Page 72 of Ballad of Sea and Sky

“You taste like the sea and the sky,” he groaned, not looking up from where he was currently lavishing attention. “Skies, Marina, I want you so badly.”

“Then have me,” I said, my heart pounding at this admission as I untied my makeshift shirt and bared myself before him. “I won’t stop you Cas.”

“I know,” he groaned, his desire evident in the press of his body against mine. The urgent roll of his hips. “But we can’t.”

“Why not?” I asked, finding it difficult to form coherent thoughts with him pressed against me. I pulled his face back, cupping his cheek to force him to meet my gaze. “What is this important thing that I don’t understand about sex in your culture?”

“It’s not sex in general,” he said, rolling off me and falling onto his back on the bed next to me, his wings splayed out beneath him like like a blanket of white feathers. The space was too small to lie side-by-side comfortably, so I shifted to sit above him, my chin and arms resting on his broad chest. “It’s you.”

“Me,” I said, frowning, uncertain if I should be hurt by this refusal.

“Skies, this is coming out wrong,” he groaned, pushing my hair from my face and catching my chin. “It’s not that I don’t want you, Marina, because I clearly do,” he added with another press of his hips that sent warmth shooting up my spine. He pulled me forward into a kiss that was far too short. “It’s that what I feel for you…it complicates things between us.”

“Because I’m a selkie?” I guessed, still frowning as I tried to puzzle out what hewasn’tsaying.

“Marina,” he said, propping himself up on his elbows to look at me more directly. “If you told me you would come with me today, stay with me—then I’d have no qualms. But you’re not ready to make that choice yet, and I won’t take it from you.”

“I see,” I said, not entirely sure that I did see. “You want to wait until I’m certain.”

“Yes,” Caspian hedged, although he still seemed to be keeping something back. “But believe me, Urchin,” he pulled my face to his, capturing my lips in a bruising kiss. “When youareready, you’re mine.”

Warmth flooded me at the purr in his voice, spooling down to make my center throb.

“And what aboutotherthings?“ I suggested, placing a kiss on his jaw, then beginning a slow slide down the length of his body, grazing my lips over his scarred flesh and golden muscle. “Can I dothose?”

“Marina,” he warned, lifting his head to give me a penetrating stare. “I told you, we can’t.”

“I’m not suggestingwedo anything,“ I said innocently, pressing a kiss to his chiseled abs, and then lower. “I’m suggestingIdo something.”

“I won’t be able to restrain myself if you take me in your mouth, Urchin,” he murmured, the words sending another flood of heat through me.

“You’ll have to try,” I teased, brushing a hand over the front of his trousers to tug at the laces. He jerked, rigid beneath my palm. “If thisalliancetruly means so much to you.”

“Marina,” he groaned, stifling a laugh at my suggestion. He met my eyes again, his gaze hungry.

“Do you want this, Cas?” I asked, pulling the laces free and releasing his length, palming it as I positioned my mouth over him. “Because I know you said no sex, but I’ve heard that pleasure can be given inmanyways.”

“You have no fucking idea how much I want this,” he laughed, the sound becoming a hiss as I took him in my mouth.

I felt the groan he let out travel down the back of my throat as I pressed my tongue to him, tasting him in all the ways I had only let myself imagine in the privacy of my mind. He tasted of salt and wind as I ran my tongue down his length, teasing him as he had done me.

“Now the most important thing,” I teased, lifting my head and planting a chaste kiss at his tip, “is communication.”

“You are a menace,” Caspan growled as I took him in my mouth again, flicking my tongue over every inch.

“The more vocal you are, the better I can make it for you,” I added, grinning as he balled his hands in the sealskins while I wrapped my hands around his base. “How’s this?”

“Good,” he ground out, his hips straining with the urge to thrust upward as I teased him. “Everything you do will be perfect.”

I smiled, deciding I had finished teasing him as I began to find a rhythm, squeezing gently with one hand as I moved my mouth up and down his shaft. I had never particularly enjoyed this experience with my few dalliances, but something about feeling Caspian so hard for me as I held him completely at my mercy made shivers erupt at the base of my spine, heat pooling as desire rose and crashed in waves through me.

“Marina,” he groaned, fisting his fingers into my hair as I worked him, his other hand still firmly in the sealskins, “Skies, you’ll be the ruin of me.” I didn’t respond, continuing to move in a steady rhythm until I felt him jerk beneath me. “I can’t—”

He cut himself off with a shout as he came, spilling into me as I drank him down. His warmth and salt, usually not appealing to me in any other male, was like nectar, and I lapped it up.

He pulled me roughly to him, capturing me in a kiss despite what I had just been doing. “My turn.”

“I thought—” I cut off with a cry of surprise as he flipped us, suddenly pinning my body beneath his as his mouth trailed a similar path south toward the growing ache between my legs. “We can’t.”