Page 134 of Soulgazer

A gentle tug on either wrist and my shift falls entirely free of my upper body. It’s never been so difficult to breathe before. “Since the fever? And that stupid song about—about my thighs?”

He pauses and then laughs. “Obsessed with those thighs, aren’t you?”

“You’rethe one who wrote a song about—feck.”

The scrape of his beard against my breast draws my back off the bed. Faolan slides an arm along the arch it makes, coaxing it higher as his mouth drifts to the tiny dip of my belly button, tongue finding the barest curve of bone to the side of my hip where the shift is newly trapped.

I grit my teeth against the urge to cry out, or beg and plead for more.

I wantmore.

“I should’ve written another verse. One for either breast, weapons of torture against an innocent man trying to get some rest with them pressed to his back most nights.”

Heat flushes beneath my skin until my face surely burns scarlet. Faolan releases my back only to catch my hands instead, weaving our fingers together.

“For your belly, soft and rounded—gods, so sweet.” He nips the curve, then catches fabric between his teeth and tugs it down. Pastmy hips, peeling it over my thighs. His eyes meet mine over the slopes of my stomach and breasts, and some small part of me tries to reach for the old shame. But I can’t find it. Not when he looks at me like this.

Not with the ghost of his mouth on my skin.

“I’ve thought about you for far longer than that song.”

His voice is rough as he guides my hands to his shoulders and then nudges my legs apart to kneel between them. Presses a kiss beside my knee as he lifts my hips in his hands, pulling the shift all the way free.

“Since the night of the storm?”

“Longer than that.”

I close my eyes. Stars above. I’ve never felt so bare as the moment I hear the shift drop to the ground, until Faolan releases a shaking breath just after.

“Much.” He moves, tugging my body closer as his hand drags higher up my thigh. “Much.” His lips drop a kiss to the innermost curve, and I forget how to breathe entirely. “Longer.”

He hooks my leg over his shoulder, and my eyes fly open because his kisses—

I bite down hard on the fleshy part of my palm to contain the raw cry that tries to escape. Suddenly, I understandexactlywhat they all meant about worship. In all those years of prayer, I’ve never felt so pure—so holy—as I do now.

But then he stops. Smiles against the crease of my thigh. “Guess again, Trouble.”

A moan tears free of my chest. “You’re not being—fair!”

“Pirate.”

He nuzzles once. Licks. A shudder wracks my body that hasnothingto do with the gods and everything to do with the ordinary magic of another person’s touch.

“Saoirse?”

Another stroke, this time with his finger, and I burrow back against the bed. “The bloody—Damhsa!”

His groan is my reward. “Good girl.”

Faolan stops his teasing, and it’s almost too much to bear. My hand falls from my mouth to the sheets, his shoulders—threading in his ruddy hair. He growls when I tighten them into fists, his kisses more fervent, drawing my body as taut as a bowstring.

When I find release, it’s nothing like what comes from the furtive passes of my own fingertips in the dark nor even what he gave me after that fevered day by the Teeth. This feeling sweeps through every part of me, down to the deepest, darkest corners I hide from the world—quiet and powerful, caught in a belly-deep moan I do everything I can to contain.

Until Faolan bites gently down on my hip, forcing a bit of the cry to break free. And then his body slides up, his elbows driving into the mattress by my ribs as his bare chest presses to mine. “Don’t hide, Saoirse. Not from me.”

I can barely think when he kisses me after, but it doesn’t keep my limbs from twining around his own.

Parts of my being weave into a new pattern that matches this moment, the colors he’s painting across my world. His touch to my face is exceedingly gentle, thumb carving the slope of my cheek. It makes me want to be soft, as warm as melted wax—until his hips press to mine. Something animal takes me over then.

---