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Defying everything I told myself, how badly I need to stay away from her, I do the fucking opposite.

I step toward her and cup her face in my hand. Her eyes flutter closed at my touch and the lantern at her feet throws its light up at us from below.

I’m about to cross a line I don’t think I’ll come back from.

And I don’t care.

Chapter

Eighteen

SATURNA

Baz’s hand’s at the side of my face.

I don’t know what he’s going to do with it, and then I do, because his mouth’s on mine before I’ve finished the thought.

The kiss isn’t the kiss on the sea wall. That one was still wary, still tentative, at least at first. This one is pure decision. His mouth is hot and open and wet and he’s already pulling me into him with his hand at the back of my neck, and all composure goes out of me in one breath.

I kiss him back. It would be impossible not to.

I grab onto the front of his coat and I pull, and he comes down fast and hard and his hands are everywhere at once, at my waist, my hip, the small of my back, pressing me into him so I can feel the whole length of him through the wool of his coat and my dress. He’s rock hard as he pushes himself against me. Hard and somewhat intimidating.

But I’ve always been up for a challenge.

With a grunt, he walks me backward until my rear is pressed against a headstone, and he pushes me into it with his hips against mine and his mouth still on mine, and his hand comes up to my throat, his thumb at my jaw and his fingers at the side of my neck, holding me where he wants me. It’s a possessive gesture and, from the way the heat warms between my legs, one that I apparently like.

“Baz…” I whisper against his lips

“Hmm,” he says, his mouth now at the corner of mine, then my jaw, then the spot under my ear he seems to love so much.

“We’re outside,” I manage to say through a gasp as his teeth nip at my earlobe, sending another current of want through me.

“Are we now?” He’s amused.

“If anyone⁠—”

He kisses me again before I can finish, deeper and wetter, his tongue seeking mine, a kiss that makes my toes curl in my boots. He knows and he doesn’t care and in this moment I don’t care either. It’s this recklessness, this wildness, that’s stirring something in the depths of me, my desire rising.

His mouth goes down to the side of my throat and he bites, not hard but hard enough, and a moan slips through my lips. He does it lower, at the hollow of my throat, and I don’t bother holding back this time. His fingers trail along my exposed collarbone, warm against the cold, sliding down.

He finds my breast through the dress. His palm closes over it. His thumb goes over the nipple through the fabric and I arch into him, and he makes a sound against my throat that goes straight down the inside of me.

“Fuck,” he says. “The way you…”

He doesn’t finish. His hand’s gone from my breast down my side and found the hem of my dress, and he’s bunching it up in his fist and lifting it, and the cold of the cemetery air hits my legs. His hand’s under the hem and sliding up the outside of my thigh, and I’m shaking before he’s gotten anywhere near the top.

His fingers find the inside of my thigh.

They slide up, up, with warm calloused palms.

He finds me wet.

A low, rough sound rumbles in his chest, the look on his brow one of asking for mercy. He puts his forehead against mine and his fingers slide against me, slow and deliberate, and my knees start to shake. I have to lean back against the headstone for support.

“You sorceress.”

His fingers do it again.