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 fingers. Then her mouth.
Exquisite and agonizing, each caress burned a little hotter, a little deeper. Clenching his fists, he indulged her curiosity, welcomed the satin sweep of skin across skin. As though he hadn’t fully healed, she used only the barest pressure to explore him.
Her dark head bent with every pass, her palms heating up his already feverish skin.
The girl he’d teased, intrigued by in ways he hadn’t understood then, was now a remarkable woman with a spirit he wanted to chain himself to in hopes of forever holding onto some small part of her. Love was impossible for him—almost as impossible as being so taken with a woman he hadn’t seen in years—but the knotting ache under his heart said otherwise.
Unable to take any more of the blissful tenderness that could throw a stronger man off balance, Lucan tipped her head up, taking her lips with his.
Her tongue, greedy and increasingly demanding, pushed into his mouth. With as much care as he could manage, he pulled her down, her gown half covering the mossy ground beneath them as he came down on top of her.
Lips shiny, eyes sparking with an inner fire that ensnared him completely, she stared up at him waiting. He closed his eyes, lulled by the glide of her fingertips up his spine, and aroused by the squeeze of her thighs around his hips.
So fucking aroused.
She arched her hips, rubbing against his cock in slow, needy circles. Through the thin material of his pants, he could feel how warm and wet she was.
For him.
Sliding down her body, he palmed her breast. The tips—already hard—beckoned him, and he lowered his head. She gripped the back of his head, her claws lightly raking when he pulled her into his mouth. Rolling his tongue across her nipple, he released her only to draw her back in with a slow, greedy suck.
He couldn’t stop from grinding against her, the length of him throbbing, wanting inside her.
“Luc.” She licked her lips, and he rose up to conquer the lush mouth that was meant for him—just like the rest of her. Every sigh, every freckle, every strand of hair the color of the darkest ale.
Gripping her hips, he lifted her, sliding a palm beneath. There he could rub her ass, changing the angle as he pressed against her. Her whimper of pleasure filled his mouth, and he teased with his tongue, drawing another soft cry from her.
“I need…” Her breath caught, and he deepened the kiss, letting it spin out of control. Reveling in it. In her.
“Tell me,” he managed when he could speak.
She shook her head, but captured his hand and brought it to her thigh.
Watching the pleasure drift across her face, he dragged his fingers upward. Already damp for him, she parted her legs, letting him slide higher, through the slick moisture waiting for him at her core.
She never once looked away from him, not even when he raised his fingertips to his mouth. She bit her lip as he sampled her, letting her scent and taste fill his senses. Starved for her, his cock pulsed, the need to be inside her stealing over every inch of his body.
She wasn’t ready yet, but he’d get her there, to a place where she would writhe beneath him, her cries echoing against his ear.
Finding the slick knot between her folds, he circled in lazy strokes.
“Luc,” she hissed, her hands digging into his shoulders.