Page 52 of My Fae Lady

“Oh . . .” Her lashes lifted, and her eyes fixed on me with so much intensity I could feel the weight of them. They were slitted and dreamy. “Oh, I see what you mean . . .”

Muscles in my chest and arms tightened. I kept moving, kept circling, trying to work the building pressure out of my system. “Don’t look at me like that,” I warned her.

“Why shouldn’t I look?” she breathed, her voice gone thick. “What harm could it do? It’s not as though I haven’t already looked at you. All of you . . .”

“Stop staring at me like you like what you see!” My pacing increased. “You know not what you’re risking!”

“Of course I like what I see! Don’t blame me for this!” she barked.

“You and those blasted stunning eyes of yours! And your skin! Why does your skin have to be so damned touchable! Would it kill you to look like a proper hag instead of just acting like one when the world displeases you?”

“My skin?” She left her seat, eyes an angry green. “What about yours? Just look at you! Your blasted muscles have muscles on top of other muscles! And what am I supposed to do? Pretend that you aren’t more beautiful to me than any man I’ve ever seen before?”

“Yes!” I hissed. “Pretend! For the love of your goddesses’ light, pretend!” I hadn’t realized I’d crossed to her. My body acted of its own accord. Suddenly I’d closed the distance between us to loom over her, our bodies so close I could feel her desperate breaths brushing my chin. “Pretend that you hate me. Pretend that I’m an ass. Pretend that I have fleas, if you have to!”

“You want me to pretend I never think about the way you taste, the feel of your hands in my hair when you kiss me? Your tongue in my mouth?”

“Giselle,” I pleaded. Our eyes met, hers shot through with that lovely violet shade, and finally I understood it. “So that’s what that color means. All this time I thought it meant you were hungry.”

“Oh, I’m very hungry,” she admitted, and her face flushed. “Just not for food.”

“Bad girl,” I hummed. I’d meant it in reprimand. Why, then, did it fall from my lips sounding like praise? I reached out, my thumb brushing her lips because I had to touch her.

Her tongue, wet and pink, darted out, catching my knuckle. Then her lips quirked. Playful. Eager. I had to have more of them.

Her eyes begged me to steal a kiss, so I obliged her. She was in my arms a heartbeat later, her return kiss a punishing one. I held her chin, then the base of her neck. My thumb skirted lower. Her back arched into the teasing caress.

The archway and the corridor beyond returned with a groan of wood and rumbling floorboards. I carried her through it, and the door to my chambers swung open wide. Giselle’s lips traced a hungry path down my throat as I lowered her onto the wide bed atop the stacked furs.

She helped me out of my suspenders, pulling at the fall front of my trousers. I froze then.

“Is this all right?” she asked, breathless.

I shut my eyes tight, trying to grab hold of a thought that was clear and calm, unclouded by lust and cake and champagne. “It’s been a very long time for me, and I want to treat you more delicately.”

“It’s been a long time for me too, but I’m not fragile. I wanted this well before I touched that cake.”

“Then I need you to be gentle with me,” I said, and her throaty chuckle warmed my chest and neck and sent my head spinning. “Though I admit I too wanted this. With or without that damned cake.”

I buried my nose in her lush hair, and I breathed her in deep. Winter pines. Clear pools of crystalline waters. The air after a fresh fall of snow. I ran the pads of my fingers along the hem of her nightgown and the soft flesh of her thigh. She covered my hand with hers and encouraged my touch up and under the hem, then higher still.

Her breath caught when she had me where she wanted me. The silken heat of her was nearly enough to finish me off. She moved against me, lifting her hips, showing me exactly how she wanted to be pleasured.

Whatever she wanted, whatever she craved, I’d give it to her. She had me so completely. And then I was on her and in her, filling her up, being squeezed by her eager body. When her moans quieted and her breathing evened out, I rolled her onto her stomach. I kissed down her spine and entered her from behind, my weight pressing her into the mattress. Each thrust left her panting and spurred me on.

“I want to see you,” she whispered. Her fingers clawed at the bedding. “I want to watch.”

I rolled us over until she was straddling my hips. The view was exquisite. Her thighs tightened around my waist as she rode me, and we got lost together in a bliss that made the world vanish around us.

⊱❀⊰

Giselle and I stared up at the ceiling long afterward, dressed in nothing but the sheets, still tangled around one another. Neither of us had spoken a word. The effects of the cake had worn off a while ago. My heart had calmed to its usual patter, and my flesh had cooled.

“It was a mistake,” Giselle groaned, one arm thrown over her eyes.

“Absolutely a mistake.” I couldn’t have agreed more.

“We’ll never solve anything between us this way.”