I opened my eyes once to look at him.
Once.
He gazed back at me, eyelids half closed, drunk and delirious on the taste of my tongue. I never wanted that look from anyone else again. He said he’d fought to keep his mind, but I’d gladly throw my own away to stay here with him. Perhaps it was already gone. I gave a small, wild laugh at the idea, and Pheolix’s eyes darkened. He wrapped his hand around my throat, pulling me back to him.
Something snapped between us. Cracked open like a strike of lightning against a mountainside, rending stone and earth apart, the consequence of its touch more permanent than anything found between the rifts of time.
His teeth grazed my tongue. I bit his lip. His hands gripped my hips hard enough to bruise. I rolled my weight into his lap.
Hunger burst within me like the bolt of thunder that follows the crash of light, a rattle in my chest drumming through my fingertips. I grabbed the collar of his shirt and tore it off him.
He swore under his breath. Then aimed a rough kiss at the hollow of my throat, nipping with teeth and tongue. A sharp hiss escaped my lips, but I arched my back, thrusting into him.
The next thing I knew, I was on my back.
Buttons popped from the pleasure servant’s shirt as he wrenched it off me. His hand delved under my bra, rough and demanding, shoving it up and out of his way. He swore again, though this time he dragged theword across my skin as his mouth followed his hand, the filthy sound of it burning into my ribcage.
My knees wrapped around his hips, and he found the belt below my navel, unbuckling it hard enough to rock my body to the side. Then grabbed the top of my pants and ripped them down. I kicked them off my ankles, suddenly enraged they were there in the first place. My nails raked his bare chest, muscles solid under my palms. White lines trailed my fingertips all the way to his abdomen, disappearing into the tattooed lines that framed his sides.
I wrangled with the ties of his pants, my chest heaving with every breath as he pressed sharp, open-mouthed kisses into my sternum. The heat of his breath lay over my skin, trapped between my breasts. My mouth opened with a wide gulp of air as his thumb slid over the thin strip of cotton between my legs, sending a small shockwave deep through my abdomen. I abandoned his ties.
We both froze.
He lifted his head, meeting my eyes. I panted into the air, the coarse edge of his stubble-lined jaw a quiet chafe over my nipple. Liquid puddled in my belly, hot and bright and vexed at the sudden delay.
Gray eyes fixed into mine, whispering a question in the dawning morning.
Pheolix might have been haunted by uncertainty. But I’d spent a year plagued by the aftermath of indecision, and I refused to let myself hesitate again.
I reached between us, twining my hand in his. Then guided him beneath that small stretch of fabric to the heat trapped below. Let my fingertips press against his, branding a smooth and lazy circle into my center.
His breath thickened with gravel as his eyes glazed down my throat and over my body. My spine lengthened, my legs dropping to the sides. My hand abandoned his, leaving him to work alone. Fire dripped from the pads of his fingers and into my core, a molten bath sinking below my flesh.
My eyes closed. My fingers delved into his hair. My sense of time evaporated with the air in my lungs, cast away in short and heavy gasps. Pheolix propped himself on an elbow, nailing my leg to the floor, watching me dissolve to liquid like butter tossed in a fired pan.
A stretch pulsed low in my abdomen, sharp and rough and smooth all at once.
I chanced a glance at him as he slid a finger in. His dark eyes locked onto mine, predatory and greedy. Pressure wrapped around his touch, aching and twisting, sending an incendiary wave through my blood. It surged and climbed like a riptide, wickedly possessive of my body and pleasure, and I arched at its call.
A sly grin spread slowly across his mouth. Once again, that hooded imp, pockets full of tricks. “Come on, heiress,” he murmured, his voice throaty and wild. “I want to hear it.”
“Hear what?” I rasped.
“The noise you’ll make when I take you there.”
The burn of his voice elicited a sudden flare of shyness from me. Mouth drawn, chest gasping, I rolled my head to face the other direction.
“I don’t think so.” Pheolix took my chin, pulling me back, reaching to press a slow, smoldering kiss into my mouth. A torch against my mouth. His fingers blazed a scalding emblem into my core. “You can’t hide from me now. You wanted this, Selena.”
I’d sought my own climax before, alone in bed while the palace slept. I knew what built deep under my skin, what happened when it filled and spilled over. But I wasn’t ready for the violent release that plummeted through my blood, burning through every inch of flesh he touched. I shook and shivered against him. He gave a dark laugh, the sound rumbling into my side, husky and gruff and somehow like velvet.
Cold wind swept across my body. I shivered again. Pheolix’s hand continued to roam and tease, coaxing tension back into me. My hips lifted and rolled with the movement of his hand, churning to his cadence.
“I didn’t hear it,” he said, nuzzling his nose under my ear.
A growl from my own throat razed the air, goaded by the taunt in his words. I rolled onto my side, shuffling his pants down his hips and taking his hard length into my mouth with an air that verged on hostile. His breath guttered with surprise, and he fell back into our cloaks, hand cupping the back of my head. I watched as his weight settled with something between strain and leisure, his skull rocking backwards, the underside of his jaw square and shadowed in the cavern light.
If he wanted that noise so badly, he could make it.
