Page 63 of Heart’s Rescue

I lean forward, pressing my lips to the ragged edge of his ear. Rowan makes a noise like a wounded animal, a soft sort of whimper, and I kiss him again. How wrong I’d been. There is nothing cold here, nothing at all like ice.

I follow the curve of his jaw with my lips, and Rowan rolls onto his back, letting me touch him everywhere. He pulls his shirt over his head and I run my fingers across his chest, exploring the scattering of hair, the hard white lines of scars. When I kiss them, his breath catches, and I feel the wild beating of his heart against my lips.

My cheeks burn as my fingers, wildly bold explorers now that we’re in the Lands Below, reach past the curve of his abdomen and drop to his hips. Rowan gasps when I trail my fingertips along the soft edge of his shorts, and I hesitate. I want to touch him, to touch him like he just touched me, but stars, I have no idea what I’m doing. I’ve never touched a man like that before; I’ve only ever bent over and received, as I’d thought was proper.

“May—” I begin. My voice trembles. “May I touch you?”

“Please.”

Rowan sounds breathless, like he’d just fought another void beast. He shifts in the bed roll, tugging his shorts down to join my silk underclothes. Then he smiles at me, his cheeks flushed and his eyes dancing.

“Or you could, you know, mount me,” he says.

It sounds like a joke. It has to be a joke, but something inside me catches on his words and howls with desperate hunger. I’ve never done anything like that, never even heard of it, but oh, by the stars, now I want it. Rowan grins like he can read the wild hunger on my face.

“Really,” he says. “Go ahead. You set the pace.”

I bite my lip, hesitating. I’m not sure where to even begin. But Rowan reaches for me, wraps his hand around my neck, and pulls me into another deep, fiery kiss, and wild Arryn takes over, Arryn from the Lands Below. I wrap my legs around Rowan like I had that first night, the night when I held a knife to his throat.

Only now we’re both naked, and his skin is hot against mine, and I can feel the pulse of his cock against my sex. I move against him; Rowan's body pulls tight between my legs. Oh, stars, the power of it, of having this man between my legs, his body hard and tight and waiting.

I suck in a breath and rub against him, pushing harder and harder, and then he’s inside of me. I gasp. Rowan is holding very, very still, breathing in quick, shallow little puffs. I can feel him straining against me, taut with the pressure of holding back. Of letting me set the pace.

I moan and sink down further, and Rowan fills me. I’m waiting for the pain, the sharp discomfort that always comes with being entered, the dull ache whenever my body is violated, but my breath catches and I realize we’re already joined, we’re fully joined, and stars, there’s no pain. There’s only pleasure, a sense of completion, and—

“More,” I whisper, hardly aware of what I’m saying.

Rowan trails his hands up my thighs and wraps them around my hips. When he moves inside me, it’s so good I cry out. He freezes.

“D-Don’t stop,” I say. It’s almost a whimper.

He rocks inside me again, and this time I move against him, and it’s so good I feel like I’m going to cry. I didn’t know it could feel good. I didn’t know—

“Fuck,” Rowan growls, his voice so low and viscous I can feel it inside me. “Fuck, you feel good.”

I open my lips and laugh, and it’s a wild thing, this noise that escapes me. It’s as wild as a void beast. I’m rocking my hips against him now, grinding into him, riding him like an animal. Rowan takes a hand from my hip and moves it between my legs, and I cry out, hard and sharp, as he finds that spot again, that secret, hidden spot I thought no one else would ever uncover. He holds his finger against it, there but not pressing, letting me come to him.

“Fuck, yeah,” Rowan says, growling and panting. “That’s it. Take it. Take what you need.”

Take? What I need?

In my entire life, no one has ever told me to take anything.

I close my eyes, throw my head back, and take what Rowan is giving.