Page 161 of Scars Beneath a Serpent’s Scales

“How?”

Her cheeks heated. “Touch me.”

“By the fucking Fates,” Roremar exhaled, pure relief deepening his voice as his head dropped to her shoulder and his hands gripped her waist.

Before she knew what was happening, her skirt was falling down her legs, and she was being propped on the counter. In only her lace undergarments, the cold marble bit into her thighs, and she gasped at the contact. It fueled the fire roaring through her, unquenchable now that she’d let it spark. The hunger, the burning need.

She could drown in it.

Roremar stepped into the cradle of her thighs so he was pressed against her and dropped his lips to her neck. Her legs automatically locked at his waist as he rocked into her.

The graze of his lips drove her wild, his tongue and teeth as they dragged her top off one shoulder, then the next in slow, reverent movements that heightened every sensation. Every brush of his hands roaming her skin called up more and more waves of pleasure within her.

He trailed kisses between her breasts, circling a callused thumb around one nipple, his tongue teasing the other.

“Please,” she begged, arching into his palm.

With a satisfied growl, Roremar gripped her ass, pressing her closer, and sucked her into his mouth. The contrast of his heated flesh and mouth with the cool marble beneath her had her writhing.

“Fates, Roremar,” she breathed. He’d barely touched her, and it was the most alive she’d felt in years. Ever, truly.

The scrape of his teeth over her sensitive skin was almost too much. Her head dropped back as a moan escaped her throat. She dug her heels into his back, needing to keep him there.

“How do you want to be touched, Emmeline?” His breath was hot as he dropped lower, mouth traveling down her stomach. “Tell me, and I’ll do whatever it is you need.”

Fates, those words. She had a feeling Roremar the Reckless had a sinful mouth, and she wanted to experience every bit of it.

Gripping her knees, he spread her wider as he lowered. She could hardly get words out.

“This?” he asked, and his teeth grazed her waistband, placing a gentle kiss over the lace covering her center. She shivered.

Emmeline forced her gaze to his as she tried to speak, but that was a mistake. Because she couldn’t think of anything beyond him looking up at her from between her legs—an image she’d never forget. One that should be memorialized in history but also kept privately for her; no one else to see that crazed, starving look darkening his silver eyes.

“Or this?” Trailing kisses up the inside of her thigh, he teased one hand over her center, pressing down where she was most sensitive. Emmeline writhed on the counter. “Fates, Huntress, I bet you taste divine. Is that what you want? My tongue?”

She wanted to feel him—his fingers, his tongue, his cock, whatever he was offering. She wanted—no needed—to give this piece of herself to him, to allow him a sliver and give them both something to remember because she couldn’t give him more.

No one could be close to me.

And as that reminder clanged through her mind, she knew that while she needed him in all those ways, there was one boundary she couldn’t cross. Not with how desperately she wanted him, not with how the image of him smirking up at her from his knees was already tattooed on her memory, his touch an inky stain she’d never scrub from her soul.

“No kissing,” Emmeline forced out, as his mouth pressed to the lace again.

Roremar froze. He rocked back, eyes burrowing into hers from between her legs. “What?”

“No kissing,” she repeated, breathless.

Roremar’s silver stare was calculating, peeling her apart piece by piece. His hands braced on her thighs as he rose to his feet. “Is there a reason?”

And Fates, that voice. It was rough, but it purred over her skin like the most decadent silk, heady as the richest wine. Like every side of him she’d experienced so far had been.

What would it feel like against the crook of her neck? Buried between her thighs? How would the faint shadow of stubble he hadn’t shaved today scrape against her skin? Her breathing came quicker at the thought.

But despite all those questions, there was a new edge to Roremar’s voice, too—it was raw. Vulnerable.

“Em,” he repeated, her name rolling in the way only he said it. That, paired with his gravelly tone, made her breath catch. “I need to know if there’s a reason. If there’s something that happened”—his hands tightened possessively on her thighs—“you don’t need to tell me what, but tell me if I need to stop.”

“I don’t want you to stop,” Emmeline said hastily, and his thumbs stroked over her inner thighs. At his touch, she widened her legs. His eyes darkened with the shift beneath his palms, but Roremar kept his stare intent on hers. “I want you to touch me. But no kissing.”