Page 95 of Master of Storms
“And what do you think I would be willing to offer?”
His smile held all manner of sin. “I want you naked. I want to see every inch of you. I want to taste you.”
She set the heel of her boot against his chest, and he caught it there, eyes flashing. “Then unlace it.”
Still a command, even if she was conceding a small vulnerability to him.
Marduk found the tight laces that ran up the length of her shin, and then he was tugging them loose. “You like being in control.”
“Who doesn’t?”
He tugged her boot free, his hands locking around her calf as he moved to tug her thin stocking down. “I wonder… would you like it if you were the one under my thumb?”
She’d always been on top. No male had ever reversed the tables on her, and there’d been none of that with females.
But again, memory was intruding….
The way he’d held her down the day of their mating ceremony; the determination on his face as he kissed her and tugged her knife from his throat.
If his friends hadn’t interrupted, she’d have allowed him to seduce her on the floors of her chambers after their mating ceremony, and she wasn’t sure if she’d have had the presence of mind to demand his submission.
A shiver ran through her as he slid his hands up her calves, slowly tugging her boot down.
“I will never yield,” she told him, but she’d hesitated too long, and the glint in his eyes told her he’d noticed.
He tossed the boot behind him. “Another.”
Solveig replaced one foot with the other.
Inch by inch, he stripped her bare. Soft kisses painted themselves against her knees and thighs, until he yanked her breeches from around her ankles and threw them behind him.
“You’re so damned pretty,” he whispered as he kissed his way up her body and then began working on her shirt. Her corset went next, until she was as bare as he was.
“Pretty is such an insipid word,” she breathed into his mouth.
“You’re fucking glorious.”
That was better.
Marduk caught her hand, and she sensed the challenge within him. “Kiss me.”
“I thought you offered me your surrender.”
“And you have it, but the price is this: kiss me.”
Solveig stared into those implacable eyes.
This too—like everything else between them—was a challenge. The thought thrilled her. Submission, though tempting, was not the reason her body flexed with wet need. She wanted him undone. She wanted him to beg her. She wanted the challenge.
And she would win it.
Sliding her palm over the heavy ripple of muscle in his chest, she curled her hand behind his nape and drew him down to her.
The first time they’d kissed, it had been fierce with fury and desire.
She’d lost control. Badly. And only in her dreams did she allow herself to remember the way he’d taken her mouth, claiming it so roughly that her lips were branded with the sensation for hours later. She’d worn his bruises on her skin, and thwarted desire had left her feeling utterly wretched.
One taste was not enough.
