The Warrior King (Inferno Rising #3) - Abigail Owen Page 0,78
forced himself to reason. “Rest and make decisions tomorrow.”
Meira’s chin wobbled, and he groaned a protest as he kept himself from pulling her into his arms. “You’re not sure if you can believe that I’ve chosen you. Are you?”
He wouldn’t lie to her. “This is happening too fast.”
“I know.”
“I won’t use you to buy my clan’s loyalty.”
Her lips twitched. “I’m the one propositioning you.” A blush bloomed in her cheeks, spreading down her neck. “I’ve been pulled in a thousand directions and torn to shreds trying to do what’s right.” She swallowed hard, a plea in her eyes. “What if what’s right is also what we both want?”
How could he walk away from a world with her in his life? Even with everything that it brought.
“Sam.” She whispered his name. Almost like a vow.
Then shock speared through his heart as she, with a boldness to rival her sisters’, opened the blanket, arms wide, before dropping it, baring herself to him, her skin aglow in the firelight, beckoning, turning deliciously pink as her blush spread to every part of her skin. But she also refused to look away, chin tilted proudly.
Samael’s dragon lunged for her, and he barely held back from doing the same. “Meira—” He clenched his eyes shut, but the image was burned into his mind’s eye.
Earlier, when he’d undressed them both, it had been clinical, all about making sure they didn’t die of exposure. But now… This. What she was offering…
“I want you,” she murmured. “I always have.”
He opened his eyes to find her watching him with eyes swirling with pure white consuming the blue, such open longing that his soul cried out for her. Unbidden, he released her hand and ran the backs of his fingers softly over her breast, tracing the shape.
She moved restively beneath his touch, and he continued to lightly trace the contour of that heavy breast, feathering under the bottom before traveling back up.
“This isn’t a snap decision,” she said. “We couldn’t. Now we can, and I don’t want to let the chance pass us by. Not again. We don’t know how Brock is tracking us, but what if he finds us here? Takes me away? Or we make it to Ararat and we wait until you’re established as the king, only they don’t want me, too? There are so many things against us. I couldn’t handle—” She broke off. “I can’t lose you…”
She gasped as he brushed her nipple. Then swallowed and took his hand by the wrist, first raising it to kiss the puckered, scarred skin, an action that swelled his heart, before lowering that same hand until he cupped the soft, damp curls at the juncture of her thighs.
The gesture was bold, the real Meira emerging from the flames, tested by fire and forged into something amazing. His phoenix. He knew she meant everything she was saying. Her heart was there in her eyes for him to see. No more distance. No more denying.
“I want to be your mate, Samael Veles,” she said, her gaze steady on his. “Forever. Yours.”
On a groan, Samael leaned forward and captured her lips, his hand at the back of her head, winding in her curls and holding her to him. “Mine,” he growled against her softness.
She smiled against him. “And you’ll be mine.”
A claim and a promise dropping from her lips like rain from heaven.
“Do we dare claim each other?”
After all her bravado, her insistence and logic, she still asked?
“I don’t think we dare go against the fates,” he said against her lips.
…
Could this be happening?
Meira was afraid to search for a true answer to that question, lest she wake to find this was all a dream.
Except Samael’s emotions bound tightly around her—need and desire, yes, but also a profound understanding and connection. As though they were two parts of the same. Like a circuit and signal, both not working without the other. At the same time, his lips were real against hers—hot and urgent and demanding. Each press, each kiss, the stroke of his tongue against hers led her deeper into a haze of wanting. Needing his touch like shelter from a storm.
In his arms, the world became…perfect.
His hand, still cupping her mound, heated her, turning her molten in his arms. Then he moved one finger, brushing in just the right spot, and she widened her legs, wanting more.
Samael buried his face in the curve of her neck and inhaled deeply. “Jasmine,” he whispered, and she smiled.