Starting at her nipple, he followed the line of flames around and back to her shoulder, her spine. Each tiny flame burst into color, life, as he touched them. her body instinctively responding to the call of his.
He felt his own branding burn on his skin and he relished the feel, because it marked them as one. It joined them as nothing else ever could.
Bending his head to her breast, Torin let his tongue trace the same trail his fingers had moments before. She sighed at the contact and held his head to her breast, hungry for more.
He gave her what she craved. What they both craved.
“Torin,” she whispered, “you make me feel so much.”
His hands moved over her skin, tracing every line, every curve and he felt his heart swell in his chest. She was everything and more to him. She had no idea what he would do for her. What he would sacrifice for her.
To save this witch, he would surrender the world if he had to. Because without her, he was nothing. Without her, there was only the loneliness of centuries past. The misery of knowing what he had found only to lose it.
Her hands slid up and down his back, then his chest, stroking the branding tattoo until the lines of each flame burned with a fiery red light and he felt the heat of every one of those flames licking at him.
She stroked him, reaching down between their bodies to wrap her fingers around his hard thickness. Sliding her hand gently up and down, stroking the tip of him until he was forced to hiss in breath after breath in a gritty determination to hold on. To not claim the release she was bent on giving him.
At last, though, he couldn’t take her touch without the risk of exploding, so he pulled her hand free of him and smiled down into her emerald green eyes. “Not yet, Shea. There is much I wish to do to you. For you.”
“You give to me all the time, Torin,” she said, arching off the bed toward him, needing the feel of his skin on hers as badly as he did.
“And it will continue,” he vowed. “I will always put you first above all others. Your happiness means more to me than anything.”
She stilled and looked deeply into his eyes. “You do make me happy, Torin. Happier than I ever thought I would be. After Aunt Mairi died, I was so alone and so scared. I never imagined I could feel like this. That I would find purpose again. That I would find you.”
He kissed her then, long and deep and hard. Dragging that moment on for a small eternity because the taste of her was staggering to him. But there was more he wanted, needed, to taste.
Sliding along her body, he caressed her skin, kissed every inch of her as he worked his way down, past her breasts, her abdomen, to the very heart of her. He parted her thighs with the touch of his hand. She opened for him eagerly, willingly. He dipped first one finger, then two, into her hot depths and watched her face as she lifted her hips into his hand. The mating tattoo burned a dark, bright red around her breast and an answering fire sizzled on his own skin.
He felt the mark chasing down along his spine and knew that Shea was experiencing the same. The brand was nearing completion and now it would burn fiercely whenever they came together. A reminder, he thought, of what they had earned. What they had become.
Moving now, Torin knelt between her thighs and watched her smile as she lifted her hips to welcome his body. But he wanted something more from her first. Wanted to take and give and feel her shatter.
Scooping his hands under her behind, he lifted her off the bed and held her, suspended. “Drape your legs over my shoulders, Shea.”
“Torin . . .” She bit her lip and did as he asked.
He kept his gaze locked with hers as he lowered his head to taste her most intimate flesh. At the first swipe of his tongue, Shea groaned aloud and took a sharp, quick breath. That soft sigh of sound fed the desire pumping through him.
Torin licked and tasted and nibbled at her core until she was breathing in ragged gasps and twisting in his hold. She rocked her hips wildly, desperate for the release he kept pushing her toward. She