Gleam (The Plated Prisoner 3)

His lips twitch. “The bed, Auren.”

Great Divine, the way he says that. The command sparking through his tone is ravenous, impatient, dominant. Like he’s been waiting for me all this time, and he’s ready for the clash. The lascivious need inside of me craves it, wants to see just how hungry I can make him.

“Hmm, I think I’ll stay right here,” I tease. My tone is flippant, though I have to work not to let a smile out.

I’m careful to stay next to the wall, letting only the back of my head rest against it, my hair covering my skin enough not to gild anything. Then, with a boldness I didn’t know I possessed, I let my fingers play against my collarbone, then a slow stroke down between my breasts.

A low, rumbling growl escapes him.

He brings one hand up to run a thumb over his plush bottom lip, and my gaze follows the movement, wondering what it would feel like if it were my lip he was touching like that.

“Lower.”

His gruff command makes me press my legs together, trying to feed into the sudden need for friction.

With my eyes locked on his, I let my fingers trail down slowly between my breasts in a leisurely scrawl. I drop beneath to the curves of them, my hair moving in the slightest ripple of tantalizing tease without revealing anything beneath.

“Lower,” he says again, and my nipples pebble.

I let my touch drag down to my stomach, circle over my belly button, and then pause just above my panty line. Slade leans back and tips his hips up slightly to adjust himself in his seat, and I don’t know what it is about the move, but it sends a rush of heat between my legs.

“You have no idea what you’re doing to me.”

I steal a look at the length that seems to have grown between his legs. “I think I have some idea.”

Another drag of his thumb against that bottom lip. “You look good against that wall, but you’re going to look even better pinned up against it while I fuck you.”

“Great goddess,” I murmur, flooded with a newfound throb.

“It’s nearly dusk.”

My eyes flit over to the balcony door, its glass frosted with little veins of freeze hanging from every corner. Outside, the light’s gone murky, the gray giving way to obscurity.

“So it is.”

As if he can’t hold back anymore, Slade unfurls from the chair and straightens. His power coils around him, reaching out in invisible fingers to stroke against my skin. My breath catches, and once again, there’s no nausea or sense of wrongness. Instead, his magic seems to blow around me in an unmoving breeze.

Like a caged predator, Slade goes to the glass doors of the balcony and then grins. “You’re very nearly mine now.”

My teeth trap my bottom lip in anticipation, everything in me nearly trembling beneath the wait. When he reaches for the top button on his black shirt, my eyes go wide, and even my ribbons go still.

At seeing my expression, he pauses. “I can leave it on, if you prefer.”

For a moment, my brows lower in a frown of confusion, but then it dawns on me. My gaze traces over the shifting stems along his skin, the reaching ends peeking above his collar.

“Don’t you dare,” I tell him. If he thinks I don’t want to see him, he’s wrong. I’m not put off by those strange roots beneath his pale skin. If anything, they make me want to run my fingers over each and every one.

My reply earns me a roguish grin, but I don’t miss the flash of relief in his expression. He undresses slowly, and with each button that comes undone, my heart seems to beat harder.

I saw him shirtless in the fight circle, but that was wh

en he was in his Rip form, and great Divine, was he ripped. But when Slade shrugs out of his shirt and tosses it to the floor, my breath catches, because...

“You’re beautiful.”

A surprised laugh escapes him, but I’m not kidding. Every inch of him is sculpted to perfection. My attention is latched onto his body, and I’m unable to look away.

Those intrinsic threads of his power seem to sprout from his chest, right at the chiseled line below his pecs. They’re thick at the bottom and a perfect mirror image on both sides of his chest and neck as they root upward, like they’re searching for a sun. They’re thinnest right where they end at the edge of his jaw, barely bigger than a needle, yet as thick as my finger at the base.