Page 49 of A Vocation of Violence
Without a word, driven by an impulse I could neither name nor resist, I leaned forward and pressed my lips to his. The kiss unfolded like the bloom of nightshade—beautiful and dangerous. My pulse quickened, a frantic need driving me, a yearning for connection that bordered on reckless abandon.
I was astonished, yet arousal coursed through my veins, chasing away the remnants of fear the Ripper had provoked in my blood.
I clung to Night Horse like the safety he’d offered. Like my feet were dangling over a precipice only he could pull me away from. As he leaned forward and captured my lips in a breathtaking kiss, my anxiety from the evening fueled a frantic passion.
As I responded with urgency, Night Horse’s hands came up to gently capture mine. “Slow down, Fiona,” he urged, his touch tender, his tone a soothing balm to my frenzied senses. “There is a saying about slow-burning candles. I forget what it is when you look at me like that.”
“There is also something to be said about seizing the day,” I replied, my voice quivering slightly, betraying the tempest within me.
Night Horse stared down at me, his dark eyes smoldering with desire. “A day is one rotation of the earth. Then let the earth turn without your having a say about it. Be here with me. Don’t seize the moment. Don’t hold it too tight. Then it will slip through your fingers like mist. Instead, we can take all day. All night if we want.”
His words resonated deep within me, igniting a fire that spread through every inch of my body. As Night Horse’s rough hands tenderly traced the curves of my skin, an electric shiver cascaded down my spine. My pulse quickened, and I felt an urgency I’d never known before.
His words, spoken with a native cadence that made them sound like some ancient incantation, washed over me, and I felt myself surrendering to the inevitability of the tide that was drawing us together. I reached for him, sliding my hands across his chest, feeling the heat of his skin beneath the fabric of his shirt. Our lips met again, this time with a hunger that was all-consuming.
“Please…,” I whimpered, my body aching for more. He silenced my pleas with a searing kiss, his tongue exploringthe depths of my mouth as his hands continued their sinful exploration.
As his mouth moved against mine, I could taste the wildness of him, the untamed spirit that had recognized its counterpart in me. I fumbled with the buttons of his shirt, desperate to feel the reality of him, to confirm that he was not just some fevered dream conjured by my longing.
When the fabric parted, my hands roamed across the landscape of his chest, tracing the scars that spoke of a life marked by violence and survival. He groaned into the kiss, and his hands found their way to the small of my back, pulling me closer until there was no space left between us, until we were pressed so tightly together that I could feel the thrumming of his heart against my own.
Our breaths mingled, hot and fast, as we explored each other with an intensity that bordered on desperation. There was a primal need in his touch, a claiming that spoke of dark nights and even darker passions. His hands traced lower, igniting a trail of fire along my spine that pooled in my belly, coiling tighter and tighter until I thought I might shatter from the intensity of it.
And then his mouth trailed down, following the path his hands had set, leaving a scorching wake across my collarbone and down to the valley between my breasts. With each brush of his lips, each nip and suckle, the world became a blur of sensation, a symphony of pleasure that crescendoed as he continued his descent.
I could feel the roughness of his cheek against the softness of my inner thigh, the hot breath that teased before his tongue delved into the core of my being. It was as if he spoke a language that my body understood innately, answering his every move with a surge of ecstasy that built and built until it broke over me in waves.
I gasped, my voice a keening wail that filled the room as my body convulsed around him, a storm that had been brewing within me finally finding its release.
My fingers tangled in his dark hair as my thoughts spiraled into chaos, consumed by the raw desire that burned between us. As waves of pleasure crashed over me, I surrendered to my first orgasm, my body shuddering with the force of it. In that moment, I felt truly free—free from the constraints of society, free from the suffocating weight of my past, and free to experience the passion that had been ignited by life-affirming danger.
He continued to worship me with his mouth, drawing out every last shudder, every whisper of pleasure, until I lay spent and trembling in his arms. The raw desire that had consumed us both had burned through to something deeper, a connection forged in the crucible of our shared sorrows and mutual understanding.
As I lay there, panting and dazed, a new awareness settled over me as heavy as his muscled form. My thighs cradled his hips, welcomed his sex. It was as if I had crossed some unseen threshold, stepping out of the shadows of my past and into a realm where pain and pleasure, love and loss, were intertwined in an exquisite tapestry of motion and madness.
Beneath the weight of Aramis Night Horse, the world turned not just on its axis but spiraled into a vortex where time and reason lost all meaning. Our breaths mingled in the dim light as the remnants of our earlier passion ebbed into a tender dance of interwoven limbs and shared whispers.
“Does it always feel like this?” I murmured in his bed some hours later, my voice laden with wonder and the vestiges of raw need. I traced the lines of his sinewy arms, feeling the strength that had wielded both violence and pleasure with equal mastery.
His hands, calloused and unyielding, now roamed my body with a gentleness that belied their capability for destruction. In each caress, I found solace—a balm for wounds unseen but deeply felt.
“I was sure I’d turned to stone,” he said, pressing a kiss to the hollow of my throat, “but your fire… It melts what it should not.”
In the quiet aftermath of our passionate encounter, I found my senses heightened, acutely aware of every breath Night Horse took, every whisper-soft touch of his fingers across my flushed skin. Our bodies lay entwined, still trembling from the intensity of our connection.
The remnants of our tempestuous union lingered like the ethereal whispers of fog clinging to the Thames. Night Horse’s breath, soft and measured against my temple, was a protection from the storm that had raged within me. Each rise and fall of his chest beneath my cheek was an affirmation—a silent heartbeat syncing with mine.
“Tell me this at least,” I murmured, tracing the scars on his chest, each one a hieroglyph of his survival. “Do you ever dream of a different life?”
“Every night,” he confessed. “And every morning, I wake to this one.”
I lifted my gaze to meet his—those eyes that had seen worlds beyond my ken. The weight of loss shadowed his face, yet in the dim light of his quarters, there flickered something else. Hope, perhaps? Or the glimmer of dreams not yet extinguished?
“Perhaps dreams sustain us more than reality ever could,” I offered, and his slight, wistful smile was like the first break in a relentless winter.
“Then may we never wake,” he said, cupping my face, brushing my hair back as if he could tuck away the truths we shared along with the stray locks.
“May we never wake,” I echoed, leaning into his touch.
