Brave the Tempest (Cassandra Palmer #9) - Karen Chance Page 0,94

matter the time or incarnation.

And just like that, I felt my pulse settle down a little.

Then I saw it again: the mischievous grin of that boy I’d met in Wales. “It’s all right,” he told me. “I understand.”

“You do?”

“Of course. Many have found it to be somewhat . . . intimidating.”

“Intimidating?”

“My size.”

I stared at him, caught completely off guard. “I—what?” And then I realized what he’d said, and I felt my cheeks flush. “How many?”

The grin tilted toward smug. “I’ll give you a moment to adjust, shall I?”

“I don’t need a moment!”

“You know, there’s no shame in admitting—oof,” he said, as I rolled us, while kissing him furiously to shut him up, because it was either that or beat him to death. And I discovered that anger and passion weren’t a bad combination.

Not a bad combination at all, I thought, sitting up and finding my seat. And proving my point by getting used to the feel of him, stretching me, filling me from a new angle. My breath caught a little, but it was a good ache, and I slapped at his hands when he looked concerned and moved to reposition me.

“Not a chance,” I told him, and inwardly grinned at his surprise when I started to move, biting my lip a little because he was big, not that I’d ever admit it, and it had been a while. But the burn felt good, too, a strange mixture of pain and pleasure, like the look on Pritkin’s face as he stared up at me.

I held his eyes as I rode him, feeling self-conscious at first, although that didn’t last long. Callused hands came up again, but only to my hips to steady me and help me find a rhythm. Until I pushed them down to the bed and put my knees on top of them.

“No touching until I say.”

The lips quirked slightly, but he stayed where I’d put him. He was obviously humoring me. Yeah, keep thinking that, big boy, I thought, and got to work.

I don’t know where the idea came from. Maybe the hot green gaze that followed my every movement but couldn’t actually touch me. Only it felt like a touch; I swear it had both weight and heat. And I suddenly thought, why not do the touching for him?

So everywhere he looked, my hands followed. He caught on to the game fast; I guess there’s not many that an incubus doesn’t know. But it seemed that I’d picked one he liked, because his gaze fairly sizzled over my skin.

Here a finger followed a collarbone, causing me to remember how he’d once traced it with his tongue. There a bead of sweat rolled down the valley of my sternum, only to get trapped by my naval as I undulated above him. Here I steadied myself with hands on his chest, stroking hard pecs and straining abs for a moment before removing them again, because I never said I couldn’t touch. There I cupped my breasts—

And Pritkin’s eyes flashed purely black for a second.

Ahh, I thought so. He’d always liked my breasts, even when we were pretending to hate each other. I’d had to quit wearing a certain tank top, which was cut slightly lower and was slightly thinner than my other ones, because he’d stop interacting with me at all when I had it on. Other times he’d made comments I’d brushed off at the time, but seeing the heat in that gaze, I was pretty sure they’d been deliberate.

Let’s test a theory, I thought, and brushed my nipples playfully with my thumbs. He made a noise from somewhere lower than his chest that resonated through me, making me bite my lip. And tighten around him for a moment, before remembering who was supposed to be in charge here. And then I did it again, and again, until I was straight up playing with them, until they were rosy pink and fully erect and I was pulling sound after sound out of him, until he was trying to come off the bed and I was having to grind my knees down to keep him in place.

Until the game had turned into something else entirely.

I stared down at him, quietly amazed by the look in his eyes, the one I’d never thought I’d see. The naked hunger, the raw desire, and something else that made my stomach twist and my heart clench. And my body flash hot and liquid and strangely bold.

I finished off with a butterfly brush