Page 116 of Between Soul and Vessel
“Can I see?” I asked.
He raised a brow, his handsome face almost too much for me to handle looking at right now. “Eager to get me naked,wife?” he teased, his voice a shot of bourbon.
Pride overwhelmed me, just hearing that word on his lips.
“Say it again,” I murmured, mesmerized by the power of it.
“Wife,” he purred then kissed me. Like a thief in the night, he stole the very air from my lungs. No matter how many times he did it, I never seemed to see it coming.
“Again,” I beckoned breathlessly in between kisses.
I could feel his lips shift into a smile. “Wife.”
I let out a deeply satisfied sigh.
“Is that a turn on?” he asked, pulling back.
I grinned. “You tell me,husband.”
“Mmm.” A masculine, throaty moan passed his sexy full lips, stoking my coals with oxygen. “I understand now.”
“Right?” I chuckled.
Glancing down, I traced my fingers over his arm, following the lines of his ink. “Are some of these onesyou’ve done by hand rather than using magic?”
“Some are, yes,” he acknowledged, rolling his arm over so I could continue to explore his muscular arm, his skin hot beneath my touch.
“I hadn’t realized that before. I had thought all of your tattoos were from deals you had made.” I looked back up at him.
“Most of them are, but some I’ve gone over. The ones I couldn’t reach I had Folkoln redo. Like the ones on my back.”
“Why?”
Eyes meeting mine, he answered slowly, each word ripe with deep meaning. “Sometimes, you need to feel the pain of something to feel like you’ve earned a right to have it.”
My breath hitched in my throat. He wasn’t just talking about tattoos. I sat with that truth for a moment before I asked, “Which ones?”
His eyes burned like liquid fire. “The ones that matter the most. The ones I made with you or on your behalf.”
“Von.” I spoke his name softly, my heart beating wildly in my chest. I had no idea what I’d done to deserve him, but I couldn’t help but feel gratitude toward the Creator for making him. A memory from a lifetime ago conjured in my mind, of a dark forest and an even darker male, of mud and rain, of a newly formed bond, of my lips tattooed on his—
My gaze shifted to the prominent bulge in his pants, which was pressed against my bare abdomen. The seam of his leathers stretched taut, emphasizing what waited for mebeneath the onyx-dyed fabric.
Although I had been well acquainted with his length in the past, I realized that I had only seen it once in my current lifetime, and that was when he was in his phantom form.
My brow furrowed. “When you came to me as a phantom, the tattoo of my lips . . . I don’t recall seeing it.”
“It took every bit of remaining power I had left to send my apparition to you that day. Because of that, I had to pick and choose, which meant I was missing afewthings,” he answered. “It’s a good thing you didn’t look down, because I didn’t have any feet either.”
“Stop,” I said, cracking a smile—one echoed across his lips.
“It’s true. My feet are big and my cock is big. I had a decision to make. When I saw you on your knees, mouth open in invitation, it was an easy one.”
My cheeks ran hot at the memory—his hands in my hair as he’dfilledmy mouth. Heat pooled in my lower belly. I wanted to do that again.
“So then, are my lips still there?”
He gave me mischievous grin. “They are.”
