He smiled a demon smile and bent his head. She curled her fingers in his hair and held on.
He scooped his hands under her bottom and lifted. With his thumbs, he spread her folds wide. Eyes half-closed, he looked at what he’d exposed: the most vulnerable, hidden part of her body, the most secret, protected part of her.
Being so bared for his perusal, for his approval, broke her. Her body clenched with a vicious, perfect pulse. Desire hammered on her. More. More. More.
Then he leaned forward and touched his tongue to her.
She cried from the forbidden pleasure of it.
He teased her with his mouth as he had done with his hand. Fluttering soft almost-touches, followed by long, slow drags. He lapped her as if she were a meal, then flicked his tongue as if she were being punished, unleashing hard, snapping jolts through her body. He alternated between them so she never knew what he would do next, until she was quite mad. And somehow, she was showing him how, tugging on his hair, making him do more of this, less of that.
Then he entered her again, slid a finger up inside her—no, two—and pushed.
Her hips arched and her fingers tightened in his hair. “Oh…please...yes.”
“More of that, then,” he murmured, his mouth still against her.
Her head fell back to the earth and she sobbed a broken gasp of pleasure.
She was heedless, her head rolling, her hips bouncing in a hard, swift rhythm, aching for more of everything. Teasing, testing, taunting, he built her pleasure like a fire, until the hot, red-gold center of her body expanded to become her entire being.
She was the fire. Máel had lit her.
She jerked as her body exploded. Shuddering waves rocked through her, crashing out in every direction, and she cried, her neck arched, lost in him.
He pushed up from between her legs and held her while her body spasmed. He kissed her cheeks, her mouth, her neck. She followed his every move, tethered to him by desire. He inhaled; she exhaled. He shifted; she moved with him, her body still shaking in little bursts and flashes.
He finally rolled onto his back, his arm behind her neck, her body nestled between the heat of him and the heat of the fire.
He pulled her toward him, ro
lling her so her head rested on his shoulder, her arm flung weakly over his stomach.
“I did not know,” she whispered. Her voice was ragged, barely audible.
“Neither did I.”
A moment later, his hand came down and draped over her forearm, as if it was the most natural thing in the world for their bodies to be entwined.
She finally slept, as the moon began to sink in the sky.
Chapter 25
Máel was up before the sun rose. He slid away from the warmth of the blanket and her body, and sat on the downed tree, watching her.
He should have known she would wreck him. He watched her sleeping. Wearing his tunic, wrapped in his cloak, her hair drying in frizzes. Low hips, long legs, a hot, curving body and banked passion that he’d flared into life. Passion that had stunned him with its power.
All the desire welled up again, along with respect…and affection.
That was the true wreck and ruin. For it betokened even more emotions behind it, like a door kicked ajar by a boot and held open for light to shine through.
He did not want light in the darkness of his heart. There were too many awful things lurking there, and he did not wish to see them.
But truth, however awful, was a thing he respected, and he could not avoid this dangerous truth: Cassia might wear silk, but it was sheathing fire.
She was magnificent.
Tempestuous. Full of spirit. And not one of those men at the tourney, or anywhere in her life, knew what she was made of. None of them could hold her. None of them could light her.