Page 90 of When Bones Whisper
He pressed his finger to her lips, painting them with crimson. She licked them away, sucking gently for more until she felt it coat her tongue.
She shifted her body until her head was resting against his chest until she could hear the steady thrum of his heart. Clinging to him weakly, with closed eyes, she murmured, “Thank you for staying with me.”
She swore she heard his heart skip a beat but was too tired to think too much into it.
Chapter Twenty-Five
After a few uninterrupted hours of sleep, Charlotte awoke to the sensation of Duke jumping off the bed. She listened as he left the room, likely hunting for some milk from one of the maids, who she was glad to discover treated him far better than the staff at Lovett Manor ever had.
Her eyes fluttered open to the dark, the lids gently shutting when she felt Nathaniel’s arm tighten around her as she adjusted her position on the bed.
Flickers of touch ran between them when she turned to face him, his fingers diving into her black curls. His breaths grew longer and more pronounced as she inched closer to him, his touch whisking her waist.
A flurry of butterflies stormed through her abdomen, her heart racing. She bit her lip as a thought shoved into the forefront of her mind.Damned to Hell, he could hear her pulse.
She hated that she couldn’t even hide her body’s reaction from his keen sense, yet she had no idea what he was feeling.
With a sudden tug, his arm was around her waist. He pulled her close, biceps tensing.
“Are you cold?”
“Yes,” she whispered with a shaky breath, even though it wasn’t true. The shivers running through her had nothing to do with temperature. With a smooth shift of his hips, he entwined her legs with his and moaned softly into her hair. Sparks shot through her lower extremities, tingling her toes.
The restraint in his low sound of pleasure was enough to send her over the edge.
“How are you feeling?”
“Better. The pain is gone,” she said, turning to face him. “Even the pain in my joints. I almost feel normal again.”
He trailed his fingers over her hip, sighing relief. “Good.”
Tipping her nose forward until it brushed the tip of his, she let out a stammered breath, then held it.
“Don’t do that.”
“Do what?” she asked in a soft voice, the facade of innocence obvious.
He looked at her with hooded eyes, as their breaths mixed, lips just an inch apart. “You know what you’re doing.”
She pressed up against him once more, a smile lifting the corners of her mouth.
“Stop,” he murmured against her lips, but his tone begged the opposite. “Before I lose all control.”
Her breath caught at the thought and further flutters sprang to life, but this time, between her thighs.
Tempting the monster was a terrible idea. Awful. Dangerous. Foolish.
But she was trapped, eyes closed, her body arching into his. Cautiously, she pressed her palm to his firm pectoral muscles, and he snarled when his heartbeat galloped against her hand.
She threaded her fingers through the soft tresses of his midnight hair, her fingertips purposely grazing the back of his neck. His scent was intoxicating. She breathed deeply, her mind fogging with the temptation of desire, wondering if he would taste as good as he smelled.
Slowly, she lifted her lips closer until they were almost touching. She tangled her fingers deeper, searching his face to see if there was anything that revealed he wanted this too.
As her lips grazed his, shadows cast into his eyes until the darkness in them swallowed the smoke of his irises. “You don’t want this,” he husked.
Her lashes fluttered as the confession fell from his mouth. She consumed his words, allowing them to fill her up, before saying, “I do.”
His eyes squeezed shut, his dark brows pulling together in the middle, wrinkling the skin at the bridge of his nose as if her words were a kind of torture.
