Page 50 of Dangerous Exile

{ Chapter 17 }

The words had barely left her mouth and he was on her, his lips finding hers, his hands wrapping around her ribcage, her back, pulling her into him.

Not tentative, his fierce intensity enveloped her, heat and lust descending from him, parting her lips, consuming her every nerve. The whole of the onslaught creating an insistent, pounding thunder in the core of her.

This was what it felt like.

To truly want someone, deep in the depths of her soul. She’d never experienced this raw, brutal yearning that was consuming her from the inside out.

Except in her dreams.

Dreams she’d had one too many times in the past weeks. Talen’s body over her. His skin on hers. His tongue dragging along her shoulder. For all the thoughts she’d refused to allow to worm into her mind when she was awake, in her sleep his naked body was painfully vibrant. How he would cup her breasts, set his mouth to taste the crux of her neck, crush her body into him. Too many times she’d woken in a thin sheen of sweat, panting, her body aching for his touch.

Dreams she would force out of her mind the second her eyes opened.

Unrequited lust was not going to help her move on with her life.

But now this.

She wanted him, and it was the first time she’d let herself think that thought while fully conscious. The first time she could acknowledge it.

She wanted Talen.

She wanted him, wanted everything about him on her, in her, making her feel the exact opposite of everything that had swamped her soul these past weeks. Despair. Fear. Anger. All of that bounded up and discarded by the carnal craving ripping through her body.

His tongue explored her mouth, demanding everything he could reach, his breath hot on her skin. The scent of him sent her head light, spice and evergreen and smoke and something she couldn’t quite identify, could only classify it as man—as Talen.

The kiss wasn’t enough. She wanted—needed—more.

Her tongue warring with his, her hands lifted up along his chest, sliding under his coat and pushing it off of his shoulders. She popped buttons on his waistcoat free. Not fast enough, for all she wanted was to touch his skin, slide her palms against the smooth expanse of his back, his arms.

She tugged upward on his lawn shirt, pulling her mouth away from his to rip it over his head.

His shirt on the floor, he paused as he looked down at her, his crystal blue eyes cutting directly to her soul.

Everything she wanted from him, he wanted from her tenfold. All of it pulsated in his eyes. Harder, faster—he wanted to ravage her head to toe.

Her breath caught at his stare, instant panic that she wasn’t enough for him spiking through her chest.

Panic he didn’t give air to breathe, for his lips captured hers again, the kiss battering any misgivings into oblivion.

Her head spinning, she grasped onto him, her nails raking his back as she fought to stay upright.

He pulled up slightly, his eyes searching her face, a grin playing at the corners of his mouth. A grin that belied the desperate heat in his voice. “You don’t owe me anything, Ness. We can stop anytime.”

In that moment, she realized her dress and chemise had slipped down about her waist, her stays long since dropped to the floor. Her back was arched toward him, her right breast fully encapsulated by his hand, his fingers rolling her nipple into taut submission.

A sorcerer.

When had he even managed all of that? She’d been so focused on him—on touching his body—she hadn’t even considered her own until that second.

And now that she did—blast—the sweet agony shooting through her body from her nipple sent a thirst she couldn’t control into her throat.

He was waiting for an answer, his mouth not moving back down to her, and for the life of her, she couldn’t form words, the thirst holding her tongue hostage.

She could only nod as she reached up and wrapped her right hand around his neck, yanking his head downward, first to her mouth, then he drifted lower, devouring every speck of her skin from her mouth to her left nipple. Pulling, sucking, rocking the nub back and forth between his teeth. A fine line between pain and pleasure, and he walked it with aplomb, never letting the pain last long enough to really hurt, the pleasure sending guttural moans into her throat.

Awkward as it was with the bottom half of her left hand wrapped with the splint bandages, her hands went to work on his trousers, clearing the buttons of the fall front and shoving the black fabric down his legs, her hands skimming across the hair along his thighs, the muscles underneath tensing at her touch.