Page 139 of A Promise of Peridot
If my movements were too jerky or disjointed, he didn’t seem to mind. His glazed eyes, that rigid jaw, those guttural grunts from the back of his throat—all told me he, too, was struggling to hold on much longer. I ground myself against him, the friction bringing me closer and closer, while beneath me, Kane bucked his hips in smooth, pulsing thrusts, winding me tauter, until I felt myself falling over the edge.
Ripples of pleasure tore through me—
My vision blurred and shattered. My hands shook and I sobbed through the sensation, the contractions, theraptureof being with Kane.
Satiated and still swimming in the heady fog of my climax, I noticed Kane moving to draw out of me.
“No,” I cried out. “Do not stop.”
“We shouldn’t—” He sounded like he was barely breathing. “I don’t want to impregnate you.”
I adjusted my hips to sink him in deeper. “I’ll brew something for that.”
Kane looked as if he had never heard better news in his life. “Are you sure?”
“Please,” I begged. I wanted to feel him.
It was all the encouragement he needed. Kane proceeded to pound into me, grasping my hips hard enough to bruise and slamming himself upward with stifled groans. The friction was too good... Knowing that he was spilling himself inside me only wound me tighter, and I rode him until I came again.
Exhausted, weary, and limp, I collapsed onto his slick chest, sucking in lungfuls of air. For a moment, I could only hear our twin, ragged breaths. That, and the faraway hoot of a single owl in the early night. The soft rustle of leaves through the open balcony window.
“How do you feel?”
I peered up at him, only to find that satisfied male grin I loved so dearly. But more than that, there was a quiet joy in his eyes. A peace there that I’d never seen before. “Wonderful. You?”
“There is no word for what I feel right now.”
I crawled off him, despite his yowl of protest, and snuggled into the crease between his neck and shoulder. It smelled like sweat and fir and leather.
“I live here now,” I said into his neck.
“In Shadowhold?” he mumbled, already half-asleep.
“In this nook. The nook of your neck.” I was babbling. Satiated and sleepy and silly with happiness.
“You can live in my nook forever, bird.”
“I love you.”
“I have always loved you.”
Then a blissful, heavy slumber overtook me.
?My eyes shot open, pulse racing, brow clammy, and hands fisted in Kane’s luxurious dark sheets. As my eyes adjusted to the pitch-blackness of his room, I tried to remember what dream had shaken me so violently from my sleep...
I rolled over and a pleasurable soreness pinched between my legs. I was still sticky with Kane’s come, but my own wetness had gathered there, too, and the restless, unchecked need that coursed through me told me plainly what had awoken me.
My eyes fell to Kane, breathing evenly on his back beside me.
Desire spread through my body like ink in water. The single shining lock of hair that had fallen in front of his eyes, his cheekbones jutting in the filtered bars of moonlight, those full masculine lips...
Feeling the mattress sink underneath my careful movements, I snuggled into him and inhaled cedar and the heady sweat of a deep sleep. Kane shifted, nuzzling me slightly, but his eyes remained closed as his chest rose and fell.
Still lying on my side as I faced him, I brought my hand down his chest in lazy caresses. More admiring than anything—the taut golden skin, his defined muscles, a few varied scars here and there. I pressed one kiss into his neck, inhaling like he was fresh air after a storm, then lingered another kiss along his jaw.
“Something I can help you with, bird?” Kane murmured through a fog of sleep, his eyes still closed.
I fought the blush that rose to my cheeks. “I was hoping I could helpyou,” I whispered into his shoulder before I dragged my teeth across the skin there and listened as he groaned softly.
