“Did you never wonder, Gabrielle?” he said softly, ducking his mouth close to her ear.

“Wonder what?” she managed, holding very, very still. He’d left just a tiny bit of space between their lower bodies, a tantalizing, tempting amount of space. She would not let her traitorous body bridge it. Would not let herself lean into him, searching with her bottom for that rock-hard arousal he always had. She realized then, with a bit of a start, that she liked that he was always hard around her. She’d grown accustomed to his incessant seduction. It was a heady thing, to know that the sin siriche du was so turned on by her. And the fact that he was so turned on fed her own desire. Being the focus of such intense lust from such an intensely beautiful man/fairy was the most potent of aphrodisiacs.

God, he was dangerous. But she’d known that from the beginning. He’d come packaged with O’Callaghan warning labels: Avoid contact at all cost. Didn’t get much clearer than that.

“In all your years of watching us, of being forbidden to look at us, and having to pretend you couldn’t see us, did you never wonder what it would be like to touch one of us?” He slid his hands slowly up from her waist, and she knew he was giving her time to pull away, wagering that she wouldn’t, and God help her, she knew she should, but she couldn’t seem to get enough breath to do so. Her heart was pounding like a sledgehammer against the wall of her chest.

There was a long tense moment where neither of them moved or spoke.

Abruptly, he filled his hands with her breasts.

The breath she’d been trying to gather exploded from her lungs in a hiss. Her skin sizzled beneath the fabric of her shirt, as nerve endings arced to instant, insatiable life. She could only imagine how incredible it would feel to have his bare hands on her bare skin; those big, strong blacksmith hands all over her body. With that extra brush of Fae he had, she fancied she might go up in flames from the sheer erotic heat of it.

He made an edgy sound that was so animalistic and full of sexual hunger that her knees nearly buckled, and she swayed for a moment. His grip tightened on her breasts, causing her to draw in a long ragged inhalation, but he didn’t offer her the full support of his body; he still kept himself, from the waist down, that slight, provocative distance away. “You have beautiful breasts, ka-lyrra. I’ve been wanting to fill my hands up with these since the moment I saw you. Plump and full and soft and . . .” he trailed off with a little purring noise deep in his throat.

Gabby closed her eyes; her breasts felt tight in his hands, swelling from his touch. His unshaven jaw rasped against her hair, then against her cheek as he nudged aside her hair. The sleek wet heat of his tongue traced a velvety trail down the side of her neck, sending shivers of sensual delight skittering up her spine. She was going to pull away, to stop him. Any minute now . . .

“Did you never fantasize about us? Tell me you didn’t. Say, ‘No, Adam, I never even thought about it once.’ “ He laughed huskily, wickedly, as if endlessly amused by the thought, his thumbs tracing light circles on her breasts, just beneath her nipples, on the soft underside where she was so sensitive. Her nipples were so hard they were poking through both her bra and her shirt, hungry for touch.

He closed his fingers on the puckered peaks at the precise moment that he bit down on the nape of her neck, and she clenched her teeth to keep from crying out. He knew, damn him, he knew. Her secret fantasies, the inner, eternal battle she waged. He knew all about it.

“Why so quiet? Why won’t you say it, Gabrielle?” A pause. “Because you did think it. Many times.” A sleek glide of his tongue down her neck. Another gentle nip on the tender, sensitive cord that ran from her neck to her shoulder, making her whole body shiver with desire. A delicious light pinch on her nipples. “Is it so hard to admit? I know you did. You wondered what it would be like for one of us to take you to bed. To strip you naked and make you come so many times that you couldn’t even move. To give you so much pleasure that it left you limp and exhausted, unable to do anything but lay there while your Fae lover fed you from his hands, tended you, and rebuilt your strength so he could do it to you again and again. So he could ride you slow and deep, take you fast and hard from behind. So he could lift you astride him and feel you shudder on top of him when you came. So he could lick and taste and kiss every inch of your body until nothing else existed, until all else ceased to matter but what he was doing to you, the completion only he could give you.”

She was panting softly. Damn him. She’d imagined all those things and more. And his words were painting much too vivid pictures in her mind’s eye: Adam doing all those things to her. Being lifted astride him; on her hands and knees for him as he thrust into her from behind . . .