Page 90 of Peregrine's Call
Tav shook his head. “You didn’t run away. You retreated, which was just what you should have done.”
“Then why did it feel so horrible? I left you alone.” Atalone, her voice broke off.
“I’m not alone now.” He held her, and once he held her, he couldn’t stand the idea of not holding her. He needed her. Because she was right about one thing. When she’d left, he felt the distance between them stretching into something far greater than a few leagues.
“Come with me,” he said, pulling back enough to see her face. “Right now. Come with me and stay all night.”
Her mouth fell open, but before she could raise any objection, he said, “Please. I spent last night alone, dreaming of things I’d rather forget. Now that I’m here with you, I don’t want to be alone another night.”
Robin’s chest rose as she inhaled, her thoughts racing behind her eyes, most of all an uncertainty that he wanted to erase. “You just don’t want to be alone?”
“I want to be with you,” he said.
Her smile was the answer he needed—a slow smile that started on her lips but then suffused her whole face and lit her eyes. “Then yes.”
He took her to his own room on the next floor, moving fast, as if that would ensure she wouldn’t change her mind. But when they got inside and closed the door, she didn’t seem inclined to change her mind. Her arms slipped around him, and her mouth was on his before he managed to say a word.
Robin’s kiss fed him in a way no food or drink or medicine could. How long had it been since he got to feel this, to feel her touch? Too long. He thought he’d be dead the day before yesterday, but he was alive now, and all he wanted was to prove how alive he felt.
They were tangled together and yet clothing still came off. Robin lost her gown and then her shift, lying gloriously naked on his bed, which was exactly where she was supposed to be. He got rid of his offending clothing as well, but only earned a furrowed brow from Robin as she rose to her knees on the bed, scanning the various wounds he’d got.
She cautiously touched the bandage on his left arm. She said, “The cut could have severed the limb if you’d been standing a little differently! Does it still hurt?”
“No.” Yes, it hurt. And he didn’t care. Not when she was with him.
“How else were you injured?” she asked, her hands moving across his body, delicately, afraid to bring any further pain.
“A few scratches and bumps,” Tav promised. “It’s nothing a little time won’t cure.”
“Are you lying to make me not worry?”
“If you’re worried, you should think about something else.” He leaned forward and kissed her, running his hands through her loose hair. He might never get enough of her hair.
“Tav,” she whispered. “I’m so, so grateful you’re here.”
So was he. He was grateful that he could kiss her all over, grateful that he could taste her breasts and slide his hands over her stomach and her legs and grab her feet in a way that made her wriggle against him and accuse him of tickling her on purpose.
“Of course it’s on purpose,” he told her, loving the way her body pressed against his erection. Everything he did now was with the express purpose of showing her how happy he was to be alive with her and making her as delightfully satisfied as it was possible for a woman to be.
“Hand or mouth,” he said when he’d kissed his way back up to her ear.
“What?”
“You know what I’m asking,” he told her. “I’m going to make you come for me, and you choose whether you want it from my hand or my mouth. This time, that is.”
“Oh.” Robin’s rapid breaths told him how excited she already was, how much she had missed him. “I…I’ve always loved your hands.”
He smiled, adoring the sudden shyness in her voice. “Then that’s what you’ll have.” He liked that because then he could watch her respond to him.
And she responded instantly when he touched her center, already wet with arousal. She spread her legs and let him do whatever he liked, which was to make her weak with need, drawing out little gasps of pleasure as he teased her and played with her.
He’d been lying on his side, but when she began to roll her hips in response to his touch, he shifted to put his body above hers, loving how she looked beneath him on the bed.
“Come for me,” he told her at last, his tone harsher than he expected. “I need to feel you come against my hand, Robin. It’s been too long since I felt you do that for me.”
“Is that what you need?” she asked a little breathlessly. “Or is it something else?”
He was already painfully hard, and when she reached out and curled her fingers around him, he somehow grew harder still.
