“How has your day been so far, sweetheart?”
“Fates,” Arken murmured, her golden gaze gone molten, biting her lip. “Did I do anything at all today before this? I can’t say I recall.”
You have no idea how badly I needed to hear you say those words, sweet thing.
As if she knew how desperate I was to allow myself to be comforted by her, Arken reached out with a tentative hand and ran her fingers through my hair as I continued to press kisses against her flawless flesh. I groaned as her nails grazed against my scalp in small circles.
“Gods, I missed you, Kier,” she whispered. There was something like awe in her expression as she drank in the sight of me on my knees before her, something tender, a mirror to the gentle seduction I had started. “I missed you so godsdamned bad, it’sabsurd.”
I drank those words in like the nepenthe they were. And her next words were so faint, I wasn’t entirely sure if she intended for me to hear them.
“Fates damn it all, Kieran, what are you doing to my head?”
We had only been parted for four hours, thirty-seven minutes, and some odd number of seconds, and yet I knew exactly what she meant. I understood how she felt because I felt it, too.
I could barely breathe without her now.
“Nothing nearly as bad as what I’d like to do to your body,” I murmured, pushing myself up on my knees just enough to run my nose across the seam of her panties, letting my hands wander anywhere they could find purchase.Fuck,she smelled good—that blend of her arousal and the lightly perfumed silk was a heady cocktail.
“You know…I was hoping you might say that.”
I glanced up at her. “That so?”
She nodded, tendrils of her hair beginning to come loose from the soft bun above her head. Light from the window behind her shone through, giving her a natural halo.
Was it really any godsdamned wonder that I wanted to worship the ground this woman walked on?
“What, exactly, were you hoping I might do with this pretty little body of yours when you dressed it up for me like this?”
“I truly cannot recall,” Arken said dryly. “I fear you’ve managed to distract me from such thoughts entirely. I’ve never had a thought in my godsdamned life, actually.”
“I see,” I purred, slowly rising to my feet, my hands making their way from her hips to her waist, then to cup her breasts, both thumbs teasing at the hardening nipples hidden behind silk and lace. “Well, then…”
I could give herplentyto think about. And even more to fantasize about later, when I inevitably had to let her out to take her exam.
Arken’s eyes danced with satisfaction as I picked her up by the waist with very little effort and tossed her back onto my bed where she belonged.
“Sophrosyne’s finest academic has forgotten how to think straight? We can’t have that, now can we?”
“Something tells me that whatever you’re about to do is decidedlynotgoing to help me think straight, Captain.”
I grinned. “Yeah, probably not. Quite the opposite, if I do it right.”
“And he’s not even sorry about it, Your Honor!” Arken exclaimed in falsetto, feigning a swoon with a hand resting delicately on her chest. “The scoundrel!”
Guilty as charged.
“Not even a little bit sorry.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
ARKEN
Kieran hissed as he withdrew, his hips jerking while mine spasmed with the aftermath of my orgasm as he spent himself across my belly.
He’d been doing that rather often lately, and not out of any manner of precaution. Kier took the necessary tonic daily, but I think he knew I liked to watch him come. And I knew that heliked watching himself comeonme. With a self-satisfied growl, he took hold of his cock, gave it a few rough strokes, and then buried himself back inside me.
“Gods above, you’re insatiable,” I groaned, savoring the delicious ache as we found our eager pace yet again. We had already come together twice. And he was already fucking hard.Again.