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“Cease your sweet words, Wildling.” Black fire locked with my gaze. Kage’s rough palms slid beneath the hem of my skirt, running along my thighs. “This is meant to be for you.”
A breath shuddered free when he inched my skirt higher, higher. When he gripped the skin of my upper thigh, I let out a startled gasp.
Kage pulled back. “Do you want me to stop?”
“No.” Reckless, foolish perhaps, but I could not stop. His touch was a flame and I was desperate to burn. I let my head fall back, throat bared. Each gasp drew in another breath of wood and leather and dust and beneath it all was the citrus spice of Kage Wilder.
Gentle, heated kisses found my inner thigh. Kage’s mouth was a weapon—the sort that drew one in and sent them spiraling before they knew they were even at risk of falling.
I could not catch a deep enough breath and pressed the heel of my palm to my forehead, simply to ground me as his tongue teasedthe sensitive flesh of my leg. A skittish sort of whimper slid from my lips. Unaccustomed to being touched with such tenderness, I jolted, legs stiffening.
The top of his messy, dark head lifted. “Adira, is this what you want?”
My chest heaved, all at once my lungs ceased functioning to full capacity. Bracketed on one elbow over my plush stack of furs, I held his stare. Part of me wanted to be distant, laugh perhaps, maybe make light of what we were doing, diminish it. To play indifferent was simpler than this moment—vulnerable, exposed, and at his mercy.
“Yes,” I said, voice hardly more than a breath. “I want you.”
Unexplainable, but it was the whole truth. Our introduction was a brutal welcome, but the more layers I peeled off Kage, the more I saw that brutality as a vicious sort of love.
Struck by this degenerative darkness himself, he still fought for others.
I’d yet to dare press how deeply the curse impacted him. I had seen the marks, seen the distant glimmer in his eyes when the degeneration was mentioned.
In truth, it was a question with an answer I was not certain I wanted to hear.
There was an undeniable piece of me that was clawing my way through the pages of spells and grimoires because of him. Because a broken edge of my heart would not accept that Kage might lose himself to this darkness.
How it was possible to feel at such depth for a man I’d only met, I didn’t know. Only that it was real, as real and palpable as the damp pine scent of the hut.
I straightened, placing my feet flat on the ground, and held Kage’s stare. Straps for his knives and leather spell pouches fell away first. Next, the boots and stockings off my legs. After his sheaths came his tunic. Kage ripped it over his head, and tossed it aside.
Dim lighting did not give up the true breadth of his form, but my fingers lavished the muscles of his chest, his shoulders.
One of his large palms covered the space over my heart. Hisexpression was unreadable as he pressed me back again until I was flat over the furs. I dug my fingernails into the heated skin of my palms when he hooked my knees over his shoulders, baring me to him.
My breaths came too rapid, too shallow. The rough stubble of his chin scraped along my legs, his hands following.
“I want to taste you.” Through the gaps in his messy hair, his eyes sparked with mischief.
All I could do was nod and fumble through a breathless, “Yes.”
All my life, all my memories, I was tethered and bound to a world that did not consider me of much worth. No one but for a few kind foster siblings, cheery schoolteachers who told me to love myself, and my own shadowed memories ever led me to think there was any value in my existence.
The way Kage touched me, it was as though he handled the finest of silk—tender, gentle, awe-struck. Beneath his hands, his wicked tongue, his greedy lips, I felt as though I stood on the edge of a jagged cliff, ready to tumble over the ledge.
Skilled and passionate, he knew how to balance me on the precipice. His groans and sighs, the tension in his muscles and attention to every movement, Kage was reveling in my torture. He was drawing it out until a precise moment.
Heat slid down from my skull, landing white hot in my belly. Far from my control, my hips bucked and thrashed against his mouth, my limbs flailed until one hand found purchase buried in his hair. I yanked on the roots, grounding myself to the moment, to the lashes of his tongue on my core.
“Kage . . .” What did I want him to know? What was I even trying to say?
I felt him smile before he sucked harder and drove his tongue deeper into the heat of my slit. He tossed me over the edge to my self-made destruction. I cried out, yanked his hair, locked my ankles over his shoulders. I was no longer the master of my own body.
When I went still, Kage kissed his way back to standing—the points of my hip bones, my belly, up the slope of my throat. One hand slid along my ribs, over one breast, until he cupped the side of my face. “There’s that fire in youreyes.”
I took his lips. His tongue glided with mine, the taste of my own release shared between us. Without breaking the kiss, I reached for the buckle of his wretchedly complex belt.
Mage clothes were all laces, buckles, and knots. He chuckled against my mouth and helped unfasten one loop.
