He kissed her and kissed her, greedy long after the tart flavor of the rowan left her lips.
When at last he did lean back, gasping, trying to catch his breath, his lips were stained. Hers must match. Placing one hand on the back of her neck, Clark ushered her onto her back, bracing on his arms over her.
They hadn’t practiced this next part. Her notebook simply said . . . and then we have sex.
Riley couldn’t find anything to suggest that a particular speed or position was required. It should work as long as he came inside her, as long as she let him.
He pushed her robe open all the way down her front before carefully drizzling a line of rowan glaze between her breasts, using his mouth to chase the slow drip all the way to her navel.
She arched into him—knowing that if she had brought him poison berries, at this point, he’d be sick.
Even when he’d caught every trace of the mixture, Clark kept kissing her. Hotter. Lower. Sliding his hands under her ass, spreading her legs so he could fit his shoulders between them.
“Let me,” he said against her inner thigh, and he could have meant anything.
Riley nodded until she could find her voice. “Yeah, yes.”
As his dark head ducked to taste her, Riley whined. She’d wanted this but would have never dared ask.
With everything between them, she expected him to tease her, draw it out, make her whimper again, but he didn’t. Instead, he sucked her clit straight into his mouth, rubbing his knuckles below, checking, making sure she was wet enough to take it before he curled his fingers inside her.
Oh, god. It was fast in a way that she liked. The stretch tight but not too much.
She slid her hands into his hair, urging him on, holding him close. You’d think she’d never done this before from the way she was acting. She had, but not like this—not with someone she thought might hate her. Someone who she’d handed the worst of herself. Who kept, despite her protests, treating her kindly through all of it.
“Clark,” she said, for both of them, confirmation, claiming.
His fingertips were leaving bruises on her thighs. Unlike last time, she didn’t think he realized. He moaned into it, like this was as good for him as it was for her, though Riley couldn’t imagine.
When she came the first time, thrusting up against his mouth, she assumed he missed it. Clark didn’t let up at all, kept pumping his fingers inside her, kept his mouth on her clit.
“Hey.” Her voice was wrecked. She had to try again: “Hey, you can stop. It’s all good. I already . . .” but that just made him moan and go at it harder, hiking her leg over his shoulder. And that—that was . . . the second time hit so hard, so fast her vision swam.
Since Clark still didn’t stop—didn’t look like the idea had occurred to him, even though she’d been loud—louder—Riley had to dig her heel into his back a little.
“If you want me to make it to the main event, you gotta quit it.”
He raised his head, licked his lips, said, “Sorry,” a little rough, a little sheepish. “Sorry, I just like it.” He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
“Fuck.” If Riley thought she was in danger before . . .
Clark’s eyes closed when she slid her hand down to reach for him, yanking at the knot of his robe until it came undone. He tipped his neck back, veins straining, at the first stroke of her fist on his cock, breathing through his nose, startled, urgent.
Riley tried to mirror the grip, the slide, he’d used on himself, before, but he shook his head almost immediately after she sped up.
“I can’t.” He wrapped his hand around hers, stilling her movement.
For a second her heart stopped.
But then he said, accusatory, helpless, “I’ve been hard for you for a fucking week.”
And oh. OH.
Whatever control he’d had before was gone. He held his back so straight it looked like it might snap.
Riley lay back down until her shoulders hit the mattress and pulled him forward so he covered her with his body, his dick pressing hard, insistent against her hip.
Clark cupped her cheek, looking at her in a way that made her feel desperate, so she kissed him again, whimpered against his mouth because she needed this and she shouldn’t, wanted him when she couldn’t.
If he’d been snarky again, she would have liked it. But right now, the gentle way he ran his hands through her hair, petting down her throat, his scent everywhere—spice and orange and the salt of his sweat—was better. More. More than she’d asked for, more than she deserved.
He was heavy on top of her, a good kind of crush as he moved a little, rubbing against her, making himself wait. Riley wrapped her hand around him again, positioning him as she raised her hips.
His mouth opened over hers as he pressed inside, pushing when she clenched, her body adjusting to the stretch as she gripped his shoulders.
This time, as he started to thrust, it was him whispering, “Fuck.” Syllables dragging across his tongue. And then her name, almost angry, like she should have told him it would be this good, only she didn’t know. Had thought she’d be prepared, but she wasn’t.
You’re a curse breaker, she told herself. This is a ritual. But it didn’t matter, not as he kissed the fluttering pulse point at her neck.
His chest slid against hers as he worked his hips, faster now, his hand on the inside of her knee, pressing out, opening her up.
She couldn’t come again, her body so sensitive, spent already. She’d fly into a million pieces, combust in Clark’s arms. But if he realized, he didn’t care, because he reached between them, pinching her clit while his hips snapped, the rhythm unrelenting.
Like so much else he’d given her, it was a gift, after all, to have no choice but to fall apart.
This time he felt it when she came. She knew because Clark let his head fall forward, burying his face in the crook of her neck as his thrusts finally went uneven.
As she stroked his back, taking him through it, Riley wanted to hold on to things she couldn’t have, things that had never been hers but felt like it. Now, in this moment as he spilled inside of her, as every candle in the room flickered, once, twice, a third time before they all snuffed out in unison.
“Hope you enjoyed the show,” Clark panted into the darkness.
They’d pulled off the ritual perfectly. But as he reached for her hand, brushing his thumb across her knuckles as they lay together under the sheets, Riley thought, Maybe it won’t work, even now. Because it was clear to her in that moment that she’d never managed to hate him, not really, not even once.
Chapter Nineteen
Someone was knocking on the door of Clark’s camper, ruining what had been up until then a very pleasant dream. Except—Clark peeled one eye open—he wasn’t in the camper. And there was a warm body curled across his chest, strands of hair that didn’t belong to him half in his mouth. And—he sat up urgently—the knocking wasn’t knocking. It was footsteps through the entrance hall, getting louder, closer.
“Hey!” Riley complained loudly, having woken at Clark’s abrupt movement.
“Hello?” his father called back as he appeared in the great hall’s entranceway.
His eyes blew wide for one terrible second as he took in his son, his son’s companion, the bed, their precariously covered nudity.