hands of the Night herself. But looking into his eyes, down to the smooth curve of his parted lips, she realized she wanted him.
O, Goddess help her, but she did …
The coat slipped to the floor.
“ASK ME TO STOP.”
But she didn’t. She didn’t breathe a word. And then he was kissing her, wrapping her in his embrace and crushing her to him, and it was all Mia could do to remember to breathe at all. She found her hands moving of their own accord, running over the smooth hardness of his arms, across his shoulders as he scooped her up off the ground. She wrapped her legs around his waist, ankles locked at the small of his back, their kiss growing deep enough to drown in. Shivers ran all the way down her spine as she felt his tongue brush against hers, the warmth of the fire and the dark flame inside him sending goosebumps thrilling over her whole body. His lips were as soft as they’d ever been, his body just as warm. His mouth tasted of smoke, his scent, the perfume of burning autumn leaves. She sighed as his lips broke away from hers, left a burning trail of kisses across her cheek, down her throat.
I can’t do this …
His lips roamed lower, across her collarbone, like fire and ice all at once. Her skin felt alight with it, that dark flame in her chest and between her legs only growing hotter as his mouth reached her breasts, as he took one stone-hard nipple into his mouth, teasing with his tongue. Mia sighed as her head drifted back, entwining her fingers in the soft shadows of his hair and dragging him in, urging him on as she felt the soft press of his teeth, yes, yes, head spinning, chest heaving, belly filled with butterflies all at the wing.
“O, Goddess…”
I can’t let this happen …
He sank down onto the furs, carrying her effortlessly. Her legs were still wrapped around him, the firelight crackling brighter beside them. She found herself atop him, half-naked, her tongue in his mouth, his hands on her waist. Goddess, she wanted to suck him. Fuck him. Feeling his pulse beneath her hands, grinding into the impossible hardness she felt at his crotch, her fingertips tracing the furrows and valleys of muscle at his chest, down his stomach. She groaned just like he did, rolling her hips, aching with the feel of him against her and the almost nothing between them. Lust inside her. Desire for the darkness inside him. A truedark hunger, born in the lightless black, so vast and empty she wondered if he could ever truly fill her. But Goddess …
O, sweet, merciful Goddess, she wanted him to fucking try.
She was losing herself in it. The feel of him, the taste, the familiar shapes, carved anew by the Mother of Night. Falling down into the need of him, aching from the touch of him, wanting to forget and remember and for a tiny moment, simply enjoy being lost inside it, with him inside her.
Lost.
“’Tis better to have loved and lost…”
“Whoever said that never loved someone the way I love you.”
She heard the words in her head.
Remembered the look in the girl’s eyes.
Her girl’s.
Two halves warring within me.
His hands on her body, his lips on her skin.
And the one that will win is the one that I feed.
“No,” she whispered.
He sat up, fingertips roaming her back, mouth roaming her breasts, his ink-black hands taking hold of her hips and helping her sway …
“Tric, stop,” she whispered. “We have to stop.”
He looked up into her eyes, his own shining with lust. Pulling apart from him felt like tearing herself in two. The want was so real, it was a physical pain. Burning like fire in her veins. The room growing hot, and hotter still.
“MIA—”
Without warning, Mia saw a flash of searing light in the hearth beside them. Felt a vicious, scorching heat. She gasped as a tongue of flame flashed out from the fireplace, lashed against her leathers, the fur they lay on. She rolled away with a black curse, the fire taking root on the fur and spreading in a blinking.
The blaze was hungry, furious, burning with an intensity fiercer than it had any right to. Streaking along the wolfskin, right toward Mia. Tric scrambled to his feet and flipped the furs over, smothering the blaze, stamping on it like serpents. Mia ran to her desk with a cry, grabbed a carafe of water.