Page 163 of Eternal Ruin

Kidan got to her knees on the bed and delivered small kisses in the middle ofhis chest, his heart, his taut neck all with his instruction. He tasted like leather and citrus, different from that earthy smoky scent.

“Higher,” he instructed.

There were eye to eye now.

She hovered above his mouth. “Sore?”

“Very,” he breathed.

Then he was kissing her again. And whatever she was about to say didn’t matter. Nothing mattered except them. They melted into the act, switching their tempo like a ballad, fast and intense, slow and languid, swimming in one another, laughing and breaking off when their jaws and tongues and lips hurt. Kidan had never been so attuned to every exchange and touch yet distant from it all at the same time.

She wrapped her leg over his long one, loving the heat of his body, and feeling the desperate urge to shed her own clothes.

Susenyos stopped suddenly and put his head on her chest, ear to the middle of her heart. Kidan went still, confused. But she could feel her heart pounding in every room of the house. His arm slid underneath and wrapped around, entirely enveloping her.

A contented sigh flitted out of him. “This is my favorite sound in the world.”

She stared down at his twists. “My heartbeat?”

“You, alive.”

Her fingers sifted through his coils tentatively, and he squeezed her in approval, so she did it again. She drew circles along his scalp, trying to keep this swelling light in her body from exploding. But circles couldn’t encompass this feeling, not with him, so she drew his unique symbol, an infinity loop with three cutting lines.

His hand slipped under her shirt, tracing the column of her spine tenderly and slipping her top free. He took a minute to study her bra. Kidan bit her lip, a little nervous.

“Beautiful,” he whispered, and brought his mouth to her bare shoulder. “Devastatingly so.”

She relaxed beneath him, remembering the last time his teeth grazed her shoulder.

“During Cossia Day, you bit my shoulder.” She arched into the feel of his lips. “What memories do they reveal?”

He paused. “Do you really want to know?”

She hadn’t been ready back then but now… she was.

His eyes colored dark, trailing her collarbone with a spine-tingling deliberate gaze. “The shoulders reveal obsession. Your object of total captivation in a person.”

Kidan recalled that wild night. “I saw me in your thoughts, on your lap, my dress quite low.”

He released a breath in mock defeat. “You owned me back then and you still do.”

Her eyes sparked. “What did you see in my mind?”

Susenyos’s lids lifted, a lopsided grin present. “I saw me, covered in blood and slaying every dranaic that dared touched you.”

She raked her gaze down his bare stomach. “Definitely tracks.”

He laughed, and her body jerked. She wanted to feel his mouth against her lips while he made that sound.

“I’d spent years in the Southern Sost Buildings, drank from hundreds, and they always thought about others, obsessed over their own lovers. Never once did they see me in that light. Until you. I almost kissed you.”

He shuddered.

“You should have.”

“It’s dangerous,” he said darkly, seriously. “I can’t control myself if I let your tongue anywhere near my fang. We saw what happened.”

Her lower abdomen liquefied and the words only made her want to try. Outside this house, maybe in Arowa under the golden lion faucets, she wanted to taste that paradise again.