Then his mouth, ragged scar and all, crashes down on mine.
And I was wrong. So very wrong.
The rest of him may be taking me ruthlessly, as savagely as I once perceived him, but his mouth is the sweetest torture I’ve ever felt. He sips from my lips, drawing out a swallowed gasp from me, before taking full advantage of my surprise. His tongue plunges into my mouth to tangle with mine, and I feel myself squeeze around his length.
We both groan.
I frame his face with my hands, holding him still.
Show him with my lips how to segue the kiss from passionate to teasing to all-destroying. Because that’s what this is: something more than sex, more than casual shagging. We’re burning together, willingly, and chasing the flames with everything that we are.
He cants my head to the side. Presses deeper.
I open my eyes, only to find green already blazing a trail of heat. He’s watching me. Studying me. Devouring me with his gaze and his mouth on mine and his cock that’s hitting me just right, just so, until I feel the familiar spark of fire tingling in my belly.
Ripping my mouth from his, I pant, “I’m going to come.”
“Not yet. Not until I ruin you more.”
His teeth graze my bottom lip, sucking the sensitive flesh into his mouth. He bites. I claw my fingers down the front of his bare chest, over the scars and the gruesome reminders of his past. He tempts me into another kiss, this one so soul ravaging that I feel the prick of tears. And then there are his fingers, claiming my clit and rubbing in tight circles designed to drive me wild.
I come, just like that.
My mouth claimed by his.
My core throbbing.
My heart—utterly and completely ruined.
He thrusts again, deeper, rougher, his breathing ragged in my ear. When he comes, it’s still him, still Saxon. Not overtly loud or vocal, but he groans deep in his chest, as if he’s being tortured. He pulls out of me, one hand locked around the base of his cock, and releases all over my stomach. White jets of come land on my pelvis, the soft swell of my belly.
Slowly, the seconds tick by.
And then he meets my gaze, a stark vulnerability in those green-yellow depths that wraps around my heart like a knotted rope I have no hope of ever untying.
“I liked it,” he rasps, as if surprised.
Reflexively, my legs tighten around his hips. “The sex?”
“Yes, but no.” A small shake of his head. “Your kiss, Isla. I liked your kiss.”
An altogether different sort of pleasure winds its way through my limbs. Hesitantly, I ask, “Your first?”
His throat works with an audible swallow. “Among other firsts today.”
My stomach flutters at the embarrassment caging his tone and I rewind the clock in my head, moving from moment to moment, getting hot all over again from the eroticism of his touch, his dirty words, his mouth on my—
Oh.
“You’ve never—?”
“No.”
“And you never wanted t-to”—I wave a hand at my lap, desperately searching for a word that won’t make me sound like an idiot—“eat?”
Utter. Failure.
He drags his upper lip behind straight, white teeth. Breathes out a shuttered sigh, and then confesses, “I’m not sure I’ve ever wanted anything the way I crave you.”
It’s not a direct answer but it stills fill in the gaps.
He’s never kissed anyone.
Never gone down on a woman.
Not until me.
“Saxon?”
“Yes?” he hums.
“Do you believe in fate?”
He twists his head up to stare at me, a shadow passing over his face. “No.”
“Well, I do.” I cup his face and sit up tall, so I can brush my mouth over his. “And I think, somewhere deep down, you were waiting for me. For us, whatever this is. So that I could be your first.”
And, more than likely, my only.
Saxon’s lips curl in a smile, a real smile, and if I weren’t already sitting, I suspect I’d be bowled over by his handsomeness.
Saxon Priest will be the death of me, of that I have no doubt.
30
Saxon
Drawing my joggers up the length of my legs, I watch Isla pull her hair out from under her shirt collar. Still damp with sweat, the strands stick to her neck, forcing her to coil them around her fingers and tug the heavy weight into a loose knot atop her head.
I want to fist those strands myself, bend her over my arm, and lay claim to her.
My mouth on the underside of her jaw. My mouth brushing the all-too-sensitive flesh behind her ear. My mouth devouring hers . . .
“If you want it, take it.”
Stiffening, I cut my gaze to hers. “What?”
“A kiss.” Those strawberry-blond waves cascade around her shoulders all over again. But with her attention solely trained on me, she seems perfectly content to let them go untamed. “I’m not some gift you’re only allowed to open on special occasions. I promise that I’m just as willing fully clothed as I was naked with you thrusting into me.”
Christ, her tongue.
Bold and beautiful and sweet to the taste.
In this moment, I feel like the fumbling schoolboy that I never was in my youth, mainly because I was never a schoolboy to begin with. I’ve carried the weight of the world on my shoulders for most of my life and have more than my fair share of scars to prove it.
But one woman—this woman—has stripped me raw.
Guy was wrong.
It’s not Isla who ought to be scared of what will come of us—it’s me.
One touch of her lips on mine and I feel shaken, down to my core. I’m warm, doused in my need for her, and my heart—the fucking thing won’t quit thudding double-time in my chest. When she finally wriggles into her sweats, then loops the ties into a knot at her waist, I’m forced to acknowledge that I’ve lost my bloody mind.
She’s fully clothed and here I am, heart still racing, cock still hard, my skin on fire.
I want Isla Quinn like I’ve never wanted anything else in my life.
Focus, man. Focus on anything but her.
Feeling like I’ve been dealt an impossible hand, I clench my teeth together and snatch my discarded shirt off the floor. “We need to talk about what happened at your flat.”
“I’d rather we discuss why you’ve gone from kissing me like your life depends on it to skirting around me like I’ve contracted the plague.” She pauses, serving me with a swift once-over. “For what it’s worth, you’ve probably been infected already. Mouth to mouth, you know. I’m sorry to say that you’re doomed.”
Against my better judgment, my lips twitch. “Have you always been so cheeky?”
Her blue eyes skate down my chest, to my stomach, as I lift my arms and draw the shirt down over my head. “How egotistical will I sound if I say yes?” she asks.
“On a scale of one to ten, I’d put you at a healthy twenty.”
A flirtatious smile curves her mouth. “One kiss and the sarcasm is already out to play. Just imagine what a few more might do for your oh-so-charming personality.”
“And here I remember you telling me that I was lacking in that department.”
“I have the right to change my mind at any time, Mr. Priest. It’s a woman’s prerogative—or hadn’t you heard?”