Without my consent, my body moves, wanting more. He cups my face. His flesh is warm, hot, the burn so sweet I yearn for more of it up against me.
“To taste their lips…” His finger runs along my bottom lip. And the thumping need in his veins is in me, driving my blood. “To explore all your hidden depths, the secret places you crave to be touched.”
My head spins and the dagger’s no longer in my hand. I try to step back, but I can’t move and all I feel is heat. I caught the shift in his words from ‘their’ to ‘your,’ and the promise it holds vibrates within me.
I find myself lifting my head to his as his hand drifts from my cheek down to my throat to wrap there.
Then…then… Then he kisses me.
Chapter Five
His mouth glides, lips soft and moreish, and I whimper.
The sensation of his tongue as it slides light over mine makes me melt on the spot. I do nothing but stand there and let it happen.
The meandering, the heat and wetness, are a revelation. I want to sing and be consumed as he takes his time, exploring my mouth with light, torturous touches.
It’s like something switches inside him because the kiss suddenly turns more demanding. I let his tongue toy with mine. The pressure of his mouth, his dark, divine taste grips me, making my toes curl and my sex throb and grow wet.
What shakes me even more is that there is no resistance from me. None. And I kiss him back.
I want to have that big hardness pushing into me, merging him with me in that way that leads to the highest highs and doom. Because he’s the highest pleasure and death. He told me so. I know so, from all the stories and the evidence built over the centuries, ever since this place served as a place of worship to him.
He uses the hold on my throat to keep me still, and I kiss him deep, mouth open, tongues dancing. It’s blood and fire and the kind of need I’m not sure mortals are made for.
But he shifts, drawing me flush against him, and his sex pushes heavy against my leg. I bite his lip, pulling it, licking, and he growls so deep it reverberates through me.
His fingers are wicked dancers, and they move light over my tunic, up against my thigh and then…
Oh. Gods.
He parts my folds, thumb on my clit as he plunges into my core. I shake, my muscles clamping on him, kissing him harder, darker, deeper. No man has ever touched me like this. No one.
I want to strip naked, pull my cloak from him, and climb him, impaling myself on him.
The need pulsates through me, but I break that kiss, panting hard. My vision is hazy, like I’m drunk on him, and it takes everything to push away from him.
I’ve never felt like this before.
I glance up at him, and he…he looks like a god.
“Come to me,” Rowan says. “Take what you will.”
His hand reaches for the knotted cloak.
But the spell shatters as terror rises up.
Not of him.
But of what he’s unraveling in me. What he’s making me feel.
I turn.
And run.
Chapter Six
The wind through my hair feels good, but not as good as it should. It doesn’t put out the fever of panic in my blood. The webs of Rowan’s touch linger, as does the taste of his mouth on me, and I blink to clear the blur from my eyes.