Page 176 of Bone Year

His beard is rough on my skin, and I want to feel it on other parts of my body.

“Rose.”

He murmurs my name into the kiss, and I don’t have the words to answer him with, so I tilt my chin up another degree and deepen the kiss. It’s insatiable, and I never want it to end.

His hand slides from my neck up into my hair hard enough that my scalp tingles, and he uses the grip to tilt my head back exactly the way he wants it. His mouth follows the line of my jaw, slow at first, then less slow, and when his lips find the soft skin below my ear, my knees nearly give out.

“Draven—”

Against his throat, I feel his pulse leap under my mouth. I press a kiss against it without thinking, and he makes a sound I have never heard him make before, and my whole body goes hot.

His hand at my waist slides lower to the curve of my hip where the satin of my dress bunches, and his fingers press into the fabric there in a grip that is not gentle. I feel the heat of his palm through the satin, through my skin, and lower.

“You taste—” he murmurs against my temple then catches himself. He kisses me again harder, his other hand cradling the side of my face.

His tongue parts my lips, and the kiss goes deep enough that I feel him in my chest, slow enough that I lose track of time. The whiskey is dark and rich on his tongue, and I chase the taste of him.

A small sound escapes me. Pleading. Wanting.

He answers it with a low hum against my mouth that vibrates down my spine, and his thumb glides once across my cheekbone in a touch so gentle it doesn’t match the rest of him at all.

“Maelis.”

I rise up onto my toes to press into him harder, my body asking for things my mind has not given permission for, and he shifts to meet me. His grip on my hip tightens. He leans forward into me until my back is fully against the cold stone of the wall behind us, his wings curled tighter around us, and the contrast of the cold stone and the heat of him pressed against my front nearly undoes me.

“Gods,” I breathe.

“I know.”

“Draven, I⁠—”

“I know.”

His mouth finds mine again, and this time the kiss is not slow at all. He is taking, and I let him take, and my hands move into the open collar of his coat to feel the bare skin of his throat and his collarbones, and I feel the small tremor that is rolling through him underneath the control.

He is shaking.

A man who controls everything is shaking against me.

The wave of desire that hits me at the realization is uncomfortable, a heat pulling low in my body, an ache I have never had in quite this shape before. I press myself harder against him, and my hand slides from his collarbone down the front of his coat, down the line of buttons toward his stomach, and his hand comes up and catches my wrist before I get there.

He pulls back from the kiss.

His chest rises and falls fast. His amber eyes are dark, the gold deepening at the edges, and his hair has come loose at the temples where my fingers found it. The cold of the night between us is the only thing keeping me upright.

“Rose.”

“I want⁠—”

“I know what you want.”

“Then—”

“Not here.”

He raises my wrist to his mouth and presses a kiss to the inside of it, his lips lingering against the place where my pulse is hammering, and he closes his eyes for one beat as if he has to gather himself.

“Not like this.”