Page 33 of Sun Elves of Ardani

“We’re already talking.”

“Not that kind of talking. Tell me something you like about me.” Before she could reply, he interjected again. “You don’t have to actually like me. Just make something up.” His hand was creeping beneath her sleeve, his fingers running slowly over the sensitive skin on the inside of her wrist.

Her voice seemed stuck in her throat. “You’re…” Impossibly, transcendently beautiful. “Good-looking.”

“True. What else?”

“You’re…” He was alluring in a way she couldn’t define. He’d captivated her since the moment they’d met. Their conversations always stuck in her mind long after they’d spoken, and after he’d left her, she’d still had dreams about him for years. Despite her best efforts to forget him, she’d been unable to resist bringing him to mind whenever she touched herself. “...tall.”

He sighed a little, clearly not impressed with her compliments. “Now tell me what you’d like to do with me.”

“I want… to have intercourse.”

“Holy hells, you are bad at this.”

She punched him, only remembering his cracked ribs when he gave a pained grunt.

“Sorry,” she said quickly.

“I’m not going to continue if you keep assaulting me.”

“I said I was sorry.”

“Fine. Try not talking like a stone golem.”

“Maybe you should demonstrate.”

He shifted closer until she felt the heat of his body in front of her. His breath brushed the side of her face. She held her breath, wondering if he was about to kiss her, but he just hovered close to her, as if examining her by smell alone. A part of her instinctively wanted to pull away, but a larger part was fascinated by this closeness.

“I love your hair,” he said. “The color reminds me of aged olaga syrup. It looks like it would feel like silk if I ran it through my fingers.”

“It’s likely to feel like dirty straw at the moment,” she muttered, unimpressed. He moved his hand to her hair anyway, slowly twirling a strand around his finger. For some reason, the motion made tingles run up the back of her neck.

“And I love your lips,” he said. “I love the way they twitch when you’re angry, and when they’re snarling at me I have a perverse compulsion to kiss them and see how fury tastes.”

To that, she had no response. He slowly ran his hand across her shoulder, over the skin bared by the wide collar of her shirt. His hand came to rest lightly on her neck, his thumb on the hard ridges of her trachea. Her heart leapt into her throat. Her skin felt suddenly hypersensitive, and the soft brush of his fingers sent jolts of heat through her.

“I love your skin,” he said, his lips nearly touching her as he spoke. “And I would like to see all of it bare.”

She opened her mouth, then closed it again. Something had stolen her voice.

“I love your legs.” His hand moved down, resting on the softness of her thigh in a way that left no doubt just how much he appreciated that part of her body. She fought a shiver as his warmth soaked through the thin fabric. His hand slid higher and higher. She kept thinking it would stop, but it kept climbing. “I would like to see if I can make you gasp when I touch you—here.”

His hand came to a stop on the indent at the joining of her leg and abdomen, just barely to the side of her sex. Kadaki sucked in a startled breath.

“Well, look at that. I can.”

She felt light-headed. It had been a mistake going into this without having eaten all day.

“Kadaki?” he asked, shifting his hand to her hip, away from the painfully sensitive, hot, damp core of her. She hadn’t spoken in a while. She realized she was sitting very stiffly, frozen in place. She tried to force her muscles to unwind.

“Yes,” she said.

He grasped the curve of her hip in an almost possessive way, as if his hand had every right to be there, as if her body were his as much as it was hers in that moment.

“I can’t help but think that you’ve been contemplating this for some time now,” he said.

“What?”

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