I press my thumb gently against his throat, drawing his gaze back to mine. “How did it break?”

He stills, so I release him long enough to reach down and take his hands in mine. His eyes darken when I press his fingers to my lips.

“In a fight,” he whispers, a faint shiver running through him.

“You got into a fight while you were gone? With someone other than me?”

It earns me the barest crook of a smile. “Jealous, Smith?”

I nip the tip of a finger and bask in a rush of heat when he sucks in a breath. “Tell me about the fight.”

“We thought we got good information from the interrogation and used it to plan a rescue of Sláine. It went badly.”

All the fights I’ve seen Roark in rush back with a vengeance. They haven’t been easy. I’ve seen him injured before, but he’s never classified anything we’ve faced as anything more than an annoyance or a bother. To say this fight went badly...

“How badly?”

His head tilts at the wobble in my voice. He steals his hands back. I protest until he wraps his arms around my waist and steps in closer. All my complaints drift away.

“It was an ambush. My brother wasn’t even there,” he explains, voice calm, arms tightening around me when I start shaking. “My shoulder was wounded, but it’s healing now.”

“Show me?”

He takes two backward steps so he has the space to tug his dress shirt from his slacks. He fiddles with the buttons of his sleeves and I retreat until the edge of the mattress presses against the back of my legs. I sit, not sure if my legs will hold me when I see the damage he took from the fight.

He loosens his tie, sliding the silk free of the knot and tossing the slender strip of fabric toward the desk. My blood burns and I’m mesmerized by the sure movements of his fingers. Want surges through me, but I don’t know for what. He starts to undo the first button, the one near his collar, when I figure it out and ask, “Can I—?”

He hesitates, but only for a second. The air between us thickens and my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth because I want this so badly. Want him to let me help him, even if the task is minor.

Roark reads me with remarkable ease. He steps between my knees and waits. My hands shake enough that I can barely manage, but each button gets easier. And when I’m done, the black shirt hangs open, exposing him from the pale column of his throat to his ribs to the lightly ridged plane of his stomach. I lean forward, still fascinated by the contrast of his undeniable masculinity with the smooth skin all faerie possess. His fingers brush through my hair and I press an openmouthed kiss at the bottom of his ribs before reaching up and sliding the shirt from his shoulders.

The bandage is almost unnoticeable. If he hadn’t already admitted its presence, I would have been surprised when its edges catch against the calluses of my pa

lm. Afraid I’ll rip it free, I lighten my touch on that shoulder. I stand and ease the sleeve down his arm so he doesn’t have to roll his shoulders to get the shirt to drop to the floor. He doesn’t say a word when I brush past him to put the shirt on my desk, or to close the door.

“It’s not that bad,” he promises when I return.

I ignore him and inspect the site for myself, skimming my fingers around the edges of the bandage. He sucks in a breath, but doesn’t draw away. “It’s okay,” he murmurs.

I gave him those same words our first night together. They echo around us now and I return his shy smile. No longer afraid of his rejection, I kiss my way around the bandage, wishing he hadn’t felt such pain.

He hums when I trace his collarbone with my tongue. His skin is the sweetness of newly fallen snow and the gentle bite of herbs and something baser than that, a taste I don’t think I’ll ever get enough of.

“Finn,” he whispers, a broken paean that lights up all those dark places inside me.

This time when he leans forward to kiss me, it’s not with the wild abandon that sent the ley line into a blaze. It starts as a chaste press of his lips to mine, a whisper of a promise, and grows. He coaxes my mouth open and the first brush of his tongue over my lower lip is enough to make me moan. Of course, that makes him smile and do it again. I wrap a hand around the back of his neck and hang on as he takes me apart. I admire the way his neck cords when he loses control over his kisses, and brush my thumb slowly over his pulse point when I want him to slow down. He kisses me until we’re both breathless and shaking and the hole left behind by the ley line doesn’t feel so empty anymore.

“I should go,” he whispers when he pulls away the last time.

“Or you could stay.”

When the hell did every nerve in my body decide to connect to my scalp? His nails scratch over the short hair near the nape of my neck and I melt against him. His breath rasps against my ear and I nuzzle against him, trying to memorize his scent before he walks away for good.

I know he will. There’s too much happening, too many moving parts demanding his attention. He can’t choose me on the eve of a civil war. He only came here to say goodbye.

“Stay,” I urge once more, wishing he would.

And am dumbfounded when he says, “Okay.”

Tags: M.A. Grant Fantasy
Source: readsnovelonline.net