Page 148 of Moonlit Nights & Northern Lights
Glancing sideways, I found Maxwell staring at me instead of the sky. His expression was soft, almost dreamy, completely transfixed.
“Oi,” I said, grinning. “You’re missing the show.”
He blinked, startled. “Sorry.”
“It’s so not fair that I can’t read your thoughts,” I teased, bumping his shoulder with mine.
Maxwell glanced away, then back again. “I’m trying, for the millionth time, to decide if your eyes are blue or green. And…” He paused, seeming to wrestle with himself. “Lines of poetry keep popping into my head.”
“You’ve… memorised poetry about eyes?”
“No, I…” He ran his hand through his hair, thoroughly flustered now. “I write poems. Sometimes. Well, usually just snippets of ones, really.”
Delight bubbled up inside me like champagne. My serious, ultra-professional detective inspector wrotepoetry. About my eyes, apparently.
“Do they rhyme?” I asked, grinning like a fool. “Please tell me they rhyme.”
Maxwell gave me a withering look. “No. Are you five?”
“Come on, then,” I said, squeezing his hand. “Let’s hear these lines of poetry about my eyes.”
“Absolutely not.”
“Please? I promise I won’t take the piss.”
“That’s a lie, and we both know it.”
“Maxwell, please.Please.Pleeeeease.”
He was quiet for so long I thought he’d refuse. Then, he opened his mouth.
“Like broken bottles in an alley that catch streetlights just so—dangerous and beautiful. Like verse that shifts meaning with each reading—green mischief, blue sincerity.” He spoke to our joined hands, as if the words were too intimate for eye contact. “Like storm-green and summer-blue caught in the same breath, brightness and chaos, somehow perfect together. Like looking into deep water where sunlight fractures into a thousand shadesof…maybe.”
My breath caught. Above us, the Northern Lights pulsed brighter, as if responding to him.
“That’s…” I started, then found I had no words. “That’s really beautiful, Maxwell.”
He was still staring at our hands, but I could sense his pleased hum of satisfaction.
“Really beautiful,” I whispered.
I couldn’t take it anymore—any distance between us.
Before I could second-guess myself, I threw myself onto Maxwell’s lap, one leg on either side of his hips. His soft “Oh” of surprise made my stomach flip, but his hands immediately settled on my waist like they belonged there.
I wrapped both arms around his neck, legs circling his waist, and pulled him closer. Coldness had been creeping into my bones all evening, but Maxwell was pure heat, melting away everything except this moment. The aurora above us painted his gorgeous face in celestial light in a way that made me want to kiss every inch of it.
We couldn’t call Dev and Isla until the solar storm was over, and I planned to take full advantage of that.
Hopefully, the bloody solar storm lasted for hours. Days, even. Years.
I ground down into him, feeling him harden beneath me, and pressed my lips to the corner of his mouth. The small sound he made—half gasp, half groan—sent heat shooting through my veins. His lips parted, and I flicked my tongue inside teasingly.
Want swelled within me like a tide fighting against rocks, sudden and desperate for release. I fumbled with his belt buckle, my fingers clumsy with urgency, then dragged down his zip with a metallic rasp that seemed obscenely loud in the quiet night.
Maxwell sighed. “You know, we’re supposed to be watching the castle.”
“Okay then, Mr Proper Procedure,” I said, palming his dick through his underwear and watching his eyes flutter shut. I reached up to gently remove his glasses, placing them on top of his rucksack. “Let’s stop.”
