Page 152 of Dare
I didn’t need him strictly to stay alive or satisfy a craving. I simply needed his presence, his arms, his mouth, his words.
My hands raced down his pecs and abs, the contours hitching under my fingertips as I lightly scraped down to the ramps of his hipbones, where a trickle of dark hair led to his waistband.
I sketched the rim, the motions gentle. The prince’s high cock shoved against his pants, and a rumbling noise grated from his chest. “Flare.”
Yes. Me. Only me.
“I never,” Jeryn husked. “I never fucking knew …”
Never knew it could be like this. Neither had I. He was the last person I’d imagined wanting and the last person I could let go of.
This villain was mine. And I was his.
I steepled one leg. The edge of the blanket slumped over my upper thigh, and the gap opened for him. Jeryn must have felt the heat brimming from my crease because he groaned once more and lowered himself closer, giving himself over to me.
I feasted on his shoulder, biting tenderly. I switched to the opposite side and skated my mouth up his collarbone.
A chain hung from around his neck, an empty vial dangling from the end. While I’d been dreaming and dying, the prince must have found it at last. The fang-shaped memento had lasted all this time, without a chink or scratch, except for the one I’d made long ago.
Plucking it between my digits, I rubbed my thumb over the crack. Then I raised the pendant to my lips and gave it a soft kiss.
Jeryn. Snapped.
With a growl, he clamped onto the back of my head and hauled my mouth to his. Our lips collided, tongues hurling into each other. I whined, scratching my fingers through his hair and heaving him into me.
He lunged, veering over me fully, his waist splitting my thighs apart. The magnificent weight of his body wrenched me backward and ground my spine into the grass. Snaring my wrists, Jeryn rammed them overhead, stamping my hands to the bank.
Bowing over me, he crushed our mouths together, splaying my lips wide and rocking into them. My head flaked into stardust, and my body blazed like starlight. I vaulted into the kiss, our tongues dashing.
His cock pulsed, thick and heavy against my aching cunt. My inner folds slickened, arousal pouring onto his pants.
Gritting out another noise, Jeryn drove the blanket down and flung it aside. I lay sprawled under him, naked and vibrating with need. My nipples hardened into points, and my body inflated with each anticipatory exhalation.
Jeryn drank in the sight. Irises like crystals, like glass, like ice. They engulfed me, then disappeared behind his swollen pupils.
From hate-lust beneath a lightning rainstorm, to a darkly sensuous night in his medical den, to the passionate surrender in the ocean, to our bittersweet union in the wellspring, every time had been unique. A dangerous but intimate path we’d needed to take, to arrive in this moment. For all the chasms we’d crossed, this was unlike anything that came before and anything that would come after.
The backs of my eyes burned, threatening to spill.
Jeryn kissed my lashes. “Do not,” he pleaded, sensing the tumult. “Please do not.”
“Then take them,” I implored. “Take them away.”
Until every teardrop had drained from my soul.
On a guttural rasp, the vanquished prince heaved me back to him and crushed his lips to mine again, driving his tongue with my own. I arched my breasts, my nipples abrading his torso, the traction stunning. Moaning into the kiss, I caught and sucked on the flat of his tongue, loosening a hiss from him.
Prying his mouth from mine, Jeryn worshiped the rest of me. Stamping my hands into the grass, he sucked on my throat, nipped at my pulse point, and licked down the gulp between my breasts. Dragging his mouth over one swell, he gripped the crest between his teeth and drew on it while swabbing his tongue over the peak.
A shriek got stuck in my mouth, pleasure sizzling between my thighs. With every tug of his mouth, the noise rose closer to the surface until it catapulted into the trees. Jeryn hummed his approval around a mouthful, then swept to the opposite nipple, circling the bud and sucking it raw.
Every stunted noise in existence wrung from my lips. I needed him everywhere, filling me to the brim, as deeply as he could reach.
Jeryn raked his mouth down my stomach, then grabbed my knees and yanked them apart. My pussy splayed out for him, pink and soaked. Those eyes glinted, his angular features taut. His beauty had always been on the merciless side.
Lifting my legs and latching them over his shoulders, Jeryn plied my skin with kisses. His mouth traveled from the indentation of my foot, to my ankles, to my calves. He dabbed his tongue behind my knee and over the caps. This man wouldn’t stop until he’d left imprints of himself on every inch.
But there was more. The touches and kisses were attentive, healing. Winter gave more than he took, because this world had already stolen so much from me.