Page 163 of Games of Death and Desire

Stavros kicks his trousers to the side, his gaze smoldering into me. “Do I meet your satisfaction, Lady Thief?”

I wasn’t always sure I liked that nickname. Hearing it now in his old sardonic lilt, the cockiness returned to his voice with warmth twined through it, lifts my spirits with another flutter of my pulse.

I smirk back at him. “I suppose you’ll do.”

With a rustle of my skirt, I stand and saunter toward him. Stavros holds perfectly still other than the rise and fall of his breath.

I set my hand on one pectoral and skim my fingertips down to his waist. The slight hitch of his chest eggs me on.

The top of my head barely reaches his shoulder. But that simply means that I’m the perfect height to press a kiss to one of those scars mottling his torso.

At the brush of my lips against his heated skin, a rumble of amusement that’s a little ragged as well emanates from the former general’s lungs. He cups my shoulder, gliding his thumb along the curving neckline of my dress.

Everywhere I shift my gaze, there’s another nick or lingering line that I couldn’t make out from afar. My lungs constrict at the sight of them.

I really don’t have any concept of just how much this man endured during his years on the front lines of Silana’s ongoing military squabbles. Has he skirted death even more times than I have?

With a sudden sense of urgency, I set my hand over the roughened skin of his dedication brand and kiss another of the scars. And another. And another.

“What are you doing?” Stavros asks, with a rasp in his voice he can’t quite master.

I move my lips to the next scar, letting them graze his mottled skin as I speak. “Thanking Sabrelle for ensuring that none of these wounds brought you to your end.”

A choked sound escapes him, and then he’s tugging my chin up while he lowers his head. His mouth crashes into mine.

I’ve been kissed before by all three of the other men Julita brought together. Benedikt’s kiss was merely a quick thrill, doused by his blasé attitude afterward. But Alek’s can electrify me, and Casimir knows how to make me melt.

Stavros’s kiss sets me on fire.

Even as the flames of desire dance beneath my skin, threatening to burn me up, I can’t help leaning into him. Can’t help wanting to absorb every bit of the scorching need we kindle between us.

This is the only kind of bonfire I want to worship at.

When he tugs at the laces of my gown to loosen it, I don’t have a single protest left in me. I let the garment fall and wriggle out of my underskirt as well between kiss after addicting kiss.

I have to let go of him so he can pull off my chemise. He gazes down at me, now as bared as he is, with the familiar twitch of his head that makes me abruptly self-conscious.

I won’t look anything like the pampered noblewomen he must be used to. No amount of living among them will disguise the effects of my childhood deprivations or the scars I’ve taken in different sorts of battles.

But Stavros traces his fingers down my sternum with a reverent expression. They graze the false godlen brand and continue to my belly button.

Then he lifts my arm and presses a tender kiss to the scar that slashes across my bicep from a blade I didn’t dodge quite fast enough. The wider one on my forearm, where I scraped it on a window ledge fleeing the Crown’s Watch at thirteen.

He trails a caress back up my arm and grazes the worst scars across my shoulder blades, his touch feather-light. His voice comes out low and raw. “The only one I can thank for keeping you alive is you. But Sabrelle herself would be impressed by the strength that’s gotten you through everything you’ve endured.”

I can’t deny the admiration or the hunger in his tone. Before the surge of emotion can overwhelm me, I yank his mouth back to mine.

With one hand tangled in my hair and other arm a solid pressure against the small of my back, Stavros guides us both down to the floor with me straddling his lap. It’s a good position for our mismatched heights, putting me where I can claim another kiss by bobbing a little up on my knees… or drop lower against him to create a friction that has us both groaning.

When I grind against him through our drawers, Stavros’s arm tightens around me. He teases his hand down my front to cup my breast and cants his hips upward to pay me back in kind.

“Last night was good before I screwed it up,” he murmurs between increasingly urgent kisses. “But this is so much better.”

I make a noise of agreement that sounds embarrassingly like a whine of need and reclaim his mouth. As his tongue flicks between my lips, his thumb swivels over my nipple. I shiver with the pleasure flooding me from every angle.

A hard surface cooler than his skin strokes over my hip. I startle for a second before I recognize that—of course—it’s his prosthetic.

Stavros pauses, glancing down at the hooked loop of metal against my leg. “I can take it off. I wasn’t thinking—”

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