Chapter 21
He tastes of spiced honey.His skin smells of wood shavings from our earlier work and of smoke from the fires that lit the square below. His hair tickles my face and cheeks, curtaining around us, protecting this moment from the cruel world that will collapse on us all too soon.
I brush my fingertips up his sides, running them over the expanse of his chest. The shirt he wore today is almost open to the navel. It hangs invitingly and my fingers brush against his hot flesh. A groan escapes me and he inhales sharply, as if trying to consume the pleasure his mere existence elicits in me.
Davien shifts his weight. One hand is beside my head, the other cups my cheek. He guides me with light pressure against my jaw and probing from his tongue. I’ve kissed before, once, but it was nothing like this. The butler’s boy—back when we could afford a butler—was only a year older than I and we were both little more than curious adolescents.
But Davien kisses me as a man. It’s better than every teasing dream and indulgent fantasy I could ever concoct. I knew how a man and woman fit together conceptually…but nothing could’ve prepared me for the actual feeling of it.
His tongue slides against mine and I arch upward. I can feel his lips pull as he smirks once more. My brows knit. I hate that he’s getting amusement from my pleasure. I know I’m inexperienced and he has likely had hordes of women throwing themselves at his feet.
But I’m not frustrated enough to break away from his kiss, either. Maybe it’s because of fae magic they have yet to tell me about. I’m an utterly willing captive under him. My fingers slide underneath his shirt, following his collarbone. They wrap around his shoulders, holding him to me until the point that we have to force ourselves to separate for air.
His hair continues to partition us from the world. His green eyes hold their own luminescence in the darkness. I trace the outline the sheen from the kiss leaves on his lips with my eyes.
“I’m sorry I’m—”
“What could you possibly have to apologize for?” he interrupts.
A scarlet flush burns my cheeks. “I’m not well versed in these sorts of matters.”
“What sorts?” There’s a wicked glint in his eye as he traces his fingers down my cheek and neck. He teases the silken collar of my blouse. I’ve never been more aware of exactly how much fabric is covering me and where.
“You know what sorts,” I manage.
“I want to hear you say it.” His eyes flick from my chest to my face.
“The sorts of things that a lady of my standing isn’t permitted to indulge in until I’m wed.”
“Until you’re wed…” he repeats thoughtfully. “To think, I could’ve had you long ago and I never did.” Davien leans toward me again. I tilt up my face but he shifts so his lips brush against the shell of my ear as he whispers huskily. “Would you have enjoyed that? Your mysterious husband whose first name you didn’t even know coming to you in the night? Would you enjoy feeling my weight atop you in the darkness? Would you keep your eyes open, roving my silhouette for any hint of how I might look? Or would you close them and submit to every caress of my hands and mouth?”
Every inch of skin puckers into gooseflesh. My body responds to his words as if he were physically touching me and not merely describing the things he could do to me. Old gods help me, the things I think I want him to do to me.
“I thought of you, then,” I admit. I hadn’t ever expected to tell him so. But there’s nothing keeping me from him right now, not even my vault of secrets. “In the night, I would imagine you coming to me.”
“Oh?” He hums in the back of his throat. The sound rumbles though me, turning whatever bones I had left to molten heat. “Tell me what you would imagine.”
I suppress a groan. Why am I allowing him to do this to me? I should push him off and walk away. At least, that’s what my better sense tells me I should do. But my better sense is no longer in control. All I can think of is heeding his every demand, and I find a dark sensuality to the notion of setting my mind aside and following my instinct instead.
“I imagined you at my door, waking me from sleep…asking if you could stay the night in my bed.”
“And, in your fantasies, did you allow me to stay?”
“Every time.”
“And what did we do when I spent the night in your bed?”
I haven’t thought about these waking dreams since coming to Midscape. How long has it been since I first stepped foot in this strange world? A week? Two? A month? It could be a year for all I know in this moment. Time has become strange and distorted. I’m helpless underneath a fae and all I want is for him to kiss me again. And if it takes my telling him my darkest fantasies, then so be it.
“I felt you,” I whisper.
“How did you feel me?”
“I felt you on me, touching me. I felt you lavish all of your attention on me—for me, solely, only, completely for me.”
“And did it feel good?” His fingertips lazily caress down my chest on the arcs of my curves. I inhale sharply.
“Yes.”
