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“We don’t have to do anything tonight.”

She nodded, pulling her hands free from his.

He let her go easily but was close enough she could smell his mahogany and pine scent. His eyes searched her face, and she knew he listened to her thoughts, looking for any sign of hesitation.

How could she explain to him that from the moment she’d laid eyes on him, it was the only thing she wanted? It didn’t make sense. It defied logic. When they’d met, something in her—her soul—just knew.

She lifted trembling fingers to the buttons on her blouse, undoing them one by one. When she reached her skirts, she pulled the blouse free and finished undoing the buttons. She looked up, biting her lip, and found him watching her.

His eyes trailed her every movement in rapt fascination.

Under his piercing gaze, she felt like a gift he desperately wanted to unwrap. Emboldened, she slid the shirt over her shoulders, letting it fall to the floor.

She reached for the buttons lining the left side of her skirts and began undoing them. The loose skirt slid to the floor, and she stretched her petticoats over one another until she stood in a pile of clothes. Only her undergarments remained.

Gabriel lifted one hand, running soft fingers down her bare arm.

She shivered under his touch but stared boldly, unashamed that she’d foregone her corset again.

He slid her dark curls over a shoulder, revealing her bare breasts.

She bit her lip, watching his gaze travel down the length of her.

His fingers moved lightly over her skin, landing on her cotton bottoms, and he slid them down, exposing her completely.

He moved closer, pressing his warm body to hers. In that same moment, his clothes were gone; skin met skin as he wrapped a hand around her waist and pressed her down onto the bed.

She landed in soft blankets, reveling in their touch against her bare back, but when he came down on top of her, warm skin pressing into hers, she could think of nothing but his touch and every place their bodies met.

It was dark, but the moon cast her room in a silvery glow, making his wings sparkle as they spread around them, cocooning her from the night.

He pressed soft kisses to her neck, trailing them down her body to her thighs. As he slid down, his soft touch tickled her skin, making it come alive with a need she’d never known she possessed.

When his lips moved to the inside of her thighs and began their assent, heat radiated from her core as it pulsed with its own heartbeat. He stopped, looking up from between her thighs, a question in his eyes.

Yes?

He didn’t say it, but she heard the question in his mind and nodded, her throat too dry to form a response. Tangling one hand in his hair, she ran her fingers through the silky strands.

His head dipped low, nose running through dark curls as warm breath puffed against the sensitive skin between her thighs.

She tightened her grip on his hair, tugging at it as he pressed his lips softly to the tender area before his tongue darted out and swept along her skin.

She gasped, dropping her head back on the blankets, releasing her hold on his hair, momentarily lost to the sensation of his tongue as it swept up and down, making something coil low in her belly.

Heat burned at the apex of her thighs. She cried out as his tongue moved faster and faster, and then he pressed his mouth to her most sensitive area and sucked.

She wrapped her hands in his hair again, this time scraping against his scalp as her body writhed under his tongue’s caress and the tightening in her belly intensified, some foreign precipice dangerously close to tipping.

His mouth lifted, leaving a cold, wet sensation behind, and she moaned for him to keep going.

“Don’t stop. Don’t ever stop,” she begged, but he wasn’t listening.

He was climbing up the bed, up her body, pressing his warm length along her thigh as his mouth found hers and claimed her, doing all the same things to her mouth he’d just done between her thighs.

His hard length pressed against her still-wet curls, teasing a new ache in her.

Nothing felt more right than having him inside her this very moment, and she strained against his weight to move her body into a better position underneath him.

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