The tips of his fingers trailed over the crease between my thigh and hip, causing my breath to hitch. “In every single way.” The air caught in my throat for a whole different reason now.
He drew his finger down my thigh, and then I watched him lower his head. His hair brushed the skin below my navel. My heart launched itself into my throat. “I … I’ve never done this before,” I whispered, my hands opening and closing on the sheets.
His mouth followed his finger. “Neither have I.”
“That … that doesn’t sound right.” My entire body jerked as I felt his lips along my skin. “You seem to know what you’re doing.”
“I really don’t.” Inching my legs apart, he settled there. “I’m just doing what feels right.” His warm breath danced over an extraordinarily sensitive part as he glided a finger up my thigh. “Am I doing it right?”
“I … I think so.”
“Think so?” His finger came close as he made another pass to where I throbbed. “I’m going to have to do better than ‘I think so.’”
I was all on board for that.
He chuckled, and I knew immediately he’d picked up on my thoughts. His finger came close again before sliding away. My hips lifted out of instinct, in a silent urging.
“You know what this reminds me of?” he said, lifting his gaze to mine once more.
Breaths coming in short, shallow pants, I shook my head.
“When you were thinking about wanting to climb me like a—”
“Don’t,” I said.
“Horny—”
“Luc.”
“Octopus,” he finished.
“I hate you.”
“No, you don’t.” Luc smiled at me then, and it was real and beautiful, softening the hard, striking lines of his face. “You love me.”
And then he was sipping from me again, this time from my skin, and every part of me shorted out.
Every part of me shorted out.
His tongue. His teeth. His hands. I was moving with him, twisting and rolling, gasping for air. My pace picked up as my fingers dug into his soft, unruly hair. Tension coiled tight. Everything about me became frantic. My gasps. The way I moved. The sounds that came from me. The way I said his name, over and over, and then it was like when I touched the Source. Electricity rippled over my skin. Light filled me, and Luc was with me through the waves, until my legs were limp and my fingers had slipped from his hair.
Luc eased up, stretching out beside me. He curled an arm around my waist, tugged my boneless body to his chest. The blanket folded over us, and I knew he hadn’t touched it.
“You’re so lazy,” I murmured.
“You’re just jealous.”
“I am.”
Luc was quiet for a moment. “I should’ve known.”
“What?”
He kissed the space below my ear. “I should’ve known when I saw Diesel.”
For a moment I didn’t know what he was talking about, but my gaze drifted to the smiling face of the oval-shaped rock.
“I should’ve known then that you loved me.”35Luc and I lay in warmth and silence for a little while, his fingers tracing idle shapes along my stomach. A circle around my navel. A triangle above it. A smiley face near my hip while my thoughts flitted from one thing to the next, shying away from things that would shatter the peace that had invaded my soul.
“I just realized I didn’t ask you about the Arum,” Luc said, his fingers dipping over the curve of my waist. “Did he say or do anything?”
“Nothing really, but…” I shifted onto my back, causing the blankets to slip low on my chest, and his fingers found their way to the center of my stomach once more. “Actually, he did speak … in my mind.”
A frown started to appear on his well-formed mouth. “That’s how they communicate while in their true form. What did he say?”
I shuddered at the memory. “He said I wasn’t … normal. And you know, that isn’t the first time. Lore, the other Arum, said the same thing.”
His eyes narrowed. “What?”
I realized I hadn’t told Luc what Lore had said when he saw me outside the club. “Lore asked me what I was. Like he could sense something … off about me. I’d thought it was the Andromeda serum, but now…”
“He wouldn’t be able to sense the serum.” Laziness vanished from his features as he stared down at me. “And you shouldn’t have heard him speak.”
I digested that. “You know, he sounded like Sarah, and remember when I heard her speak? She said something was done to her, and no one else heard that. Maybe because it was in my head, just like the Arum was. I know it sounds insane, but—”
“It doesn’t.” He tilted his head down, brushing his lips over my forehead. “I just don’t know what it means yet. Everything that I consider is impossible.” The muscles along his arm tensed. “Or doesn’t make sense.”