Page 171

“Please,est amage. Explore me,” he coaxes softly.

I’ll have to look away,I admit down our bond.

Memnon runs the tip of his nose down the bridge of my own.

“I don’t mind,” he breathes against my lips as his cock moves in and out of me. My eyes flutter a little at the sensation, but his thrusts are slow, measured.

My palms skim up his back, and I feel goose bumps rise along Memnon’s skin in their wake. I pause when I touch the seam of an old scar several inches from his armpit. A barbed arrow had embedded itself here, though it happened before we met. This was the day when Memnon’s voice first called out down our bond.

My hands continue up until my fingers graze the curling ends of his black hair. I play with a few strands of it. Then, because I cannot help myself, my touch migrates to his scar, tracing it up the side of his face and over to his eye, remembering when I first touched it?—

“This looks like it hurt.”

His eyes are closed. “It did, but I am grateful for it.”

“Why is that?” I ask. I cannot imagine being grateful for something so heinous.

“Because it made you stroke my skin.”

Down my hands move, to the column of his throat, where the inked image of my panther rests. Then lower, to the pectoral tattoo of a dragon—his family crest. His mother had the same tattoo, as did his sister.

As did I, once, long ago.

I feel his whole body shudder as I run my hands over it, and the sensation somehow heightens the drag of his cock inside me. I ache a little at the absence of my own tattoos and scars. They didn’t make the journey through time with me.

My hands move lower, over Memnon’s abdomen before they seem to drift of their own accord back to his face.

I hold that face, the two of us watching each other.

“I love you, my Roxi, my Selene,” Memnon murmurs.

Deeper he drives himself, though his speed is punishingly slow.

I want to beg him to go faster, but even that would be an order wrapped in a plea, and I’m afraid my order will work—and equally afraid it won’t.

The corner of his lip curls as he studies me, and his eyes blaze with intensity. “Your face says what your lips won’t.”

I jerk a little. Did he just hear my thoughts?

But then he follows with, “I will go faster—if you command it.”

My heart is now pounding hard for an entirely different reason. I tense, accidentally clenching around his cock.

Memnon hisses out a breath, then laughs, his thrusts still languishingly slow. “You grip me so well, little witch.” He bows his head to take one of my breasts in his mouth, teasing my nipple between his teeth. He releases it to lave the other. I never thought my breasts were particularly sensitive, but this man has me seeing the goddess with his tongue.

I moan, grinding myself a little harder against him.

“I love you,” he breathes against my skin. “I love you, I love you, I love you. A thousand lives wouldn’t be enough with you, but I have to content myself with just this one.”

He pulls away from my breasts to gaze down at me. And once again, we’re back to staring at each other.

“Command me, my queen. I am yours,” he says as he thrusts into me.

I stroke his cheek. “You are mine,est xsaya, but I won’t command you.” Not right now at least.

He smiles at me, the expression softening his entire face but most especially his eyes.

Fine, do not command me. I shall simply anticipate your desires.