body, sculpted the contours of her soul rather than mere bits of flesh. With others, she was cool, remote — a guarded citadel. With him, every touch was lightning, every stroke of his tongue bringing the thunder of her own heart as her walls tumbled down.
“Nick,” she murmured as he pulled away.
“Still want to stop?”
She’d forgotten his ultimatum. “No. Just…don’t make me wait forever.”
He chuckled as he smoothed a bit of hair away from her face. “I can’t even if I wanted to.”
His hands had left her as he said this. She mourned the fading imprint of his hand on her torso and the disappearing sensation of his fingers pulling through her hair.
But he didn’t leave her alone in the dark. Something unfurled in her belly as he caught her up, his arm snaking under her derriere to lift her slightly off the bench. He dropped her again an instant later, but he had rearranged her nightgown, and her bare knees made direct contact with the subtly textured cushion.
She groped for his waist, tracing her fingers along his skin until she found the fastenings of his trousers. But as before, he stopped her. “Stop rushing, darling,” he said.
Then he dropped to his knees. Her hands, which moments before had nearly grazed his erection, came to rest on his shoulders instead. His palms slid up her thighs, pulling her nightgown up.
The painting in her mind remade itself. The serving girl became a queen; the sultan, a captive king, brought in to pay obeisance.
“Are you sure you aren’t Odysseus?” she asked, her voice shaky as his hands reached her waist. He could see all of her, laid bare before him, while she could see nothing of the thoughts on his face.
His thumbs caressed her, tracing a path to her navel. “Only if you’re Penelope, not Circe. Now hush, or you’ll miss the best part.”
She wanted to be his Penelope, the woman he’d fought the world to come home to. But she was no faithful wife. And his craftiness was Odyssean in its brilliance — but aimed toward revenge, not love.
He kissed her belly. “Stop thinking.” Then he kissed her inner thigh. The shadowed stubble of his cheek rubbed against her skin and made her shiver.
He kissed her other thigh. “Give in, Ellie. For five minutes, if you can’t give me an entire night.”
His words bound her to him, to the moment — to a world of darkness and brocade and his clever, clever mouth.
“Yes,” she whispered. She bowed her head as though to look at him, and her hair fell over her breasts. “Always yes.”
His mouth found her most private place, a dark echo of every kiss he’d given her in every lifetime that had come before. She pressed against him, wanting it, wanting him — wanting to see the contrast of his black hair against her pale skin. But in the dark, all she could have was the feel of his tongue and the heat of his mouth.
Surely he would burn her with it. He’d never done this to her before, not all those years ago when he treated her like a fragile statue he feared breaking. She gasped as he licked her — gasped again as he sucked the bud where all her pleasure was centered. Her hands found his head, burying themselves in his hair — part demand, part plea.
He responded in kind, wrapping an arm around her thighs, trapping her against him so she couldn’t move away. Every stroke of his tongue was a welcome torture. She throbbed as though her heart beat for him between her legs. She leaned back, not to escape — to admit that here, now, all that mattered was the point where their hungers fused them together.
Nick knew, somehow, what she needed — remembered the tempo she craved, even if he’d used his hands instead of his tongue when he’d taken her in the past. His strokes were sure, slowly building in speed; his arm was an iron band, as inescapable as any dream she’d had of him. She leaned even further back, until the strain in her thighs added to her need, until her hair fell free behind her. She couldn’t see, couldn’t analyze light and shadow and color.
Couldn’t search for darkness in Nick’s eyes.
Her mind gave her what her eyes could not — a swirl of color threaded through with the heat of his mouth and the texture of brocade. Her fingers tightened in his hair as her need approached pain.