Glory let loose a wild noise that she didn’t even know she could make. It was all too much. Clinging to him was the only answer. The only thing she could do. But he was peeling her away, laying her back and rearing up over her.
He was naked, she realized, the way he looked right after she’d seen him shift. Glory bit her lip, her mouth watering with desire for him. She’d finally get to touch all that muscle. The golden dip and shadow of his strength.
She reached her hands out to him but he caught them in mid-air.
“No,” he growled, as grouchy as usual. “Now it is time for me to touch you.”
His words sent a charging thrill through her system and she let him pin her hands back. His hands came down over her body and he seemed to be touching her everywhere at once. Her feet, her elbows, her wrists, the backs of her knees. Nothing was safe from the path of his calloused hands.
Glory arched up off the ground and he reared up over her, his face blocking out the sun for her.
She felt a tremendous, pushing pressure between her legs and she wanted to scream, with pleasure, with confusion, with life.
“Emin!” she shouted his name again, because she had to. Because there was no other word that would properly convey what she was feeling in this moment. Everything was him.
“Glory!” he growled, gripping her by the shoulders and shaking. “Glory, wake up!”
Glory’s eyes flew open and she blinked at the dark cabin around her. It was night, and there was a damp chill in the air in the wake of a fire that had burned out in the hearth.
She was in Emin’s bed, the sheets twisted around her legs. A sheen of heated sweat covered her from head to toe. One of her hands gripped the twisted sheet like she’d been holding on for dear life. The other hand was on the back of Emin’s neck, tangled in his hair.
Emin. He was here. Leaning over her. Shaking her awake.
“You were-” she broke off. Unable to figure out what had just happened.
“I was laying on floor,” he told her. “You were having dream.”
“Yes.” She couldn’t move except to press her legs together against the pressure that had grown there. She’d never felt a feeling like that before. Like she was racing as fast as she could toward a destination she’d never been. Her heart beat like it did right before she jumped from a height. But there wasn’t a height to jump from. She was lying in a bed, with one hand on Emin.
She lifted her other hand to him now, laid it on his cheek. He winced.
“Yes, I was dreaming,” she said again. “And you were there. You were touching me. You were making me feel - you were making my body-” She couldn’t finish. How could she find the word for that? “Shimmer.”
“I don’t know this word,” he growled and in the dark, she could swear that he was staring at her mouth, not her eyes. His breath was heavy and gravelly as he leaned over her, one hand planted on either side of her head. She could feel the significant heat that his body was kicking off.
“It’s what the stars do when they first come out at night. Or,” she wracked her brain, “what happens to air that touches right to a fire. It’s halfway between sparkle and…”
“Tremble,” he finished, understanding now. His voice was so low and his head had dropped down toward hers. Glory wanted nothing more than to strain up, clasp their mouths together. But she was afraid of moving. Afraid of breaking the spell that was spinning out between them right now.
“Yes,” she whispered. “You made me sparkle and tremble and shimmer.”
“How did I do this?” he asked, his hair a dark, wavy frame around his face.
“With your hands,” she replied instantly, no chagrin or embarrassment in her voice. “You put them on me. You touched my skin. Made me electric.”
He said nothing, just vibrated over top of her like the first tense moments before a storm breaks.
“Why is this happening?” she asked him quietly. “What is this?” Her voice broke just a little, both from the intensity of the arousal she’d just felt, but also from the overwhelming wave of confusion that was washing over her. She’d always been able to ask any question she wanted in the past. Her mother had been there to answer anything she’d ever thought to ask. But not anymore. And now she was learning that there were some things that she shouldn’t ask or say out loud. The world was turning out to be so much more confusing than she’d ever thought it could be.
Emin made a small, soothing noise in his throat and it almost made Glory feel worse. Because she wanted him to gather her in, soothe her. And she knew that he wouldn’t. Knew from the moment that she’d opened her eyes, that he was intent on keeping a distance between them. She had no idea why, but she could feel it.