Page 81 of A Reign of Roses
Maybe he had been. The raw, near-pleading look in Kane’s eyes told me there was quite the beast currently roaring inside him, the one urging him to plunge his tongue into my mouth. To rip the clothes from my body and make love to me in the middle of these snowy woods, our bodies still slick with dirt and the blood of our enemies like frantic, war-torn barbarians.
Somewhere between one of my own shaky, choked inhales and a shallow grunt of his the beasts inside both of us emerged victorious.
Kane’s mouth on mine tasted like pure desire.
The kisses we’d shared—in that Solaris garden, in Hart’s infirmary—they’d been mere vessels in which to store months and months of misery and yearning. And relief at seeing each other again, when I was sure neither of us thought we’d ever be given the chance.
But those kisses had not been about wanting or lust. Or vicious, near-painfulneed.
They’d not made my bloodstream rush with liquid fire nor sent my heart racing so fast I could have latched on to it and been hauled away.
But this kiss did.
When Kane dragged his tongue across my own, licking at my mouth and sucking shamelessly on my lower lip, the whimper I released sent scandalized creatures skittering into the bushes.
Kane barely noticed. His warm breath swept over my neck and ear and jaw as he trailed rushed kisses all across me. Then back up to my mouth, and then down the sensitive skin of my throat once more—
Heat blared through me. He was going too slow.
More, more, more—
I whined at his indolent leisure and brought my hand down to grasp haphazardly at his pants. When I brushed his twitching, stiff length, we both groaned.
“Easy,” he said, voice husky and low, though I could feel his lips grinning against mine. “Let me take my time with you.”
With gentle care, and without removing his mouth from my lips, he lifted me into his arms and walked us back until we met the thick heft of a tree trunk. I sighed with the contact, luxuriating in the pleasant feeling of being pinned by him. Compressed wonderfully underneath his body with nowhere else to go.
I held him so tightly around the middle with my legs—my back balanced against the sturdy oak—that Kane released both hands and palmed my breasts roughly over my faded beige dress.
We hummed in perfect harmony.
Undoing each button with care, Kane slipped one hand under the fabric and pulled down my bodice just enough to brush a calloused thumb over my bare breast. I wasn’t cold—we were still wearing all our clothes and his body heat was radiating off him and onto me in waves—but my nipples were pointed to near agony. That thumb, sliding across me in slow, languid circles sent a need that teetered on life-threatening straight between my legs.
I mewled,aching, and swore Kane chuckled through our kiss. “You really do love that.”
My head was too dizzy to form an intelligible response.
Without halting his light caress across my nipple, Kane brought his lips down to my neck and sucked languorously, the soft scrape of his teeth sending stars into my vision alongside the falling snow. He held me to the tree with his fingers stretching across my side, thumb still petting over and over that pointed tip until I cried out, and even then he didn’t relent.
The way he touched me…I thought I might come from just that thumb and the agonizing, pleasurable pinches he doled out whenever he saw fit.
Kane’s other hand fished through the layers of my borrowed dress until his knuckles stroked the inside of my thigh.
Oh,Stones…“Kane—”
“Yes, bird?” he breathed against my neck.
But then his fingers were brushing against the thin cotton that separated him from the almost mortifying wetness that had collected between my legs, and once again I couldn’t form an answer. Not while I could feel his fingers swiping across the fabric, soaked so thoroughly that he could barely create the friction I so craved.
His shoulders tensed under my hands as he touched me. I was so swollen for him, so plump and slick and ready, and knowing the effect that had—how ragged and wild it made him—only produced another senseless whimper from the back of my throat.
Those hands—
Thosefingers—
Kane shoved the sodden fabric to the side and pushed his thumb rigidly against the spot I’d been shamelessly grinding along any part of him I could reach. I bucked from sheer pleasure.
“There you go,” he murmured.
