Page 191 of A Tribute of Fire

“I noticed,” he said with a grin.

“Please.” I had thought only minutes ago that I could have him pleading with me for more and now I was the one doing it.

I wasn’t even embarrassed.

He gave me what I wanted and shifted himself over me and then lowered down slowly. I let out a moan when his taut body finally molded itself against me. It was both a relief and a demand for something new.

When his mouth found mine, ravenous and consuming, I realized that he liked this just as much as I did. Maybe even more. We wound ourselves together, one of his legs settling between mine. It felt like wewere trying to possess each other, each kiss hungrier and deeper than the one before it.

I had found the right key, the right door, and now I was going to be led to the treasure waiting for me.

Then he slowed the kiss, taming it deliberately. As if he meant to calm me down, but somehow his precision and technique only added more fuel to the fire he had built.

“You’re always in such a rush,” he told me, nuzzling his nose against mine. “We have all night. You don’t know how many times I’ve imagined this. I want it to last.”

I was so mindless with need that I didn’t understand the words the way he was using them.

“But first, this has been digging into me,” he said. He rolled away and it was like someone had torn my skin off.

Then he was pushing my tunic up and running his hand up my left leg. He leaned over to kiss me and I felt him grin against my lips when his hand came across my sword. He disarmed me and tossed it to the ground.

I trembled, my breath quickening, as his fingers brushed against the bare skin of my inner thigh, undoing the straps there so that he could tug the sheath away and let it fall as well. It felt incredible.

“Better,” he said, but his fingers were still running along my thigh and I couldn’t stop shaking.

He took his hand away and again I wanted to protest but then he was back on top of me and a buzz of pleasure started in my spine, traveling along all of my nerves. I needed something. Something more from him. I didn’t know what it was, but these sensations were building inside me, desperate to get out.

It seemed he intended to kiss me slowly but it didn’t happen according to his plan. I didn’t allow it. I plundered his mouth and he immediately responded.

He broke it off and said, “We can wait—”

But I interrupted him. “I need you to make me forget.”

He reached up to softly stroke my face. “Forget what?”

“Forget that tomorrow I will be parted from you.”

Then he kissed me the way I wanted, the way I’d been aching for. His hands moved like liquid over my body, over my curves, leaving heat in his wake. I pulled him against me, searching for ... something.

We burned so hotly and brightly together, bigger than even the bonfire in the temple courtyard.

He ground his hips against me, right where I needed him most, and it caused all my other senses to turn off. I couldn’t see, hear, taste, or smell anything else—I was consumed by the white-hot spikes of desire he created inside me. I arched up into him. Fire lit up my bones while he continued to move against me.

Now I understood the urge to bite. To devour. To consume. I sank my teeth where his neck met his shoulder and he groaned with pleasure.

I soothed it with my tongue and lips, tasting the saltiness of his skin again. He was undeniably delicious.

“You’re even better than the wine I had tonight, and that was exquisite.” I murmured the words into his strong neck.

He immediately stilled. “You were drinking at the festival? Before you came over the wall?”

“Yes.” What did that have to do with anything?

Jason let out a groan of disbelief and rolled onto his back, covering his eyes with his hands. “I know what’s in that wine! Everyone knows what that wine does to the celebrants.” He let his hands drop from his face so that he could look at me. “You are not yourself. Your judgment has been impaired.”

“It has not!”

“Tomorrow you will wake up with the memory of this and you will hate yourself for what we almost did.”

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