Chapter Fourteen
As he dipped his wings and soared in widening circles, Qavox felt the small body curled into his back begin to violently shake. “Are you well, princess?” he asked, knowing she’d be able to hear him even over the whistling wind. He craned his head backward on its long neck and gave a snort of astonishment, sparks flying from his nostrils. She was laughing! The princess’s face was aglow with excitement. “I am well, indeed!” she cried in return. “I am flying!”
—The Dragon and the Blue Starby Analise Crewe
The two ladies chattered on about ribbons and dress trimmings, making the shopgirl fetch dozens of samples.
Miss Crewe rested her head back against Dex’s chest. His hand still covered her mouth. He held her by the waist, her generously curved bum soft against his thighs and his...
He couldn’t move. Couldn’t stop holding her. The risk of discovery was too great. He had to stay like this, his body responding to a female body pressed against his. He shifted his hips but there was nowhere to go. Surely she could feel his arousal.
She squirmed a little, moving against him, and it was all hecould do to suppress the groan of pleasure that threatened to escape his lips. So small and soft in his arms, locked together behind the silk-covered screen while the two ladies chattered on about ribbons and dress trimmings only inches away from them.
He’d seen the way she stared at him back at the club when he’d been shirtless. No doubt she’d been cataloging his physique to write a description for her novel, but the sight of her gaze roaming his body, lips slightly parted and cheeks flushed, had been devastating to his self-control. He had felt her gaze like soft fingertips running over his skin.
She’d wanted him in that moment. He’d seen the physical signs. She’d approved of his body, ignored his scars; she’d looked at him with hunger in her eyes. And damn it, he wanted her, too.
Wanted to turn her, lift her hands and place them against the wall. Learn the curve of her cheek with his palm, test the weight of her hair, see if those curls would tangle around his fingers like vines and trap him forever.
He wanted to breathe in her scent, like wildflowers heavy with morning dew, flowers greedily soaking up the sun, opening further. Slip the thin shift down her shoulders, slowly, slowly, revealing the delicate collarbone, the hollow at the base of her throat, the pulse that beat there.
He wanted to kiss the back of her neck while he learned the sweet curves of her breasts. Breathe against her skin, waiting, drawing out the moment, until she arched her back and urged him to continue his exploration. He wanted to kiss, learn, taste every inch of her. Wanted to apply himself like perfume to the insides of her wrists, the soft hidden skin behind her ears.
Rip the thin silk shift until she was naked for him. The flush spreading along her cheeks, down her neck, over her breasts. Hewanted to outfit her with his hands, his body, his lips. That’s all the covering she needed.
Rip his clothes off, too. Slide his hands between her legs, nudge her thighs apart...
Fuck. Why weren’t those ladies leaving? This was intolerable. This dangerous attraction between them. The way she sighed and nestled closer, so trustingly. How could she know that he was having the most bestial of fantasies? Rending the thin shift, taking her from behind, up against the wall.
His breathing ragged, he fought for control.
Why had he visited the dressmaker’s? He hadn’t needed to return the fan, he’d wanted to see her again, see her in clouds of tissue-thin silk. He’d gotten more than he’d imagined. Pressed up against her behind the screen.
This desire was inappropriate, forbidden. The urge to ravish was in direct opposition to his promise to protect. He stamped it out, cold water on the fire. He couldn’t want her. He shouldn’t want her. She was his duty. Not his desire.
But what was it about her that destroyed him so utterly? The bravery she’d shown as she fought him off in the alleyway, thinking he meant to purchase her. The layer of scar tissue she had over her heart because the life of ease and love she’d known had been stripped away so harshly and she’d had to grow up, to fend for herself, a lamb among wolves.
The conversation they’d had in the stables. How she missed her father so keenly. Orphaned and alone in this world, longing to belong, to publish her writing so that an audience would give her the approbation and love she craved.
There was that survivor’s instinct in her, that wound that she covered over. He recognized a wounded soul when he saw one.And he didn’t only want to clothe her in silks and velvets and furs, and place jewels at her throat and her ears. He didn’t only want to make her life safe and comfortable.
There was something so much more selfish and so much more perilous to this desire. He wanted her. Full stop. He wanted to take her, kiss her, ravage her. He wanted to taste her and make her his.
The challenge in her eyes, the current between them, like threads of silk. Pull one and the whole thing unraveled. And she would have a permanent mark through the fabric of her life. One more sin to confess to, one more grave error in judgment.
Ward. She was his ward.
Under his protection.
He could never act on this desire.
Ana’s breathing was erratic beneath his palm. She twisted her neck, attempting to see his face, but he moved his chin. His body was tense behind her, ready to spring. To escape her? To pull her closer. That’s what she wanted. She wanted his hands on her. All over her.
The sight of him boxing. The violence barely contained by the gentlemanly rules of the sport. His hands were so huge, so powerful. He held her around the waist with one strong arm. What if... what if those hands covered her breasts?
Thinking about it made her breasts tingle and her nipples stiffen to aching points. A restlessness made her shift against him, push her bottom against his... that must be his... she’d seen the male member illustrated in medical texts consumed in her all-encompassing reading sprees, but it had always looked somewhat silly and inconsequential. Nothing like this.
Hard and long, pressed against her lower back. His fingers spread over her navel, and the tingling sensation spread from herbelly to between her legs. She wanted to sink back against him. Be surrounded by him, surrender to him. What if he turned her around, lowered his lips to hers?