Serpent's Kiss (Elder Races #3)(67)

The Light Fae finished checking in and headed for the stairs. She watched them climb upward and disappear. Rune’s whisper was the barest thread of throaty sound. His breath tickled along her sensitive skin, and she shuddered harder as her knees weakened. She found herself leaning back against him. She breathed, “What are you doing?”

He felt it again, the sense that here was some keystroke password to an unbreakable code. He put his lips against her neck and mouthed, “What do you think I’m doing? I said I was going to come after you again.”

“Yes, but here? Now?” She tried to turn around, but his hands tightened and held her in place.

“What can I say, I’m an opportunist,” he murmured. “And you’re making me crazy. I loved the feeling of your legs gripping me tight when you knocked me down at the cottage. I love the fact that you could knock me down. I love your strength and confidence.” He realized the depth of truth in that statement. Back on the island it had hurt him to see her so profoundly shaken, and he would do just about anything he could to avoid seeing that happen to her again. He whispered, “Look at the couple that just walked in the door. They don’t have a clue we’re standing here. Or the doorman over there, standing just outside. He can’t see a thing as I do this.”

Unable to resist, Rune’s hand slid around and he cupped her full, round breast.

Even though he had given her plenty of warning, acute shock still bolted through her, washing her from head to toe. She made a small, strangled sound and suddenly Rune’s other hand was clapped tight over her mouth.

“Shh,” he whispered. His breathing had roughened. “We can’t make any noise.”

She gripped his forearms tightly, shaking, as she watched the couple, a man and a woman, walk by obliviously. The heat from Rune’s hand on her breast burned through the thin barrier of the cotton caftan. He stroked along the firm, weighted flesh until her plump nipple jutted between his first and second fingers. Then he pinched her gently, and the sensation speared right down to the juncture at the top of her legs.

She jerked in his arms and sucked in a useless, frantic breath. Her fingers dug into the muscled flesh of his forearms.

And she did not push away either the caressing hand at her breast or the hand that covered her mouth.

His mouth felt taut against her skin, at the sensitive spot where her neck met her shoulder. “Tell me to stop,” he breathed. Because he could not stop himself. The compulsion he felt kept driving him toward her. Dimly he was aware of warning bells going off somewhere, but they were far off in the distance, cloaked by a sensual haze that covered everything in his head.

Her head fell back against his collarbone. She gazed blindly at the ceiling and mouthed the word soundlessly against his broad palm. Stop?

He massaged her breast, rolling her nipple between his fingers, and good f**king hell, once again he almost came in his jeans. The luscious heavy weight of her breast filled his palm just right, and her nipple was a delicacy his mouth watered to taste, but the by-God real ass-kicker was how she shivered in his arms and held on to him like he was the last stable thing on earth, how her gorgeous, healthy scent bloomed with feminine arousal. That was his scent. That was for him.

And she breathed for him, in ragged, telltale gasps.

“You need to say that word again,” he whispered roughly against her neck. “Because I’m feeling a little thick right now and I’m not processing too clearly. And this time you need to say it like you mean it.”

The gears in Carling’s head ground as she tried to understand what he said. Word. He wanted a word from her. What was it?

Girl. No, that wasn’t it.

Out of the corner of her eye she caught sight of a teenage boy slouching through the hotel’s front doors, wearing ripped designer clothes and goth makeup, and carrying an iPad under one skinny arm. He glared at the world as if it owed him an explanation. Yeah, good luck with that one, kid.

Then Rune opened his hot mouth on the sensitive skin of her neck and suckled at her, and she lost the ability to get any word out. He grazed her lightly with his teeth as he let go of her nipple. His infernally clever fingers moved to the front of her caftan.

All of her caftans were hand-stitched, of varying designs. Some were simply fashioned to pull over the head, and others were fastened down the front with a row of small buttons carved of either bone or wood. None of them contained zippers, as she used them so often for work and metal could sometimes interact or interfere with magic.

This caftan was fastened in the front with a row of buttons. As he suckled at her neck, Rune slipped one of the buttons free of its hole. His hand was clamped so tightly on her mouth she couldn’t turn her head. She tried to track his movements by just moving her eyes.

The buttons ran close together. He unbuttoned another and slipped his hand inside to cup her breast again. They both hissed as his calloused palm came in contact with her heavy, naked, sensitive flesh. Every muscle in his body felt ridged with tension. When he pushed his lean hips against the rounded curve of her ass, she could feel the long thick ridge of his erection. She could sense the blood hurtling through his body like a stealth bomber, and his jagged breathing sawed against her skin. He massaged her breast and scraped the tip of her nipple with his fingernail.

Every pulse point on her body screamed in response, the sexual need ratcheting higher. Normally so cool, she was shocked all over again when she broke into a sweat and her sex moistened in a liquid gush. The sense of urgency, of possible exposure, was agonizing.