Page 76 of Her Dreadful Will
When Achan finished spraying the symbols, he crouched beside his backpack and propped the speakers on top of it, hooking his phone up to them. He bit his lip in concentration, and Soleil suddenly felt that she might explode if she didn’t run to him and press her lips to that sweet sardonic mouth of his.
Wicked or not, she wanted him, with a tight-jawed, fierce-eyed, fists-clenchedwanting. She had been so very, very good. So careful. So meticulous and controlled with her magic. She deserved something beautiful and savage and thrilling.
Something dangerous and wicked.
Her conscience yammered in the back of her mind—Killer, murderer, rule-breaker, liar, you shouldn’t, you shouldn’t want him. Bad girl—false, foolish girl!
But something else inside Soleil—something she had repressed and denied for ever so long—drew itself up tall and covered the mouth of her annoying little conscience with its long sharp fingers.
Soleil breathed easier and smiled to herself.
Was Achan good for her? Maybe not. But every inch of her body cried to be touching his.
Maybe it was the urge of his own energy straining to get back to him.
Maybe he didn’t want her like that. Only for magic, and not for more.
In a sizzling, white-hot moment of decision, she unbuttoned her jeans and wriggled out of them. Pulled off her shirt, and unclasped the bra beneath it.
Maybe she was tired of maybes.
27
Soleil stood in just her panties, casually drawing sigils on her body. Through her lashes, she watched Achan rise from the audio setup and turn around.
And freeze at the sight of her.
He glanced away, as if he wasn’t sure that her willful exposure gave him permission to look. But his gaze crept back again, awed and tentative.
Soleil’s heart thundered its approval. She loved the power that her body gave her over him. As much as she enjoyed other forms of power—magic, mind, strength, authority, money—there was something raw and satisfying about the primal power of her own sexuality, her ability to turn eloquent Achan into a mindless, motionless statue.
This was not magic, but a dynamic power, one that could belong to anyone willing to claim it, anyone bold enough to strip away the last bits of concealment and bare themselves to another soul.
Music uncoiled from the speakers and swept over the silvered grass, through the pools of golden light around the candles, to the edges of the clearing where the shadows clustered.
Methodically Achan took off his sandals. His shirt. His jeans followed next, and—Oh.
Oh.
So hedidwant her in that way. The jutting length beneath his boxers was dramatic proof.
To spare him the embarrassment of knowing she noticed, and to hide her own ridiculously satisfied grin, Soleil turned her back to him. “Draw my spine sigils, would you?” She held the marker over her shoulder.
Achan accepted it with tremulous fingers, but when he pressed the tip to her back, his touch was firm. She had to admire how quickly he’d regained his self-control.
Neither of them spoke as they marked each other. Thumbs swirled over warm flesh a few seconds longer than necessary. Lips exhaled across shoulders, arms brushed in a tingling sweep of skin. They were already dancing long before the markers fell away into the grass, and they circled each other, hands linked and released and interlaced again, drifting and swaying in the glow of the moon.
The jittery, trembling discomfort inside Soleil grew stronger, and she knew that the unbearable unrest would be stilled if only she were touching more of him. Or maybe it would explode into something wildly beautiful and uncontrollable, something that could never be caged again.
The music changed, and a series of ghostly whispers erupted from the speakers, shifting moments later into Halsey’s evocative voice, singing “Young God.”
Soleil knew the song, every lovely wicked word of it. “You chose this one on purpose.”
“You went topless on purpose. Revenge for the way I teased you.”
“Touché.” And she moved in so that her chest brushed his.
He inhaled sharply, and his hand slid to her lower back.
