J. Geissinger - Edge of Oblivion

She glanced at his chest, his neck, the silver rings in his eyebrow. Their gazes met again. Her answer came very low. “Some girls don’t want a boyfriend who’s prettier than they are. Some girls like tattoos. And piercings.”

Heat passed between them again, bright as sunlight, just as burning. There was a pull, a softening, and he felt himself slipping, felt the room tilt. His heart rate skyrocketed. “Eliana—”

“What’s it like?” she interrupted.

Thrown off balance—again—he frowned. “What’s what like?”

She dropped her gaze to his arm, watching intently as an errant drop of rain still beaded on his skin began to track slowly over his bicep. “Outside.”

He drew a breath through his nose, calculating. She could be manipulating him still. She could be testing him, or using him—though she could have anyone she wanted to use, why him?—she could merely be making conversation.

But...no. Eliana didn’t make small talk. And he sensed on a cellular level that he wasn’t being manipulated; he had a sharp nose for that, having served her father for so many years.

She really wanted to know. And after he told her...she was going to ask him to take her outside.

He knew it. He knew it.

He should get up right now, go back to his own bed, let his wounds heal by themselves and never, ever speak to her again. Yes, he should do that.

Instead, he opened his mouth and in a husky, halting voice said, “It’s...everything.”

Her breathing stilled. She met his gaze.

“It’s terrible and harsh and cruel. It’s beautiful and grand and dazzling. It’s...” he faltered, searching, “...it’s heaven and hell and your worst nightmare and your fondest dream, all rolled into one. And you never know what’s going to come next because anything could, and that’s what makes it so goddamn amazing. And so awful.”

Their gazes held, the moment deepened. Her fingers kept a faint, lovely pressure on his arm.

She said, “I want to see it.”

“You can’t.”

“I want to.”

“Your father—”

“What my father doesn’t know,” she said, dark eyes glittering, “won’t hurt him.”

His heart was suddenly like a wild thing in his chest, gnawing, twisting. She wasn’t talking only about going outside. She was talking about him. About them .

“You don’t mean that,” he said, his voice low and husky.

“Don’t I?” She didn’t blink. He saw something in her face he’d never seen before: steel.

There was no mistaking that voice, that look. He was well acquainted with it, having lived in silent mutiny his entire life. But there was something else too, some ineffable quality, longing or loneliness that stirred the beast inside him to frenzy.

Was he wrong? Was he misinterpreting this entire thing? Was this just—wish fulfillment on his part?

He had to know. He had to. He had to make her say it.

“You can have any male in this colony, principessa . There are a thousand males who’d fight for the privilege, a thousand more who’d take a death sentence just to kiss your hand. You don’t need me.”

Her face softened. “I don’t want them. I don’t want them, Demetrius. I want you.”

A war erupted inside his body. Withering heat, storm and fury, a lightning strike of desire against his fortress of good sense, blasting chunks of caution away.

They stared at one another a long, long while, silent, her fingers on his arm, his eyes searching her face, the sounds of other conversations unheard. He knew she smelled his pleasure and hunger, knew she felt his pulse throbbing beneath his skin, and knew without doubt that though it was stupid and dangerous and utterly forbidden, he was going to take this precious thing being offered to him because he wanted it with every atom of his being, and had for years.

Very low, he said, “When?”

Her eyes flared. “After the Purgare . He’ll be distracted. He’s always distracted then. I’ll meet you at the sunken church.”

That pull between them again, stronger. The need to kiss her was almost overwhelming. To manage it he said something—anything. “Wear black.”

She broke into a smile, brilliant, heartbreaking. “Don’t I always?”

Then she leaned over and kissed him on the lips—swift and soft as goose down, leaving him reeling—and went back to work on his arm.

When Morgan awoke sometime in the night—disoriented, thirsty, and sore—she was for a moment completely unfamiliar with her surroundings. The darkened room, the strange bed, the heavy leg flung over both of hers—

Memory came hurtling back, sharp as daggers.

She turned her head very carefully on the pillow, and there he was beside her, large and male and slumbering.

Xander. Her killer. Her lover.

She wasn’t sure which was worse.

She didn’t regret it, though, not really. Well, not yet. Because the Fever still burned like a swallowed sun within her, and even now her hormones were rising again like a tide. She let herself be carried with it, floating toward the inevitable, toward what they’d done over and over until finally they both had fallen into exhausted sleep and the pain she’d felt had—at last—subsided.

Now it was back. She needed him again. She’d worry about the consequences later.

She shifted beneath him, rolled to her side, pushed him to his back with a hand flat on his chest. He made a low sound in his throat and stretched—she felt it, the way his muscles lengthened and pulled taut and shivered, then relaxed—but didn’t wake. She nuzzled her nose into his neck, and his arm wrapped around her shoulders, pulling her closer.

He mumbled something in his sleep that sounded like her name.

She trailed her fingers over the expanse of his chest, over the field of hatch marks, over the bare mark above his left nipple she assumed would soon be filled. She pushed the thought aside and let her fingers drift farther down, over the bandage still wrapped around his waist, over the hard, flat muscles of his lower belly, over the downy trail of hair that led from his belly button straight down to the curling soft patch of hair and the erection already hot and throbbing stiff against her hand.

“I told you that you’d be the death of me,” he murmured into her hair. She couldn’t help it: she giggled.

“All’s fair in love and war,” she quipped.

She felt him come wide awake. She looked up into his eyes, warm, endless amber, shadowed by those dark lashes.

“We’re not at war,” he said, very serious, and brushed a lock of hair from her forehead.

“Not until the sun’s up,” she reminded him, stroking her fingertips down his hard shaft. The skin there was so soft, the softest thing she’d ever felt, like silk poured over steel.

He shuddered, frowning, and pulled her closer. “Not ever,” he whispered into her ear.

She found a rhythm with her hand, coaxing a response from him, coaxing his hips into that push and pull that she so loved, the masculinity of it, the raw power. He pressed a kiss to her temple, her cheek. She stroked him until his breathing was ragged and he kissed her on the mouth, hard and demanding.

He said something to her in that language of his—musical, magical Portuguese—and her hand slowed. Her fingers gently squeezed and released, exploring, teasing. He groaned, his face turned to her hair.

“What does that mean?”

“It means you’re driving me insane .”

“No, what you just said.” She ran her fingers over a throbbing vein on the underside of his shaft, around and around the full head atop, and he groaned again, louder. Her own breathing grew irregular; she loved him like this. Like putty in her hands. Hard putty.