Page 148 of Moonmarked

He came to the bed, then crawled on it on all fours, stalked toward me with those wide dark eyes locked on mine.

Please, please, please be real…

My hands moved when he was close enough, and I touched his smooth cheeks, pushed strands of his wet hair away from his eyes.

Hiseyes. And his hair and his scent and his feel—Rune was real.

“You came back,” I whispered, but Rune didn’t make a single sound.

Instead, he leaned closer and pressed his lips to mine.

I let go of every bit of weight I’d been carrying on myshoulders, closed my eyes, and surrendered to him wholly. It was as easy as breathing to me.

Our kiss was slow at first. Desperate.

I pushed the cover off and rose to my knees, and he did the same. The nightgown I wore was similar to the one I had on when we met in the throne room that night, so when his hands moved down my neck and to my waist, I felt it all as if on naked skin.

God, I’d missed him so much it could be funny. I lived on his lips. The way he erased everything—the entire fucking world and all that was in it—was the realest, truest magic I had ever experienced.

I wrapped my arms around his neck and pulled him closer, sucked his lips in my mouth, pulled him down on the bed. I needed to feel every inch of him against every inch of me, and Rune didn’t hesitate. I fell back on the pillow and he lowered down with me, never breaking the kiss, though he was still on all fours.

We kissed like we needed to remember exactly how we felt when we were like this. Like it was the first and last time all rolled into one.

He kissed my face, the side of my neck and my collarbone. I whispered his name, completely delirious already, so high on the feel of him my panties were soaking wet.

“Rune, please,” I begged, trying to reach the button of his pants, to take him in my hands.

He growled low in his throat, kissing down my chin, bringing a hand to touch my breasts over the nightgown furiously.

“Mine,”he said in that deep voice of his that my ears adored. He rose on his knees, looked down at my body with bloodshot eyes for a moment, touching me, digging hisfingers into my ribs, into my hips, analyzing me like he was seeing me for the first time.

When he had enough, he gripped the V-neck of the nightgown andtoreit all the way down.

A cross between a moan and a scream left my lips as Rune pushed the pieces of fabric to the sides to reveal my body, then continued to touch my naked skin with the same passion.

“You’remine,wilding,” he said. “In life and in death, you’re mine.”

“Yes,” I breathed, my eyes rolling in my skull when his thumb pressed on my clit over the panties, and he touched me like only he knew how.

Not for long, though. He was impatient, it seemed, because a few seconds in, he hooked his fingers on the sides of the panties, too, and ripped them to pieces with ease.

God, just the sound of it was so damn sexy that I screamed out his name again.

His fingers were inside me, pressing into me with just the right amount of pressure as he leaned down and kissed every part of me he could reach. Tasted my skin like it was his medicine. Like it kept him alive. And when he finally reached my clit with his mouth, he didn’t take his fingers out of me at all.

His tongue pressed on my wet folds brought me to the brink embarrassingly fast. His hair was in my fists and I rode his mouth and his fingers until I was on the very top of the world, looking down from the clouds. His name was on my lips and I chanted it like a fucking prayer.

It all happenedsofastyet I felt every little detail as if for hours and committed it to memory. The way this man could play my body should have been a sin.

And when I was done riding the high, Rune didn’t come up until he licked me clean, slowly, taking his time, savoring the taste of me. I whispered his name with every breath I took until he came up, kissing every inch of me again, then stopping there, his lips over my heart, like he wanted to kiss every beat.

“Did you feel that, Wildcat?” he whispered, his mouth still on my chest as he pushed his pants down his hips, and I unbuttoned his shirt with shaking hands.

“Yes,” I breathed, stillfullwith the aftermath of the pleasure but so fucking ready for more.

“That’s what it feels like when a man worships,” he said, kissing the tip of my chin, then my lips.

A lazy smile spread my lips and my toes curled. “Looks like I’ve got a true believer in my bed,” I breathed, taking in his eyes, the spark in them, those silver lines. He was absolutely beautiful.

---