His fingers traced the shape of my jaw, settling underneath it, tilting my face up to his. He pressed his mouth to the corner of my eye where the tears were still wet and he kissed the salt off my skin. He moved to my other eye, then to my cheekbone where a tear had dried, then to the bridge of my nose, swollen from crying, and finally, he kissed the hot, tender skin just below my eye.
He was kissing the tears off my face.
Every one of them, his mouth moving across my skin like he was erasing every trace of the crying, and each press of his lips sent a shock through me that was so far beyond anything sexual I’d ever felt that I couldn’t categorize it. It was intimate in a way that sex had never been intimate. It was personal in a way that made me feel cracked open and seen and absolutely terrified.
His mouth found the tear track that had run down to my jaw. He kissed along the line of it, slow, his lips warm against my skin, and when he reached the corner of my mouth, he stopped.
He hovered, a breath away from kissing me. “Tell me to stop.”
“No,” I said. “Absolutely not. Don’t you dare stop.”
His hand tightened in my hair and he tilted my head just a little, before dropping his lips to my mouth.Finally.And oh god, oh fuck, oh every expletive in every language.
It was consuming. His mouth was hot and firm and he kissed the way he did everything: with total focus, like I was the only thing in the room, the only thing in the world, the only thing that had ever required his attention. His hand cupped the back of my skull and tilted my head exactly where he wanted it. I opened for him like I’d been waiting my entire life to open for exactly this mouth.
Which, honestly, maybe I had.
A desperate, needy moan came from somewhere so deep inside me I didn’t recognize the origin. His tongue stroked mine and the taste of him was strange, ancient, like cold iron and the way a forest smells where the roots go deep. I grabbed the front of his leather chestplate and pulled him closer, harder, needing more, needing everything.
His other hand moved down from my back to my waist, cupping the bare skin of my ass to pull me close, massaging and squeezing until I was rutting into his stomach. His fingers dipped lower, teasing at my balls, and I broke the kiss, letting out a rough sob of pleasure as his fingers teased the base of my cock.
“The thing you’re wearing,” he said, eyes on me. “It’s obscene.”
I sat up, still straddling him, and let him look. He traced my abdominal muscles, and I shivered at the rough brush ofhis calloused fingers against my skin. They wandered lower, exploring the strap around my waist, the edge of the pouch in front, and finally, down over the ridge of my erection where it pressed against the fabric.
“It’s a jockstrap. It’s very popular where I’m from.”
“It covers nothing.”
“That’s the point. To let you look.” I rocked against his hand and watched his eyes go dark, the violet swallowed by the black of his pupils.
A sharp rap on the door froze us both. He didn’t seem surprised.
“When I went to get Ilyndra’s powder, I sent for someone to clean this up.”
I pouted. “Can’t it wait?”
Chapter 8
Aedlryc
Mybodywasscreamingat me to ignore the maids, to push Pip back against the bed and finish what we’d started.
“They could come back later. We don’t need to touch the floor for you to fuck me.” The way Pip spoke so openly about sex made my cock pulse.
The commander in me registered the interruption as a tactical reprieve. This was a vulnerability, a path to pain I had walked before. I closed my eyes, forcing the air from my lungs.
The iron lamp on the wall was humming, the buckles on my armor vibrating with the pulse of my arousal. Seven centuries of iron control, reduced to a quivering mess by a human with devastating eyes and an indecent approach to clothing.
“The maids must come in and clean up, before you are injured again.”
Pip’s face fell, and I lifted him off the bed, cradling him against my chest. He was so small, so warm, so solid in my arms. His head fit perfectly against my shoulder, his breath hot against my neck.
“I’m taking you to the bathroom so they can clean up.” My boots crunched on broken pottery as I carried him through the door to the small adjoining water closet, set him gently on the floor by the faucet. “You need to wash up. You’ve got blood all over you.”
“Is this like a timeout?” He crossed his arms over his chest, which had the effect of pushing his pectorals together and drawing my eye to the soft, vulnerable spot at the base of his throat where his pulse beat visibly. “While you go talk to the maids?”
“I’m putting you in a safe place so you can clean up.”
