Page 37 of Touch of Oblivion (Woven in Time #1)

Wren

M y shirt lifts easily as I draw it over my head in one motion, the sleeves trailing down my arms until the cool air brushes over my bare skin. I toss it to the floor next to the bed and soak in the way his fangs descend as his gaze sweeps over me.

I want him to see all of me–this time of my choosing and not just from waking up in a world, abandoned.

I don’t hide. I let him look.

His eyes roam over me slowly, and the way he looks at me has my toes curling and heat flaring beneath my cheeks.

“I don’t know what to do now,” I whisper, unashamed in my lack of knowledge. “I just know I want you. ”

His throat works around a swallow as he forces his fangs to retreat. “If I go too far,” he says, voice deep and steady, “you tell me. I’ll stop. No questions and no guilt, darling.”

I can’t imagine a world in which I’d ever tell him to stop, but I can tell it’s important for him that I acknowledge his request, so I nod.

Suddenly our positions are switched and I find myself cradled in his arms as he lays me back across the bed. His mouth brushes mine once before he pulls back. The air kisses my skin as I settle beneath him, and I can feel the tremble in my own breath.

My body aches to find an outlet for this all-consuming heat licking through my body.

“Don’t make me wait,” I plead, yet he doesn’t rush.

His gaze roves down the length of my body as his fingers trail across my collarbone with a light brush. Then he leans forward to press a kiss to the spot where my shoulder meets my neck, and I exhale shakily.

His lips move lower, learning my body as I’d done to him.

Across my collarbone.

Down the center of my sternum.

Each kiss is deliberate and devotional.

His breath fans over my skin between each one, and the space between his breaths grows shorter, like his own restraint is crumbling.

“I’ve waited centuries,” he whispers against my stomach before looking up into my eyes, “to worship someone worthy of it.”

I don’t have time to ask what that means before his hands rise. The moment swells as his palms finally curve around the soft weight of my breasts. His thumbs move slowly, dragging over the peaks of my nipples in the lightest circles, and I gasp at the feeling.

The sensation is electric. A flicker of something bright and urgent that pulls tightly in the pit of my stomach. I arch instinctively, not even knowing why–only that the ache between my thighs sharpens and grows.

“Beautiful,” he murmurs, watching me. “Every sound. Every breath. I want to learn them all.”

He moves again, with one hand cupped around the swell of my breast while the other teases the peak of my other breast with more pressure, rolling it gently between his fingers, tugging and testing.

I whimper. A spark jolts through me, low in my belly.

Just as I adjust to the sensation, he lowers his head and suddenly his mouth replaces it.

He draws my nipple into his mouth and sucks gently, the feeling warm, wet, and soft. A broken sound rips from my throat, and my back arches again, pressing me further into his mouth. My hands clutch the sheets.

I didn’t know it could feel like this. That pleasure could start so simply and still build with such force it feels like it might split me open.

His lips close tighter around my nipple and he groans against my skin.

He’s enjoying this too.

That realization makes a new feeling bloom...a sense of power. This pleasure isn’t one-sided, I’m giving something, too.

I look down at him to see that his eyes are already locked on mine.

The way he watches me while he worships my body feels more intimate than any kiss, as if he wants to watch the moment I come undone under his touch.

His mouth lingers, lips parted against the curve of my breast, before his tongue begins to swirl. Every flick sends a ripple through me, and I feel it all pooling between my thighs–an ache I don’t have words for yet, only need.

One of his hands drifts down my side slowly, fingers splaying over the curve of my waist and then the dip of my hip. His palm drags lower, a warm line of pressure that sets off a fresh cascade of shivers. My body is buzzing, alive in ways I didn’t know it could be.

I hold my breath in anticipation. I don’t know where he’s going…I only know that if he stops, I might cry.

He continues to tease my nipple with his tongue and teeth while his fingers slip past my hipbone and brush the soft flesh of my inner thigh. He pauses there for a moment and I know he’s giving me time to say no.

His eyes lift to mine again and the question is there, as clear as the heat between us: Are you ready?

I nod, just once, and the tremble in my exhale carries my answer.

His fingers graze a place I didn’t know could feel like this. A soft, tentative stroke over the center of my ache. I cry out, sharp, breathless, and shocked. The sound catches in my throat as my hips jerk upward.

My hand flies to his wrist, not to stop him, but to hold on as the sensation rushes through me.

