Page 72 of Why Broken Wings Fray

It seemed he wanted to reveal more.

“I wish to kiss you.”

Everything in me stilled yet roared to life at the same time. The strangest feeling, as if I was falling off a cliff, yet halfway through the free-fall I remembered that I had only jumped from a diving board. It was just a kiss, yet with Raegan, it was so much more.

My words were hardly a whisper as I met his eyes, “Then kiss me.”

There was a quick shadow that moved across his face as he craned his head ever so slightly to the side. His hand moved towards my cheek, where he brushed his knuckles along the peak of it.

“I cannot be distracted by falling for you again,” he murmured.

He was there – so close, but so far. The heat of him warmed every inch of my body, yet the distance between us was a harsh reminder of just how cold this world could be. But I didn’t know what to say to that, so I simply stared at those eyes that had haunted my every movement since I was last separated from him.

The creases between his brows finally relaxed as he crowded me, his lips now easily accessible from where they lingered inches away as he whispered, “Kiss me this once and promise me it will not happen again.”

I wasn’t sure why I was breathing as if I had run a marathon. His breathing was the same, both of us drunk on the shared air between us, our gazes both on one another's lips.

I pushed up onto my toes, brushing my lips over his in the smallest of movements, the briefest of touches – that was all that was needed to shake my whole being. My eyes fluttered as I moved away from him, as I felt everything in me respond to such a simple touch.

“I can’t promise you that.”

“Good,” he murmured.

33

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We remained there for a few minutes, the world around us utterly silent other than the slow waking of the meadow around us. The songbirds chirped in the distance, numbed out by the thundering of our hearts against one another. The crickets sang somewhere around us, but we could not hear them above the heaviness of our breathing.

Raegan cracked first.

Our kiss had been tender and gentle, soft and promising, just as it had been on the balcony. But what woke in Raegan, the movement that he made and the kiss that followed, it was the other side of him, the type of guarantee that I had wanted from him. And just like I had imagined not so long ago, it did devour me whole.

His hand gripped my neck. It was a firm yet gentle grip, enough to allow me to move but not so much that I couldn’t feel the devotion and the security in the pressing of his calloused hands against my soft skin. He used that grip around my neck to haul us towards one another, where we met in a damning and destructive rush.

When his mouth found mine this time, it was everything. It was claiming and possessive, promising and eager. He brushed the tenderness of his lips against mine, leaving me no option but to gasp against his contrasting movements. The noise I made only encouraged him, pushing him to crave more, to find new angles, to slide his tongue against me in a silent question of pursuing his every touch.

I melted into him. Truly, melted. There was not an ounce of strength or willpower left as he moved against me. I knew then what I had thought all along – Raegan was everything. His wretched heart, his tortured mind, his damning masks, his agonized soul. All of him was in front of me and he was everything and more. His presence was more powerful than the richest of sunsets and his being was more radiant than the sharpest of stars, and I feared I would never get enough of him.

An approving growl slipped through his lips and onto mine as he hoisted at me, one hand slipping to the back of my neck where he set a gentle pressure at the nape of my neck, the other gripping to my lower back to balance me against him. I was alight with craving and throbbing with desire for him, forcing me to rock against his waist and generate another one of those guttural noises as I found the hardened length of him ready for me.

But Raegan seemed hell-bent on dragging out my aching for him because he gripped me tighter, moving against my mouth quicker, and did not drop us to the ground where he could properly claim me. Instead, he moved us across the meadow, the sun haloing his outline as it always did, until it was blocked.

I pulled away from him to see why that was, only to see he had moved us towards one of the flowers.

“What are you – oh!”

He hoisted me, as if I weighed nothing more than a feather, and placed my back against the nearest stretch of stem. The sensation of the texture against my back forced me to rebound back against him, only increasing the way his gaze darkened even further and he drank in the sight of me. I was completely at his mercy where he had me perched in front of him, half of my weight taken by the stem he had me braced against, the other half absorbed into his body where he wrapped my legs around him.

“I am sorry for this,” he murmured, giving me only half of a blink to appreciate what he was about to do. He grabbed onto my shirt, the light, near-translucent material of Cluaineach, and tore it in one easy tear.

Cold air rushed over me, encouraging my already peaked nipples. His eyes fell from mine as I shivered, his pupils widening as his tongue slipped between his lips and he admired me.

Yet again I had no warning before he dove into me, his mouth finding one nipple while the other was quickly met with the pinching of his fingers. Between the hot moisture and lapping of his tongue on one, and the cold air and tight twists of the other, I had little control over the moan that tore from me. Not only could I feel his arousal stronger and more demanding beneath me, but he approved of my noises and also could do nothing about the growl that came from him and vibrated the nipple he had between his teeth.

Allowing my head to roll back, I sank my weight against the stem and refused to stop the noises that came from me while staring up at the petals above us. He moved masterfully, careful to pay equal attention to my breasts as he switched. The heat that had previously been placed against one by his breath and mouth was taken to the other, leaving an even more violent chill to rush over me before his fingers clamped down.

While he worked, his free hand moved for my trousers.