The Queen's Line (Inheritance of Hunger #1) - Kathryn Moon Page 0,60
scream and a laugh rising out of my throat. The water was a cool caress against my back, until it started to swallow me and Cosmo at my side, his arm still wrapped around my waist.
"Ugh, pleh! Hang on!" Cosmo said, coughing water out. I could just barely feel the resistance of a mossy stone under my toes, with water up to my ears, but Cosmo was tall enough to slip and walk and pull me forward to the bank.
"Geese are monsters," he gasped.
I coughed and spat, but the lake water was reasonably clear. "We were warned," I croaked, reaching under the water and wrestling with too much fabric around my legs.
Cosmo snorted, lifting me up with both arms, my dress sopping and heavy, pouring water back to the surface as he grunted and hauled us to shore. My giggles broke free next, and he grinned at me, black hair hanging around his ears in sodden curls.
"I hope you weren't very hungry," I said, grinning and looking back over Cosmo's shoulder to see the geese rescuing what was left of our picnic as it bobbed up from beneath the boat.
"I'll be fine. What of your hunger?" he asked, the double meaning hovering in the question. Cosmo sank to his knees at the very edge of the water and set me down in a soft nest of grass and sand. He hovered next to me, undoing the buttons of his soaked vest and peeling it off his shoulders. The white fabric of his shirt was now transparent, and I admired the familiar path of dark hair over his chest and down his stomach.
I swallowed and struggled to my own knees, pulling wet fabric away from my legs. "I am…in need of assistance in getting out of this dress," I said.
I liked Cosmo's smile; there was something secretive about it, as if the expression was entirely for my own eyes whether we were alone or not. He reached out, hooking his index finger in the collar of my dress, his touch sliding down between my breasts and yanking me forward. My balance failed, and I fell into Cosmo's chest, my face turned up to his as his mouth slanted over mine, tongue licking in immediately. I moaned into the kiss, my hands grabbing onto Cosmo's shoulders. There was a slightly bitter flavor between us, the taste of the lake, but it melted away the longer we kissed until there was only Cosmo and berries and honey.
His finger had retreated, and I wanted it and more back on my skin, until a moment later there was a tug on the back of my dress. I gasped as Cosmo pulled away, and then stiffened at the ripping down my spine and the sticky cling of fabric loosened. Cosmo grinned at me and then revealed a penknife in his hand.
"I'll find you new ribbons to lace with," he said, and then he flipped the knife closed and began to pull the dress off of me.
No one had ever gotten that close to me with a knife in my life, and there was no logical reason for my heart to beat faster and my blood to run hotter, but I moaned as Cosmo peeled me out of the gown.
"Are you going to ruin my corset too?" I asked, wondering if I sounded as hopeful as I felt.
"I don't know why you bother with them, you're perfectly made as it is," Cosmo said, staring down at the swell of my small breasts against the binding of my corset.
I wiggled my hips out of the skirt, falling back into the grass as Cosmo pulled his shirt off over his head. Sunlight wove its way through the gnarled branches of the dead oak above us, freckling over his tanned skin and catching on the droplets of water that clung to him like kisses. I gaped at him, and he laughed as he caught me at it.
"Do you really want me to cut it?" he asked, nodding down at my corset before scooping up my dress and tossing it away from us.
I raised my knees, planting my heels on either side of Cosmo, watching the instantaneous flick of his eyes move down to my center. "I do," I said.
Cosmo's lips curled, and his eyes traveled back up to mine. "Is my muse a little attracted to danger?"
"Maybe. Or I am simply impatient to have your mouth on my breasts," I said, flush flooding my cheeks.