Gathering my gown, I pull it over my head, baring my body. His eyes go dark as he takes me in, but then he lowers his mouth to my breast again, his tongue and teeth sending molten pleasure to my core. He trails his hand down my spine, over my hips, and lower, readying me, making me throb as I push against his touch.
He stares up at me, a wicked little smile curling one corner of his mouth. “I was going to be gentle.”
I shake my head and sign his words back to him, the words he’d spoken at the stream. “Sometimes, a rough hand is best.”
Holding my gaze, he slips a finger inside me, pushing deep, making me gasp. Pulse pounding in my ears, I urge him down to the bed and bury my hands in all that dark hair, kissing him harder and hungrier than I’ve ever kissed anyone before. His touch remains, his skillful fingers brushing over me, tormenting.
I’ve never ached like this. Never felt like I might die from need. Never burned for another as I burn for him.
Nothing but his thin braies separates us, and already, the friction and pressure is intoxicating. Brazenly, I shift so that I can slide my hand between us. I untie the laces and tug the fabric down, enough that I can clutch him in my hand. He touched me so perfectly in the wood. I’m only returning the favor.
“Gods, Raina.” With every stroke, my name is an ache given life, hanging from the edge of a ragged breath.
Alexus raises his hips. Together, we clumsily shove his braies down his thighs, and he kicks the garment aside. The action only presses his rigid length against me—without any barrier. He’s so hard, so perfect.
Slick with desire, I move against him and swallow his fevered groan with a kiss.
“Want.” I press that word into the skin over his heart.
Alexus Thibault pulls away from my mouth and says the three words that are my undoing. “Then take me.”
Bracing myself on his broad, rounded shoulders, I sink onto him and gasp. There’s so little of me and so much of him, yet there will somehow never be enough.
Rocking gently, I draw a deep moan from his chest.
“And I thought your mouth would be my ruin.” Breathing hard, he shuts his eyes for the span of a heartbeat, and then stares into my eyes. “I might not survive this.”
A smile tempts my mouth. I felt like a god when I straddled him in the wood, and I feel that same way now.
I bite my lip as he carefully rolls his hips, each shallow thrust matching the pace I’ve set. I can see the tension in him, the way the tendons in his neck strain, the way the vein across his shoulder swells as he clutches my hips.
He’s holding back. For me.
Soon my body complies to his movements, opening to him, for him—
And I am lost.
There is nothing gentle about anything I do to him from this moment forward. I’m ravenous, heat coiling inside me, the tightest, sweetest ache making me move with relentless abandon.
Alexus skims his hands up my body, wraps his fists in my hair, angling my head back with enough force in his grip that a chill covers every inch of my skin.
“Take me,” he commands. “Take all of me.”
The soft, dark hair on his chest tortures the tips of my breasts as I move, my rhythm driven by the soft bites he presses along the side of my neck, the way he licks and sucks the places where his teeth might’ve left a mark. For one long moment, I think I might fall apart from this alone.
But then he closes his mouth over the tip of my breast and presses his teeth around my nipple, sucking. Watching me, he flicks his tongue and raises his hips, pressing into me so deeply that I drop my head back, my body falling still as I try to breathe around the fullness.
He grips my waist and turns us over, flipping me on my stomach. I shiver when he slides his warm hands down my back and drags those rough palms over the curves of my hips and down my legs, all the way to my ankles before he returns and does it all again. The third time he spreads my legs and draws me to my knees, my torso still flattened to the bed.
“You are so beautiful, Raina.” He holds me there, his fingers pressed firmly into my hips as he trails kisses down my spine, lower and lower, until—
He tastes me.
I clench the bedcovers and bite down on the thick brocade fabric. He turns me mindless, plunging his tongue into me and over me until I can barely think around the desire he won’t let me release.
It makes me ache, and desire overwhelms me. One second, I’m pressing back against him, grinding my hips, needing his tongue deeper. The next moment, he’s touching me, opening me, sliding his fingers inside me, his tongue still ravaging my body, and I’m clawing at the bed linens to get away.
A throaty little laugh leaves him as he grips my hips and draws me back to his hungry mouth.
How easily I surrender.
He groans—feasting, savoring, devouring. The vibration of his voice over my tender, aching flesh sends a chill chasing across my skin, coaxing me toward a climax I so desperately need.
This is worship. Alexus Thibault has lain me on his altar and praised every inch of me.
Just when I think I can bear no more, he presses soft kisses to my thighs, trails his tongue up the curve of my backside, and then kneels behind me. Slowly, he enters me, little by little, every inch its own unbearable torture.
Greedy, I shift my hips and push against him, until he’s buried deep. My reward is him, the lewd curse that trips off his lips, and his shuddering gasp.
With my heart pounding, he curls his arm around my waist and lifts me up against him, my back to his front.
The rune on my chest warms as he lifts his hand to that gentle heat, delicately touching his mark as he moves his hips.
“There is magick even in this,” he whispers against my ear. “If you close your eyes, if you search, you’ll see the threads of my desire for you. We’re connected now. You just need to draw the threads inside you. We can tangle our magick. Even though mine is weak, it will still make this night like nothing you’ve ever known.”
Gods. Tangling our magick? I do as told.
The threads are easier to find than I imagined. They burn brightly as a star, and when I reach for them with my mind, they seep into me like sunlight.
“Got them?” he asks, and I nod. “Good. I’m going to kiss you now,” he whispers, tilting my head until his breath is on my lips. “And I swear to every god who has ever lived, you’re going to feel me everywhere.”
He brushes his mouth over mine, the taste of us sweet on his lips. Hungry, he sweeps his tongue deep, kissing me with the same passion as when he kissed between my legs.
A glimmer of magick and pleasure skitters over my skin, making my body clench around Alexus’s hardness. The intensity almost shatters me, the binding of our power, tangling and twisting like lengths of silver silk. I hadn’t thought two people could be any closer than the intimacy that happens during lovemaking, but I feel Alexus Thibault throughout every speck of stardust that makes me me.
He turns my chin forward. Our glistening reflection and his penetrating emerald gaze stare back at me in the window.