whimper that broke between them coming from someplace deep inside her. Kissing Vaughn, even if it hadn’t been an experience they’d vowed never to repeat, could never have prepared her for the half-starved sweep of Lucan’s lips across hers.
Gargoyles were known for their dominant natures, but the brutal possession in Lucan’s kiss rocked her to the core, awakening an unfamiliar hunger. It stretched and reached inside her, craving more of the slick and scorching strokes of his tongue against hers.
Sliding her hands up the back of his neck, she sank her fingers into the ends of his hair. Her lips parted for him again and again as she found and matched the merciless rhythm. She’d never seen Lucan fight, but if he went into battle with even a fraction of the intensity that spilled over into her, she couldn’t imagine a soul touching him.
His teeth grazed her bottom lip. Sucking slow and hard, he pulled it between his own, drawing out the pleasure that spiked her bloodstream. Fitting herself closer to him, she indulged in his heat and strength, wanting to kiss him longer, deeper.
The certainty that she would never get enough of it—of him—punched straight through her chest. Nearly panting, she pulled back, pressing her fingers to her already swollen mouth.
Green eyes held her gaze carefully, an eerily calm lake on the surface, but with a fierce current raging beneath.
No, she hadn’t imagined anything. He felt it too.
Lucan didn’t try to stop her as she backed out of his arms, then she turned and ran. “You’ll have to catch me if you want more.”
“Briana,” he hissed after her, but she’d already left him behind, not caring if anyone heard them.
Knowing he’d follow, she let her cat rise close to the surface, guiding her as she lifted her gown to duck beneath branches and leap over fallen limbs and roots that turned the forest floor into a map of gnarled ropes.
She paused long enough to remove her boots, and ran until the celebration in the meadow had faded entirely, leaving only the woodland creatures to reach her ears when she finally slowed. It would have been easy to lose Lucan altogether, making it more of a challenge to leave a trail he could follow.
She tipped her face up.
A trail she could watch from above.
Grinning, she pulled herself up into the tree that split in two, twin trunks fighting for the moonlight. As comfortable moving among the leaves and branches as she was with the earth beneath her feet, she settled herself in the crook between the trunks, one leg tucked beneath her.
Surprisingly, Lucan didn’t leave her waiting for long.
He came into view moments later, bursting through the undergrowth. He slowed, crouching to study the ground. Carrying both her boots and her sword—what on earth had possessed her to leave such a gift behind?— he took another few steps, then paused to look at the twigs left broken when she’d passed.
When he studied her tracks for another moment only to turn in the wrong direction, she called out, “Do you always tromp through the woods like a drunken troll?”
Lucan laughed, spotting her easily. “If you’re waiting for me to come up there and get you—”
Pushing off, she jumped from the tree, and found only her boots and her sword on the ground. She turned, but he was already behind her, wrapping an arm around her waist as he had at the lake. He was much too fast for a human.
“Giving in already?” His lips moved against her neck.
Her eyes drifted shut, and she leaned into him. His groan of approval made the tightening low in her belly clench harder.
The heat from his palm warmed her through her gown, and she watched as he drew the backs of his fingers up her ribs, catching the side of her breast. A yearning so foreign, and so perfectly right, pulsed under her skin in delicious anticipation.
She tipped her head back, watching him. Eyes hooded with seductive intent, he continued to explore her, his feather-light touch growing bolder until she cried out when he finally closed his palm around her.
His thumb circled the tip of her nipple, increasing the throbbing pleasure that tugged between her thighs.
“Briana.” He groaned into her neck, his grip unbreakable. He turned her in his arms, his mouth finding hers, devouring her all over again. “We should go back, before it’s too late. Before I…” He sighed, the sound caught somewhere between regret and heartbreak.
“Before you realize exactly how good I am at this?” she teased.
“You seek to torment me.”
“No.” She pressed her hand to his heart. “I only seek to know you.”
He looked away. “What you find there may disappoint you.”
She bit his bottom lip. “Never.”
He smoothed the tangled strands of hair back from her face. After running through the woods, she had no doubt what she must look like, but she felt too alive to care. A silent war seemed to wage in Lucan’s head, and more than once he glanced past her in the direction they’d come from.
She felt more than saw the moment when he gave up on whatever would have pulled him away from her.
His thumb stroked the length of her jaw, the kiss he stole from her mouth overwhelming in its intensity. If he’d been possessive before, now every place he touched felt like a predatory brand that marked her bone- deep.
His fingers snagged the laces at the back of her gown, and she closed her eyes as the material slipped down her body to pool at her feet. If there had been a chill in the air, she wouldn’t have felt it, not beneath the gaze—pure ravenous heat at its core—that held her in place.
The night seemed to hold its breath.
She moved into his arms, and no step had taken so little effort or taken her so very far.
Lucan couldn’t stop from touching her.
Everywhere.
Spellbound by every blissful sound she made, drugged by the wild scent of her—crushed wildflowers and rainstorms—and drowning in the softness of her skin, he craved only to please her, the need poised to consume him completely.
Caging her hands in his palms, he captured her mouth—so soft and lush—in another kiss that spiraled away from him. She didn’t protest the way he ravaged her mouth, didn’t question the staggering thirst she unleashed inside him.
He drank from the sweetest lips, savoring every molten taste, losing a little more of his control. Later he could kill the gargoyle who’d dared to kiss her before, but for now he sought only to sample every inch of her.
Her tongue slid into his mouth, and he fisted a hand in her hair. She nipped at his jaw, daringly playful. “How can I barely breathe and still feel like I could run for miles?” Like fragile silk over heated-steel, her voice weakened him further.
He drew his thumb across her bare shoulder, her skin so pale and delicate compared to his sun-darkened hand, rough from training. “Maybe you should run.”
“You’d never catch me.”
The gut wrenching certainty that he would never stop until he found her kept him from agreeing. He bent, pressing his mouth to the slope of her neck.
She shivered in his arms, her nails lightly raking his chest. Her fingers brushed the edge of his shirt, lingering at the hem, but then too quickly fell away. Sensing her hesitation, he tugged it off and was rewarded with a soft sigh of feminine appreciation.
With Arthur and Constantine for company, he’d grown accustomed to women watching him, but never had he felt so exposed, at her mercy, as she stood there, drinking him in.
One by one, her gaze traced the scars on his body. He’d forgotten how many he’d picked up over the years, never once self-conscious of the healed wounds—until she drew an invisible path between each one. First with her
