Total pages in book: 131
Estimated words: 121389 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 607(@200wpm)___ 486(@250wpm)___ 405(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 121389 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 607(@200wpm)___ 486(@250wpm)___ 405(@300wpm)
It bore the mark of his lips.
SOLEIL wasn’t sure she was still alive. She could hear someone’s pulse. Maybe it was hers. Or maybe it was that of the man on whom she lay, his inked skin her pillow and her hands spread out over him. They were all but pasted together with sweat, and his hand was fisted in her hair, his other one on her butt.
He liked doing both, she realized hazily. That was fine with her. She liked it. She’d have made it clear if she didn’t. And he didn’t seem to mind the light scratches she’d given him. She stroked her fingers over them now, smiling in satisfaction, the cat inside her smug. “I’ve marked you.”
A rumble under her was the only response.
She smiled again, kneading lightly at his chest with her claws while she just enjoyed the full-body contact with the man who was her mate. Of course he was; there was no question on that point. She’d also figured out why the bond hadn’t completed itself—because her Psy was trying to protect her.
Honestly, she’d be irritated with him if she didn’t adore him. Also right now, she was pleasure drunk. Her toes couldn’t even curl, they were so lazily sated.
She kissed his chest again.
He flexed his fingers in her hair, curled them back in.
As he lazily stroked her bottom, her eye fell on a shred of white not far away. “Damn,” she muttered. “That was my last pair of panties.”
“We’ll go shopping.” His voice was husky and languid in a way she’d never before heard from Ivan Mercant.
Curious about what he looked like in the aftermath of what had been an unashamedly carnal bout, she made herself rise up into a seated position, her bottom half against his abdomen. Then she took in her lover.
His perfect hair was deliciously mussed, the ice blue of his eyes foggy, and his lips delicately bruised. Kiss-bruised. Touching her fingers to her own lips, she smiled. “We’re a pair.” And that was before she took in the scratches on his neck. Oh, her cat was sneaky, all right. It had marked him where no one could miss it.
His eyes shifted from her face to her throat.
“What?” she said.
“I marked you, too.”
Delighted by the idea, she wanted to find a mirror, see, but she wanted to be with him more, so she prowled up so they were nose to nose, her hair thrown over one shoulder to pool against one side of his body. “Hi.”
He ran a hand over her spine. “Hi.”
They just looked at each other and oh, they were kissing. Slowly, and with intense focus, as if nothing else existed in the entire world. And it didn’t, not for these moments in time caught between pieces of chaos. This time was theirs, and Soleil intended to enjoy them to the hilt, well aware that Ivan’s priorities would have to shift the instant he was back up to full psychic strength.
She was a healer, had no argument with his priorities. Those people needed him.
But that time hadn’t yet come, so she could monopolize him without guilt. Kiss him with lush eroticism while he touched her as if he’d never touched anything so beautiful, even though she was too thin, her ribs and hip bones sticking out, barely any curves to her.
Then there were the scars. So many scars quite aside from the familiar ones from the childhood accident. Changelings had good healing capabilities but she’d been badly wounded, and her body had directed its energy into keeping her alive. The scars would fade over time, but they were yet rigid and obvious.
The one where the ax had thunked into her back was the deepest, but there were myriad others, all of which Ivan touched and stroked the same as he did the unmarked parts of her body. As if learning her piece by piece.
And the way he’d looked at her when she’d first stripped for him? Oh, the man had been fixated on her breasts, hadn’t given a fig about any scars. He’d just wanted to put his hands on her. It made her lips curve as she made her way down his body.
Because her Ivan had loved her body before, and he loved her body now. She could imagine him touching her just the same when she was an elder of a hundred and twenty with skin seamed by life and bones that no longer worked quite the same. And oh how she hoped they’d get that moment—and all the ones that came before it.
Kissing the image of her he had written on his skin, she found herself being tugged up by a gentle pull on her hair when she would’ve wriggled her way farther down.
Lifting her head, she said, “I’m not done.”
“I want to taste you as you imagined.”