He pulls back just enough to look at me, voice low and careful. “Too much?”

I shake my head frantically. “No. I need more. Please.”

His body shifts over mine, a growl rumbling low in his chest as his hand returns, this time with more certainty. He parts me gently, his fingers circling with the kind of precision that makes me gasp and arch all at once.

Each pass over that bundle of nerves sends a fresh surge of heat rolling through me. My thighs begin to tremble and my breath catches. He’s learning me at the same time I’m learning myself.

“Oh,” I whisper, “what is that? ”

“Your body responding to mine,” he says, his voice a ragged breath. “This is only the beginning, darling.”

He presses his thumb down with just enough pressure to send me careening. The heat builds fast, sharp, and relentless. My hips roll into his touch, desperate and trembling. I can’t stop the sounds pouring from me. I don’t want to.

It crests like a wave and breaks in me all at once. My mouth falls open and my core tenses just before I shatter.

He holds me through it, murmuring something I can’t make sense of over the rush in my ears. My fingers twist in the sheets and my chest heaves. My body feels devoid of bones–I simply pool atop the bed.

Just when I try to come down from the sensation, his body moves lower.

I expected him to come back up and kiss me, but he doesn’t.

His hands trail down the length of my thighs, parting them with aching care as he settles between them.

My breath catches as his lips press against the inside of one knee.

Then lower.

And again, lower still.

I feel the heat of his breath brushing against the place he just touched with his fingers and I freeze.

“Riven…what are yo u doing?”

He glances up through the dark spread of his lashes, and the look he gives me is nothing short of wicked devotion.

“What I’ve wanted to do from the start,” he murmurs. “You didn’t think I was done with you already, darling?”

Before I can formulate a response, his mouth lowers and his tongue drags across me in a single, smooth stroke.

My hips jolt as my head drops back, a sharp gasp falling from my lips.

I didn’t know mouths could do that. I didn’t know anything could feel like this.

Pleasure surges through me again, but differently this time, somehow deeper and more consuming.

His hands anchor my thighs apart, firm and unyielding. His tongue moves with purpose now, circling, flicking, and drawing tight spirals over the most sensitive part of me until I gasp his name, again and again, like it’s the only word I remember.

“Riven, please–”

My voice is broken. I don’t even know what I’m begging for, but he growls low against me as if he understands.

The sound vibrates straight through my core and I cry out at the sensation.

The world narrows to the wet heat of his mouth, the pressure of his tongue, the firm grip of his hands keeping me open and grounded while my body spirals higher again .

Then, another new feeling steals my focus. A single finger, slick with my arousal, presses gently at my entrance.

I freeze, but only for a breath.

He waits and gives me space to stop him, but I don’t.

I lift my hips in invitation and his finger eases in. Slowly and carefully. My body wraps around him, and the pressure is strange at first, but never painful. Just new.

Then he curls it upward, hitting a new spot entirely.

“Oh,” I moan out as my lashes flutter.

He starts to move enough to stroke and curl while his mouth continues its sinful rhythm.

Sensation starts climbing again. My body begins to tighten on the edge, already shaking, and his name is a litany on my lips.

Then I feel the brush of his fangs slipping free, grazing just barely over the soft skin as his growl deepens, as if he’s struggling to stay restrained even now. The reminder of what he is and what he could do if he lost control right now should scare me.

Yet it doesn’t…It’s what sends me over the edge.

I fall apart against his mouth with a sound I don’t recognize as mine, my body pulsing and pleasure burning brightly behind my eyes.

My hands fly to his hair, fisting the dark strands as the waves crash over me again and again until finally he relents and removes his mouth and finger. I lay there, breath catching in small, broken gasps as the last waves of pleasure ripple through me, and he smiles lazily down at me.

I don’t know how long I lie there, eyes fluttering open and closed, pulse thudding wildly in my throat.

Riven shifts up from between my thighs, his hands steady as they guide my legs to settle around him. He doesn’t try to position himself into a new area again, he simply gathers me in his arms.

My cheek finds his chest as he pulls the sheets over both of us. His skin is warm and his heartbeat strong and steady beneath my ear.

I breathe him in.

His scent, his touch, the soft way he strokes his fingers through my hair. It grounds the sparks still trailing through my limbs. The tremble in my thighs begins to fade, a swirl of disbelief replacing it.