Melody lifted one of her graceful hands off of her wineglass, then held it between them with her palm facing him.
“This is how I see.” Her head tilted to one side, sending her hair cascading over her shoulder and that scent of hers dancing all around him. Griffin breathed in, deep, like he wanted to drown himself in her. He did. “Do you mind?”
His throat was tight. And he was harder than he thought he’d ever been. His sex was ready. He was ready. He could feel the pulse of his need, deep and low and insistent.
He should have been ashamed.
Yet he was...not.
“I would be delighted,” he managed to get out, in a gravelly voice that no doubt betrayed him.
But he couldn’t think of things like shame. Not when Melody was leaning closer. Shifting her body so that her thigh was pressed against his. Torturing him—
“Would you hold this?” she asked, in that same soft, sweet voice.
Reminding him who she was.
And who, by contrast, he was.
Griffin took her wineglass from her. He ordered the beast in him back to its cage. And recited the promises he’d made—to his brother, to this woman, to himself—like a prayer as he gripped both glasses. Much too tightly.
Not that he expected prayers to help him. Not after the sins he’d committed—and gleefully.
Then he watched, transfixed, as she lifted her hands and carefully fit them to either side of his face.
The shock of it was like a blow.
He felt his pulse gallop. She was touching him, her hands cool against his jaw, while he could do nothing but burn. Her face was close to his, and that was another kind of heat. The scent of her filled his senses. Her hair, her skin, the soft curves in her lean frame.
But he didn’t move. He didn’t dare.
She moved her head as if she was listening to something far away. A faint frown line appeared between her brows.
Griffin died a thousand deaths, yet somehow—somehow—kept his hands to himself.
And slowly, almost reverently, Melody began to move her hands as if he was made of Braille and she was reading every word.
Griffin had seen every possible sexy thing there was. He’d had them acted out upon him and acted them out in return. Yet he had never in his life seen anything sexier than this.
Than her.
Princess Melody, his bride, focusing on him with such intensity that he was sure if he squinted he would be able to see the force of all that concentration in a shimmering, electric arc between them. As if every light touch of her graceful fingers against his jaw, his cheekbones, the bridge and then the line of his nose, spread light.
She traced his eyebrows and his temples. She smoothed her fingers through his hair as if she’d read his mind and knew what he longed to do with hers. She found his mouth and traced her fingertips over his lips, seemingly heedless of the greedy flare of heat that kicked up inside him.
He shoved it back down. Or he tried.
Melody shifted beside him, and he couldn’t decide if it was a blessing or a curse that he was still holding on to both of their wineglasses. Surely it was a curse that he couldn’t put his hands on her as she performed this oddly hushed and seemingly sacred act.
That was the blessing, too, he knew.
Because she was looking at him, that was all. She wasn’t trying to seduce him. And in return, he wanted to devour her.
Melody didn’t stop at his face. Almost dreamily, her hands drifted down to learn the column of his neck, that betraying pulse, and the width of his shoulders. He wore only a light sweater himself and found he missed the faint abrasion of her fingertips against his bare skin. She learned every muscle in each of his arms, then moved back to his chest. Her brow still furrowed, she used the whole of each palm to trace his pectoral muscles, then the ridged abdomen below.
And then slowly, with that same fierce look of concentration that had him hard enough to burst, she climbed her way back up again for one last pass.
Her face was so close to his. It was unbearable. And Melody moved a hand as if she knew what she was doing. As if she was deliberately positioning her palm she could pull his head to hers—
But she didn’t.
It was an agony. He was in agony.
She stopped, her lips a scant centimeter from his—
“Thank you,” she said, her voice that soft wisp of sound.
He barely heard it over the thundering inside of him. The clenching, near-unmanageable need.
“Melody...” Griffin began, though he had no idea what he planned to say.
Or if instead he might beg.
He, who had never begged because there had never been a need. Because he had never, in all his life, had occasion to want.
Not when everything was provided to him on a procession of silver platters. Not when any need or desire was met before he bothered to express it.
Griffin couldn’t identify, at first, the thing that swelled in him when she dropped her hand. Then sat back, moving away from him, letting the December night back in between them.
Longing, he thought. This is longing.
In something that might have been astonishment, had it been less... bright.
Her smile made the stars seem like diamonds made of paste. “Now we see each other.”
“You can see me anytime you like,” he told her, and he was appalled by the sound of his own voice. His need so naked, so unmistakable, that he was surprised his shy and sheltered bride didn’t recoil.
Griffin pressed her wineglass back into her hand, waited until she gripped it, then stood.
Deeply glad she couldn’t see him wince as the heaviness of his sex...protested.
He moved to the balcony rail, entirely too aware that he was reacting as if she’d attacked him.
How he wished she
