legs wider, arched my back higher, the sparkling agony of pleasure suddenly a cup too full. Air around us snapped, hidden molecules popping and steaming while I lost myself under the waves of sharp relief.
I grappled for his hands, then slapped them away, stretching further for that piece of him that hung firm and ready between his thighs. He inhaled sharply as I took him into my palm. Smooth and solid, I wound my hand around him, traversing his sheer size from base to tip.
He licked his lips, waiting.
“I want you,” I said.Want, want, want.All other forms of speech had vacated my mind.Wantwas the only word I possessed. The only one I hadn’t lost sight of other than— “Please.”
My single utterance hit him like a siren’s song, and he lined his hips with mine, seeking my entrance. Slowly, gently, he eased into me, stretching me with himself. My mouth opened on a silent pant, my jaw suddenly tight as it hung on its hinge. I gasped just as hard as he pressed in—and began the sumptuous journey out.
My feet hooked around his back, all thought fleeing my mind. Life ceased to exist; nothing was real. Nothing but Kye and me and a million stars, our shared breaths the only music in the world. He pushed back in, faster, harder, and I rose my hips to his pelvis, meeting him as the stretch and pull of something satin and shining wound around us both. Ropes—cords—knit us together, and my blood ran hot and wild in my veins.
It wrung the oxygen out of my lungs, tangling us in a knot so tight I could hardly move, and then the stars overhead exploded in light. Kye groaned, his legs shuddering as he wrapped his hand under my neck and pulled me in, his breath fast and warm. He shuddered with the aftermath of hiscorda-cruor. Then let his weight settle over mine, nuzzling into my neck, his mouth seeking the fine curls behind my ears, and he let out a purr of—
“What is it you want, Leihani?” Kye asked, throat thick with desire
