you required of me,” she managed to return with nary a betraying tremble in her words. “What more do you want?”
“I want to look at you and to know you are mine. You are so bloody beautiful, do you know that?” His words held a note of reluctance, as if he hated allowing her to know she affected him.
He thought her beautiful?
“The Duchess of Longleigh is beautiful,” she said. “I am not.”
“No.” He shook his head slowly, moving toward her with steady, deliberate steps. “She is a faded comparison. The two of you are akin to fire and water. One could quench a thirst, and the other could burn a man alive.”
“Water is deadly as well,” she could not help but to remind him, even as she wondered which of the two elements he thought she was, compared to his ethereal former paramour. “Water can drown you.”
“Water is safer than fire.” He stopped before her. “You can swim through it for a time, if you must. Fire will consume you in seconds.”
“And which am I?” she dared to ask. “Fire or water?”
“Fire, Callie darling.” He ran one long, wicked finger over her lips. “Always, always fire.”
She parted her lips, and his finger dipped into her mouth. The invasion was strangely erotic. She instinctively sucked.
“Damn,” he muttered. “You are a dream, Lady Sinclair. A dream that emerged from a nightmare.”
He withdrew his finger, and she pressed a kiss to the fleshy pad, feeling as if she were a different woman entirely now. She had always been bold and eccentric—at least, in the wake of Simon’s death, she had—but the way she felt with Sin was different. He made her feel powerful and reckless and strong and wanted.
He made her feel desirable.
“I thought you said I was fire,” she whispered, locking gazes with him and commending herself to the moment, to the spirits of wickedness and truth mingling in the air all around them.
“You are a bloody inferno,” he said, sounding as breathless as she was. “And I have never wanted to be consumed by flame more.”
That sounded desperately familiar.
He traced his wet finger over her lips, then dragged it down her throat, following his progress with his intense stare. He watched her as if she were the most glorious sight he had ever beheld. As if she were riveting.
“I love the way you look at me,” she said, then inwardly kicked herself for revealing so much to him.
Too much.
Too soon.
“Mmm?” His approving hum made her pulse between her thighs as he continued his light, teasing touch. “And how do I look at you, little wife?”
His finger trailed over her clavicle, then over her shoulder, before proceeding in a languorous caress down her arm. She had never before realized her elbow could feel so alive aside from the times she had inadvertently thwacked it upon a hard surface. But this was new. His finger swirled around it, circling.
“You did not answer me,” he reminded her, still working his torture upon that most unlikely part of her body.
How could she unravel by a mere touch on her elbow? She did not know. All she knew was that his finger was lightly swirling over her flesh, over her bone, making her ache there and everywhere else.
Especially between her thighs.
“You look at me as if you want to consume me,” she whispered.
His finger left her elbow at last, gliding down her forearm in a barely there touch that made her wild. He took her hand in his and brought her palm to his mouth, kissing her there. Slowly. His tongue flicked against her skin, tracing the lines, tickling and teasing all at once.
Another kiss, and then he raised his head, his gaze frank. “That is exactly what I want to do to you. I want to lick you until you come. I want to taste you everywhere. And then I want to bury myself inside you and get lost in your flames. In your sweet, decadent heat. In your tight, delicious cunny that is all mine.”
His revelations shocked her. Exhilarated her. For she felt the same way. He astounded her, made her feel a depth of emotion and passion she had not believed she would ever experience again. And if she were completely, brutally honest with herself, she would acknowledge that the love she had shared with Simon had never been this intense, this profound.
Her love with Simon had been sweet.
Effortless.
They had never shared more than kisses.
The way she felt for Sin was…different. Deeper, darker,