Page 63 of A Velvet Kiss After Dark

They headed back upstairs, their pace equally slowing and breaths becoming harder as the blisters and burns across their pinched, tight skin grew worse and worse by the second.

"Kane, I need to stop," Tabitha said reluctantly, grimacing through the searing pain at her back.

Everything hurt, from her skin to her ankles. Her skin looked beet red and bubbles of popped-up blisters pebbled her all across from where the dragon's fire had scorched her. His body was much worse…

"That's the last thing we can do," he stated evenly, though sweat was dripping from his brow, and his eyes were red from some internal agony he was trying hard to keep hidden. She imagined he was in a far worse way than she could even realize.

They made it back upstairs and Kánnérd took up a seat at the desk where he'd found the master key set.

"Come up here," Kánnérd said stoutly and patted the desk. "Show me your back."

Tabitha eyed the desk strewn about parchment paper, partially filled ink wells, and broken quills and grimaced.

"And why should I do that?" Tabitha asked skeptically.

Kánnérd set the clean water and linens on the table and stared at her with an implacable expression. "Because I need to tend to your wounds, and then you need to tend to mine. Then, we'll talk about escape and finding this relic you feel you know so well. Agree?"

Tabitha nibbled crudely on her fingertip as nerves got the best of her. "You mean, you want me to take off my dress?" She was in an awful lot of pain and the thought of a cold compress sounded heavenly against her burns which made her skin feel pulled taut and scrunched.

One of Kánnérd's black eyebrows flew up at her question. "That is one way to do it. Or," he suggested blithely, "you can keep the dress on and we'll simply ruck it up as needed."

That didn't sound so bad, she supposed. Tabitha considered her options, then delicately scooted herself onto the desk and lifted up her dress to expose her back and derriere.

Kánnérd sighed deeply, a sound of barely restrained masculine appreciation which earned him a healthy glare from her. "Not as bad as I thought, my love. Not bad at all." He coughed a thick sound, then amended, "The burns, I mean. The burns aren't as bad as I thought they'd be."

Flushing vibrantly, Tabitha laid down flat against the deck with her cheek on the table and her bare buttocks revealed to the werewolf's devious stare. But, when his touch came it was gentle, even reverent and efficient as he gently applied the clean water across her wounds making her both flinch in agony and sigh in relief as the puckered, blackened skin seemed to relax at the dousing of cool liquid.

Kánnérd cleaned each abrasion as if he was rubbing a delicate broken wing off a cherished butterfly. His reverent touch played havoc with her heart, making it dance and jolt erratically, and making her feel things like deep appreciation and gratitude that she didn't know she had any business having toward such a man who led such a disreputable life, let alone one who was so unfamiliar and foreign to her ever since that deadly vision startled her into a driving new purpose.

He finished with a gentle sweep across the arching swell of her rump, causing other stirrings within her, and her breath stuttered for a moment—the sound so loud in the quiet room, she felt his hand become still and frozen in that moment. Not once had he hurt her. In fact, his ministrations had been so gentle and graceful, she felt nothing but relief from the soaring heat that scalded her and began to renew now that the cold water had dissipated. But, for a few moments, she'd floated mentally in the ether of paradise, free from scorching agony and bloody wounds; free from stress and hate and violence, she'd felt protected, coveted even.

Turning to look at him was a very dangerous thing to do in that moment, yet Tabitha did it anyway, and found Kánnérd Farkas looking her eye to eye with such intense emotion that she had to swallow a gigantic lump that rather suddenly appeared in her throat. She knew that look; she understood it. And if she'd been wearing socks, surely they would have rocketed right off her feet.

This man was in love with her.

That look alone made her question everything she'd ever thought about him. Why, oh why, did she ever think for a single moment that he could be a bad man, a player, an evil man, when his eyes held the truth—when his gaze and gentle, reverent touch revealed the real truth. That this man would fight the Devil for her. That this man would lie down his own life to be with her. What a fool she'd been not to see it previously. Or, perhaps she'd just been trying to play dodgeball around the tension she'd always felt existing between the two of them.

