Page 57 of Dissection of Immortal Hearts
He pinned her down, trapping her thighs between his knees. Leaning over her, he seized her wrists and pressed them to the mattress on either side of her head. Their faces were close enough to kiss.
“Answering your question,” he said. “You have no idea how little I care about saving my necromancer’s ass. But your secrets? I want to learn them –allof them.”
She tensed in a feeble attempt to shove him away. “Your life must be dreadfully dull if I’m the most interesting thing in it.”
Constantine’s gaze drifted down the neckline of her thin shirt, imagining what it would feel like to trace that path with his tongue. At last, Diana’s body surrendered, her breath coming out shallow and quick. He could wager those same images were flickering through her mind, too.
“Damn it, Diana,” he murmured. “I thought you were dead. And that I’d missed my chance with you.”
Her eyes fixed on his. “You never stood a chance with me.”
He pressed his hips forward, brushing against her. “How long will we keep lying to ourselves? Why did you run from me?”
Her chest rose and fell in a steady rhythm. “I didn’t. I left for the tournament.”
His grip on her wrists tightened. “With just a note for goodbye? Coward. You knew if you said farewell in person, you’d end up spending one of the most unforgettable nights of your life. My plan was to start off as a gentleman – take you for an evening out. After that, though…” He started tracing light circles on her palms with his thumbs. “I would have stripped that exquisite dress off your body and fucked you all night until you’d have forgotten any plans to leave. Letting you slip away was a rookie mistake on my part. It won’t happen again.”
Her pupils dilated, a flicker of doubt coating her tone. “You’d have grown bored of me once you had me…”
“I say we find out.”
His lips met hers, exploring them with deliberate slowness, savouring the tempting curve in the middle. When Diana drew a trembling breath, he deepened the kiss, intoxicated by the heady mix of sweetness and spice she carried.
He released one of her wrists and glided his palm along the smooth skin of her arm. His hand slipped down to her thigh, gripping it with a hunger he could no longer control. Years of casual encounters had numbed him to the finer art of seduction – the thrill of anticipation, the slow unveiling of desire. Yet here he was, a novice once more, rediscovering the captivating allure of a single, breathless kiss.
She moaned, arching her back. How often had he yearned to run his fingers over her body, but ended up restraining himself, insisting it was for her own good? He couldn’t understand this overwhelming longing to claim her, nor the aching need to leave his mark on her.
The hardness straining in his trousers rubbed against her thighs, and she buried her fingers in his hair. At that moment, Constantine reached a conclusion: the best thing for her was him.Onlyhim.
She hooked her legs around his hips, trying to flip him off. In a heartbeat, he twisted, rolling her on top instead.
“Do you trust me, Constantine?” she whispered, eyes half-lidded.
He hadn’t thought of her as shy, though he’d expected her to take longer to lower her guard. This unexpected side of Diana intrigued him. “Of course,” he said.
Then she surprised him further by reaching for the handcuffs dangling from her belt. She pressed her hips into his, leaning down for another kiss. By the time the metal clicked around his wrist, it was too late.
Diana straightened herself and fastened the other end of the cuffs to the bed frame.
“I’m sorry.” She crawled away from him.
He lunged for her with his free hand, grasping at the empty air.
“What the hell are you doing?”
Her lips were still swollen from their kisses, her hair tousled from their entanglement. Yet the passion in her gaze had faded. “I wasn’t out gathering information tonight. I was hunting.”
He strained against the cuffs, but they wouldn’t give.
“For Chosen. I planned to capture one and ransom them to the Queen, in exchange for the mirror.”
His arousal vanished quicker than if he’d jumped into an icy lake.
“Then I saw you and Amelia.”
“And?”
“I figured you two would be more valuable to the Queen than her Chosen. I hadn’t come up with a foolproof plan, at first…”
