Page 42 of Burn

Atop the windowsill. Against the wall.

Had we been alone in this enclave, I suspected we wouldn’t leave this cabin for several days more.

Poet’s digits sketched my temple, then quested to my ear, which he rubbed between his thumb and forefinger like a trinket. Or a treasure. Delighted shivers rushed up my skin, and a closed-mouth sigh drifted from my lips as the jester continued to etch my countenance with those dexterous hands.

“Hello,” I whispered, happy with exhaustion.

“Hi,” he murmured in that husky, drowsy timbre.

I stretched and burrowed into Poet’s touch. He traced the length of my body as though he’d been doing so since I fell unconscious at dawn, encased in his arms.

Then again, the realization clicked. My brows furrowed, the space between them wrinkling like paper. “You have not slept.”

“Good afternoon to you too,” he teased.

“Why have you not slept?”

“Chiding me already? Jesters have rules about that. No lectures before coffee or sex.”

“Poet—”

“I didn’t want to miss this,” he answered plainly, running his knuckles down the edge of my waist to illustrate. The motion tickled as much as it enticed, a combination that shouldn’t be humanly possible, were it not for his skills.

Something akin to melted sugar seemed to pour down my limbs. Why must my concerns always come out sounding like admonishments?

I softened my tone and reached out to caress the grooves of his abdomen. “You need rest.”

“You’re my rest,” he assured me, snatching my fingers and dragging them to his pulse. “You hear that? ’Tis evidence of your effect on me.”

Relaxed tempo. Strong and steady.

If I revealed my own heartbeat, it would sound much the same. The notion wrung a relieved smile from me, especially when other facets came into clearer view.

The purple shadows under his eyelids were gone. They had vanished at some point last night. As for the slight bristles tracking across his unshaven jaw, I rather enjoyed the unrefined and ruggedly sexy appearance it gave him.

Presently backdropped by the gilded light, this jester should not be of our current world. Rather, he resembled a careless fae of ancient times, in all his disheveled glory, though no less lethal.

Peace filled my lungs to capacity, then whooshed out in a great exhale. We gazed at one another, inebriated with bliss. I had marveled at the mysticism of this place, but Poet’s presence turned the treehouse enclave into a paradise. Like our own hidden castle of the wild, where untamed things happened.

I swayed my own fingers over Poet’s bare chest, relishing every contour. Feeling as blithe as a Spring citizen, I bent my knees, lifted my calves into the air, and crossed them at the ankles.

A deep masculine noise strummed from Poet’s throat. His lips crooked with appreciation and mischief. “Look at you. My reigning thorn. If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were gloriously fucked all night, by everything from my fingers, to my tongue, to my cock.” When my face suffused with heat, he quirked an eyebrow and gave voice to my private thoughts. “And by some other source as well. Care to confess your sins, Highness?”

That sex toy he’d used on me, after tying my limbs in scarlet ribbons. Although it was nowhere in sight, I imagined the object tucked safely in a drawer after Poet had meticulously cleaned it. He catered to such tools the way he did his wardrobe.

Heat blazed across my cheeks, surely painting my skin in a mortified and wanton shade of pink. With a half-groan, half-laugh, I slapped my palms over my face. “I cannot believe I did that.”

The bed shook from Poet’s lazy chuckle. “Oh, but you did. Energetically, I might add. Come now,” he said, pawing my hands from my face. “None of that. You should be proud, sweeting. Such heights can’t be reached without the tenacious will of a princess and the deviant prowess of a juggler.”

Playfully, I smacked his bicep. “What perverse miscreant brings a dildo to a romantic reunion?”

“Someone who’ll never bore you. Let’s not forget I’m of Spring and a man of performance. Likewise, I had extra space in my bag.”

“With your addiction to textiles, I very much doubt that.”

“Fair enough, but I made room. And what unbiased heiress judges a mere trinket as being perverse rather than sensuous? What Autumn calls debauched, Spring calls intimate. There was nothing hedonistic about what we did.”

“Fair point,” I teased back. “And I agree.”

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