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Opal
Early evening brought a half-naked male with it.
Chin on his palm, his other hand toying with my hair, Dade watched me with a smile in those lupine blue eyes as I stretched my legs and forced my own to stay open. “I never partook in the festivities,” he said by way of greeting.
It took me three confused blinks to gather what he was referring to, and relief swaddled me so tight that I sat up. He hadn’t been with any of those females that night in the ballroom.
He passed me a glass of water, and I guzzled the lot. “You may do as you wish.”
I tried to crawl off the bed, to set the glass by the books on the nightstand and to leave. He was back. He was back, and now I didn’t know what to do with him.
With myself.
The glass fell to the carpet on the floor, rolling under the bed when an arm looped around my waist and threw me beneath a large, toned body. Dade stared down at me, a fresh cedar scent rolling off him. He must have bathed while I was still asleep. “What I wish for is you.”
Stu
Dade’s brows gathered. “I have at times, yes. You’d be hard-pressed to find someone who wouldn’t.” He gri
He had me there, and I bit my lips against the heat wanting to rise into my face. “I was shocked.”
“You were curious.” His smile drooped into something deadlier, then he lowered until his naked chest was almost pressing into the satin covering mine, and murmured, “But if it bothers you, I won’t look ever again.”
I knew a vow when I heard one, especially given in that deep, rasped tone. “Truly?” I still asked.
My lips parted, breath sailing between when his eyes dipped to them, then down to my chest. They returned to mine fevered, his nostrils flaring. “My lovely swan,” he purred. “My bittersweet nemesis, I’m begi
I gasped at hearing those words and the way his lower body fell into mine, my legs spreading before I could think better of it. I couldn’t think.
He erased everything rational, and the aggressive shine that deepened his eyes, causing the muscles to flex in the powerful arms on either side of my head, said he knew it. “Princess,” he said, voice hoarse. My hands grabbed his cheeks. My body arched into his. His eyes shuttered as he choked out, “Fuck,” before slamming his mouth over mine.
Fire filled every extremity, my heart an explosion of failed beats as his mouth pillaged and plundered, and it was all I could do not to melt into the feathered mattress beneath us.
A clawed finger skimmed my side, gooseflesh rising in its wake, and then the other. The straps were next, then both hands returned to fist the bedding beside my head as my nightgown fell in strips with each thrusting slide of his lower body over mine. “I liked that nightgown,” I panted when his mouth gave me reprieve, and grazed my neck and chest.
“I’ll buy you twenty more to tear apart,” he muttered to my breasts, breath hot and ragged, and I mewled as his warm mouth closed over a beaded nipple. He sucked, then licked, then moved to the other to give it the same attention. His eyes flashed up at me, watching, learning, knowing. Gently, his teeth scraped over the delicate skin, his question more of a search for confirmation. “Like that?”
“Love that, but come back.” Desperate, I clasped his hair between my fingers, pawing at his back when he gave that luscious mouth to mine, and then pushed at the waistband of his pants.
They left his body with one movement, and I froze at the feel of him, the heat of his smooth skin near boiling. “Need you,” he whispered, husked and nipping at my lips. “Like I’ve never truly needed anything until now.”
I nipped his lips back, then licked at the tiny pearl of blood I’d spilled. “Do it,” I pleaded, too soft for it to be the taunting dare I’d intended.
Dade stiffened over me. His head lifted far enough for his eyes to search mine. I gazed back, my heart thundering against his, my tongue tangled in all the words I wanted and refused to say.
Take me, possess me, reduce me to nothing but yours.
He read the unsaid message loud and clear, a shuddering exhale shaking his broad shoulders and leaving his nose. My fingers dug into his muscular back, my thighs tightened around his waist, and my heart thrashed like the wounded animal it was when he didn’t devour me.
No. Instead, the monster kissed me sweetly, earnestly, as though I were porcelain that would shatter if handled without care.
My eyes smarted with tears, and I closed them, sinking inside my own peril as I kissed him back. A soft caress for every shaken breath, rubbing and melding and incinerating. I lost myself so thoroughly that when he reached between us, a finger pressing and then entering, I released a loud moan.
“Exquisite,” my beast breathed against my mouth, removing that finger just far enough to slide it back in and torture me all over again. He stopped when he reached the barrier, the one I’d thought he would decimate with the same skilled cruelty he was known for, then retreated and moved down my body.
I mewled in protest, but my reaching hands were no match for his eager mouth. He licked my breasts, my stomach, tongue dipping inside my navel, giant hands squeezing my hips, then he paused at my mound.
A heated exhale burst over my slick skin, my legs twisting in the bedding on either side of him as he drank his fill with his eyes. A graveled curse was all the warning I had, his mouth falling over me. He might have been unpracticed in the art of bedding a female, but I knew I wouldn’t know even if I’d had experience in this arena myself.
In long velvet strokes, his tongue ravished me—tasted me from thigh to thigh. They shook so violently, I half feared they’d rattle the bed, my fingers in his hair tugging and pulling. More.
More, more, more…
He answered my call, finding that place he’d been purposely avoiding to give himself time to explore, and a single coaxing drag of his tongue over it was all it took. I shuddered and moaned, my thighs trapping his head between them, and my body curling toward the ceiling as an ocean of pure rapture held me under for blissful moments.
I was released gently, the barely-there kisses Dade pressed to my center violent in comparison, and I pulled him away, desperate for his mouth to return to mine.
He loomed over me, lips glistening and his lashes bobbing low. “Never in my entire existence have I tasted anything quite like you.”
My breathing was still uneven, my heartbeat sharp and bruising, but I wanted more. Wanted it bad enough that I managed to whisper hoarsely, “What do I taste like?”
“The stars and the sun and mine.” He licked his lips. “All fucking mine.” I clasped his chin, pulling him closer, wanting to see for myself—just wanting, needing more. Dade’s hooded eyes widened with a flash, his lips curling. “You surprise me.”
“Shut up and kiss me, savage.”
I swallowed his laugh, then his groan as my tongue swept into his mouth, tasting my own essence. The way it combined with his caused my head to spin.
But he pulled away, breathless and suddenly seeming so unsure of himself that I wondered if he was the same male I’d been stuck with these past weeks. “I will hurt you.”