Passion Untamed (Feral Warriors #3)(42)

He squeezed her hands softly. "You've had to give yourself to too many people, for too many years."

"That's not true. I've never given myself to anyone. Others have taken. But you're the only one I've ever wanted, Paenther. The only one I've ever touched like that."

Her words tightened the band around his chest and only inflamed his desire more.

She pulled her hands from his, then rose to her knees and cupped his face, looking down at him from her slight advantage. Her eyes held soft vulnerability and raging heat.

"Do you want me?" she asked huskily.

He gripped her waist because he couldn't keep his hands off her. "That's not the issue."

"I think it is. Your body's ready for me, Paenther. I felt it. But I won't push you. I know how you feel about the Mage."

He tightened his grip on her. "It has nothing to do with your being Mage. I want you, little witch. I'm throbbing for want of you. I just think we should take it slower. You deserve that."

Her expression softened, and she leaned forward and kissed him lightly on the cheek, her arms curving around his neck as she turned and brushed her cheek to his, like a creature starved for touch. Exactly what she was, he realized.

He pulled her tight against him.

"I want what we had in the woods that day, before you knew what I was." Her words, against his ear, were but a whisper. She was starting to tremble. "It's never been like that before. Or since. I want you to touch me like that again."

She pulled back where she could face him, looking into his eyes with a trust and a tenderness that slew him. "Please, Paenther? We may never get this chance again. And I need to be close to you."

She was shooting his good intentions to hell, but he was beginning to understand. Yes, she'd been used, but the worst thing Birik had done to her was isolate her. From kindness and comfort. From tenderness and touch. She'd had her animals, briefly, before they were slaughtered each night. But she'd lacked the touch of her own kind.

He remembered the way she'd crawled up beside him on the stone slab. Even after he'd attacked her and torn a chunk from her arm, she'd curled around him in sleep. She'd almost never been in that room that she hadn't been touching him.

She might not be Feral, with his own animal need for physical contact, but she was more at one with the animal world than most. And she clearly hungered for that contact.

With him.

The softness toward her expanded inside him, swelling, giving birth to a tenderness he wasn't sure he could contain. Without a doubt, she was casting a spell over him, weaving a net around his heart. A net he wasn't entirely sure he wanted to escape.

"You want me," he murmured against her temple. His hand slid down her hip, to the hem of the shirt that covered her.

"Yes, Paenther. Yes."

His fingers curved around her warm thigh, then started a soft, sensual climb to her heat.

Chapter Twelve

Skye curled her hands behind Paenther's neck as his warm fingers slid up her bare thigh and curved around her hip. She'd begged him to touch her again, to take her in the most basic way. Her body quaked with anticipation even as her heart swelled with a raw affection for this man who had so many reasons to hate her yet treated her with more caring, more gentleness, than anyone since her mother.

She pulled back, her gaze caressing the strong lines of his face, those high cheekbones and the feral slashes across his eye, then dipped to his mouth. Her own lips parted, longing to feel his again.

As if reading her mind, he leaned forward. She met him halfway, melding her mouth with his, shoving her tongue into his mouth even as he shoved his into hers. She craved his kiss and his touch. Three times he'd come inside her, but only one of those times had he been free to touch her. Only that time in the woods when she'd captured him, and it had all happened too fast.

"Lift up," he murmured against her mouth, as his hands gripped her hips on either side and lifted her off her heels.

Skye pulled back from his kiss, watching his dark, passion-filled eyes.

"Spread your knees for me, Beauty. Let me touch you."

Thick, damp heat gathered low inside her as she did what he asked, her gaze locked on his as she curved her hands over the thick muscles of his bare shoulders to steady herself. She held on to him as his hand traveled from her hip to her stomach, then slowly down.

As her breath caught with frantic anticipation, his other hand slid inside her shirt and covered her breast, setting fire to the sparks already consuming her. She gasped, her fingers digging into his shoulders as his own finger and thumb plucked at her nipple, drawing hot gasps of pleasure from her throat until she was leaning into his touch, silently begging for more.

The hand on her stomach slid down into her curls before sliding lower, straight to the source of her heat. As a single finger teased the hot core of her pleasure, her hands slid into his hair, and she grabbed his head, holding on against the torrent of sensation. His finger stroked between her legs, flicking the center of her heat over and over until she was moaning and rocking against his hand. Then his finger slid deep inside her, curling against her inner walls, circling the edges of her sheath, around and around, harder, faster, until she felt she was spinning in the eye of a storm.

"Paenther."

A second finger dove inside her, both shoving deeper still as she pressed her hips down, groaning with pleasure.