Page 63 of Elanie & the Empath
“Yes,” I said when I pulled back, but not too far, refusing to surrender an inch of proximity to her mouth. “When it’s hard, it gets veiny.”
Maybe she hadn’t heard me. Maybe she didn’t care. Because she leaned in, tilted her head, and kissed me back.
Her lips were somehow even softer than I’d imagined. All the nights I’d spent dreaming about how warm her mouth might be, it was warmer, and it tasted like vanilla. Wrapping an arm around her waist, I urged her closer, a little growl rumbling from my chest when she came to me. As her fingers drifted up my arms, over my shoulders, I dared to slide my tongue along her bottom lip. She went limp, just for a second. My entire life existed in that second, every heartbeat, every breath, every memory.
I tried to keep our pace slow, my hold on her hips soft and steady. But it was so hard with the noises she made, small sighs while she hooked a hand around my neck and pressed her fingertips into my skin.
“Elanie,” I said, breaking the kiss long enough to let her catch her breath, to make sure this was what she really wanted.
Grasping my face, she pulled my mouth back to hers.
Fair enough.
I moved now, twisting so my legs straddled the bench. So I could haul her into my lap. I swept my tongue into her open mouth, tasting, teasing. She moaned, and I devoured the sound, my hands closing around her ass and pulling her into me. Abandoning the warmth of her mouth, I dipped my head to taste her neck, her throat, her pulse pounding under my lips.
“Sem. There’s something happening. Oh…” She ground against me, the heat of her seeping through the thin fabric of our clothes, the softness of her meeting the hardness of me. Under the stars. Out in the open.
Reality grabbed me by the shoulders and shook. I was kissing Elanie. Finally, deeply, passionately. On a picnic table in a very public place. Most of the tables around us had already emptied, the few Thurans remaining not paying any attention to us. But still…
With every ounce of willpower I possessed, I pulled away. “I’m sorry,” I said, my chest heaving. “I didn’t mean to?—”
“Why did you stop?” Her eyes were dazed, half-closed, her lips wet and swollen and begging to be kissed again, all night, forever.
“Because we’re not alone here. And things were getting”—I glanced down to where I was so hard for her it hurt—“veiny.”
“I’ve never been kissed like that,” she said, breathy and wild. “When I kissed Blake, there was nothing. I felt nothing. I thought there must be something wrong with me, but I felt this kiss.” She held up her hands. “I felt it in my fingertips. In my toes. Everywhere.” Her eyes sparkled brilliantly. “Sem, I’m not broken.”
“I felt it too.” I took her hips in my hands again, rocking her slowly over me. “Istillfeel it. And you are mostdefinitely in excellent working order. But maybe we should stop? Or at least talk?—”
Shaking her head, she grabbed my hand, yanked me up from the table, and pulled me down the path back to our hut.
By the timewe stumbled up our steps, I had never, ever been so turned on. She’d stopped once along the way to push me against a tree. Wrapping her legs around my waist, she’d kissed me so thoroughly I’d just barely stopped myself from flipping her around and dropping to my knees, just for a taste.
Now her hand was in mine again, tugging me inside while her hair trailed in unruly waves down her back.
I backed her toward the wall, my fingers sliding under the hem of her shirt, my mouth on her neck.
“Sem,” she hissed when I scraped my teeth over her earlobe. “Please. I need…”
“What do you need?” I asked, even though I knew.
“I don’t know.” I sucked on her shoulder, and she whimpered. “I’ve felt like this before. Once. And it was… Sem, it was terrible.”
I leaned away, meeting her stare. Her pupils were so huge there was barely any iris left. “Terrible?”
She nodded.
“When? When did you feel like this before?”
“That night,” she said, her chest heaving. “The first night we slept together. I think you thought I’d had a nightmare, but it wasn’t that.”
Even as I tried to give her space, remove the pressure, her hands pulled on me, holding my hips close to hers.
“What was it?” I asked. “What did you dream about?”
When she said, “I can’t tell you that,” I pushed into her. Just a little.
She gasped, her head falling back against the wall.
