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 body presses down on mine, hot and firm, and protective like an anchor to help me through the rush of this unknown.
I know theoretically. I know through the lens of a healer. I know from dreams and imagination. But I didn’t know the trembling, panting reality. Didn’t know the solid feel of these hard lines. Didn’t know this unbearable mounting something slinging through my body. Didn’t know staring into someone’s eyes could be so vulnerable.
I grip Quin’s shoulder blades, pressing tightly. I feel his expanding chest on thick breaths. I feel the harder bite of the flutette jammed between us.
I feel his question slide down my neck and pool at my collarbone. “Can we?”
My limbs shake. Not from uncertainty or fear. This is something else—a collision of all the memories of us that led to this moment. All the banter, the teasing, the spoken support and the unspoken. All the anger and surges of frustration. All the times he’s looked at me and shaken my insides.
All the times I’ve felt.
They’ve led to this.
And it feels inevitable. I whisper into the waves of his hair.
A tremor rolls through him and I feel the fading of his restraint once more. I skim over his back, my touch light and then hard. A touch that commands.
His hand finds mine and grips it above my head. His fingers glow with a spell that feels oily, slippery. He deliberately runs his fingers down the length of my arm to tell me—
This is what’s coming.
He wants this now.
His eyes are dark on mine, his lips parted; his desire is unchecked—
This is Quin letting me beneath all his masks.
We are both at our most vulnerable here. And we’re sharing this moment together.
My throat is too jammed up to speak. I lift his glowing fingers and steer them on a gasp between us.
His eyes flash, his pulse wild beneath my fingers. His lips part like he might say something, like there’s one last thing he needs to be sure of. But I shake my head before he can. I know. I want this. I want you.
Something in him breaks. A shudder runs through him, and Quin cannot control it anymore, he growls into a messy kiss, fingers shaking between my cheeks as he searches and skims.
The slick spell rubs up against me with a desperation I feel mirrored in my panting against Quin’s mouth. I’m ready to break apart for you. To break apart with you. Together.
All in a rush.
I claw at his back, pulling him closer and closer, because I too am losing control. Let us be free for these moments. Let us enjoy a moment of coming completely undone.
Through the shifting gaps in his hair, the stars glint brightly. More brightly when Quin skims me there again and shallowly dips in. His slick spell is warm and a million nerves wake up under his exploration. His finger presses inside and I clench. Not from not wanting. But from the shock of shivers that throttle through me, that have me gasping against his jaw, that have my knees falling into puffs of cloud as I open myself more.
I whine as I bite his chin.
The cloud suddenly lurches up and I love that I can feel his cracking composure, not just in the deepening of his needy fingers, of his quick removal of them, of his repositioning between my legs, but in all the spaces around me. Wisps of silky plumes slide over my arms, my waist, my ankles.
His hand tightens at my hip, against my forearm—the only warning before a sharp intrusion and Quin’s guttural, shuddering gasp.
His eyes flutter closed with unbearable pleasure—pleasure he is taking from me, that I am giving him. He moves and there’s pain and fullness but also connection. A raw, intimate connection, but also a deeper one. It stirs inside my chest and swells—his lovelight inside me, responding to him, recognising his soul—
It unfurls, a mounting ticklish beat that drums through my veins, from deep in my middle to the tips of my toes, to my knuckles, to the sensitive spot at the base of my neck. Even my scalp prickles with it. With each plunge, the lovelight connects with his pleasure, releasing it inside me. I feel Quin as if I’m one with him.
He is awash with desire, he cannot push himself deep enough, he wants to live in this moment. He moves in me with curiosity and need and such achingly simple joy.
This is something he has always longed for. Something he thought he’d never be able to have. He has always been a man of a million masks: the ruler, the tactician, the symbol. But here, with me, he is just a man. Just Quin.
In his hectic moves inside me, he’s not bound by rules and discipline, doesn’t have to be afraid of schemes and cunning, doesn’t have to keep his mind sharp. He doesn’t have to think. He can just feel.