Page 94 of Master of Storms
“Get up,” she said.
And he did, pushing to his feet, muscle flexing through those powerful thighs until he towered over her again. Light flashed in those wicked eyes. A certain sort of calculation, but she didn’t miss the hint of frustration she saw there.
He would yield because he knew it was what she wanted. But he didn’t like it.
“And now?” he demanded, his jaw obstinately firm.
“Don’t move,” she whispered. Solveig reached out, placing her palm against his chest. His heart kicked behind the thin cambric of his shirt, but it was his body she wanted as she slid her palm down his abdomen, her fingers trailing away from his belt just before a savage look came over his face.
“No,” she said, slamming her palm to his chest as he leaned down to kiss her again. If this was going to happen, then it was going to happen on her terms, and she had no intentions of losing control again.
His mouth was ruinous. Kissing him was dangerous.
There would be no more kissing.
“I’m in control,” she told him as frustration etched dark shadows into his face. “No kissing.” Pressing her fingertip to his lower lip, she reveled in the flash of insolence that burned through his gaze. “Not on the lips.”
He bit her finger, suckling it into the wet cavern of his mouth. It made a popping sound as he released her. “Then what does my queen want of me?”
“Strip.”
Turning, she strode toward her chair, trying to rein in her catapulting emotions. She slunk into it, hooking one leg over the other and enjoying the battle waged in his eyes. Marduk did not cede control easily.
And that was why she was enjoying taking the reins so much.
“As you wish.” There was no longer any hint of defiance in his face. His lips quirked—a faint apostrophe forming at the right side of his mouth.
Finding the buttons at his throat, he tugged them open insolently. His eyes were hot flame. A dare. And then he reached over his shoulder and hauled his shirt over his head, revealing the wide expanse of those shoulders and the rippled flex of his abdomen.
His shirt hit the floor in front of her—a proffering of peace.
And her mouth went dry.
There was no denying it. Marduk was a god carved of heated flesh. His ribs were sheathed in a fine layering of muscle, and darker tattoos covered the heavy slab of his right pectoral. Adrekibreathing golden flames. It was beautiful artwork, inscribed in his skin by a master. Every inch of him was pure muscle, and from their brief encounters she knew he knew how to use it.
Solveig reclined back in her chair, reaching for the goblet of wine on the table beside her in order to still her hands. “More.”
Kicking off his boots and socks, he started working on the buttons of his trousers. Lamplight gilded each fine muscle. The chiseled cut of his hips dipped into the leather, hints of taut pelvic bones revealing themselves with each button. Desire imprinted itself fiercely against the leather, until she knew it was almost a relief for him to shed his constraints.
He was wearing nothing beneath.
And as he straightened, she couldn’t stop her gaze from dropping to the prominent jut of his erection. Her breath caught.He was enormous. Marduk captured it in his hand, his fist whitening as he strained to encircle his cock, but his attention was all on her even as he insolently traced the pad of his thumb over its weeping tip.
“Would that it was your lips,” he whispered.
There was a breathtaking moment where she was caught in memory—gasping beneath him as he thrust against her, the feel of that brutish weapon driving right between her thighs, even as barely two layers of material separated them—but Solveig shoved her way back out of the memory, her nostrils flaring.
“Kneel,” she whispered, running her wet finger around the rim of the goblet. The sound of it keened in the air, slicing through the swift kick of her heartbeat. Wetness slicked between her thighs, but she was not to be undone.
Not yet.
She wouldneverbe undone.
Marduk went to his knees at her feet, the powerful muscles in his thighs straining.
“Come to me.”
He smiled. “I don’t crawl for anyone, my queen. If you want further submission, then you must offer me more than a command.”
