Page 70 of Bonetide

“All of you,” I add.

More than just getting finger-banged in a forest.

He tilts his head, as if thinking something through.

“You’ll have what I can give you tonight.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means I will have my hands on you and my mouth on you in a bed for the first time, foxglove. It means I will make you come for me until you can’t anymore. It means I will not yet take all of you, because I am keeping that for a day that hasn’t come yet.”

My brows go up. “Why not?”

“Because there are still things you don’t know about me.”

Things? Oh, just things? How about mostly everything?

“Okay, so tell me them now.”

“No,” he responds, somewhat firmly. “Not now. Tonight you are mine in the ways I can have you. The rest is for tomorrow.”

I should push him and make him tell me. I shouldn’t let him put my body in his bed without telling me what he’s been waiting to tell me.

But I don’t push him, because I am a horny fool, and because the idea of his hands and mouth all over me reduces me to those two bumbling brain cells again.

I let him kiss me instead.

The kiss is long and slow and undoing. He has me in his bedroom, with the bed behind me, and he’s going to take his time. He undresses me piece by piece—the camisole, my bra, the pants, my underwear. He kisses along my skin where it becomes bare, then folds each thing as he takes it off me, setting them down on a side table. Eventually, I’m totally buck naked and he’s still fully dressed. Just like last night, before I got in the water. But unlike last night, while I do feel on the spot, I don’t mind him looking so much.

And he looks. He takes his time and my skin erupts in gooseflesh where his heated gaze has been.

“You are unfairly lovely,” he murmurs, his eyes flicking over me.

I make a whimpering noise, my cheeks and chest flushing.

“You need to take your clothes off,” I manage to say.

“In a minute.”

“Now. You’ve seen me naked like this twice now and I’ve not seen you.”

“Oh, but you have seen me naked,” he jokes with a small curve to his lips. “With binoculars of all things.”

“How did you…” I begin, but he walks me back to the bed. He lays me down on it slowly, his hand at the small of my back, easing me onto the heavy quilt. The bed is soft and old and the smell of it is woodsmoke and clean linen and him, more him than any room I have been in.

He stands at the foot of the bed and stares at me.

“Open your legs for me, foxglove.”

I make that whimpering sound again.

I open my legs for him.

He kneels at the foot of the bed.

“Christ, Iris. Look at you.”

But I can’t look at him. I look at the canopy of the four-poster above me. The wood is carved in places, the shapes are flowers, or knotwork, or…