A Shadow in the Ember (Flesh and Fire 1)

“You feel…” He inhaled sharply, drawing those fingers out before tracking the rise of my hips with those churning eyes. “So warm. So soft and hot. Wet.” He shuddered, his voice thickening as he thrust his fingers while mine simply clung to his wrist. “You feel like silk and sunshine. Beautiful.” He dragged his teeth over his lower lip, and I thought… I thought his fangs seemed longer, sharper as my back arched over the grass, and I ground against his hand. Something about watching him, watching us, was shocking. It sent my stomach dipping and tumbling. Stretched my nerves until they felt as if they’d snap. “That’s it, liessa, fuck my hand.”

His words scorched my skin, burning through every part of me. My head kicked back, and my eyes fell closed. Blood pounded as my hips rocked and twisted against him. Tension built and coiled tighter and tighter.

He moved over me, chest to chest as his mouth closed over mine once more. The way he kissed was just as wild as the sensations building inside me. My other hand sank into his hair as I did just as he’d demanded with wild abandon. All I could hear was the sound of our kisses and the wet thrust of his fingers. All I could feel was him and the tight tension settling deep in my core, curling and curling. My body went as taut as a bowstring, and then everything unraveled.

His mouth caught the cry of release as pleasure unfurled in wracking spasms, lashing out and flooding pleasure into every nerve, vein, and limb. It was shocking, the waves and waves of pure feeling.

Only when my hand fell away from his wrist did he slowly ease his fingers from me, his mouth from mine. “Beautiful,” he whispered against my swollen lips, and my eyes fluttered open.

“I…” Words failed me when he lifted those two very wicked, glistening fingers. His luminous eyes held mine as he drew them into his mouth. My body arched as if his mouth sucked on my flesh, not his.

I had never seen anything so shameless in my life.

He grinned around his fingers, slowly drawing them from his mouth. “You taste like the sun.”

My heart skipped. “What…what does the sun taste like?”

That curve of his lips was wicked. “Like you.”

His mouth returned to mine. It could’ve been his words, the taste of myself on his lips, or how I could still feel his fingers inside me. It could’ve been all of those things. Whatever it was, it fueled the need to give him what he’d given me. To share that pleasure. I slipped my hand between us, finding his thick, hard length straining against the soft cloth of his breeches. Another ripple of tight pleasure radiated out through me at the feel of him. His entire body jerked, much like mine upon his first touch.

Ash made that dark, luscious sound again as he reached between us, folding his hand over mine. He pressed against my palm, shuddering. “This…this will become more than kissing and touching.”

“Will it?” I’d never heard my voice sound so velvety before. I’d never quite felt my heart beat throughout my body like it did now, as another whirl of anticipation swirled. “I want to do what you’ve done for me.”

His jaw flexed as I cupped him through his breeches. “You have no idea how badly I want that.”

“I want that, too,” I whispered in the space between our mouths.

“It’s not your palm I want wrapped around my cock right now. It’s you I want. Tight and wet and warm,” he breathed, and a deep shiver rolled through me as my grip on him firmed. He groaned. “And if you keep touching me like that, that’s what’s going to happen. I’m going to get inside you, and it won’t be my fingers you’ll be fucking.” He lowered his head again, brushing his lips over mine. “I think you know that.”

I did.

Oh, gods, I totally did.

I swallowed, my hand unsteady as I slid it down over the hard plane of his chest. A hundred thoughts swirled, a battle between impulsivity and caution, recklessness, and wisdom. We’d already gone too far. A part of him had been inside me. He knew what I tasted like. There were countless reasons for why I should heed the latter, and only a few for the former. But those were louder, more incessant.

I didn’t want this, whatever it was, to end quite yet. I didn’t want to return to reality, where I knew I would never feel this again. This abundant wildness. This connection to my body. To his. The realness. No dying hope of fulfilling my duty; of taking something like this—something beautiful and powerful—and using it to kill. No need to be anyone but myself.

So, I shut down the caution and wisdom. “I know what will happen.”