Page 40 of Hearts Lost

Warning bells clang inside my mind. I ignore them for a heartbeat longer, sinking into our kiss, letting it fill me with a kind of heat I haven’t felt in years. Oh, stars, this is sweet, this is so sweet.

And Aloserin said we shouldn’t.

I pull away, my insides twisting with arousal so deep and hot it’s almost pain. Aloserin sucks in a breath as our lips part, and I’m so close I can feel his chest rise against mine. I can feel his heartbeat thrumming in the air between us.

“You— You said we shouldn’t,” I gasp.

My body is trembling, like all of me is hanging on his next words. Something dark and wild flashes through Aloserin’s eyes, and a shiver runs down his body. Then he pulls his fingers away from mine.

“Right,” he says. His voice is ragged, like wind through a broken branch. “Right. Shouldn’t.”

He pushes his hands through his dark tangle of curls and, stars, he looks like it hurts. I reach for him without thinking, cupping his cheek in my hand. Our eyes meet, and there’s something so raw and naked and hungry in his gaze that it sends a tremor through my body. I’m rising to meet him before my mind can voice its dozens of reasonable objections, and then we’re kissing again, and there’s nothing soft or gentle about it.

No, this kiss has teeth. It has claws. My hand drops to his shoulder, grabbing onto his skin, and suddenly his mouth is devouring me, twisting my lips and teeth, pressing against my tongue. His lips batter mine, driving into me, and I rise to meet him, taking everything he’s offering, taking it all.

His hands snake around my waist, pushing beneath the lacing of my bodice until his cold fingers find my bare, burning skin. I gasp and send my hand up, twining into his hair, holding on as he pushes me to the ground, gasping for breath as his lips abandon my mouth and trace their way down my neck, biting and growling as his hand shoves up my skirts.

I’m flat on my back and he’s between my legs, and oh, fuck, yes! I arch my spine as he splays my skirts out on the grass and runs his teeth along my collarbone. He’s panting like a wild animal, my fingers twisting in his dark curls, his entire body hard and tight between my thighs. When I tilt my hips to brush the thick, hidden length of his cock through the soft leather of his pants, his entire body stiffens against me, and oh, I want this. I want this man so bad it hurts.

“Aloserin,” I growl.

His hips are thrusting against mine now, moving in a rhythm my body understands perfectly, driving through the layers of cloth and leather separating us. His breath is hot on my neck, his fingers tight around my thighs. I tug his head upward, forcing him to look at me.

Scarlet fires dance in his cheeks, and his dark eyes are wide and wild, nothing at all like the calm, composed Acting Captain of the Royal Guard who’d come waltzing through every barrier I’d had around my world.

“I want this,” I gasp. “I want you. I don’t give a shit if we shouldn’t.”

He answers with another bruising kiss, a kiss that feels like he wants to taste every part of me and leaves my lips aching for more.

“I— I want this too,” he gasps, as his hips push against mine, the swell of his cock tantalizing close despite the layers of fabric separating us. “So much.”

I kiss him again. It’s sloppy and rushed as I’m twisting my hands in the waistband of his pants, yanking desperately at the thick leather bands, and how in the nine hells does this belt even work? Then Aloserin’s pulling back, fumbling at his pants as his shoulders tremble, and finally, something gives way and I feel bare skin beneath my fingers, the heat of his legs against mine, and oh, stars, I really am going to burn up from the inside.

Our kiss breaks, and I fall back, letting the grass catch me. Aloserin is above me, firelight dancing over his thick curls and dark eyes, and he’s staring at me like he can’t quite believe this isn’t a dream. My legs wrap around his thighs, skin against skin. For all the frenetic energy of our kisses, all the fire of just a moment ago, we’re both still and silent now, frozen in this one aching moment. Aloserin stares at me like he’s asking a question. My lips part.

“Yes,” I whisper.

The velvet heat of his cock presses between my legs. I moan and lift my hips, opening for him. He enters me slowly, his eyes closed, his arms trembling around my shoulders. There’s a moment when he’s fully sheathed inside me, a moment when all the worlds freeze, hovering, balanced on the knife’s edge of ecstasy, and then his mouth finds mine again, and we’re kissing as he moves inside me, his hips rising and falling against mine, following the steps of a dance we’d begun the moment he stepped through that portal and into the light and heat of my world. And, stars help me, I don’t want it to stop. I don’t ever want it to stop.

Our kiss breaks as our breathing grows ragged, desperate. My legs shake from the effort of meeting his thrusts, and deep inside the crest of pleasure starts to swell, building and building with every thrust. Aloserin brings his hand to my neck, tracing a path down the swell of my breast and the curve of my stomach to the place where our bodies are joined, and finally to that sweet, secret bud, that hidden center of pleasure so few of my past lovers had bothered to find. I cry out when he touches it, and the noise my lips make sounds almost like his name.

For all his sarcasm, his biting responses to everything I have to say, Aloserin is silent as he moves inside me, his breath catching on the gate of his lips, his gaze locked on mine with an intensity that makes me feel like I’m the only thing in the entire world. His dark eyes are like the night sky and far, far too late I realize I’m falling into them, falling into something where I could easily drown.

Aloserin’s hips and fingers dance against me, his eyes pin me to the grass, and our bodies move together in the irresistible dance that began when our eyes first met, every step leading us closer and closer to this point, to the sweat-streaked places where our bodies meet, to the waves of pleasure tumbling through me, stealing my breath, my mind, my heart.

When I finally fall, tumbling down in a wash of ecstatic oblivion that pulls every muscle in my body tight, Aloserin falls with me, his own crest coming just moments after mine, both of us gasping and clinging to each other as pleasure pulls us together and then sweeps us both away.