He watches me a heartbeat longer, then lowers her mouth to mine, kissing me slow and sweet as his fingers work the buttons on my pajama top. One by one he releases them, unwrapping me like a gift, kissing his way down my throat and between my breasts as I slide my arms out of the sleeves.
His lips are warm and soft, a stark contrast to the cool air on my newly exposed skin, leaving a trail of sparks that sink into my skin and light my insides on fire.
My core is throbbing, my desire winding tighter as his fingers and mouth ghost over the raised pink lines crisscrossing my stomach, still healing from Phaines’s brutal dark magick. Even without reaching for his energy, I feel the fire growing inside him too—the rage at what Phaines did to me, the heat between us, a burning desire, all of it colliding into a red-hot inferno on the edge of total combustion. Every touch, every tender kiss seems to cost him a little more, but Baz remains in control, his gentleness as surprising as it is maddening.
Dragging his mouth down my stomach, Baz tugs my pajama bottoms and underwear, slowly peeling them off my body until I’m lying nude before him, my skin hot and needy, my heart pounding, everything in me desperate for more.
With the same slow, crazy-making touch, he guides my thighs apart, kissing his way from my hipbone to the inside curve of my knee, then back up again, the heat of his breath misting over my clit as he moves to the other thigh, down and back again, teasing and kissing, touching me everywhere except the place I want most.
“You’re torturing me,” I breathe, arching my hips, trying to get closer, to take control.
“Shh.” He traces his tongue over my hip bone again, then moves closer, closer still, his lips grazing my clit and making me gasp. “Don’t fight, Little Bird.”
“Non-friendship,” I pant, torn between the intense pleasure of his delayed gratification game and demanding release right this instant, “does not mean non-touching. I want—oh,fuck…”
Suddenly he grips my thighs and licks my clit, then blows a cool breath across my superheated flesh before sucking me hard between his lips. After all the teasing, the raw pleasure of his commanding mouth is almost too intense, his tongue stroking me hard and fast, then slow, bringing me closer and closer…
I slide my hands into his hair, arching my hips against his devouring mouth, and he unleashes a throaty moan that vibrates straight into my core.
Tightening his grip on my thighs, Baz plunges his tongue deep inside me. The last of my control breaks like a dam, unleashing the full force of pleasure I’d been denied. It crashes through my body in a fierce wave that starts in my core and spreads through my belly, sweeping me over the edge until I’m tumbling and my thighs are trembling and I’m screaming his name, my own long since forgotten.
Baz kisses my thighs, my belly, retracing the same path he took on the way down with more soft, slow kisses. When he reaches my jawline, I turn and capture his mouth in another kiss, desperate to breathe him in, to feel his lips moving against mine, to feel the heat of his breath in my mouth.
His cock is hard and hot, pressing urgently against my thigh, and despite the fact that my body is still trembling with the aftershocks of my last orgasm, I want him inside me. Need him inside me.
“Condoms,” I breathe, grateful Isla insisted I stock up that day we went shopping. “Nightstand drawer.”
He reaches for the drawer, grabs one from the stash.
He’s back on top of me again, his mouth finding mine in the darkness as he shifts between my thighs. He slides inside me, his body shuddering as I wrap my legs around him and bring him in deeper. Again I see our meadow from the Cernunnos card, sunlight glittering through moss-covered trees, grass tickling my bare skin.
Without breaking our kiss, Baz slides his arms around me and flips us so I’m on top. I straddle his hips, his rock-hard cock thickening inside me as his hands slide over my backside.
I pull back and gaze into his eyes, and he stops for just a moment, reaching up to sweep the hair from my face. The look in his eyes is so raw and real, so intense, I almost feel like a spy, a lost girl stumbling in the darkness, discovering something rare and special and fragile, something that was never meant for me. The familiar fears scrape at the edges of my heart, warnings about dangerous mages and loss and broken hearts…
As if he can read my thoughts, Baz slides his thumb across my lower lip and cups my face, drawing me down for another soft kiss. “Come back, my beautiful Star,” he whispers.
“Cernunnos,” I whisper back. “Don’t leave.”
“I promise.”
He shifts beneath me, heat cresting between us once again, and I sit up on top of him, rolling my hips to take him in deeper, faster, desperately chasing the blissful orgasm building inside all over again.
But Baz’s firm grip on my thighs stops my frenzied pace.
“Slow,” he whispers, holding me tight. “Slow.”
I look into his eyes again, losing myself in the liquid heat, in the depths of his intensity. Obeying his command, I slow down until I’m barely moving.
“Just feel,” he whispers.
“Feel what?”
He reaches for my hand and presses it against his chest. “Everything.”
I close my eyes, bringing myself back from the edge and focusing on all of the things I can’t see.
Here, in this moment, what I feel isn’t the heat and friction of frenzied passion, but the stillness. The silent spaces between the powerful beats of his heart. The gentle mist of our breath mingling in the air. My bedroom smells like him, like fire and earth, and when he takes my hand in his again, the connection sparks between us, the magick rooting us to each other and to the earth, and it fills me with a sense of belonging that’s so right, so perfect, it’s as if I’ve finally found something I’ve been seeking my entire life.
