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Cedric’s pleasured moan and the feel of his strong hands gripping her thighs drew her back to the matter at hand.

Elyria squealed as she felt a quick moment of weightlessness. Cedric had lifted her straight up in the air above him—stars above, when had he gotten so strong?—simultaneously sliding down onto his back once more. And when she felt the mattress under her again, her knees digging into its plush surface, she was sitting on her knight’s face.

The shock of it pushed the breath clean from Elyria’s lungs.

She braced her hands against the woven-branch headboard that lay against the wall, staring down at him with wide eyes.

Cedric, for his part, looked . . . pleased.

A slow, dangerous smile curved his mouth as his hands slid up her thighs, reverently brushing over her scars. Then they moved to the top of her ass, digging in just enough to make her gasp.

“Comfortable?” he asked mildly.

A laugh burst from her lips. “Are you?”

His answering chuckle vibrated straight through her. “Oh, don’t you dare worry about me, Trouble. I’m exactly where I want to be.”

Elyria’s laugh turned breathless, disbelieving, as Cedric tilted his head to nip at the sensitive skin on the inside of her thigh. The thin fabric of her nightdress was pushed up around her hips, baring all of her to him.

“You didn’t bother with undergarments tonight, I see,” he murmured.

“What can I say? I had high hopes.” She grinned down at him. “Plus, I thought I’d save the poor Elderglade seamstresses the embarrassment of me having to explain why yet another pair of my underthings had been torn entirely to shreds.”

“So considerate of you,” he said, turning his head and placing a kiss right over the bundle of nerves at the top of her cunt.

The contact sent a jolt straight through Elyria’s spine. Her head tipped back, and she inhaled sharply when Cedric ran his tongue straight up her center. He groaned against her heat, and the combination of the sound in her ears and the vibration against her core was nearly as orgasmic as each one of his long, torturous licks.

Elyria’s fingers curled around the woven branches of the headboard. The wood creaked under the pressure of her grip, just as Cedric’s own grip dug into her ass, pulling her down and centering her fully over his wicked mouth.

“Stars above,” she murmured into the ether. Her hips moved involuntarily, the light dusting of morning stubble on his jaw scraping deliciously against her inner thighs as she rode his face.

She was relatively certain that air had to be an elusive commodity for him like this, but, hey, if this was how the man wanted to perish, who was she to deny him? Her knight devoured her like he had been starving his entire life. He feasted.

Elyria rocked against him, unable to stop herself, chasing the sensation as his grip flexed, holding her exactly where he wanted her. Exactly where she needed to be. And it wasn’t long before she was racing up, up, up that cliff, pleasure sparking hot and bright at the base of her spine, behind her belly button, spearing through her nerves.

She cried out, his name falling from her lips in a way that only made him moan deeper, more possessively. His grip—and his tongue—did not relent as she fell over the edge, spinning down, down, down into endless pleasure. Her body seized, tightened, and her breath caught in her chest. Then slowly—so slowly—she relaxed, until she thought she might melt right into him.

Cedric pulled his face back, adjusting her slightly so that he could look up at her. And when she gazed down, when his gold-ringed eyes met hers, Elyria’s breath was stolen for an entirely different reason.

There was just so much love there.

There was hunger still, yes—a dark, desirous want. But there was also fathomless adoration beaming back at her from him, from this man who had chosen her. Time and time again, he chose her. And every lingering doubt that had lodged itself in Elyria’s chest—every unspoken thought that she had somehow become less than she had been without her wings, that she was broken or incomplete—crumbled at the edges.

Cedric kept one hand on her hip and lodged the other under her thigh to lift her off him, setting her next to him on the bed. She was still panting, still trying to catch her breath, when he sat up and swiped his thumb over his bottom lip, then sucked the evidence of her pleasure from it.

“Cedric . . . ,” she warned, the sight making her core pulse. She leaned forward, catching his mouth in a bruising kiss. He met her instantly, his tongue sweeping inside her mouth, letting her taste herself on his tongue. She moaned into him, moving to wrap her arms around his neck, but his arms were faster. In an instant, she was flipped around, her knees still on the mattress, while one of Cedric’s hands gripped her breasts, pinning her back to his chest, his hard length pressing into her ass.

“Do you feel that?” he asked softly, dotting a series of kisses along her shoulders. He loosened his hold to peel her sleeping dress over her head and discard it on the floor.

“Is that a real question?” she asked breathlessly, utter relief soaring through her bones at the meeting of skin against skin when she leaned back again. “I don’t think it’s possible not to feel that.” She wiggled her hips for effect.

He huffed a whispered laugh against the shell of her ear, and she shivered. “Not that.” His kisses were a searing brand as they trailed across Elyria’s spine, then moved down, as though he meant to paint every inch of her back with his touch.

She tensed as he passed her shoulder blades.

Well, he didn’t pass them.

He lingered.