House of Earth and Blood (Crescent City #1) by Sarah J. Maas

He didn’t balk from her searching gaze. “The good kind,” he said with equal quiet.

She didn’t ask, though. About how it would be possible. How any of it would be possible for him, for them. What he’d do to make it so.

Her lips curved upward. “Sounds like a plan to me.”

For a moment, an eternity, they stared at each other.

And despite what they’d just watched, what lurked in the world beyond the apartment, Hunt said, “Yeah?”

“Yeah.” She toyed with the ends of her hair. “Hunt. You kissed me—at the medwitch’s office.”

He knew he shouldn’t, knew it was ten kinds of stupid, but he said, “What about it?”

“Did you mean it?”

“Yes.” He’d never said anything more true. “Did you want me to mean it?”

His heart began to race, fast enough that he nearly forgot the pain along his back as she said, “You know the answer to that, Athalar.”

“Do you want me to do it again?” Fuck, his voice had dropped an octave.

Her eyes were clear, bright. Fearless and hopeful and everything that had always made it impossible for him to think about anything else if she was around. “I want to do it.” She added, “If that’s all right with you.”

Hel, yes. He made himself throw her a half smile. “Do your worst, Quinlan.”

She let out a breathy little laugh and turned her face up toward his. Hunt didn’t so much as inhale too deeply for fear of startling her. Syrinx, apparently taking the hint, saw himself into his crate.

Bryce’s hands shook as they lifted to his hair, brushed back a strand, then ran over the band of the halo.

Hunt gripped her trembling fingers. “What’s this about?” he murmured, unable to help himself from pressing his mouth to the dusky nails. How many times had he thought about these hands on him? Caressing his face, stroking down his chest, wrapped around his cock?

Her swallow was audible. He pressed another kiss to her fingers.

“This wasn’t supposed to happen—between us,” she whispered.

“I know,” he said, kissing her shaking fingers again. He gently unfurled them, exposing the heart of her palm. He pressed his mouth there, too. “But thank fucking Urd it did.”

Her hands stopped shaking. Hunt lifted his eyes from her hand to find her own lined with silver—and full of fire. He interlaced their fingers. “For fuck’s sake, just kiss me, Quinlan.”

She did. Dark Hel, she did. His words had barely finished sounding when she slid her hand over his jaw, around his neck, and hauled his lips to hers.

The moment Hunt’s lips met her own, Bryce erupted.

She didn’t know if it was weeks without sex or Hunt himself, but she unleashed herself. That was the only way to describe it as she drove her hands into his hair and slanted her mouth against his.

No tentative, sweet kisses. Not for them. Never for them.

Her mouth opened at that first contact, and his tongue swept in, tasting her in savage, unrelenting strokes. Hunt groaned at that first taste—and the sound was kindling.

Rising onto her knees, fingers digging into his soft hair, she couldn’t get enough, taste enough of him—rain and cedar and salt and pure lightning. His hands skimmed over her hips, slow and steady despite the mouth that ravaged hers with fierce, deep kisses.

His tongue danced with her own. She whimpered, and he let out a dark laugh as his hand wandered under the back of her dress, down the length of her spine, his calluses scraping. She arched into the touch, and he tore his mouth away.

Before she could grab his face back to hers, his lips found her neck. He pressed openmouthed kisses to it, nipped at the sensitive skin beneath her ears. “Tell me what you want, Quinlan.”

“All of it.” There was no doubt in her. None.

Hunt dragged his teeth along the side of her neck, and she panted, her entire consciousness narrowing to the sensation. “All of it?”

She slid her hand down his front. To his pants—the hard, considerable length straining against them. Urd spare her. She palmed his cock, eliciting a hiss from him. “All of it, Athalar.”

“Thank fuck,” he breathed against her neck, and she laughed.

Her laugh died as he put his mouth on hers again, as if he needed to taste the sound, too.

Tongues and teeth and breath, his hands artfully unhooking her bra under her dress. She wound up straddling his lap, wound up grinding herself over that beautiful, perfect hardness in his lap. Wound up with her dress peeled down to her waist, her bra gone, and then Hunt’s mouth and teeth were around her breast, suckling and biting and kissing, and nothing, nothing, nothing had ever felt this good, this right.

Bryce didn’t care that she was moaning loud enough for every demon in the Pit to hear. Not as Hunt switched to her other breast, sucking her nipple deep into his mouth. She drove her hips down on his, release already a rising wave in her. “Fuck, Bryce,” he murmured against her breast.

She only dove her hand beneath the waist of his pants. His hand wrapped around her wrist, though. Halted her millimeters from what she’d wanted in her hands, her mouth, her body for weeks.

“Not yet,” he growled, dragging his tongue along the underside of her breast. Content to feast on her. “Not until I’ve had my turn.”

The words short-circuited every logical thought. And any objections died as he slipped a hand up her dress, running it over her thigh. Higher. His mouth found her neck again as a finger explored the lacy front of her underwear.