Page 157 of Mother of Death and Dawn

His lips curled into a sly smile. “General. I was promoted, remember.”

“Don’t get too full of yourself, mysterious snake man.”

He laughed—a beautiful sound—and grabbed my waist to pull me on top of him, my thighs straddling his hips. The hardness pressing against my core was enough to make my own laugh die on my lips.

“So demanding,” he said, as his hands slowly ran up my sides. “Put me in my place, then.”

I reached down and pulled down his trousers, lifting my eyebrow at him. “I told you not to put these on.”

“You were right.”

“I always am.”

“Notalways.”

I discarded his trousers with the rest of our clothes on the floor. I crawled back over him, trailing kisses up his body—his knee, his thigh, his hip—and at last at his cock, which I kissed too, then ran my tongue up in languid, slow strokes.

Max groaned, his hand falling to the back of my head, and the sound became a hiss as I took him in my mouth.

He said my name like a prayer. Gods, I loved that—not only the sound of his pleasure but, selfishly, the control it gave me. I loved the way he tasted, the way his muscles tensed as I worked. I pressed my palm to his abdomen and his other hand, the one not clutching my hair, covered it in a gesture that was surprisingly tender compared to the force of his grip.

I pushed deeper, and Max let out a louder curse.

“Stop, Tisaanah. This isn’t how I want to go.”

I lifted my head enough to bat my eyelashes at him.

“Really?”

“Not this time.”

I wanted to challenge him just because I could, but the desire at the apex of my thighs—a yawning emptiness that demanded more—told me otherwise. Before we had taken each other fast and hard, but I wanted to relish how he felt inside me.

I let him pull me back to him, into a long kiss. That, too, was different from before. Slower exploration, carefully marking each other’s mouths. His hands ran up my back, tracing the shape of my scars.

His hardness nudged my entrance. I was ready. All it took was one shift in my hips to lower myself over him. Slowly, this time, savoring every inch that stretched me—savoring what it felt like to be together again.

We both groaned into our shared serrated breaths. His hands moved to my thighs, gripping them hard enough to no-doubt leave marks in the pale patches of my flesh, but he didn’t try to move. We were perfectly still and yet acutely aware of each other, and how every expanse of skin felt against the other.

Slowly, I sat up, breath hitching as the movement made him press deeper inside of me. It was almost enough to give in to what I wanted so badly—wanted more friction, more movement, wanted to forego patience in favor of our earlier frantic pace.

But instead I just looked at him.

When I was touching him, I knew his body so well that even the parts of him that had changed were inconsequential. But visually? Visually, he looked so different. The sheer amount of alchemical ink that now marked him still shocked me. The marks were even more jarring now that the Stratagrams had been broken, so the tattoos were not circles but sharp lines layered over each other. I traced one of them with my fingertip over his stomach, making his abs twitch and an almost-laugh escape from between his teeth.

“Don’t do that to me now,” he said. “I’m begging you.”

“I hate them.”

“The tattoos?” When I nodded, he said, “I think they make me look mysterious and dangerous.” His hips shifted, his hands running up and down my waist—pausing at the top to press his thumb over my breast. “Don’t you want a mysterious and dangerous lover?”

The spark of pleasure almost distracted me. Almost.

“I don’t hate…them. But I hate that you have them.”

“I don’t hate anything right now.” His hips shifted again, and this time I couldn’t help but meet the movement with my own, drawing moans from both of us. His touch migrated to my back, fingers playing at the raised skin of my scars, and for a moment his eyes darkened. “Well. Some things.”

At least we understood each other:I love your scars and hate the person who gave them to you.

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