Page 78 of Damned and Broken Gods
He was right. It was best to be rested and alert. “Fine, you don’t have to convince me too hard to get into bed with you.” I said it lightly as a joke, but his expression softened, eyes darkening.
My stomach quivered.
We’d been skating our attraction for weeks now. Sharing a bed but never crossing the line, and I’d become adept at gaslighting myself into believing that we were simply good friends.
Good friends who slept in the same bed and snuggled and sniffed one another and fantasized about kissing.
Araz sucked in a sharp breath, and my cheeks heated. I ran a hand over my face. “Sleep. I need sleep.”
“Yes…” His tone was thick. “Sleep.”
I climbed into bed, and he joined me a moment later. We settled into our regular embrace, my head on his chest, his arm around my shoulders, our bodies kissing as heat settled between us.
“Close your eyes, Leela,” Araz said.
I did. Long minutes passed, but sleep refused to come. Instead, awareness bloomed—of his scent, sweet and enticing in my nose, of the hot ridges of his body flush against me, and how we fit, so perfectly, so effortlessly. How would we fit completely? How would it feel to be connected in the most primal way?
The pulse between my thighs throbbed harder, and a wave of warmth rushed up my body to hug my neck—arousal so strong it stole my breath.
Araz tensed, then inhaled through his nose. “Leela…” His tone was strained. “Do you need relief?”
“What?” My voice was a squeak.
“The longer we’re bound, the stronger certain…desires will grow. We’ve agreed to maintain a boundary for our sanity, but you do not have to suffer physically. I can help you find release.”
Was he saying what I thought he was saying? I swallowed the lump that had risen in my throat and peered up at him. His topaz eyes blazed in the gloom, swirling with flecks of gold that flickered like embers.
I licked my lips, and he tracked the movement. “What…what are you offering?”
“I won’t touch you more than is required,” he said softly. “Just enough to give you release.”
My breath came faster, the spot between my legs tightening and pinching with sweet anticipation. “No…I can’t…We can’t.”
“Then touch yourself,” he said. “I’ll leave. I’ll give you privacy to?—”
“No! I want…I need you here. I want you to…to find release too.”
His jaw flexed. “Then we do this. Together. No boundaries crossed. No touching each other.”
I nodded, my mouth suddenly dry, my pulse hammering so hard in my throat that I was afraid it would jump out of my skin.
His chest heaved, and he pulled away from me, lying on his side, propped on an elbow, and suddenly I felt shy. Painfully fucking shy.
“Don’t…” he said. “Look at me. Watch how I worship your body with my gaze. Touch yourself in the places that it lingers and imagine that I’m touching you there.”
I nodded, and he dropped his gaze to my mouth. I lifted my fingers to my lips and traced them. His gaze slid to my throat, and my hand followed, grazing lightly. My skin tingled as he took me lower, and I felt him through the fabric of my thin undershirt. Not my fingers but his gaze. It dipped to the waistband of my pants, and I faltered.
“Don’t stop…” His voice was an aching whisper that called to the yearning deep inside me. I slipped my hand into my pants, over my hot skin, down to the swollen nub of need that nestled there. Oh…Oh gods.
My eyes fluttered closed.
“No, Leela. Look at me,” he demanded.
I snapped them open and gasped at the heat in his gaze. At the dark inky pupils that flared as if trying to devour me. My fingers hot and slick. The tension spiraling, my breath quickening, and him. Always him. His face close. His lips closer. His breath coasting over my mouth, and oh…fuck…
Stars bloomed in my vision. My whole body tensed before splintering in release. A cry spilled from my lips, and his mouth crushed to mine, swallowing the sounds of my arousal as I shattered in his arms, a fist squeezing my heart while my body bloomed. Hot tears leaked down my cheeks as I kissed him back with every ounce of want and need that I’d been suppressingfor the past few weeks. I sucked on his tongue, and a low growl reverberated in his chest. His hands fisted in my hair, bringing me closer, his body sliding over mine, caging me to the bed.
Yes, I wanted this.
