Page 98 of A Reign of Roses
So I just listened to his slow, rough breaths as I removed my bodice and let my breasts fall, full and aching. And then I knelt, the vertebrae of my spine pebbling as cool air slithered across them, and fished my nightdress from my pack.
When I stood and slid the silk fabric over my head, Kane stalked leisurely behind me.
And though I could smell him—his sweat and leather and the mint on his breath—and could hear his labored breathing, I still didn’t turn.
“Bed?” My voice was thin. I swallowed.
Kane said nothing at all. No witty retort or sexual innuendo.
He only wrapped one warm, broad hand across my neck to gently cradle my jaw, the other snaking around my waist like a hot iron band, his fist bunching in the material as if he were one swift tug away from shredding through it—and pressed his length into my back with a heady, rough groan.
I shuddered out my own moan and liquid heat gathered between my legs.
“I thought you didn’t sleep in undergarments,” he muttered against the shell of my ear before sucking the lobe into his mouth. Teeth nipping, then licking the spot.
I couldn’t gather a response around my blaring need. It was all I could do to shimmy the thin, now dampened fabric down my hips and to the floor.
“Good girl.” The words wrung a whimper from me.
His hand drifted from my waist to my hip, lazing across my lowstomach, and gathered the fabric of my nightdress until he’d grazed my bare flesh. I shivered, and he kissed my neck indulgently, the way he would my mouth. Tongue and teeth and lips. Slow, soft, suckling. He muttered something—
“Bird?”
“Huh?”
“I said,” he purred, “are my hands cold?”
I nodded into him. “A little.”
“Can I warm them against you?”
I nodded again, his silken voice like a drug. I would have nodded if he’d asked to swallow me whole.
Kane let those chilly, calloused fingers drift down. Down and down anddownuntil he swirled them across the place I’d been waiting for.
I bucked against the feeling and he held me to him, easing me against his chest, helping me to weather the light brushing of his thumb and forefinger and the slow, wet circles.
“Oh, Stones,” I breathed as my knees went weak.
Oh, Stones, oh, Stones, oh, Stones—
The creak of the stairs unfurling across the room was like the breaking of glass. I sprang from Kane, who hesitated to release me, whose lips briefly lunged back for my neck as if he were a man possessed—
But I shoved him away just as Mari scrambled down the stairs and Griffin after her.
Kane chuckled darkly as he turned away to adjust himself.
I knew I was fifteen shades of pink when I opened my mouth to apologize but Mari only scooped up her canvas bag and brushed past us both, slipping into the washroom and slamming the door loudly behind her.
Griffin made his way down the stairs slower, and when his boots touched the floor, he closed the rungs manually and locked them tight.
“Sorry to interrupt.”
“What got into her?” Kane asked, jerking his chin toward the washroom. His voice was still a bit like gravel.
Griffin shrugged, but his eyes were hard. “Fuck if I know.”
I wasn’t sure which of the two of them could stand to be alone together less. Being up there, even for ten minutes, had likely been one impressive game of sexual-tension chicken.
