me.”
“But you’re with me, aren’t you?” Knuckles persuaded her chin upward till her mouth was an inch from his. “Every freezing inch of you is here with me. Kiss me back. It’s your turn.”
Rain slanted in past him and hit her face with little cold darts. Drops slid down her forehead and cheeks, into her mouth.
He said, “Don’t think about it. Just do it.”
When she kissed him, he tasted like rain. She sucked it off his tongue and his teeth. She drank him in. A column of energy built in her body, beginning where their mouths joined, that spun and twisted inside her.
Still kissing, he muttered, “Oh, yes. My God, yes,” and bit down on her lips. Response jerked inside her, pulled her loose of all control. She could feel herself shaking.
“What do I taste like?” he demanded into her mouth. His hands took her breasts, shaping them, gentle, gentle across the nipples. He brushed them with the side of his thumbs and her blood jangled in her veins.
“Rain.” It came out a whisper. It was hard to get her breath. She put her arms around and him and pulled close.
His voice. “Taste me. Be here, with me.”
She tasted soap on his lips and the stubble of his chin. Harsh soap. No perfume. Not like the others. He was compounded of simple flavors—tea, rain, soap, smoke, flame.
Under everything, she smelled Adrian himself. She had not once imagined the smell of his skin. It dragged her to him, like fingers pulling at her skin. She stretched upward and filled her mouth with his hair. Set her teeth into the texture of it and tasted. Sucked the rain from it.
He nuzzled her aside to get to her ear, biting, licking, filling her mind with his breath. “Feel this,” he said. “And this.” Somehow his lips, his teeth, found her breast with its goose bumps and the pucker of cold. So sensitive. He warmed her nipples with his tongue. A hum, deep in his chest, appreciative, vibrated on her there. The words, “So good,” were in there somewhere. The hint of his teeth sent frantic, nervous energy to pluck between her legs.
She squirmed with it. Not away from him. Toward him. His hands spread wide on her ribs, to hold her. His arms hardened to steel. He lifted her off her feet and slowly let her slide against him as he brought her down to earth.
They were slick with the rain, chilled, almost shivering. But there was no cold where they were together. His cock was the center of all that heat, hard and insistent on her belly.
A man. The edges of her nerves flicked and twisted like leaves in a high wind. He was very much a man. He would—
“None of that.” He lifted her upward again. Let her glide with agonizing slowness down the architecture of his body. A thousand shocks pricked where every part of her was against every part of him. Surface to surface. One to the other. Complexities interwoven.
He said, “Look at me. Who am I, Owl? Who’s here with you?”
“’Awker.” His name was a talisman. Hawker did these things to her. Rain fell in her face, washing everything away. All the past. All other hands, other men, all the smudges on her soul. The dark cloud of them dissolved, and the rain carried them away. Ghosts, washed away. Gone. Leaving her clean.
Hawker was real. Nothing else. She gripped her hands on his shoulders and leaned to him. Yes. She opened her legs around him, to hold him to her, to make her warm.
Cold roughness at her back. More kisses to her breasts. She was gasping now. His hands soothed downward over breast and belly till he stroked between her thighs, then upward to the joining of her legs. Skillful and sure, he found the fold there and touched inside. She cried out.
“Just my hand, giving you pleasure. That’s all. You and me.
Him, touching her. Only pleasure. Dark, secret pleasure, like the night. Dark fire. She rocked against his hand.
“I want to be inside you,” he said. “I can’t hold out much longer. You ready for this?”
Anything. It did not matter, if only he would keep touching her. She nodded once, jerkily.
He slipped his hands around her. Brought her to him. At the end of the long caress of his skin against her skin, he was inside her.
He bit down hard on her earlobe, and she lost the thought. Rough bites to her lips tore every dark memory away before it took hold. He was a storm contained in a body. He swept over her. He kissed deep and she whimpered into his mouth, overwhelmed.
He thrust. The pang of it shot through the tension inside her. She was the center of a thousand sensations. Shock upon shock as he eased outward. Entered again slowly. Fully.
He was still talking to her. She didn’t try to understand the words, only heard the tone of his voice. Determined. Unrelenting. His hand found her. Was between them. Caressed, so softly, so skillfully, rhythmic, following her as she twisted and gasped.
Faster now, he thrust deep, driving against her. She tried to climb him, while her legs slipped and slid on his thigh. She throbbed and could not escape, she was so unbearably open. Did not want to escape. Offered herself and gloried in it. Heat swept through her, down every pathway of her body, sweeping decision and fear ahead of it.
She dug her fingers into his back. Opened her mouth and bit his neck. Braced her feet on the ground, arched backward, and drove herself toward what he gave her.
He was everything she needed. Unceasing. Steady. Sure of himself. He knew exactly what to do. She released the last restraints in her mind and trusted him.
She was seized and tossed by the climax. Grabbed and shaken as by a great fist. Inside, she closed around him again and again, and every time was a new beat of pleasure. She heard herself cry out in a sound like pain.
He was pleasing himself now, with rough, quick thrusts inside her. Absorbed. Drinking his own pleasure. Lost in her.
She gave back to him, as she knew how to do. Rose to reach for him. Took his hair strongly with her fingers and pulled his mouth to hers. Licked, teased, played with his mouth. Used all her knowledge upon him. Gloried that she knew so much.
Below, she clenched herself around him, where he was within her. Squeezed him tightly. She knew the muscles to use. Had practiced and practiced. She contracted against the hardness inside her.
This, she could give him. This, she knew how to do.
But this time it was no indifferent service. This was beyond words different from anything before. She had not known, could not have imagined, how the tension twisted and exploded. Joy came from everywhere and gathered there, where she held him. She tightened and tightened and felt him move and was struck with ecstasy. Breathless with it. Dizzy.
He was no careful and controlled expert. Not any longer. He had become wild, pounding into her. He was beyond thought. Mad. Consumed. A cry rasped in and out of his throat. His body shocked and stiffened.
His last thrust withdrew. She felt him shudder in her arms and spill himself against her thigh.
They held each other. While he shook. While she trembled and her bones melted and she let her head fall to his chest. While he gasped into her hair.
His grip opened and closed on her shoulders. It was long minutes before he spoke. “Well. That was . . . That was very good.” His voice was gritty. Hoarse.
She did not want to open her eyes. She was crying. She could not imagine why she was crying. “I will not tell you . . . You are conceited enough.” Then she said, “It was good. I didn’t know it would be that good.”
“Me neither. Joke’s on us, innit?” He breathed heavily. “Let’s get inside before you catch an ague.”
“Yes. That is wise.”
“We’ll see how we do in bed.” He did not make her walk back to the cottage in her bare feet. He carried her in his arms while it rained down on them, hard, every step of the front path back to the door. She became cold, as well as filled with amazement.
