“Csitri is”—he frowned—“little one. But affectionate.”
Teagan didn’t ever want to think of herself as “little,” but she liked the affectionate part and she couldn’t deny that beside him, she was on the smaller side. Okay, maybe beside most people, but still. “And the other part?”
“Ainaak terád vigyázak.” He mulled that over for a minute. “I have difficulty translating that properly, but it means you are in my care. Always in my care. I do not have the proper English words to convey the full meaning.”
He sounded distracted. She was totally okay with him being distracted. The healing warmth penetrated deeper, right into the muscles and tendons she’d strained. She could feel the difference already. She also preferred that he wasn’t paying close attention to her reaction to his touch.
The longer he was close to her, the more her breath stayed captured in her lungs. Even her thighs seemed to dance with fingers of desire moving up and down them from his voice alone. The heat between her legs increased and she felt her womb pulse and her feminine channel go damp with need.
It was beautiful. Perfect. Scary strong. Very intense. She’d gone from not being able to react physically to a man to wanting to turn her head and see if his mouth tasted as good as it looked. She also wanted to dance a little jig or something to celebrate that she wasn’t totally frigid.
His breath hitched. She felt the warmth on the nape of her neck as he swept her hair out of his way. The pulse in her throat jumped. Throbbed. She reached up and covered it because, just for a moment, she felt his mouth there, against her skin, his tongue sliding across her pulse. She knew it wasn’t real, because his mouth was close to the nape of her neck—she could feel his breath. Still, she captured the sensual feeling of his tongue over her pulse with the palm of her hand and just held it there, pressing it into her skin.
She hoped the memory burned deep so when she went to bed, she could take that with her and keep scary dreams of Armend at bay with Andre’s presence.
“I need your hand, sivamet.”
Even as he told her, he already had taken possession of it, so very gently. His touch was a caress, and it sent a shiver of awareness down her spine. He examined the raw fingers, smoothing them out in his palm. Her hand looked very small inside of his. The pads of his fingers stroked over the raw wounds. Her toes actually curled, and she felt her very core spasm and spill damp heat between her legs.
Teagan nearly jerked her hand free, but his fingers closed around hers and he brought them to his mouth before she could do a thing. She was so mesmerized, she stared at him over her shoulder as her fingers disappeared into the warm haven of his mouth. The reaction of her body was shocking. She could have sworn she had a mini-orgasm just from the sensation of his tongue stroking caresses over her fingers.
She couldn’t move. She should have—but she couldn’t. Her entire body was on fire and that was just . . . remarkable. She didn’t want the feeling to go away, yet at the same time, she didn’t want this strange bear of a man, so gentle and kind, to know what she was feeling.
Her hand tingled, and then grew warm. She felt his tongue slide over each individual finger a second and then third time. Each slow, sensual movement sent desire knifing through her body. It took a moment for her thought processes to kick in.
Her brain felt slow and sluggish, dazed and mesmerized by the lines carved so deep in his handsome face. His hooded eyes filled with concentration, the blue so deep and true, she’d never seen such a pure color on anyone. He had to be the most sensual man in the world, and she was alone in a cave with him.
There might be something to vacation flings after all. She’d never understood the concept. It seemed so wrong, sharing your body with a stranger and walking away. She wanted intimacy and emotion. A connection beyond physical. She wanted everything—or nothing—with a man. She’d accepted, a long time ago, when her body didn’t respond to anyone, she was going to have nothing.
She took a breath and let it out to calm her wildly beating heart and maybe get air to her brain so she could actually think. He removed her fingers from his mouth, although he did so reluctantly, slowly, as if he didn’t want to. He held her hand up for his inspection, turning her fingers first one way and then the other.
Teagan stared at her hand. There no sign of injury; the skin had completely healed over the raw wounds where she had torn them. She held her other hand up for comparison. Both hands had suffered the same fate when she’d slipped off the rock with her foot and tried to hold on.
She loved climbing, but she seemed to have thin skin. She didn’t develop the necessary callouses the way others did.
“How did you do that?”
Looking at him over her shoulder as she was doing, she saw him in profile, and his eyelashes were outrageously long. His mouth was perfection. His nose straight and his jaw strong. She liked the scruff on his jaw and the blue of his eyes. She could stare at him for eternity and that wouldn’t be long enough.
“I have a healing agent in my saliva,” he said.
“Wow. That’s awesome. Amazing. I can’t do that, but it would come in handy when I climb. Maybe I should take you along so you can heal my hands after I tear them up again.” The words tumbled over one another. She couldn’t help herself. He had possession of her other hand and once again he was inspecting the damage.
Her stomach performed a slow somersault. A million butterflies took wing. Her feminine channel throbbed and pulsed. She stared at his face. God, he was just beautiful. The concentration gathered in his eyes as he focused completely on her injury was just plain sexy.
Once again he brought her hand toward his mouth. She held her breath. Waiting. Needing the touch of his mouth. The velvet rasp of his tongue. Without warning his lashes lifted and he looked straight into her eyes. Instantly, she had the sensation of drowning. She lost her breath and allowed herself to fall.
“Teagan.”
Just her name. That was all he whispered. The tone of his voice was a caress. Fingers moved over her bare skin, down her back, tracing her spinal cord. She swore she felt a light touch, but he hadn’t moved. He hadn’t relinquished possession of her hand.
She couldn’t look away from his eyes. The world was there. The entire world. Her mouth was suddenly dry, and she wanted desperately to touch him. Her palm itched with the need to run her hand over his heavy chest muscles.
Even as he stared into her eyes, he brought her fingers to his mouth and sucked on them. His tongue curled around each finger separately. It did something to her insides. She melted until she was soft and boneless—until there was nothing but Andre and his eyes and mouth and the scent of him surrounding her.
Teagan couldn’t have spoken if she wanted to. She was totally incapable of extracting her fingers from the heat of his mouth. It was so completely unlike her. She stared into his eyes and let herself just be with him. Connect to him. It was sexual—but so much more. She could live there with him. In that cave. A primitive world. Just as long as he was with her. It was crazy, but true.
She knew she was in danger. She knew the danger was not just to her heart. This man could take her soul if she let him—and she would let him if she stayed much longer. She had no idea why, but she felt the truth of it with every cell in her body.