Page 65 of Mountain Protector

Resting one hand on her hip and the other at her nape, I dip my head to kiss her. It’s not a tender kiss this time, but a hungry one. One that shows Lark just how much I want her.

When we break apart, both of us gasping for breath, I hold her gaze as I say, “I want to see all of you. I’m going to kiss every inch of your body. Every freckle. I’m going to show you all the thingsI’vebeen dreaming about. Is that okay with you?”

Her breath catches. Pink flushes her chest as she breathes, “Yes. It’s more than okay.”

CHAPTER 15

LARK

“Do you know just how gorgeous you are?”

Knox gazes at me, his blue eyes stormy with desire. “I thought I knew. But seeing you like this”—he trails his fingers across my collarbone—“bared to me, with your silky skin and these incredible freckles all over… just covered with bits of lace… songbird. You’rebreathtaking.”

My skin tingles from the brush of his work-roughened fingers against my skin. Need builds at my core, an insistent ache demanding to be filled. Slightly breathlessly, I ask, “You like my freckles?”

His lips curve up. “Lark. I more than like them. I love them.”

If only my teenaged self had known. The bane of my existence, the persistent spots that popped up at even the mention of sun, the exact opposite of the golden tan I wished I had as a teen—and this incredible man loves them. Thinks they’re incredible.

“I meant it when I said I’m kissing every last one of them,” Knox continues, his gaze heating as it sweeps over my body. Then he lowers his lips to my shoulder, feathering light kisses across my skin.

“There are a lot of—” As his lips move to a tiny freckle at the base of my neck, I suck in a breath. Sizzles of electricity surge through my body.

“Good. I want to take my time.”

Oh. He’s using that growly voice again.

I never realized a man’s voice could be this sexy.

“I love these freckles, especially,” Knox says—growls—and presses his lips to the tiny cluster of them on the swell of my breast. “They look like a little heart.”

His big hands frame my waist, pulling me even closer to him, so I can feel his arousal jutting against my belly.

The lace between my thighs goes damp.

Breathing is a forgotten thought as he kisses his way across my chest, each one soft but sensual, setting my already sensitized skin on fire.

I want to touch Knox, to unfasten his pants and free his arousal straining against them. See what it looks like for real instead of in my imagination. But I’m frozen. My muscles are on strike. All I can do is stand here, feeling more treasured and desired than I ever have, hardly believing this wonderful man is mine.

That he wants me. That he thinks I’m gorgeous. That he might even feel the same way I do about him.

Then he drops to his knees and presses his lips to the little tattoo on my hip. His tongue swirls across it, leaving a searing brand behind. When he lifts his head,he looks up at me as amusement glitters in his eyes. “A sprig of holly?”

Just as I start to answer, his fingers brush the underside of my breast.

My womb clenches. My nipples go hard. Taking a full breath seems an impossibility.

“I was eighteen,” I finally manage. “Freshman year of college. Kate wanted to?—”

Oh.

He palms my breast, his thumb brushing across my nipple. I arch toward him, and a tiny moan falls from my lips.

“The tattoo?”

“Right.” But it’s hard to think amid this flood of sensation. Amid this tsunami of need. “Kate. She wouldn’t go alone. So I?—”

Knox takes my nipple into his mouth, sucking and laving through the layer of lace.

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