She was so susceptible in that moment, that a mere flicker of her gaze to his mouth, made them both their lips part in a soft gasp, the sound nearly indiscernible in the rapidly thickening atmosphere around them. And, against all better judgments, her heart seemed to re-align for this man, for this monstrosity of a being who could wield an ax like the best of gourmet chefs would a master kitchen knife. Her stomach tightened with needy tension, and it was she who leaned in. It was she who was helpless to his gentle deep-set eyes, to the longing imprinted there for her and her alone. It was she, Tabitha Burke, who closed the distance between their mouths to a nearness only felt by lovers, and it was she who placed the first kiss upon Kánnérd Gunner Farkas.

***

Of all maddening desires that could be, this kiss could last an eternity and when she came to from its sleepy-like spell, she'd be old, aged, and weathered like a crone. For that was how long a length of time seemed to transpire between their two lips finally meeting and obtaining one another.

Not a vicious crux of maligned caresses, not a jamming of hard flesh or a crisscrossing of teeth to fangs. This was, simply put, a gentle, decadent foray from one innocent mate to another. A hopeful beating of two chaotically rapping hearts that ached to conjoin, to tether themselves with one another. A trick of love to sneak so thoroughly upon her, and perhaps upon him as well; for, it wasn't with malice that their graceful lips slid to caress the others, it was with momentous charge, ammunition of adoration, fearlessness, bravery, and utmost behoovement to grace the others presence that led this device…this so-called kiss…to be so utterly enchanting, magnetizing, and decadent.

It was with precise gentility that Tabitha poised her mouth one way, and he naturally the other, so that merely their soft mouths achingly traced the others like the deepest of lovers reunited after battle. Her heart fluttered, then pronouncedly marked up its pace to that of a warring drum, growing louder and more robust, with each sweeping pass, with each soft sway from mouth to mouth.

So soft, she thought, her mind lost in a dream-like trance of love and adoration. She wanted to keep this man and to be kept by him.

The darkness of this realm and all the chaos it had brought with its many overbearing weights seemed to be lifted away from her instantaneously, as if by magic. The tender growth from his facial hair gently scoured the skin around her lips, uncovering his sheer masculine presence which liquidated her insides and left a crooning song emanated from her throat. He was all man, yet his lips caressed hers back with equal tenderness. No barricading war of mouths was this everlasting, no fighting between two would-be lovers to win a faux battle of minds or wits, only the most tempting of dares that left them soon fumbling to unite chest to chest, to feel more of their bodies tethered together as only lovers could unite. And, as she scrambled across the desk to press their bodies align, Kánnérd rumbled with appreciation and lovingly wrapped his arms around her to accept her. Small to large, tiny to huge, he was mighty and she a shield. They were an equal alignment of parts and pieces as one body perfectly touched another so wonderfully that her heart soared like a wildfire of pure white light. How ever could she have thought this man a brute? A killer? A mere savage—when he had the kiss and touch like that of the holiest of angels.

Her hands ran up his chest to collect fistfuls of thick dark hair, and as she did so she memorized every vein of strength, sinew, and musculature of his form, which left her hormones flooding for more of this pure, decadent joy.

A lick against his tender mouth opened a floodgate within her. His mouth parted at the cautious caress, and then one large hand encapsulated the back of her neck and turned her head as he pulled away from her to stare deeply into her eyes. He appeared to be in a deep trance, his eyes hooded with longing and desire and emotion so rampant, her heart raced with joy and longing. It took her breath away, and left her wiggling in his lap as her legs parted to accept him more fully.

"You are so beautiful, my love," he said.

Tabitha flinched, a natural expression that she couldn't have predicted, nor could she try to hide it. She'd never been particularly beautiful, not in her own eyes, cute, or occasionally "pretty". But in his eyes, she saw the truth, that he did find her lovely, perhaps even beautiful like he said.

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