The tiny friction of his touch raised goose bumps along her bare skin, and she shuddered. I bet you say that to all the spiky, beautiful girls.
Never. I’ve never said it before. He spoke with such conviction she was actually tempted to believe him. He took her shoulders and pulled her back against him. Then he bent to put his lips against her ear and said in a whisper against the delicate shell of flesh, “There is one catch to the cloaking. Anyone with Power can look and see a shimmer where we’re standing. I’m told it looks like a heat haze rising off asphalt. But that happens only if they’re looking in the right direction at the right time, and are paying attention enough to question what they see. And nobody is looking at us.”
The Light Fae finished checking in and headed for the stairs. She watched them climb upward and disappear. Rune’s whisper was the barest thread of throaty sound. His breath tickled along her sensitive skin, and she shuddered harder as her knees weakened. She found herself leaning back against him. She breathed, “What are you doing?”
He felt it again, the sense that here was some keystroke password to an unbreakable code. He put his lips against her neck and mouthed, “What do you think I’m doing? I said I was going to come after you again.”
“Yes, but here? Now?” She tried to turn around, but his hands tightened and held her in place.
“What can I say, I’m an opportunist,” he murmured. “And you’re making me crazy. I loved the feeling of your legs gripping me tight when you knocked me down at the cottage. I love the fact that you could knock me down. I love your strength and confidence.” He realized the depth of truth in that statement. Back on the island it had hurt him to see her so profoundly shaken, and he would do just about anything he could to avoid seeing that happen to her again. He whispered, “Look at the couple that just walked in the door. They don’t have a clue we’re standing here. Or the doorman over there, standing just outside. He can’t see a thing as I do this.”
Unable to resist, Rune’s hand slid around and he cupped her full, round breast.
Even though he had given her plenty of warning, acute shock still bolted through her, washing her from head to toe. She made a small, strangled sound and suddenly Rune’s other hand was clapped tight over her mouth.
“Shh,” he whispered. His breathing had roughened. “We can’t make any noise.”
She gripped his forearms tightly, shaking, as she watched the couple, a man and a woman, walk by obliviously. The heat from Rune’s hand on her breast burned through the thin barrier of the cotton caftan. He stroked along the firm, weighted flesh until her plump nipple jutted between his first and second fingers. Then he pinched her gently, and the sensation speared right down to the juncture at the top of her legs.
She jerked in his arms and sucked in a useless, frantic breath. Her fingers dug into the muscled flesh of his forearms.
And she did not push away either the caressing hand at her breast or the hand that covered her mouth.
His mouth felt taut against her skin, at the sensitive spot where her neck met her shoulder. “Tell me to stop,” he breathed. Because he could not stop himself. The compulsion he felt kept driving him toward her. Dimly he was aware of warning bells going off somewhere, but they were far off in the distance, cloaked by a sensual haze that covered everything in his head.
Her head fell back against his collarbone. She gazed blindly at the ceiling and mouthed the word soundlessly against his broad palm. Stop?
He massaged her breast, rolling her nipple between his fingers, and good fucking hell, once again he almost came in his jeans. The luscious heavy weight of her breast filled his palm just right, and her nipple was a delicacy his mouth watered to taste, but the by-God real ass-kicker was how she shivered in his arms and held on to him like he was the last stable thing on earth, how her gorgeous, healthy scent bloomed with feminine arousal. That was his scent. That was for him.
And she breathed for him, in ragged, telltale gasps.
“You need to say that word again,” he whispered roughly against her neck. “Because I’m feeling a little thick right now and I’m not processing too clearly. And this time you need to say it like you mean it.”
The gears in Carling’s head ground as she tried to understand what he said. Word. He wanted a word from her. What was it?
Girl. No, that wasn’t it.
Out of the corner of her eye she caught sight of a teenage boy slouching through the hotel’s front doors, wearing ripped designer clothes and goth makeup, and carrying an iPad under one skinny arm. He glared at the world as if it owed him an explanation. Yeah, good luck with that one, kid.