A Throne of Ruin (Deliciously Dark Fairytales #2)(49)

“How about with finding the place you will read?”

His sandpaper voice flowed over me. Goosebumps coated my skin. My animal eagerly sat up and took notice.

Hadriel drifted to the side as Nyfain walked toward me from around a corner deeper in the library. Clearly there was more to it. His gray T-shirt, though a bit looser than the white ones he usually wore, stretched across those impossibly broad shoulders. His jeans hugged that delicious bulge.

“Goddess have mercy on us mere mortals,” he said as his gaze roamed over me. “Cecil does not disappoint.” He glanced to the right. “Hadriel, that will be all. Close the doors after you. We are not to be disturbed.”

I smiled, dropping my gaze in sudden embarrassment. When Nyfain reached me, he fitted his hand below my chin. Pressure had me looking up, meeting his golden gaze.

“You are a vision, Finley.”

I ran my hand alongside my face, then touched my hair. “I didn’t dress up or anything. This is a lounging dress, he called it.” I shrugged. “It’s comfortable.”

His smile was soft, and his gaze hadn’t left my eyes. “You don’t need your hair and makeup done. Your inner beauty radiates out of you, enhancing what nature gave you. The dress blends into the background. Your fire, your strength, your unyielding power… You are… You take my breath away.”

He bent slowly, grazing his lips across mine. I placed my palms against his chest and then slid them up and hooked them around his neck as the kiss deepened. His tongue swept through my mouth, his taste delighting my senses. His smell beat that of the books, balmy and comforting and sensual, like a lazy afternoon in the sun beside a high mountain lake.

When he backed off, he slid his tongue down the side of my throat. He kissed softly where he’d bitten me on the neck in the past. He moved down then, his lips lingering at the base of my neck. My heart sped up. My core tightened.

“This dress would show a mark very well,” he growled. He sucked in my fevered skin to the point of pain.

“Hmm, yes.” I tilted my head, outside of myself, not thinking about anything other than the heat of his mouth and how desperate I was for the sharp stab of his teeth in my flesh. “Please.”

He pulled off, my skin popping out of his mouth. The air caressed the new mark, chilling it.

No, don’t let him stop now! my animal thought desperately. He wants to mark you, I can feel it. The dragon is desperate for it. Urge him on!

“I can’t,” Nyfain said, as if hearing her. Or maybe he was talking to his dragon. “I have to…stop.”

He put his arms around me, his palms flat, feeling the soft fabric against my flesh. He cupped my butt then slid his hand across to the other cheek before coming back. The other hand reached up along my front as he nibbled my lips, his kiss sending me into a state of anticipatory bliss. I moaned softly, my pussy pounding, needing to be filled.

He pulled back, his eyes dark with arousal. The bond blistered with it. He stared at me for a long time, indecision coloring the bond. Once again, his eyes seemed to be reaching down through me, searching for answers to undisclosed questions.

“Come.” He took my hand, threading his fingers through mine. “Let me show you around.”

I staggered a little, and he waited for me to regain my composure. In a moment, I followed him, trying to ignore the wetness sliding down my upper thigh, my animal’s cry of frustration at his change of pace.

“I’ll take care of you before I leave, I promise,” he rumbled, pulling me around the corner.

“What do you mean?”

“My dragon promised that we would fulfill your carnal needs, right? I haven’t been holding up my end of the bargain.”

As he should, my animal purred.

Shivers coated my body, and heat pounded in my core. I didn’t trust myself to speak. Thankfully, my brain took over, overriding my body’s tightness.

Nyfain walked me through the various sections of the library, showing the little metal plaques that identified each area by genre. They were tasteful and inconspicuous, blending into the overall beauty. We walked all the way around the room, toured the second story, and Nyfain paused frequently for me to brush my fingers across a spine or take out a book and look it over. At the end, he led me to a darkened corner in the very back. A forward-facing lounger sat behind a large hanging tapestry. The table beside it held a leafy green plant that seemed to block the view.

“If you sit a certain way, you can see most of the library. I’ll show you in a bit. Right now…” He gently tugged me deeper into the corner. Behind a squat shelf, a collection of volumes chronicled the historic laws of foreign kingdoms. He reached behind one of them and flicked a switch. A door popped open within the bookcase.

“Your mother’s secret library,” I said with an excited grin.

“I’m still waiting on a letter from you.”

The hidden space was about as big as my living room back home, crowded with all kinds of books in no particular order.

“She liked to hunt for her reads,” he explained as I browsed, biting my lip. “She liked to pull down books and leaf through them. If something caught her eye, she’d read the book. If not, she’d try again, and again, until she finally decided to pick something.” He stood by the open door, watching me look. “I remember being so annoyed by how long it took her to pick a book. That was before I knew about this room. She did it with all books. Later on, I’d settle in and read while she hunted for a find that would appease her in that specific moment in time. She said that there was a book for every single moment, and she was not satisfied until she had found it.”