Page 72 of Shadow's Edge (Night Prowler 1)
Then, as he stroked one hand down her back and traced a finger into the cleft between her bottom, she thought breathing might not even be necessary.
“I may have one or two more dramatic pronouncements up my sleeve yet,” he murmured. His gaze, pale green veiled with shadows, angled to hers. “Perhaps something involving a bent knee?”
It took her a moment of stupefied silence before she found her tongue and willed it to move.
“I’m not sure I can take any more of your surprises,” she said, unnerved. She lowered her head to his chest to avoid his gaze and listened to the steady thump of his heartbeat, trying to calm herself with the rise and fall of his smooth chest beneath her cheek.
“And besides,” she said, tart, before she could stop herself, “things involving men and bent knees usually involve questions, not pronouncements. And large baubles. Specifically diamonds.”
She swallowed, bit her lip, felt flame spread across her cheeks.
“All right then,” he said, amused and unrepentant. He smoothed his hands over her head, combed his finger through the thick cascade of hair spread over her back. “I’ll say something entirely neutral. Perhaps...good morning?”
Jenna breathed in and out through her nose, vexed and rattled, verging on hysterical. “You have exactly ten seconds before your head becomes separated from your body,” she said with exaggerated care, concentrating hard on the real and grounding sight of an elaborate dressing table across the room, an elegant piece of burled walnut topped with Caraca marble and a shield-shaped mirror. “I was born here?”
He pressed his lips to her hair and she felt the laughter shaking him. “Hostile and demanding. The perfect duo. How irresistible. You are most definitely my dream woman.”
She flung herself off him with a frustrated huff, but he caught her before she rose from the bed and pushed her back into the downy softness of the mattress. He threw one heavy leg over hers, caught her wrist, and pinned it to the pillow over her head.
“You are so endearingly literal,” he said softly. Light spilled through his inky hair to paint the angles of his face deepest chocolate, espresso, and gold. She relished the heat and weight of his leg over her body, the firm muscles of his thighs and stomach and arms, the tickle of his hair against her skin.
She looked into his emerald eyes, filled with warmth and a deep, mischievous tenderness, and felt the cold and impenetrable thing that had been lodged inside her chest since childhood dissolve, like a block of steel lowered into a smelter.
She blinked up at him, dazed by an uncomfortable new feeling, something she hadn’t felt in years, something that made her body feel so light it was as if she was filled with helium and was in danger of floating off the bed and drifting up toward the ceiling.
She had a terrible suspicion this uncomfortable new feeling might be happiness.
No, she thought. Oh, dear God, no.
“Literal?” she repeated weakly. Her pulse was a sudden, thundering roar in her ears.
You cannot fall in love with him. Yo
u cannot.
He drew his hand down her arm, stroking the skin of her wrist and the soft place inside her elbow, caressing her shoulder, then her neck. He brought his hand up to cup the side of her face and lowered his head. He brushed the tip of his nose against hers.
“The New Forest has succored the Ikati of Sommerley for almost twenty generations. It’s kept all our secrets, allowed us to flourish and live undiscovered through hundreds of years. It’s in our blood. It’s in your blood. Your body may not have been born there, but your soul was, your spirit was. It’s your home, Jenna,” he murmured. “You’re finally home.”
“Oh.” She laughed, a little too high and breathlessly, turning her face to avoid his eyes. “Is that what you meant?”
She’d never known exactly where she was born. It was just another of the many mysteries of her childhood, an unimportant fact lost in the shuffle of moving and hiding and pretending to be something she was not. “Somewhere near the water,” was her mother’s standard response, and whether she really didn’t remember or just didn’t want to say, Jenna never found out. And so it was tucked away with all the other questions that were never answered, frozen into the bitter cold that solidified around her heart so long ago. It was the kind of cold that burned like fire.
That’s why you’re here, remember? she reprimanded herself. Answers. Nothing more.
Leander lowered his face to hers. She exhaled and he stole it back from her lips, mingling their breath together. He drew his mouth over hers with a lovely, silken brush of skin against skin that made her shiver.
“My beautiful girl,” he murmured, kissing the corner of her mouth. He spread his fingers around the back of her neck, his fingers warm and strong in her hair, stroking, possessive. “My lover.” She felt the heat of his erection growing stiff and insistent against her hip. He bent his head and nipped the tender skin of her neck, pressed his lips gently where he had bruised the skin from the night before. “Say you’re mine. Tell me you’re mine.”
No. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. NO!
She squirmed beneath him, trying to escape, but he only laughed low in his throat and pulled her even closer.
“So demure,” he teased in that pirate’s voice that made her weak all over. He slid his hand down to her chest and cupped the fullness of one breast in his palm. His voice dropped an octave. “You weren’t quite so demure last night.”
He pinched her nipple between his fingers and she fought back a gasp.
She leapt up from the bed and stood quivering and wide-eyed before him. “Show me!” she blurted out, desperate for any distraction that would restore her rapidly shrinking sense of control.
