Page 108 of Steel Heart Iron Claws

I silence a moan. By the gods, has there been a time he touched me thathasn’tfelt good?

My throat constricts. Memories flood me of the first time we met in my family’s courtyard, when Basten lifted me, naked and spitfire-angry, onto Myst. At the time, I tried to ignore the spark. Told myself it was hatred instead of attraction.

I slide my hand over his, intertwining our fingers in the dark.

I murmur, “We were staying together at an inn. I told you I was nervous about my marriage. The wedding night. I asked you for a…bedroom lesson.”

A surprised laugh rolls out of his mouth. “You, in my bed, begging for a tumble? What good deed did I do in my life to earnthat?”

He laughs, but I can hear the pain there, too. The ache of wanting to remember.

I delicately kiss his knuckles one by one. “Well, Iwastrying to trick you. To escape.”

“Sabine, if you want to escape me, it’s as impossible now as it was then. Now that I have you, you’re mine.” He skimshis thumb over my cheek and, achingly close to my lips, shifts into a deeper voice. “Did I give you a good lesson?”

My heart tumbles at the same time that the base of my belly tightens, catching me before I crash into a blubbering mess.

“You said that if I were yours, you would kiss me first here.” I lift his fingers to my lips.

“And then here…” I guide his hand to my jaw.

“And then here.” Our clasped hands hover over my birthmark as my voice grows husky again.

His broad hand slides around the back of my neck as he leans his weight against me, trapping me against the confectionary shelves.

“Do you think that’s a lesson that needs repeating?” he asks.

My breath stalls as he leans in for a kiss.

Our lips connect.Finally. His warmth floods into me, and I moan all the way down to my toes. His left arm encircles my waist, folding me into his body as tight as a button. His other hand roughly cups my cheek, his fingers plunging into my hair near my temple.

The way he kisses is like a storm: a slow rumble, then a crash, then aflood.

My skin snaps with a delicious itch that has me nuzzling my cheek against his, my hands desperately undoing the buttons at his collar so I can breathe in the woodsmoke scent of his bare skin.

Yes. Gods, yes.

It’s been so long apart. So many doubts. Fears. Longing. Suddenly, I’m like a frenzied animal as I trail my lips down his neck, tasting and licking more than kissing.

His head tips back. “Fuckinggods.”

“Powdered…sugar,” I moan breathily as I lick up the rough underside of his chin. “You taste…so good.”

I tug his shirt back over his shoulders, running the flat of my hand over the muscles that might as well be carved from hard oak. He spears his fingers through my hair at my nape and wrenches my head back to face his.

“Little violet.” His voice is husky, hesitant, testing out the nickname. “I dreamed so often about this. Having you. Loving you. For a long time, I didn’t have a damn hope in the world it would come true.”

He kisses the hell out of me, his lips as feral and possessive as I remember, but there’s something different. A thread he’s holding back. He doesn’t bite my lower lip as he knows I like; he doesn’t grind his hips against mine until I’m seeing stars.

I pull back, barely able to keep up with my own breath, and ask, “What’s wrong?”

He braces one arm on the confectionary shelf again, his chest rising and falling hard, his shirt falling loose on either side of his perfect abs.

“Nothing,” he says, but there’s a telltale hitch in his voice. “I just… I don’t know what youlike.”

His words hit me like the snap of a breaking branch. How many nights have we spent exploring each other’s bodies, sharing secret desires whispered in the dark? We knew each other’s hearts in ways we’d never shared with anyone else.

But for him, this is our first kiss.

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