Page 160 of Nikolay

A flush rose slowly over her chest.

I bent and kissed the top of one breast, through my own disbelief. Then the other. Her fingers found my shoulders. Held.

When I straightened, I said, “Undress me.”

Her eyes widened.

“If you do not,” I added, and the truth of it roughened my voice, “I shall ruin my clothing in a manner unworthy of my upbringing.”

That drew a breathless laugh from her. “Now that I would pay to see.”

“You may yet, if you continue to delay.”

She set to work on my shirt with a seriousness that would have been amusing if it had not nearly killed me. Her fingers trembled only a little at the first button, less at the second. By the time she reached the center of my chest, curiosity had begun to overtake nervousness. Maddie had always been brave where it counted. Brave enough to be honest. Brave enough to ask questions. Brave enough, apparently, to undress a vampire prince while looking directly at the result.

When she pushed my shirt from my shoulders and laid her palms against my skin, I hissed a quiet breath through my teeth. Warm hands. Small compared to me, but not delicate in any useless way. She explored the breadth of my chest with a concentration so pure it felt more intimate than seduction.

Her gaze dropped lower.

I removed my boots myself before impatience made her scowl at me for trying to be helpful, then rose and let her open my trousers. The instant she dragged the zipper down, the pressure of confinement became its own torment. My cock sprang free when she pushed the fabric lower, hard and aching and without any of the polite concealment the evening downstairs might have preferred.

Maddie stared.

Then, with that frank, open curiosity that was so entirely hers, she traced her fingertips lightly around the length of me.

A growl left me at once, low and involuntary.

Her eyes flew up to mine.

“Did I—”

“No,” I said hoarsely. “You did precisely what you ought not do if your intention is to preserve my decency.”

“Your decency seems long gone.”

“An excellent observation.”

I caught her under the thighs and lifted her before either of us could say something clever enough to delay what was clearly no longer postponable. She gave a small, startled laugh and wrapped herself around me on instinct, arms around my shoulders, hair brushing my face as I carried her the few steps to the bed.

When I laid her down against the turned-back covers, I paused only long enough to look at her there—flushed, wanting, alive beneath the amber lamp glow and the quiet witness of her books.

Then I went down beside her, and the rest of the world ceased to matter.

The mattress dipped beneath my weight as I settled over her, and the sight of Maddie spread beneath me struck me with such force that for a moment all I could do was touch her as if prayer had finally been given a body.

My hand moved over her hair first, smoothing it back from her face. Then over her cheek, where the bruise had nearly vanished. Then lower, tracing the line of her throat, the delicate shelf of her collarbone, the soft rise of one breast beneath my palm. Every part of me ached to devour, but I had been denied this by my own folly for too long to rush now that mercy had arrived.

She watched me with parted lips and unsteady breath.

“What are you thinking?” she whispered.

“That I ought to have worshipped sooner.”

Color touched her face. “That was criminally smooth.”

“It was also true.”

I bent and put my mouth where my hand had been. Along her throat first, where her pulse leaped against my tongue. Across the curve of her collarbone. Over the upper swell of her breast. She arched beneath me at the first slow circle of my mouth around her nipple, breath catching sharply as my hand found the other and gave it the same patient attention. Maddie’s fingers slid into my hair, not pulling yet, merely anchoring. That small trust nearly broke me open again.