Page 87 of Flames and Blood

“Christ—”

She kisses me before I can finish the word.

Her mouth is hot. I knew that. I felt it once before, and I’ve spent every day since trying not to think about it. It’s hotter now. My own mouth is cold inside hers.

“Mm—” She breaks off the sound halfway and deepens the kiss. At this rate, I’m going to stop thinking clearly in about ten seconds flat.

I get a hand flat between us.

“Kalli.”

She stops. That surprises me. Her eyes come up to mine and hold there.

“I want this,” she says. “I have waited long enough.” She doesn’t say more. Her hands are tightening in my shirt, and she’s pulling me down again.

I stop holding back.

So does she. Not that she was from the start.

She takes my shirt off me fast and badly. Two buttons go. One pings off the stove and skids under the bed. The left cuff catches on my wrist and turns the sleeve inside out. I swear into her hair while she hauls at it. The seam gives before the button does.

“That was my good shirt.”

“You don’t need a shirt. Ever.” Her mouth is on my chest. “You should walk around like this all the time.” She nips my nipple, and my hand closes hard on her hip.

I’m pulling at her shirt now. It comes off over her head and snags on her chin. She drags it clear. Her hair comes down out of it, heavy, over her face and into my mouth when I kiss her.

Then my hands are on her, and everything else stops mattering.

She’s bare without the shirt, and her back is smooth. Skin over muscle, nothing between my palms and the heat of her. She runs hotter than the wall nearest the fire. My hands have been cool as stone for sixty years. When I spread them flat across her back, she pushes into them instead of away.

“Touch me.”

I do. Down her spine. Around her ribs. Up under the weight of her breast, and she arches into the cold of my palm and stays there.

She goes for my belt and can’t work the buckle one-handed. I focus on her jeans instead, getting them open and sliding my hand down until I’m cupping her mound.

“Yes,” she hisses as my fingers slide through her slick folds. She’s wet. She’s also burning. The heat comes off her against my fingers, and she stops breathing for a second, then starts again, rough.

“There.” She’s tugging her jeans further down, taking her underwear with them. She spreads her thighs. “Stay there.”

I do as she says, two fingers flat against her clit, learning what makes her move her hips. When I slide further and dip past her entrance, she takes it easily. Her head goes back against the door.

“Cold,” she says.

“Sorry.”

“No. It’s good. I like it.”

Her hand comes down over the back of mine. She presses it harder into herself and holds it, then moves my whole hand where she wants it. She’s telling me where to touch her. I’ve never been happier to be told.

I get her jeans all the way down her legs. She kicks one foot free and leaves the other tangled at her ankle. I take her by the hips and put her up on the table by the stove.

The wood is warm from the fire.

“Ah!” The backs of her thighs hit it, and the sound comes out of her before she can stop it.

I go down on my knees on the plank floor in front of her.