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More. I needed so much more of him after so long without. Needed friction and pressure and—
“Oh God.” I threw my head back when his hands grazed over my breasts, my nipples pebbling beneath the fabric of my dress for his touch. I’d expected hard, but he’d given me feather-light despite the inferno of stars radiating from his gaze.
“I’ve dreamed of this,” Coen said, each word rough. “You and those perfect little sounds you make for me. I’ve missed them so much.”
Kissing me again, he slid a strap of my dress to the side, exposing one of my breasts to him and the air, and swirled his thumb around my nipple. I couldn’t help but moan into his mouth, and he swallowed the sound with teeth and lips and tongue, walking me backward until…
Something else crashed to the ground. Coen growled, then yanked me into his darkness for a dizzying swirl of a second before my back was pressed against a bamboo wall on an upper floor of the treehouse.
Here, the space was tidier, with only an old dresser, a rickety-looking bed, and open windows where streams of sunset gushed through the widespread leaves of the banyans.
“Please don’t make me wait any longer, Coen.” My blood was going to boil over if I didn’t get him between my legs right now. All those moments we’d met mind-to-mind, never able to truly touch, only to pretend—they had condensed into this one moment of frenzied need. I didn’t care about our plans or the oath or the Good Council or anything besides him.
Coen’s canines flashed before he hoisted me up just like he had in the jungle after my secret Branding. Once again, my legs wrapped around him, the hard length beneath his pants digging into me right where I needed it.
“I love it when you say please,” he whispered, and then we were kissing again, this time his hands cupping my ass. One of them moved, a large finger slipping down from behind and curling up to find the wetness that had already soaked my underwear. “Fuck, Rayna,” he hissed against my lips. I whimpered when his finger swept aside the fabric and grazed my bare flesh, circling my clit. “Open yourself up to me and tell me exactly what you want.”
I knew he didn’t mean open up my lips or legs. Every part of my body was already open for him, but my mind… I dropped my blockade completely, letting him merge with me, and he grinned wickedly at all the desires that poured into him.
Before he plunged two fingers into me and curled them until they hit the perfect spot.
The sound that came out of me was like the shriek of free fall. Only this time, there was no ocean to swallow me whole, just endless sky and the building of euphoria swelling around me. I began to rock against his hand, my back thumping against the wall of the treehouse, chasing the sensation that loomed ever closer.
“I… I want the rest of you,” I panted.
Coen gazed at me with a mixture of reverence and smug male pride. “No, you don’t. You want me to keep doing exactly what I’m doing. And I’m not going to tell you to come for me, little hurricane, because I want you to take your sweet time. I could watch you like this for eternity.”
It was those words, the lack of expectation and the promise that he would keep going for as long as I needed him to, that made my free fall explode.
I arched my back and shattered around his fingers. At the same time, the treehouse trembled, the light of the sunset quivering as the enormous branches holding us up shook just as much as I was.
“Oh, no.” I whipped my head around. “Did I—did I break—”
Coen slid his fingers out of me and set me down, bringing his hand up to cup my cheek: the same hand glistening and wet with my own pleasure. “No. You didn’t break anything, Rayna.” He swept his wet fingers over my lips, coating them, then kissed me deep and slow until we both tasted what he’d just done to me. “You make me whole.”
Except he hadn’t reached his own pleasure. His shoulders were twitching again, restless as before, and my gaze traveled down to what strained within his pants. No sooner had I imagined yanking them off than my Object Summoning did it for me.
With a sharp ripping sound, every inch of clothing on Coen’s body fell into pieces until he stood naked before me.
“Oops,” I said, my own smugness creeping in. For once, I could thank this third magic of mine for something good, because Coen was a masterpiece that I couldn’t stop drinking in. The veins in his arms bulged as they traveled down his muscles, his chest rising and falling with the lines of his abdominal muscles. My gaze dropped below the V of his stomach, and I swallowed at how large and ready he was, his cock twitching as soon as I laid eyes on it.
But then my eyes snagged on something slightly above and to the left of what waited for me. I inhaled sharply.
“What’s that?”
Coen blinked the haze from his eyes. “What?”
I pointed at the side of his waist, where a jagged pink circle of flesh marred his otherwise perfectly tan skin. “That.”
“Oh.” Coen twisted to glance down at the scar, although I noticed he kept his back—and the tattoo—facing away from me. “That’s just a scratch.”
“Coen.” Warning laced my tone. “I know how fast you heal nowadays, and that scratch wasn’t there the last time I saw you without a shirt on.” I advanced on him, determined to inspect it more closely, but Coen caught me by the chin.
“Do you remember that Sorronian soldier I was forced to kill?” I nodded. “He got me with a spear before he died, and I’m glad he did. It’s a reminder of what I did to him. What I’m capable of and what I will have to do again. Do you understand?”
I nodded again. I understood all too well. With our minds open to each other, our thoughts flowing like open streams, I knew he was warning me away from him despite the fact that Mydusia’s command didn’t apply to me. Even after everything we’d been through, in spite of all the love I felt overflowing from him, Coen was willing to let me go if I turned and fled right now.
But I would not flee. This male didn’t scare me even if the rest of the world had every right to fear him, so I lowered my hand until I wrapped it around as much of the base of his cock as I could. “Dy via nenete fayer, remember?”
