Page 108 of Artemysia
Delphine gives me a strange look before dropping her gaze. I realize she’s about to cry. Before the tears slip from her eyes, I slide across to her side of the carriage, leaning in until my forehead touches hers.
I clasp a firm hand on the back of her neck. “I promise. I never wanted to escape you. You are where I want to escapeto…”
Her chin trembles when she tries to speak, and she bites her bottom lip.
I know she tries her best to avoid heartbreak, so I don’t expect her to say anything—not when she thought I could’ve left at any moment.
It’s important for her to know how I feel. To know I’m not the heartless brute she and everyone else thinks I am.
She’s where I want to be.
So for her, I try my hardest to express everything I need to say. Exposing my deepest emotions makes me feel utterly defenseless, as if I bind my hands behind my back and offer someone a knife to use against me. But for her, I’ll do anything.
“I’d have fought the Syf to the death otherwise. Saving you was theonlyreason I had to leave. The thought of not having you in the world—of being in a world without Delphine Julian—I can’t breathe, thinking about it.”
Our foreheads are warm where they are pressed together. My hand slides down from the nape of her neck to trail along her throat. I softly sweep back her curls, admiring how the strands shine.
When she inclines into my touch with a soft hum of pleasure and closes her eyes, I think I might completely lose it. The now familiar scent of her—sweet, honeyed summers by the river—forces my pulseinto an uncontrolled frenzy.
I want her. She’s mine.
My body and soul yearn to possess her.
But I know she needs to process all I’ve told her.
She shivers at my touch on her bare shoulder. Her neck flushes a pale pink. I’m trying not to glance down the heart-shaped neckline of her strapless gown again. But damn. I can see a light freckle or two at the top of her right breast. She angles her cheek onto my palm as my fingers graze across her collarbone. Perhaps she missed my touch too.
The heat rises in the carriage. It could be my imagination, but I swear when her eyes close, she is trying to hold herself back.
And I’m right.
Her eyes flash open, meeting my gaze—and without warning, she crushes her lips onto mine.
Sweet lord.
She’s not gentle. She’s still hurt and confused. But she wants me, and I can’t believe it.
I’ll spend the rest of my life earning her trust back.
I have no idea what she’s thinking, but I pull her by her waist over my lap, so she feels my hard arousal. Simply from kissing her. It’s wild, animalistic, what she does to me. I’m accustomed to being used, to being the one giving pleasure, and while most nights, it’s a distraction, I’ve never wanted anything in return.
Here and now, I want everything with Delphine. All of her.
The throbbing heat in my breeches is unbearable. I force myself not to think of her warm, wet mouth on my cock. It was far better than I deserved.
I’m surprised when she lifts her skirt and straddles me, pressing a damp heat onto me through her underwear. When I palm her breasts, one slips out over the top of that emerald-green dress, and my mouth works that beaded, dark pink nipple. She utters a loud, breathy gasp as I scrape my teeth over it and suck on it, drawing it deep and hard into my mouth. My hand frees her other breast from her dress, and she cries out when my thumb rolls over the hard peak even as I suckle harder.
She still hasn’t said anything, and part of me knows she doesn’t want to think right now. I know her. Perhaps she wants only to bedistracted from the terror we’ve experienced since we left Stargazer or to escape her jumble of feelings about me. There are probably too many worries in her head, and she needs to sort through them.
I need to give her time.
As badly as I want her—to sprawl her out and take her again as I did in the cave pools—I back off. Even though everything she does is showing me she wants it too.
There has to be some kind of prize for this.
“Elphie.” I barely muster a coherent word over the tightness straining between my legs. My balls fucking ache. “I know you, and I want to talk.”
She ignores me, unbuckling my trousers. Before I know it, she’s sliding her body down the front of me, kneeling on the carriage floor.
