Page 49 of Saint of the Shadows

She propped herself up on her elbows. “Feel how wet you make me.”

He pushed part of her shorts aside, exposing her and running his fingers over her bare flesh. His breath hitched, and his ivory skin flushed pink. Was he on the edge like her?

Writhing with every stroke and pluck of her body, she didn’t await the answer. She panted and held in a squeal. He laughed, watching her body wriggle and flex under his touch. She feared flying too high and burning. Every squeeze and twist resisted the edge.

“How may I please you?” He withdrew his hands, leaving behind a violent chill that stung against her hot skin.

“You seem to know what you’re doing.” She whimpered, her body quivering without him.

His tongue teased at the crease of her thigh, a tantalizing preview of what he could do. With her eyes squeezed shut, she breathed deeper and tightened every muscle of her body. He nuzzled again at the inside of her thigh, as if he was waiting to pounce at her command. At her command.

Her eyes opened. She held his chin and ran her thumb over his pouty lips. “Work that pretty-boy mouth on me and don’t come up until I scream.” She bit her lip and searched his face for approval. Too much, right?

He raised an eyebrow and then yanked her shorts, freeing them off her hips. His arms supported under each of her thighs, arching her toward his face. Every part of his mouth found her. His tongue flickered, prodded, and rubbed flatagainst her. She bucked. His lips suckled. Her fingers clawed through his hair, pulling at his angelic waves. Her body became a clenched fist, tightening and tightening. Yet she bucked and clawed. Anything to hold off the inevitable snap.

“I want to please you. Let me please you.” He panted between delicious laps of his tongue.

The toes of her good foot curled. His words and tongue barreled through her defenses. She deserved to have her pleasure matter foremost. He unearthed in her a long-lost sensation, building and building. Her body went rigid. She tossed her head back. The snap, the snap, the snap! “Vincent!”

Ow.

Ow? Spasms traveled down her leg and bored into her wound. Ow. The orange flames of her vision became white flashes in her eyes. Pain manifested into a visual synesthesia, blocking the edges of her view, not at all like the good ache of being claimed and ravaged. Her muscle tremors peaked into an “Ow!”

“I’m stopping.”

Her entire body stiffened into cramped angles. “I just need a moment.” Maybe the moment needed to be a minute or—oof!—twenty.

He tightly wrapped her naked body in the sheets. “Breathe.”

Right. How had she instructed patients through similar pain but forgot now? Must be Vincent’s talent of turning her brain into mush. Shenestled in the perfect bevel between his shoulder and collarbone. The sharp pain became a dull pulse.

Their breathing synchronized as she traced her fingertips along the golden hair of his chest and smoothed over the muscular lines of his torso. “Kind of feel like a straight dumbass when I talk a big game but reach my limit right at the first O.”

His mouth formed into his feline smile. “You shouldn’t feel like a dumbass. I should very, very, very gently,” he said before kissing the soft spot behind her ear, “find what your recovering body can handle.”

Sounded like a delicious and wicked and great idea—as great an idea as glancing over the trail of golden hair below his navel and under his waistband “We don’t have to make this about me.” She palmed his erection and felt it strain against his fly.

Vincent hissed and shooed her hand away. “I have a better idea.”

“And deny yourself pleasure?”

He hovered his mouth over hers and tangled both of his hands in her hair, effectively pulling her away from his lips. “Whose pleasure is being denied?”

Marisol wiggled her hips to fight the empty need within. The warm breath from his parted lips promised the electricity of his mouth. But the gap between them, barely an inch, was the good kind of wound that left her begging for more. Maybe she could ride along the edge the rest of the night, savorthe quieter pleasures, and hold off the loud peaks? She arched into his arm, hoping that hand of his would yank open the sheet and dip lower and lower.

“Turn over,” he said with a feather-light rasp.

Her grin widened as she flipped onto her stomach. She heard only the whispering of Vincent’s hands rubbing together. His oil-slicked fingers smoothed over Marisol’s lower back. He kissed the spot and glided his hands up her back, pressing his thumbs against the tight muscle between her neck and shoulder. The cassia in the oil heated her skin.

Marisol greeted her muscle’s release with a grateful hum, and she shifted to rest her cheek on her arm. A massage wasn’t exactly what she expected, but it served as an adequate substitute. His hands traced down her sides, applying pressure at the outer edges of her glute muscles. She opened her eyes a little, watching Vincent’s perfect, shirtless, shining body move over her. The perfect body that aroused as many questions as it did pleasure. “Can I ask you something?”

“Hm.” Vincent ran his hands in a curve at the back of her thighs. His fingers whispered along the crease just under her ass.

“I think most of the time the media said you’re out of the country, and you’ve been busy as him?”

“Is that a question?”

“No, but…” Marisol furrowed her brow. “How do you do it? The media have pictures of you tearing up a hotel in Barbados when I know you were punching baddies in the city.”

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