Heart of Steel - Meljean Brook [110]
His jaw clenched. “Why are you saying this?”
“Because I am about to kiss you as I want to. As I would have, if zombies had not been at your back, and a new responsibility laid on mine the moment we stepped aboard.” She rose slowly. Lifting her knee to the desk, she stalked him across its surface, put her lips almost to his. “Because I cannot believe I almost lost you today, because it still hurts, and I only have to close my eyes to see that door shattering again.”
“Then don’t close your eyes,” he said softly.
“How can I not? Without that pain, how could I have ever known?” She breathed in his breath, loved the taste, the warmth, him. “So I tell you all of this because you are a man of deep emotion, Archimedes Fox, and I want you to know: We are a perfect match.”
For a long moment, his breath stilled. “So you are warning me.”
Her lips curled. “Yes.”
“And God help us both.”
“There’s no help for this,” she said.
Rising up, she threaded her fingers through his hair. Silky and thick, unlike the rough scrape of his jaw beneath her lips. She tasted his skin, drank in his intoxicating scent, filled just by that, still empty and needing more.
And as her mouth opened over his, this was more than wanting, needing. It was longing, the slow, perfect pain of being so close but not yet having.
She had not had many things, had not wanted others, but here was both, having and wanting, built into a man who simply let her be who she was. Even Yasmeen had never allowed herself that, not completely. She’d never let herself be a woman who poured her heart into a kiss. She’d never let herself fall into the sensation of a man’s mouth against hers, the stroke of his tongue, the tease of his lips, until she was hardly aware of anything else. She’d never let herself trust a man so much that when he lifted her with incredible ease, she did not even break from his kiss long enough to see where he was taking her.
Archimedes let her be, and she loved him for it—and she told him with her kiss.
He replied with his own need, his groans that said he loved her mouth on his jaw, her tongue tracing the straining tendons of his throat, the trail of openmouthed kisses down his chest. His stillness, his rigid abdomen betrayed his anticipation. Then his hands in her hair, his hoarse chanting of her name as his body shuddered beneath her tongue told her that she could do this forever, and never tire of his heady taste, his complete abandon to her mouth.
And he was magnificent as he rose over her, eyes so brilliantly green, his fingers strong, his body lean. Her thighs opened at a touch, her longing deep, having him, but not all of him yet, until he came into her slowly, so slowly. Her body arched as she fought to take him all, her nails digging into his shoulders, lips parting on a soundless scream.
His muscles bunched beneath her hands. He drove deep, and she’d never been this before, either, a woman crying out her lover’s name, desperate to have him inside her again and again. She’d never brought his head down to hers, their kiss a frantic echo of each thrust, with everything wet—mouth and sweat and the slick push and pull.
She couldn’t let him go. Her fingers and her body gripped him tight as she felt the end approach. Then she was gasping, shaking, trying to get away from each overwhelming thrust, opening wider to take more. He gave it, as hard as she wanted, needed, longed for.
Never this much before. Never this much.
She shattered beneath him, and he broke with her, shaking, shuddering. Through ragged breaths, she kissed him again, deep and slow, and let everything slip away.
No zombies. No airship. No treasure or ledgers.
But still her perfect match.
She’d warned him. Archimedes stared up at the ceiling, faintly visible in the predawn light through the porthole, and tried to think of anything, anything, that had been more exciting, more dangerous, more incredible than Yasmeen unleashing herself upon him. There was nothing. She’d probably ruined him for treasure