“A what?” His voice was thick, like his cock swelling toward her.
“A muse. An inspiration. Something that…” She slipped her whole damn hand into the front of his jeans. “Something that arouses you.”
“A muse…” His grasp tightened on her hips, and he shuddered as she wrapped her fingers all the way around him. “You.”
“Yes.” She tipped toward him with a sigh and set her lips to his. Her tongue traced the inner curve of his mouth, and his hips jerked in eager response.
When she lifted her mouth, they were both panting, and his cock was a branding iron in her hand, hot and hard.
She let her fingers slip away. “Take off your clothes.”
He rocked off the bed and shucked his jeans, letting the shirt slide off his shoulders. But when she reached for him, he eluded her. He swept the comforter back, pushing up the flannel into a thick nest. “First things first. Lie back.”
She stared at him, her green eyes half lidded.
He hooked one arm behind the small of her back, looming over her, and gave her a slow smile. “I’m feeling inspired.”
Chapter 5
Adelyn hesitated. A musetta teased and stimulated, and then, often enough, a musetta vanished without a trace. But had any musetta ever just laid back and indulged?
The thought was tempting. More tempting yet was the shine of desire and determination in Josh’s many-colored eyes. He wanted her, but he wanted something more. Too bad he didn’t know a musetta couldn’t give it all. Inspiration alone didn’t have the power to deliver.
A part of her rebelled. Maybe she had never been able to create anything of her own, but he was offering to inspire her. What would that look like? Well, it looked like a very intent mountain man. But what would itfeellike?
She relaxed into the curve of his arm. With the same strength that had lifted her onto the horse, he eased her back onto the hillocks of the bed coverings. The contrast between the cool fabric and his hot skin made her shiver with delight.
He leaned down to kiss her and she buried her fingers in his golden hair. A fairy princess of the kind the humans preferred might dream of possessing such thick, waving locks. But he reached up to untangle her and stretched her arms over her head, making her arch.
His lips traveled down her jaw, traced the flying pulse along the column of her neck, skimmed the hollow of her throat. She arched higher, but he needed no such encouragement.
His mouth circled a hot, damp path around her nipple, making her moan with eagerness as the circle tightened, teased, and backed away.
She’d had her share of court affairs, but finding pleasure through the obscuring lies of glamour was a trick. Josh’s big hand wandered places of her body secret from her fae lovers, a surprise even to her: the curve of her lower rib, the back of her knee as he drew her leg up, the fine bones of her ankle.
When he ran his hand along the inside of her thigh, she realized he had dipped his fingers into the salve. The fragrance ringed her, and he slipped one finger inside her at the same time as he finally closed his lips over her nipple.
She bucked against him, a wordless demand, and he obliged with a second torturously slow finger. The flat of his tongue laved her breast in a long, winding caress that echoed the lingering screw of his hand.
His thumb—slick with salve, just a little work roughened—found the exposed center of her yearning flesh. He circled once, twice, ah, the magical three times, and she came apart in a shower of flower petals.
At least it felt like that, like some rogue wind kept blowing her in every direction, higher and higher. She came again and cried out his name, careless of the consequences that came with naming.
When she caught her breath, she had to glance at herself to make sure she was intact and that her glamour hadn’t slipped. But the satiny, drifting feeling lingered as she stared into the arrogance of his grin.
“God, you are so hot,” he murmured. “So damn ready.”
She held her arms open to him. “Let me show you how ready.”
He surged up over her, his hair mussed from her hands, his lips reddened. Flushed and flawed. The scar gleaming across his eye reminded her that all her courtier lovers had been perfect. At least their glamour had always been perfect. She had never revealed her weaknesses either.
But Josh had no such reservations. With his arms braced on either side of her, he was poised exposed, his chest wide open and vulnerable. Like the thrust of his engorged flesh, he had no fear, and she wanted that bold conviction. She centered herself under him, canting her hips to meet his.
She gasped at the slow impalement, and he paused, “Adelyn?” But she rocked up against him and he was sheathed in her flesh, and she forgot where one of them stopped and the other started as they moved together in one motion.
As a musetta, she had teased him. Now he took that power from her, pushing harder and faster than she had imagined, until her back arched and her head tilted into the blankets, offering him her aching breasts and the wild rush of her pulse.
He licked her nipple and rolled the other between his long fingers as he ground his hips into hers. The pressure against her core was her undoing and she came apart again, just as he jackknifed against her with a shout, a wordless cry that nevertheless had a power in it she couldn’t decipher. He thrust again, and one more time, and then he shuddered. He dropped his head to the crook of her neck, his breath heaving, hot over her skin.