“I’m more interested in what you can do with other parts of your body.”

Marco’s lips froze with a quick intake of breath, almost as if she’d wounded him, even though there wasn’t anything she could have done, spread out as she was.

“I hope I live up to your expectations,” he murmured, licking gently up the inside of her thigh until he exhaled, slowly, at the core of her.

Jacinda held her breath, waiting. He was so close, his thumb nearly brushing her, just next to his mouth. Her entire world started and ended with the place where she waited for his touch, and she realized she hadn’t wanted anything this badly in a long, long time.

When his caress came, it nearly ended her. Just the tip of his tongue, wet and gentle, barely dipping to taste her as his thumb pressed, softly, just beside it. She was already wet, dripping with want, and she whimpered and went stiff, beyond desperate for more. Lick by lick, he teased her, tasted her, touched her, pressed in the tiniest bit, nowhere close to satisfying her, taking his time as he had promised. One finger slid into her with infinite patience, his tongue probing her most secret of places. Marco was just as frustrating in bed as he was on his feet, and she loved and hated it with equal measure.

Since Liam, all her lovers had been fast and brash and pounding and innocently selfish, easy to lose herself in for a night and just as easy to forget come morning. But Marco’s touch brought her back to herself, reminded her of what it was to yearn and want and need. She couldn’t escape it, couldn’t escape him, couldn’t escape the feeling writhing in her chest, the hunger, the needing.

“Please.”

One long, deep lick, tongue flat, enough to make her shudder. “Please what, sweetness?”

“Just . . . please.”

He put his lips against her and hummed, sending a thrum throughout every cell of her body. “Hmm. Please go more slowly?”

She groaned. “Curse you and your damn lips, Marco Taresque.”

He paused, set his forehead against her thigh. “Care to rephrase that?”

“Yes. No. Faster. More.” He licked her again, and she whimpered. “Please. More.”

He chuckled against her, slid a second finger in beside the first, and curled them as if he knew every inch of her body as well as he knew his knives. His tongue began to work her with purpose, pushing in and out in perfect time with his fingers, and she met his rhythm with every breath, with the little moans and whimpers that escaped her as her head thrashed back and forth. Her fingers were numb around the iron bars, her hands forgotten in the frenzy he’d built inside her.

“Better?” he asked.

“So close. Still not enough. All of you. Now.” After one last, forceful, hard push of his tongue, he withdrew, leaving an emptiness behind where his fingers had brought her to the edge of a release she felt sure he wasn’t ready yet to give her. The knowledge was thrilling, that he was so attuned to her body after so little time, that he was reading every signal she threw. She felt like an instrument in his hands, as if he knew how to coax songs from her that she didn’t yet know how to sing.

Marco moved up, one knee at the juncture of her thighs, flush against the place his fingers had filled almost perfectly. “You haven’t let go of the bed yet. Good girl.”

He wrapped his hands around hers and bent his mouth to her lips, kissing her long and deep and fitting his knee more snugly between her thighs. His fingertips trailed down her arms, tracing over the fabric of her undone jacket until he came to the plain of her exposed chest, her breasts still floating over her corset and aching for his touch. He licked and sucked and teased them, but she could feel his patience turning to hunger, could sense that he couldn’t go on like this much longer, drawing out her pleasure while denying his own. One by one, he unlatched the hooks down the front of her corset, kissing down the valley of fevered flesh until the last one popped free, exposing her utterly. As she gulped a deep breath, he licked a long line straight up from her navel to her throat. In a heartbeat, he was back at her navel and circling there, briefly, before dipping below the waist of her skirt.

Before she could twist her hips to show him the buttons, he’d already undone them and begun to slip the heavy skirts and petticoats down her hips, his mouth lingering on the ticklish flesh of her hipbones. She lifted herself up, helping him slide the skirts off completely and toss them onto the floor. With a sigh of bliss, she wriggled all over, glad to be free of the heavy layers of fabric. His hands ran reverently over the curves of her, tracing and cupping and brushing as if he’d never seen so much of a woman before. When she looked up, she was moved by the softness and awe in his eyes. He caught her looking and leaned over to take her face in both his hands and kiss her with such tenderness that her desire melted away, for just a moment, into bliss.

And then his finger found her again, testing the wetness pooled between her legs.

“I think you might be enjoying this.”

He began to ease in one finger, and she tossed her head and whimpered. “I want to touch you, Marco. Please let me touch you.”

He shook his head no, but ever so softly, he said, “Do, then.”

Her fingers ached when she unwound them from the iron, and her head swam when she sat up. With tentative hands, he helped her draw off her jacket and unwrap the corset, and then she was completely naked before him, a field of sweetly flushed freckles and soft red hair. The way he stared with liquid violet eyes, as if she was an angel, made her feel cherished and beautiful and fierce. Jacinda slipped from the bed to stand between his knees, the wood floor cold under the balls of her feet.

