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“What are you doing?”
“Undressing for bed.”
“Oh no. You’re not sleeping naked with me.”
“I always sleep naked.”
I always had too, until I’d taken to wearing voluminous nightgowns to expose less publicly accessible skin to him. “This is not about comfort. I don’t much like sleeping in these nightgowns, but I’m lumping it. You can too.”
He frowned, but the playful gleam in his eyes gave him away. “This was not a part of the negotiation.”
“Neither was you dragging this monstrous bed into my tent. I think that’s a fair swap.”
“These pants are tight.”
Yes. Yes, I knew that. I also knew I really didn’t want to see, in the flesh, the equipment so clearly delineated by the black velvet material. He strolled over to me, almost stalking, hair sliding over his bare skin.
“You’re staring, Gwynn. Would you like to touch?”
I had to swallow to get the words out. “No, thank you.”
He took my hand anyway and laid it on his chest, satin hot under my fingers. “Touch me. You’ve had other men. You could have me. I am no monster. Just a flesh-and-blood man.”
“Your heartbeat says otherwise.” I glanced up into his face, the inhuman eyes, the tangled pattern that was and was not part of him.
“Is that what bothers you? That I’m not human?” He left my hand where it was and snaked an arm around my waist, to press against the small of my back, pulling me closer. Not quite pressing against me. His hair fell around us in a cape when he lowered his head to whisper against my cheek. “I can promise we would fit.”
“I’ve told you my objections.”
His skin was inches from my lips and the scent of him made my mouth water, salt and cinnamon and man. The three-four rhythm of his alien heart soothed me even as his highly charged proximity sent fine tremors of arousal through every nerve. No, I had no doubt we would fit. Or that it would be phenomenal.
“I noticed,” he murmured, holding us still in that position, as if he could sense how much I longed to close that distance, “that among your objections, you did not list the fear that I would lock you in a tower and make you into a ‘Rapunzel fuck-toy,’ I believe your words were.”
I snorted with laughter at the English words coming out of his mouth. “I may or may not have been kind of pissed off when I said that.”
“So you trust me that much, at least?”
I backed off enough to study his face, indulging myself by running my hand up his enticing chest, the strong line of his collarbone to his cheek, the edges of the black lines indiscernible from the normal skin. “Maybe I just trust that I could get myself out of it.”
He smiled, a thin-lipped promise of dark delights. “Or that you would enjoy struggling against any bonds I put you in.”
I ignored the heat that flared in me at the suggestion, but he smelled it in me—my thoughts perhaps too loud with this intimacy.
“Touch me, lovely Gwynn.”
“I am.”
“No. Touch me, here.” Slowly he let go of my back and took my hand from his cheek. He held my gaze mesmerized and drew my hand back down his chest and abdomen, to his waistline and below. His ink-dark pupils dilated, nearly swallowing the fulminous blue of his eyes, as he laid my hand over his velvet-clad cock.
It jumped beneath my fingers, long and steel-hard. I should have known it would be long, as all his limbs were. Even in this upside-down world, some laws of physiognomy applied.
Rogue closed his eyes and shuddered, seeming overcome. Thrilled to have him at my mercy for a change, I stroked him. He fisted his hands by his sides, threw back his head, exposing the line of his throat, and hummed in pleasure, the sound becoming nearly a song of words.
“Ah, my lovely Gwynn, I need you so.”
I stroked the hard line of him once more, memorizing the feel and shape, then let go and stepped back. His gaze snapped down to mine, hard and bright.
“Why did you stop?”
