Road To Fire (Broken Crown Trilogy #1) - Maria Luis Page 0,91

you telling me that I was lacking in that department.”

“I have the right to change my mind at any time, Mr. Priest. It’s a woman’s prerogative—or hadn’t you heard?”

Laughter, unfamiliar but true, reverberates in my chest.

If it were possible for her smile to widen any more, her cheeks might crack in two. “You should do that more often,” she says softly, her gaze guileless as she stares at me. “You’re handsome as it is when you’re snarling and acting like a complete wanker, but your laugh?” She presses a hand to her heart. “It sinks in here, like I can feel your heat even though we aren’t touching.”

Everything in me grows still. “Isla, you don’t need to lie. I know that I’m not . . . that—”

“No. You don’t get to tell me how I should feel.”

The laughter dies as I swallow past the sudden boulder in my throat. Awkwardness—that damned fumbling schoolboy syndrome—returns swiftly, like a punch to the gut. I’ve torn apart families, I’ve put my body on the line of duty more times than I can count. Savage, they call me. But in this, with Isla, I don’t feel like Saxon Priest, Holyrood spy.

I’m a Godwin again, grasping hope with both hands and feeding it life, even if it leaves me completely exposed.

Gruffly, I ask, “And how do you feel?”

She approaches me on silent feet cushioned by the carpet, her hand already outstretched to settle on my hip the second she steps in close. Her face tips back, so much trust lighting her expression that my mouth turns dry. Quietly, she confesses, “Like if you tucked me into a dark room, I’d always be able to find you. Deep, raspy. Magnetic. And I’d follow that sound, tethered to it like a string that can’t be snipped, to a man whose heart beats in time to a rhythm meant only for me.”

I don’t wait.

Don’t hesitate.

I take it—her.

My fingers sink into her thick, still-damp hair, cradling her to me, and then I brush my lips over hers. A second kiss that feels like the first all over again. Or maybe that’s how it’s meant to be with the woman who’s singlehandedly battering down every one of my walls. Where it could be the hundredth kiss or the thousandth, but still tastes like the first.

I wouldn’t know.

But I lean into this one like it very well might be my last, my only, a kiss meant to carry me for whatever years I have left.

I drag Isla closer, aligning her chest with mine. Breathe in her scent as my tongue flicks out against the seam of her lips to demand entry. A feminine whimper breaks from her, and I bask in the sound. That whimper is for me. Awe coils with desire in my veins, quickening my pulse even as I tug on her hair to tip her head farther back, crushing my mouth down over hers like she’s mine to devour, now, tomorrow, forevermore.

Another small moan. Her fingers dance over my hip. She rocks in my embrace, swaying closer still.

In film, couples always seem to keep their eyes closed during a kiss like it’s some rudimentary rule that to taste fully, you need to be blanketed in darkness. But I’ve spent a lifetime in hiding—within Holyrood and London, with women who’d rather fuck a lamppost than an ugly son of a bitch like me—and I won’t do it here, not with Isla.

So, I watch.

I watch her lids flutter when I graze my teeth over her bottom lip, nipping sharply at the sensitive flesh, and I watch her forehead crease when I delve deeper, raking my mouth over hers and thrusting my tongue into her mouth with all-out possession. Her hands jump to my chest, clutching the fabric of my shirt, and there’s a moment—brief, paralyzing—when I’m convinced that I’ve been too rough, too demanding, too me.

Only, she doesn’t push me away.

No, she stands on her toes and pulls me closer and moans deep in her throat, needy, appreciative.

Yes. Yes.

I skate one hand south, to the space between her shoulder blades. Keep her locked against me, for better or worse. Our tongues tangle, dueling for control, neither of us willing to concede defeat. My fingers drift down, down, down, until I’m cradling the curve of her ass in one palm and groaning at the feel of her in my arms. And when she reaches up to cup my face—sweet, so fucking sweet—I growl my approval into her mouth and feel her