The kiss slid into frenzy, neither one of them able to touch the other as fast or as hard or as deep as they both needed to.
He lifted her and her arms went around his neck, her legs lifting to wrap about his waist.
His hands wrapping under her backside, a rumble shot through his chest, full of carnal craving. Or it was quite possibly from her own chest—she couldn’t fully tell, the pulsating of every nerve in her body masking where her skin ended and his began.
He spun them around and strode to the nearest trunk of a willow tree, enclosing them in the long shelter of the branches. Her back crashed into the bark and her fingers scrambled down between their bodies, fumbling open his front fall.
His member jutted free of the fabric and Wes’s hands went frantic along her skirts, baring her skin—knees to thighs until he found a clear path to her.
He slammed into her. No preamble, their lips never breaking, and it was everything she needed.
The shaft of him imbedding deep into her, delivering and promising everything he was to her. He was hers, for all of time.
She rode him, her thighs clamped about his waist, the fusion of their mouths not breaking.
With every stroke of his driving into her, he slid along the nerves buried deep in an inner wall, drawing her to a frenzied precipice she’d never felt so deeply—so frightening, she wasn’t sure she could handle going over it.
But Wes wouldn’t slow—wouldn’t let her slow—his need for her commandeering all his senses. All her senses.
Until she found herself wound so tight at the edge of the chasm, she could do nothing but clutch his neck, breathe his air and fall.
A growl from his depths and he thrust hard into her, his cock expanding, filling her, and she spun over the edge, shattering into a thousand pieces, her scream swallowed by his mouth as she went into a free plunge where air and light and time didn’t matter.
Brutal wave after brutal wave tore through her body, setting all her nerves to fire and extinguishing them in the same seconds.
Waves she could feel reflected in his muscles wrapped around her, his own body frazzled at the inexplicable force between them.
Wes was right about one very important fact.
She loved, and she loved forever.
{ Chapter 23 }
Laney looked at Wes’s back, at the slight curl of his dark hair dusting roguishly onto the collar of his coat. Three hours it’d been since leaving the last coaching inn, since he’d dragged her, half-dressed—back into the bed. They’d started off this morning later than intended, but now were only an hour away from the Earl of Troubant’s estate.
She couldn’t get there fast enough.
Couldn’t wait for the security the earl’s estate would provide. Couldn’t wait to stop looking over her shoulder. Couldn’t wait to get rid of the Box of Draupnir. Couldn’t wait to be done with this debacle and move on with her life. Move on with Wes.
Wes looked over his shoulder at her, pointing forward with his left hand. “Just a stretch further and we cross the river, then we are only a short ride from Seahorn Castle.”
She smiled. Smiled at the crinkle about his dark eyes that held constant vigilance against threats. Smiled at the upturned edges of his lips—a half-smile that had been permanent on his face since the night before.
She looked to where he pointed and saw the break in the tree line where the road split toward the river. “Thank the heavens. I do believe I have sores where I shouldn’t from all this riding.”
His mouth pulled back, wicked, at her words. “Too much riding?”
Pink tinged her cheeks. Rune was right behind them and could easily infer exactly what Wes insinuated.
“From the saddle,” she said loudly for Rune’s benefit and her lips pursed. “The leather was shaped oddly, like it was for—”
Her words cut off as Wes’s face went severe, deadly, even. He was looking past her, looking past Rune.
She spun about in the saddle.
Far—far enough away that she could barely make them out, as they looked like a furious blob of horses chased by a dust cloud. Four riders—no, five riders. Tearing toward them at breakneck speed.
A force of demons.