“One day, the cursed king was saved.” Alder drags the honey-drenched strawberry in a slow circle around the rim of the jar. “Washed clean in a golden light.”
He lifts the fruit to my lips, his voice low, coaxing. “Open for me.”
A soft, involuntary sound slips from my throat as I do.
“And when the king awoke from his curse”—he leans in, his breath warm on my cheek—“he was hungry.”
The strawberry grazes my bottom lip—sticky, sweet, slow.
“Ravenous,” he breathes, his voice a raw ache now, something that lives between want and worship. “Desperate for sugar and spice…for what he had been denied.”
He brushes a stray drop of honey from the corner of my mouth with his thumb, the barest graze of his skin sending a pulse of heat straight through me.
His story is only half tale. It’s a parable wrapped in something older, something deeper.
Or maybe it’s not a story at all.
Maybe it’s a confession.
He presses the fruit to my lips again, and I part them without hesitating, anticipation coiling tight inside me. The syrup spills, warm and decadent, trickling down my chin in a slow trail.
I don’t have time to wipe it away before his fingers follow. The rough pad of his thumb traces the sticky path down my skin, collecting the honey with unbearable slowness.
My breath stutters as he brings that honey-slicked finger to my bottom lip, dragging it across the sensitive skin, smearing the syrup in teasing glides. The warmth of it—of him—seeps into me, and I press my thighs together, desperate for relief, for friction, for anything.
Then, before I can prepare, before I can even breathe, he pushes his finger into my mouth.
My lips part, and I close around him, the taste of honey and salt thick on my tongue. A slow, involuntary hum vibrates in my throat.
Alder inhales, and the sound that rumbles from his chest is deep, dark, possessive, and so raw it makes me ache. His pupils dilate, his lips parting like he’s about to speak, but he doesn’t.
He only continues watching.
Watching the way my lips close around his finger. The way I swallow. The way the honey disappears, leaving only the heat of him behind.
“Tell me, Gemma.” His voice is low, barely more than a whisper, but it slides over me like silk, like temptation itself. “Do you think the king ever got his fill?”
I don’t answer. I can’t.
Because his finger is still resting heavy on my tongue. Because his body is so close, his warmth pouring into me, making my head spin, making my heart trip over itself.
Because I already know the answer.
No, the king never got his fill.
The king is still starving.
Nineteen
Heat pulses through me, thick, relentless, curling lowand dangerous. It begs me to close the distance, to give in. Because I want to. God, I want to. Every inch of me aches with it, a dull, hungry throb that says,just one more time.
No.
No, no, no.
This is how it always happens. This is how I lose myself in him.
This is how I ended up in a magickal kingdom, a whole dimension away from anything that makes sense, sitting on a beach with an unfairly gorgeous man who smells like salt and seduction and makes my brain go soft just by existing.
