Page 7 of Knotting Sleeping Beauty

“You just told me not to call you baby,” I say, because apparently even at the edge of my sanity, I’m still capable of being petty.

“I changed my mind. Call me whatever you want. Just do something before I lose what’s left of my…”

I kiss her.

Not soft, slow, or gentle. I take her mouth like a man who’s been dying of thirst and she’s the first water he’s seen in years. She tastes like honey, sleep, fire, and the sound she makes against my lips, a desperate, broken moan that vibrates through my chest, is the hottest thing I’ve ever experienced in my whole fucking life.

Her hands are in my hair, pulling, scratching. Her nails drag across my scalp and the sting goes straight to my cock. She kisses me back like she’s trying to fucking consume me. All fucking tongue, teeth, and fucking fury. She bites my bottom lip hard enough to sting. I growl against her mouth, and she shivers from head to toe, her hips rolling up against mine, and we both gasp.

I pull back just enough to breathe and fucking stare. Her delicious lips are swollen, magnificent eyes glazed, and she’s fucking panting.

“Still want me to…”

“Kael.” Her fists return to my shirt. “If you ask me that one more time, I’m going to find a weapon and use it on you.”

Fair.

I reach for her nightgown. The fabric is thin, worn, brittle, and soft, and it rips in my hands like paper. And looking at what’s under, my hands made the right call.

Holy. Fucking. Shit.

Full, round, fucking perfect tits, peaked and swollen, nipples tight and dark. A waist that nips in then flares into hips wide enough to make my hands ache. Thick thighs. Soft belly. Gorgeous brown skin fucking everywhere, glowing in the dim light like she’s been dipped in warm honey.

I literally stop breathing. My lungs forget how to fucking work. My brain goes blank. I’m staring at the most beautiful woman I have ever seen, am ever going to see, because there’s no way anything exists that surpasses this, no way I’ll ever want anyone else from now on, and my body is vibrating at a frequency I didn’t know I could reach.

“Stop staring,” she whispers. For the first time since she woke up, her voice wavers. Not with heat. With vulnerability. She’s naked under me, fucking exposed, and under the fire in her eyes there’s a flicker of uncertainty that makes my chest ache.

She’s never been seen like this. Never been touched. Twenty-one years locked in a palace and decades trapped by a curse… no one has ever…

I growl, “You’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”

Not a line. Not smooth talk. A statement of fact.

Her eyes go wide. She blinks. Swallows.

Then she lifts her chin and says, “Take off your shirt. I want to see what we’re working with.”

God, I love her.

I rip my shirt over my head, watching her eyes go wide.

She takes me in. The scars, and there are a lot of them, because I’ve been fighting since I was old enough to hold a blade. The tattoos, the wolf on my chest, the Celtic knotwork on my ribs, the sword down my spine. The sheer mass of me, I’m not lean, I’m not pretty, I’m built like a male whose hobbies include hitting things and carrying heavy objects.

Her scent spikes. So hard the room practically vibrates with it. Her luscious lips part. Her thick thighs press together. And she says faintly, “That’s… a lot of man.”

I cock a brow. “Too much?”

One corner of her mouth twitches. “Ask me in an hour.”

I laugh, lowering myself over her. Skin to skin. Full contact. And the feeling of her naked body against mine, soft where I’m hard, warm where I’m hot, yielding where I’m rigid, punches the air out of both of us.

She completely wraps around me. Arms, legs, everything. Fucking clinging to me. Her heart hammers against my chest, her breath coming out in sharp, shallow gasps. It’s almost like I can feel her heat pulsing, a new wave building…

I work my way down Rose’s fucking perfect body. Press my mouth on her throat. Lick her collarbone. Lap at the curve of her breast. Then I take her nipple between my lips, gently first, then harder when her hips buck, her fingers tighten in my hair, and she makes a sound that I want carved into my tombstone.

“Kael…” Her voice is fucking destroyed. “I need, I don’t know what I need, I’ve never done, this is my first…”

“I know.” I press my mouth to the center of her chest. Right over her racing heart. “I got you, my Rose.”