Total pages in book: 88
Estimated words: 84840 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 424(@200wpm)___ 339(@250wpm)___ 283(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 84840 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 424(@200wpm)___ 339(@250wpm)___ 283(@300wpm)
His one hand is riveted on my waist; the other skims my face, thumbs my chin, pulls my lips open to catch a breath—his breath.
It slinks inside me with an intimacy that has me trembling. He feels it too and gathers me close, pressing his forehead against mine, his pulse ticking in his throat, unsteady, wild. Neither of us speaks, the words simply don’t exist. This is us. This is our truth.
A braid drags lightly along my jaw, under my ear, where it rubs. Flickers of sensation—ticklish, sharp, magical—snap down my middle in quick, pulsing waves.
I gasp, searching his darkening eyes, my fingers already moving, already slipping into his hair. The bejewelled fastening kisses my neck, while his others glint under the stars. I roll it between my fingers, slow and deliberate. I have touched his braids before. I have plaited them into his hair. I’ve worn them around my wrists, felt them in every way—except one.
The one way that is most intimate. That is only meant for one other person.
I feel the fastening warming under my touch. Holding his gaze, I slowly, carefully pull it free. A piece of him. A piece of his life that he’s letting me take into my hands. A piece of him that is also mine now.
I press the bead into his hand, then slip my fingers into his hair. I touch the braid, tease it loose. The strands are silky, soft. They curl around my skin like whispers, like sharing secrets they have waited too long to tell.
One by one, I remove his braids. One by one, I undo them all.
His breath hitches, his grip falters, and then—his hands curl around the beads and around me. A shudder ripples through him, low and deep, as if he’s just been unlocked.
His kiss—his whole body—throbs against me, urgent, unrestrained, consumed. And at the slide of his tongue against mine, at my guttural hum—he moves. Hard. Certain. Desperate.
The stars tilt and I fall in a tantalising rush, my back sinking into a bed of cloud, weightless, cradled by Quin’s magic. He lets go of the fastenings, discarding them alongside his cane, and then the scent of him—fresh rain, earth, wind—wraps around me as his hands tear at my clothes and find my skin.
His hair spills around my head like a curtain and I scrunch it in my hand as I lift my face to his. I smile into a teasing kiss. “You’ve taken all my layers off.” I pluck at his shirt—and tear it too. “Now the very last of your own.”
With a spell, his clothes disappear, only his cloak whips upwards in the sky and flutters slowly back down. Quin looms over me, knees spreading mine to settle there. His arms brace either side of me just in time for his cloak to settle over his back like a blanket. I swallow nervously. He’s all tightly refined muscle and smooth skin, and I suddenly don’t know what to do with all of that. He shifts my knee slightly, and I grab his back to steady him. “Your leg—”
“The cloud gives way perfectly when I need it to,” he murmurs.
He’s not in pain; he won’t be.
I swallow and nod.
What was desperate and impatient before has settled into something achingly exposing. And slow. Quin sinks his gaze over every inch of me and I have to steer it back to my flushing face.
He raises an eyebrow. “Could it be . . . Cael?” he lowers his lips to my ear in a wolfish whisper, “Are you finally afraid of something?”
I grit my teeth and snatch him into a kiss, and his chuckle pearls over my lips.
He always could tease me into proving otherwise.
I kiss him again, softer this time. “But who knew you possibly hid that, your majesty.”
He doesn’t expect it and his laughter rips up the air, the cloud rising and falling with each bout, sending achy jolts where it’s already aching.
He shifts knowingly and the short gap between us feels syrupy, the air heavy and hot. His hair combs mine where it’s splayed and tangled, and it tickles. Every slight shift, every flicker of our uneven breaths—I feel it all. Caresses and coiling nerves. An ache that builds and builds. My toes curl in wispy cloud and I feel silky tendrils puff around my feet. And Quin’s lashes tremble—like he feels me through his magic too.
His hand grips the cloud as he steadily, slowly inches his body towards mine. Air billows between us and his warmth rushes nearer. The first touch comes to my stomach, a blunt, fleeting touch that lifts again with our hitched breaths and leaves a wet trace to cool on my stomach. The fleeting touch is followed by a lingering one, heavy, warm. Long, thick. Pressing next to mine. Pulsing. A pulsing that vibrates through the cloud, through Quin’s very being. A pulse that trips my own into something erratic—