Page 87 of Brimstone

“It’s okay, Saeris. Really. I can understand how touchinganypart of me would drive you to distraction.”

“Gods!” I tried to slap his leg, but he darted out of my reach, flashing sharp canines as he laughed. “You can stop being soarrogant, too!”

I was both vampire and Fae. I had excellent vision now, but all I saw was a blur of shadow and light as Fisher sped forward and took me by the throat again. His fingers pressed into the side of my neckeverso slightly as he rubbed his thumb back and forth over my jawline.

He was all seriousness now, his smile gone. “I’m not arrogant. I’m fucking proud. I hear how your pulse quickens when you touch my body, and it makes me feel fucking invincible. You can hear my pulse do the same when I touch you, can’t you?”

Holyfuck.

He was trying to kill me, I swore it. “I—”

His grip around my throat tightened a fraction. “Stop protesting. Own it.”

“All right. Yes. I can. I do.” Fuck. He had me breathless and back to front for him, and he knew it. His eyes simmered with desire as he crouched barefoot in front of me and cupped my face again with his uninjured hand. “I don’t know whatthisis right now,” he said, gesturing to the cottage around us, “but itfeels like a gift. We’re alone. It feels safe. It’s snowing out there. We have the fire, and food is cooking, and the fox is chasing insects. This is all I need, Saeris. Something simple. Andyou. I’m claiming you, Osha. Come on. You’re coming with me.”

The bedroom was nowhere near as luxurious as his room at Cahlish. The bed barely looked wide enough to fit the both of us, but that didn’t matter. There were plenty of sacrifices I would willingly make to spend time naked with this male, and a decent-sized bed was the least of them. He was already half naked from his wood chopping adventure earlier, which meant that most of the undressing needed to happen on my end.

Kingfisher took care of that.

He’d used his shadows to divest me of my clothes in the past, but not now. He used his hands, and he damned well savored the task. He flinched every once in a while, his broken hand causing issues, but he wouldn’t abandon his mission, no matter how hard I objected.

When he pulled my shirt over my head and then leaned into me, he wrapped my braided hair around his good fist and pulled my head back so that my mouth tipped up to meet his. “If you think a broken hand is going to stop me from fucking you properly, Osha, then please . . .” He spoke against my mouth, his lips brushing mine, his breath fanning over my face. “Let me disabuse you of that notion.”

He fell on me with a snarl that made the air rush out of my lungs. He lifted me off my feet and slammed me up against the cottage’s wall. A portrait of a very dour-looking Fae female wearing a black high-necked dress fell to the ground, its frame splintering at Fisher’s feet as he pushed his way between my legs and settled himself between my thighs.

“I could spend the rest of eternity right here and die happy,” he rumbled. “I could fuck you and feast on you until the ages turned and the suns all died and burned out in the skies, and I still wouldn’t have had enough of you.”

He hiked me higher up the wall, bowing himself over me so that he could kiss the hollow of my throat. I hissed through my teeth when the heat of his tongue met my skin, trailing upward toward my ear. When he caught my earlobe between his teeth and tugged, my back arched away from the wall and I was suddenly very,veryaware of how hard he was between my legs.

Could this kind of thing happen in a dreamscape? Was it even possible? It certainly felt like it. If Fisher could chop wood, and he could hold me and kiss me here, then it stood to reason that he could fuck me here, too.

Thank the gods, I chanted in my head.Thank the fucking gods.

Don’t thank them, came Fisher’s low, resonant reply.Thankme.I’m the one who’s about to make you scream.

His hands were in my hair. He bared his teeth, flashing elongated canines as he knocked his injured hand again, but when I tried to take it inmyhands, to look at it properly, he breathlessly shook his head. “Not yet. I need to feel it a little longer.”

It didn’t make sense to me, but I shrugged, letting him have his pain.

Fisher cradled my lower jaw, gripping my face between his thumb on one side and his index and middle finger on the other. “You’re so fucking beautiful,” he whispered. “You’ve existed in my mother’s drawings for most of my life, but you were never real to me before. I didn’t believe . . .” His eyes were wide and full of awe. “I had no idea what you would mean to me. I had no idea what I would do to keep you safe. When I close my eyes, you are all I fucking see, Saeris Fane. I could be dead in the ground fivethousand years and the frosts could have taken my bones, and still no other male will ever have loved another female the way that I love you.”

My heart tripped in my chest. Hearing him speak this way? To me? Having him love me like this? Ithealedme. I wouldn’t have been able to let anyone else do it. The intensity of the emotions I experienced whenever I was with him would have terrified the hell out of me. I would have run.

But it was different with him.

He was larger than life. Stronger. More powerful. He was bigger than the swell I felt in my chest whenever I heard him say those three words.

I.

Love.

You.

He couldhandleall the bullshit and the complications that came with loving me. He knew me. Saw me. Was capable of holding the both of us together if it all became too much. It was safe to love him back because, no matter what, he was never going to let me fall.

“Please . . .” It hit me out of nowhere: the sudden, awful realization that we didn’t know how long we had together like this. He could disappear at any moment.Icould. Maybe I’d lost my mind, and I was imagining all of this and none of it was real . . . but I didn’t want it to end without feeling him inside me first. “I need you,” I said.

I laid my hands flat against his chest, my fingers splayed wide, as if I could reach inside of him and take hold of his very soul. If I could have, I would never have let go.