Page 128 of The Silversmith

His growl was low and dangerous. And when there were only inches left between us, the starvation clear in his eyes, I prayed I might win, just this once.

His gaze darted to my mouth, his chest rapid in its rise and fall. A vast, breathing mountain, its impending avalanche seeking to crush and devour me. I waited. For long, torturous moments, he did nothing, and my stomach toiled with the ache of rejection. I gave one last pleading look and, accepting he wouldn’t give in, turned away.

The ground dropped out from under me when he gripped the back of my neck, dragged me back to him, and crushed his mouth to mine.

We collided with brutal urgency, then stilled, like he was afraid of what moving would unleash. The roughness of his beard against my sensitive skin, the hungry groan rumbling in his chest… More. I needed more. A pleading whimper escaped my throat, my heart and body begging for him.

“Gods be fucking damned,” he groaned, his fingers trailing up the curve of my jaw, gripping my hair, tilting me back, “you’re my heaven.”

I sighed in delight when he slowly, methodically took my bottom lip between both of his. I trembled and pressed against him. In response to the weak catch of my breath, he parted my lips with a dart of his tongue. Demanding entry.

With a shuddering gasp, I opened my mouth and let him in. At the taste of me, the flames between us roared.

I kissed him back, and his responding groan soaked into my skin. He feasted upon me like a starving man. He tasted like heat and honey and cinnamon whiskey and fresh air. I couldn’t see or hear or feel anything but him.

He took my heart, my soul. And with just the power and heat of his kiss, he ruined me. The world that had disappeared at the first touch of his lips reformed, tilted on its axis. My source of gravity became him.

And if I was his heaven, he was mine.

The glorious heat and sweetness of his tongue sent lightning bolts rippling through me. Each shift of his hard body against mine echoed through my pulsing core. A welcome invasion, a thousand solar flares ripping through my ice-cold body on a winter’s day.

I felt alive. I felt… free.

I used my own mouth to mirror his movements. Did the best I could without having done it before and hoped it was enough. He certainly didn’t object. Each time I exhaled, he inhaled, as if my breath was sacred. All of me burned with fire and lightning and heat until he pulled away. I gasped, my mouth, my hands reaching for him out of instinct. As if no piece of me could bear to part from him. The thought of it struck like a rusted dagger in my chest.

“Why did you stop?” The fear of disappointing him chilled my blood.

Burning brown eyes glazed, he parted my lips—swollen and wet from his kiss—with his thumb. He glanced at his hand, which he’d placed over my heart, over the bare skin of my faded mystery scar, and whispered, “I had to make sure you’re real.”

“I’m real.” I pressed my chest flush against his. “Please don’t stop.”

He cursed under his breath, and with a surrendering, feral groan, plunged his tongue into my mouth. He wrapped his fingers around the nape of my neck, holding me in place as he led me, forceful and soft, rhythmic and calculated. He licked my tongue and devoured my lips. I followed his movements. As with so many other things, he taught me how to respond to him. He held me. Kept me from falling to the ground in overwhelming need.

I whimpered when he swiped his powerful tongue across the roof of my mouth. I responded in turn, and the taste of him—hot and sweet—sent a jolt between my legs.

This feeling, with him, was the best I’d ever felt.

Somehow… still not enough.

“More,” I breathed. “Please.” I intertwined my fingers in his hair, pressed against him to show him how I wanted him to consume me, body and soul, and then capture the secret, vulnerable piece of me that was just a girl who wanted his love. The piece that was just me.

Just his Ella.

“You greedy little queen,” he growled against my mouth. “Feel what you do to me.” My pulse stumbled when he pressed his stone-hard length into my stomach. “Every time I see you, hear you, touch you, smell you. Every gods-damned moment in your presence, this is what you do to me. It is torture.” He nipped at my jaw, then gently kissed the place that smarted. “And I don’t ever want it to end.”

I gasped at his hardness shifting against the thin silk fabric of my dress. His arousal was no surprise. It wasn’t the first time I’d felt it, but this time, my core ached with a terrible emptiness I’d never experienced, and only he could fill it.

So I took a chance. I gripped his shoulders, spun him, and pushed him onto the bed. He let me straddle him, groaning deeply when my knees tightened against his thighs. His hard length, even through his pants, was thick and bulging between my legs. I felt my own hot wetness and was wholly aware of my body wanting him just as much as my heart. And the only thing separating his skin from mine was some fabric.

“Ella,” he warned, but didn’t stop me. No, he gripped my ribs with marvelous pressure, silently begging, pleading for me to keep going. Need pulsed in his fervent stare. He sucked a breath through his teeth and groaned when I ground over him with my hips. I took his hands and, without breaking his gaze, slid them beneath my dress, over my bare thighs, where they left a warm, tingling trail on my skin.

“Ella.” He growled another warning but didn’t retreat. His fingers slid over the curve of my hips, breaching the hem of my panties.

I nodded, giving him permission, and with a feral groan, he slid his strong, calloused fingers underneath, cursing as he gave in, his fingers cupping, squeezing, digging into my skin so vigorously it hurt. A glorious pressure.

“Fuck, you’re soft.” The desire in his voice quaked through me. I knew there was more there—what he kept leashed—as he hungrily kissed down the length of my jaw to my neck. “Every single part of you is soft and good.”

I pressed my hips into him, dizzy at the feeling of his mouth beneath my ear, his lips and tongue savoring me in long, sensual strokes, then biting softly at my neck as he wrenched panting gasps from my throat. Possessed by desire, I lifted up my dress, took one of his palms, and placed it on my bare stomach.