Page 140 of Nightshade

Chills skittered over too-sensitive flesh, while his mouth devoured her in reverent kisses that he trailed over her collarbone. Only when he pulled himself away, and began removing his vest, did she remember the frigid air.

Once he’d doffed his pants and boots, Lustina marveled at the sight of his chiseled body. How every inch of him had been carved in the most unattainable perfection. Lean and muscular, from his shoulders down to his sturdy feet. As if the gods themselves had sketched him in an image of their likeness.

He guided her into the water, and the moment she dipped her foot into the steamy, warm liquid, her body melted into utter bliss. Luxurious heat engulfed her with every step deeper into its mysterious pool. Soon, Lustina was neck deep, a layer of steam dampening her face.

Jericho lifted her up and wrapped her legs around him, pressing her most sensitive flesh against his stomach. He looked down between them, where the clear water below showed him flexing his stomach, stirring beneath her in a way that dragged his skin against her with only the slick of the water as a barrier. Hands palming her bottom, he squeezed, pulling her into him, and his lips found her raw and aching nipple. She arched with the flicking of his tongue and let out a moan that echoed around them. The heat, coupled with his absolute obscene mastery of her body, left her wondering if she’d found Heaven, or Hell. With every long and merciless suckling of his lips, an invisible thread pulled from somewhere deep inside her belly and thighs, and she wrapped her legs tighter.

She circled her hips against him for relief, and given the sound he made in his throat, and the digging of his fingers into her bottom, it seemed to please him. The water stirred around them, goading a frenzy of movement, their bodies slippery and warm with the steam. So lost in the sensation, she failed to notice the flames on the water’s surface, until a flicker in her periphery caught her attention. Quickly pulling away, she let out a sharp exhale, but Jericho pulled her tighter. Encircled in flames, the two had little more than arm’s length to move without getting too close.

“The concentration of sulphur in the water. It creates a circle of fire,” Jericho said, before licking the dew from her neck. “Incredible, yes?”

“Yes, but …” She didn’t want to say how much she feared the flame, particularly after the death of her mother.

“You are afraid.”

“And you are not?” Arms wrapped tighter around him, she trembled in his grasp. “Fire is a beast. An uncontrollable element of destruction, My Lord.”

“It is. But it can also warm and cleanse.” He reached beneath the flame and allowed the fiery water to catch in his palm. When he lowered it into the flameless halo where they stood, it fizzled into steam.

Lustina glanced at him and back to the flames.

“Try it,” he urged. “Hold it in your hand, as if you command it.”

Uncertainty swirled in her eyes, and with reluctance, she reached out, lifting a palmful of the flaming water, which flickered in her hand, until she, too, lowered it into the halo and it disappeared. How easily he’d coaxed her into reaching out and touching her greatest fear, holding it in her palm to watch it banish at her own will. “You never cease to fascinate me.”

“Nor you,” he said, and pressing against her shoulder, he urged her to lie back within the circle that, unless she imagined it, seemed to move further away to accommodate her. Legs still wrapped around him, she floated on the surface, staring up at the sky through the trees. “Close your eyes and mute the world.”

Smiling, she knew exactly what he meant, and she tipped her head back just enough that her ears went below the surface. With her breasts out of the water, she felt a soft tickling across her skin, so exquisitely intense that she parted her lips and arched into it.

Opening her eyes showed the baron holding a long, magnificent, black feather, like that plucked from a raven, but larger. He dragged it over the part of her body not submerged in water, and she could scarcely exhale a held breath, for fear of sinking below the surface. Where he had found the object, she did not know, as he hadn’t moved from her since they stepped into the pool.

“Remain still,” he commanded. “But should it become too much, scream mercy.”

“Mercy? As in, what you say during punishment?” Brows winged up with worry, she lifted her head from the water. “Will it hurt?”

His lips curved to a smirk, as he urged her to lie back again. “Mine is a different kind of torment.”

Over her nipples and down her stomach, he glided the feather, before he one-handedly lifted her bottom up, to flit the feather over her most sensitive flesh.

Disobeying, she jerked and let out a moan, as the soft plume tickled the tiny bud exposed by the spreading of her thighs still wrapped around the baron’s waist. Moving her arms was all she could do to keep herself afloat, with her panting breaths.

Merciless in his ministrations, he concentrated the very tip of the feather on that tiny nub of pleasure, and Lustina longed to pull her thighs closed against the tickle there. “My Lord, please.”

“I am certain I asked that you call me Jericho.”

The tickling intensified, and Lustina struggled to stay afloat, until she felt strong hands lift her onto a hard surface, where the water rushed over her shoulders. She turned to find herself lying against a smooth rock, over which warm water trickled. The flames still circled them, but had somehow moved with them, creating a flickering arc around the rock.

Jericho set her heels on the edge of the stony step, legs wide, and before she could stop him, he resumed his feather play. He parted the lips of her flesh, and the tickling sensation heightened to the extent that she curled her fingers around the slippery rock.

When she brought her knees together, he pried them apart and inserted his fingers up into her, as if in punishment.

But it was far from punishing.

The warm, slick water made for an easy glide, in and out, and Lustina lost herself to the two sensations that collided into one exquisite pinnacle. Her muscles grew tight. Back arched. The feather seemed to vibrate, sending tiny pulses over her flesh, the sensation so deliciously wicked and sublime, she trembled with anticipation. She had never felt anything so good in her life. When she opened her eyes, the feather glowed with tiny flickers of jagged light, but she was already lost to the intoxication of it all.

Her thighs quaked.

Muscles tensed.