I shiver, my head tipping back and my eyes fluttering closed as he begins to press his wicked mouth against my skin. He crouches down in front of me, dragging the sleeve of my dress with him to bare my shoulder. “You’ve bewitched my senses, taken over my thoughts. Every time I blink, all I see is you, like you’ve seared yourself into my eyes and I’ll never close them again without envisioning you. And you know what?”
My voice is as breathless as my thoughts. “What?”
He leans away to look me in the eye again. “I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
This time, it’s definitely me who presses forward to claim him for a kiss. To claim him for so much more.
He is everything I never thought I could have. Every sip I never thought I’d taste.
As if I’m worried he’ll be ripped away from me, I hold him a little bit tighter, let my ribbons wrap around him just a little bit more.
When I get too overenthusiastic with my kiss, I bite down on his lip hard enough to draw blood. But he doesn’t pull back. If anything, it just seems to spur him on even more, and I swallow up an appreciative growl right from his tongue.
“Hungry?” he teases against my lips.
“I’ve been starving for a long time,” I whisper. As soon as I say that out loud, I realize how true it is, how undernourished my soul has been. I thought it was only freedom that I craved, but it was this too.
My life was a flat, barren plain. My horizon was stale and endless, with the constraints of others’ control. There was nothing but a bland, lackluster existence with no growth, no change. Just an arid land that held no rise.
The world taught me that things could always be worse. I learned to always look up, to take what I could get, to settle.
I became too blinded by my bright sides to see the truth.
Sometimes, you look at the silver lining so much that you drift into denial about the clouds.
Slade’s black brows pull together, and he sweeps his finger beneath my eye, making me feel the wetness there. “What’s this?” he asks, rough voice carrying his worry like rainfall in buckets.
I shake my head through the bouts of breath I pull in, taking in his scent with it. Freshly turned soil, wood chips wet by the rain, bittersweet chocolate left on my tongue. “I’m just…happy.”
His face softens, and then he pushes me gently until my back hits the furs, and he props himself over me. He has snowfall in his cold hair and adoration in his warm touch, and if I could, I’d melt into him forever.
Slade looks at me like he cherishes me, the sweep of his thumb against my cheek like a kiss of touch.
“I’m happy too, Goldfinch.”
“There’s so much we have to talk about,” I say, letting my hands run over the supple leather on his shoulders. “But for now, I want you to be the commander and me to be the goldfinch, and not have anything to do with cages or crowns.”
Understanding dips into his expression. “I’ll stay in whatever form you like. I’ll give you whatever you need.”
“You,” I answer honestly. “I just need you.”
Slade stands up, eyes never leaving me, while he systematically begins to undress. His coat, shirt, boots, pants, everything comes off, until he’s standing naked in front of me, pale skin and dark spikes on full display.
Along his shoulders is another brush of scales I hadn’t noticed before, the gray of them swept from the blades, nearly up to the sides of his neck.
My eyes trace over every part of him, counting the six spikes up his spine, following the slight arc of them, as if they’re talons from a predator’s feet. The four spikes along his forearms jut out proudly too, but not as much as his thick cock.
Impatient to feel his body against mine, I sit up and lift my arms, and Slade grasps my dress and pulls it off. Just like the night before, he carefully removes my boots, dragging my stockings down right after. “Like unwrapping a present,” he murmurs.
His gaze rolls over me like thread on a spindle, taut against my body. I can practically feel him weaving scandalous thoughts to twine around my skin until I’m wrapped in attentive want, and it makes my whole body flush.
He kneels down on the ground in front of me, his rough fingers skimming up my thigh. “I couldn’t take it slow last night, but right now, I intend to lick your clit until you come all over my tongue.”
My eyes flare, but I click my knees together, trapping his hand. “I, umm, I’ve never…I mean…I don’t know if I’d like it…”