With trembling hands, she began unbuttoning his shirt, pausing only to gasp when he cupped a breast in each hand and held them together, licking every curve. The soft black linen fell open, and she untucked his shirt and drew it down over his shoulders, skimming her hands down the smooth, hard muscles of his biceps and scratching her nails through the dark, curly hair on his forearms. Her eyes were drawn by a series of thick white scars that stood out from the golden skin of his shoulder, side, and chest.

“What happened?”

He grimaced and shook his head, turning it into a smile. “Being a daggerman has its perils. Like beautiful women throwing themselves at me.”

She knelt in one smooth motion, his knees on either side of her. Kissing down his chest, she ran her hands over the curve of his ribs, over hard muscles, down to that elegantly delicious line where his hipbones made a V pointing somewhere lovely. Marco held perfectly still, his eyes closed, letting her do her work, his hands making fists in the coverlet as if he was afraid to touch her. After running her hands along his thighs and to his knees, she sat back on her haunches and slowly, so slowly, undid the buttons on his breeches. He leaned back and groaned as he sprang free, and she was smugly gratified by the evidence of his desire, that he had taken such time to drive her mad with hands and mouth while he felt the same hunger she knew.

The deadly Marco Taresque looked so very vulnerable this way, torso bared and head thrown back, throat exposed and eyes closed, wild hair tangling down his back. And she very much wanted to shock him, to drive him mad. And so, with her hands on his knees, she bent and took him deep into her mouth. He groaned and tensed and growled as she tasted him, just as slowly as he’d tasted her.

“No . . . I don’t . . . I can’t . . .”

Without pulling away, she innocently mumbled, “Can’t what?” around him.

With a growl, his hands caught her waist and pulled her to standing, and her excitement ratcheted up a notch with his sudden ferocity and need. He pulled her close and gazed up into her eyes, and it was like falling into a cave of ever-twilight, into a dark, echoing, endless chasm.

“God, you’re unspeakably beautiful.” He laid his face against her side, nuzzling, and she tugged fingers through his dark, silky hair, waiting for his next touch, for him to finally initiate the release they both craved. But he made no move.

“What do you want, Marco?”

His lips tickled her ribs as he spoke. “Everything. I want to taste every inch of you and meet you a thousand ways for a thousand nights and hear you scream in my ear as you shatter under my mouth.” He pulled away, traced her curves up and down with his fingertips. “But since you’re asking, let’s start with this.”

He spun her around and sank his teeth into her ass briefly as his fingers found her, spreading her lips and pulling her back gently. With a smile of satisfaction, she spread her legs to straddle his knees. Ready as she was, he slid in easily, perfectly, deliciously, making her gasp as she settled against him. He let out a strangled sigh and set his forehead against her shoulder, and for just a moment, she imagined she felt the wetness of a single, solitary tear.

Then Marco’s arm wrapped around her, pinning her hands to her chest, and he rocked forward tentatively. With a little “Ooh,” she moved with him, grinding against him slowly. He moved her hair aside and caught the nape of her neck with his lips, finding a steady rhythm that battered against her, striking deep inside. With his arm still around her, his fingers wrapped around both of her wrists, she leaned forward, testing his strength, changing the angle just slightly, and his groan thrummed down her neck, down her spine, adding to the pooling pleasure at the core of her. His free hand roamed her body, cupping her breasts, pinching her nipples, and skimming her ribs, following the crease of her thigh to the crux of her, where he rubbed in time, moving faster in counterpoint to his thrusting.

Jacinda threw her head back and wrenched her arms free with a growl. Her hands found his thighs, finally, and she rode him without shame or regret or thought, becoming a being of pure hunger and desire and hot, wet sweetness, with no past, no future, no deep-down sorrow. As many times and ways as she’d imagined being with Marco since the first time she’d laid eyes on him, it was better still than that.

He fit perfectly with her, moved perfectly, knew just how to work her flesh with mouth and hand in a wild frenzy that drew her into ecstasy, into forgetfulness, into that pitch-black, starlit abyss where nothing mattered but this, but him, but the movement, the feeling, the riding. And still they moved faster and faster, until only his arm kept her upright and in one piece. She arched her back against him and whimper-screamed, her head over his shoulder and her fallen hair streaming down his back as he caught her mouth and swallowed the panting whimpers of her crest. With one last cry, she clenched her muscles around him and kissed him hard, until she felt the rhythmic pumping of his own release. The kiss ended when his climax ignited a second bloom of pleasure deep inside her, and she had no choice but to lean back against him and ride it out in one long, high scream.