Page 94 of Ladybirds

Her face must reflect her feelings, because his expression softens. “You don’t—”

“It’s for Oma,” she blurts. Quick. The ripping of a bandaid that’s been pressed against her heart for far too long. “After she… it’s for Oma.”

“Ah,” he breathes, a sigh in the dark. His fingers trace the lines, his eyes following their path. “I… never knew your grandmother, but I know you. I’ve seen your love for her—your suffering. I have no doubts she was an amazing woman.” His gaze finds hers, soft with sympathy but firm with conviction. “I’m sorry she’s gone.”

Sara swallows thickly. “Thank you,” she murmurs, chest tight. A watery laugh escapes her, teeth sinking into her bottom lip to keep it from escalating into something more—something deep and guttural. “She would have really, really liked you.”

Humming, he places a gentle kiss on her hip, just above her tattoo, and Sara’s breath hitches. “I believe you,” he says, words whispering over her skin. “I am, after all, incredibly likable.”

She rolls her eyes, but the smile he inspires is wide. “Incredibly arrogant, maybe.”

Another kiss, just as soft but not even half as innocent, to her lower abdomen. “Less than seven spots,” he croons. Sara can feel his smirk, breath fanning dangerously close to the hem of her underwear. His eyes, dark and heady, are entirely focused on her. “Suppose that means a lifetime of happiness, yes?”

“Harvest,” she says, correcting him with a smile. “Oma said it was harvests.”

He shakes his head. “No, no. Not when you have no fields,” he murmurs, thumb tracing over her hip. “I have it from a very reliable source that it is happiness.”

“That being?”

“Myself. I’m old and very reliable.”

“Except you can lie now.”

“True,” he hums. In the dark, his eyes gleam. “I suppose you’ll simply have to trust me, then.”

The thing is, she does. Oh, she does. Despite the way he teases, touch feather-light and tauntingly slow, as they remove the rest of their clothing.

His lips are everywhere—tasting the inside of her knee, the dip of her waist, the curve of her ribs—while his fingers dip languidly between her thighs. Keening, her body arches off the sheets, moving against his hand in a frenzied search for more.

She gasps his name, and it’s a command and a plea all rolled into one. His scalp must be stinging with how tightly her hand has wound in his hair, but he only places another kiss, sweet and soft, at her breastbone.

“Patience,” he murmurs, breath hot. Another kiss, this one at the hollow of her throat.

The sound that escapes her is a cross between a whimper and a moan. It trails off into a gasp as his teeth drag against her pulse, the hand between her legs shifting just so.

How he’s able to hold back, take his time in exploring her, when he’s had no one to touch for centuries, mystifies her. Her body is a tangle of humming, nerve endings coaxed tight as guitar strings until she feels like she’s straddling the line between singing and snapping.

She growls, throwing her leg over him until he’s under her. “I’ve been patient,” she reminds him, hands fanning over his ribs and hips grinding down. The groan she pulls from his lips is poetry, the way his head tosses back and exposes his pale throat is art. She could fill a portfolio with the lines of his body.

Seth’s eyes are dark. Endless. He sits up, one hand caressing her jaw—fingers threading into the hair at the nape of her neck—and the other a delicious, bruising pressure at her hip. The curl of his lips against her mouth, hovering just shy of a kiss, steals her breath as effectively as his words. “As my Princess demands.”

Sara wants to scold him—at least send him a glare—but she likes the sound of my too much to argue. She kisses him instead, hand reaching between their bodies, and basking in the way his breath hitches as she grasps him.

He groans, head dropping to her shoulder. The hand in her hair travels down, fingers tracing the curve of her breast. “Permission to go through your nightstand?”

“My nightstand?”

His mouth follows the path his fingertips have mapped over her skin, breath fanning over her heart. “Isn’t that the quintessential storage spot for condoms? Or has media failed me?”

She adjusts her grip. His body trembles. Sara’s free hand runs through his hair, her answer a sigh against the shell of his ear. “IUD. You don’t come with any mysterious 18th century diseases I should worry about, right?”

His laugh is hot against her collar. “None that showed up on my labs, anyway.”

She stills, ignoring his soft whine. “Labs?”

“Miles was particularly insistent on the matter,” he hums, lips tracing patterns along her neck. “If memory serves, I believe his exact words were, ‘If you give her the clap, I’ll kill you.’”

Sara’s torn on whether to thank Miles or smack him.

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