Page 89 of Crown of the Dunes

She sighed as I ran my fingers through her braid, untangling it so her hair fanned out around one side of her head. Then I brushed over the other side of her scalp, scratching through the dark hair that was just beginning to grow back there.

I straddled her thighs. Tracing one hand down her chest, over her sternum, and toward the planes of her stomach, I lifted the other to my mouth to pull my glove off with my teeth.

Her breath caught, and I hesitated.

“Keep them on,” she said, her voice already hoarse.

The fire in my belly flared brighter, and the bond between us shivered with tension. I removed my finger from my mouth, instead lowering it to her face and pressing it against her lower lip. Her mouth opened easily for me, and I dipped the tip of my gloved finger into her mouth, pressing the leather-clad pad down on her tongue.

“Did you ever wonder what it would be like for me to touch you like this, back before you knew my name—before you knew who I was underneath the mask?”

I removed my finger from her lips in favor of stroking my palms over her ribs and down her sides. Keera shuddered.

“You shared my dreams,” she breathed. “You know I did.”

Her own hands drifted up to pluck at my tabards, and I wasted no time stripping them off, so I was naked from the waist up. Then, I returned my gloved hands to their perusal of her skin. My fingers dipped into the hollow of her navel and traced over the soft swell of her hips, rounder now than they had been when we first met in a way that made my mouth go dry.

Instead of moving my hands to where I knew Keera wanted them, I instead placed them on her knees. She made a pained noise of frustration, only to cut it off with a gasp of pleasure as I dragged my gloved palms up her inner thighs.

“I thought you promised to lick me until I screamed,” she protested weakly, and I drank in the way she squirmed.

“And I make good on my promises,” I said. “But first, I want to make sure I feel every inch of you I can with these gloves that apparently you dreamed about me touching you with. I want them soaked in you.”

With that, I finally dipped my fingers into the dark curls at the apex of Keera’s thighs. The leather slipped over the wetness there, and I parted her folds easily.

She gasped and her back arched. A rush of sensation crashed down the tether in my mind—a frisson of pleasure and the forbidden foreignness of my gloves against her flesh. The way the stitching added delicious friction that made her hips buck up involuntarily against my touch.

Slowly, I circled her already dripping entrance with the tip of my finger, and a high-pitched whine escaped her lips—an uninhibited plea for more.

The thread of control inside me snapped. In one movement, I leaned forward to cover her sex with my mouth as I pressed my finger inside her. Instantly her hands flew to my hair, her fingers pulling at the strands to urge me on, but I needed no encouragement.

My world narrowed to the taste of her coating my lips and the way her thighs clenched and shivered around my ears. I had broken too many promises in my life—to lead the clans, to heal the desert, to not fall to the same weakness as my great-grandfather.

But this promise to make her come apart on my tongue? This one I could keep.

I pumped my fingers deeper as I licked her, reveling in the way her breath came in sharp pants, each one a choked off moan. She tried to lift her hips to grind against my face, but I placed my other hand between her hip bones, pinning her down so I could devour her as I pleased.

The air in the tent began to shiver and shudder with magic, but I did not abate, driving Keera toward the cliff of pleasure I felt through the tether in my mind.

Just as she reached the precipice, a shuddering groan escaped her lips.

“Erix.”

I growled in satisfaction against her center, and she tipped over the edge. I continued to work my fingers inside her and trace circles with my tongue even as the sensations barreling from her into my mind made me dizzy.

Finally, she pushed my head away from her core, and I didn’t resist, pulling my fingers from her sex with an obscene noise.

“You certainly know how to make me feel like a queen,” she panted. A thin sheen of sweat coated her skin, making her look like she was glowing in the dim light of the lantern in the corner. Her eyes were hooded in pleasure, but a smile danced at the edge of her lips.

“And I’m not done,” I promised, reaching for the ties of my pants. She didn’t hesitate to help me as I unlaced them, shoving them over my hips and down my thighs. I kicked them off impatiently, and my cock sprang free, nearly painful with my desire for her.

I took it in one hand, hissing as I spread the wetness that coated my gloves over it. Then, I fell forward on my elbows, caging Keera between my arms as I ground my length against the heat of her sex.

She lifted her hips to meet me, and I slid inside her waiting heat. I dropped my forehead to her own as I took a shuddering breath, desperately trying to keep ahold of my sanity as the lines between us blurred. The magic of the desert swirled between us and danced in the air as I drew out slowly only to plunge in again.

Wildness bubbled up in my veins, the same wildness I felt in Keera as she lifted her hips to meet mine.

“Maybe you aren’t a queen after all,” I said, gritting the words out as I propped myself up on one hand to get a deeper angle. “You’re so much more than that. A goddess. A pure force of nature.”