“Perfect,” I breathed, only then becoming aware that I’d reclined against his chest, and that the carriage had begun to move at a snail’s pace. “Thank you, Ash.”
He tensed against me.
My eyes opened as my stomach tumbled. “Do you…do you mind that I call you that?”
“No. Not at all,” he stated roughly, trailing his hands up and down my arms. “I missed it when you didn’t.”
Now it was my heart that spun as I turned my head to the side. “Really?”
“Really.” His breath danced over my cheek as his hands found their way to my waist. “I feel a need to admit something to you.”
“What?”
“I know we could be discussing many things right now. Plans for Irelone. What provoked this change in what you wish from me—from us,” he said, and my breath skipped as my eyes opened. “Your thoughts on the coronation.”
I bit my lip as his hands coasted down my hips, relieved that he had moved on. “But?”
“But only one thing has occupied my thoughts from the moment I saw you in this dress and heard you call me Ash.” His words were a silken caress in the carriage. “And it’s not seeing you out of this dress, although that is a close second.”
I trembled.
“Nor was it seeing you bare with nothing but the crown atop your head.”
My pulse picked up as his left hand slid across my stomach. “Was that a close third?”
“A close fourth.” His hand moved even lower on my abdomen, sending a wave of rippling pleasure. “Third was imagining you naked upon the throne.”
“I’m beginning to see a trend here.”
“More like an obsession,” he countered, lips brushing the curve of my ear and sending a delicate series of shivers through me. “One I’m likely not worthy of exploring.”
I stiffened. “You’re worthy.”
He made a rough sound against my neck, moving his left hand in slow circles that steadily made their way below my navel. “Am I? Doesn’t really matter at the moment because I’m too greedy, too selfish to care,” he said, and he was none of those things as he slid his other hand down my outer thigh.
I started to tell him he wasn’t greedy or selfish, but before I could get my tongue around the words, his hand drifted lower and over my thigh.
“What is this?” Ash asked, tilting his head to the side as hehiked up the skirt of the gown, not at all mindful of the many tiny diamonds as he bared my leg all the way to the top of my thigh. “Your dagger.” He made a deep, rumbling sound as his hand closed over the hilt. The touch of his cool fingers against my flesh caused me to jerk. “Fuck.”
I felt the scrape of his fangs against my throat. I gasped, places all over my body tensing deliciously.
“I think seeing you with nothing but that dagger strapped to your thigh has taken second place. Not first, though,” he told me. I jolted as his fingers coasted over my inner thigh. “Do you know what that is?”
My heart pounded as his fingers skated over the lacy edges of my undergarment, slipping over them. My hips nearly came clear off the bench as his fingers pressed against the center of the thin garment.
Heart thrumming, I couldn’t answer his questions as his fingers drifted back and forth. The touch was featherlight until it wasn’t. He rubbed me, drawing his fingers up my very center to the most sensitive part of me. There was no doubt in my mind that he could feel the dampness of that thin undergarment increasing with each drag of his fingers, or that he could taste the rising desire. And that there was no hiding my response to him. My want. My need.
And Ilovedthat.
Eyes open and fixed on the carriage wall at the other end of the bench, I gripped his arm as he began moving his fingers over the undergarment, dragging them down and back up to where desire throbbed.
“Sera?” His lips brushed my temple.
“W-what?”
“Do you know what took first place in occupying my thoughts?”
“No,” I rasped in a rush of liquid heat.