Her eyes took on tiny silver flecks of light when she was happy, he noted. And the scent of her warmed with her mood. He knew how to make it warm still more, and how to cause those silver flecks to drown in deep, dark blue.

“All fairy tales have both. I like your hair this way.” He stepped closer, skimmed his fingers through it, testing weight and texture. “Tumbled and tangled.”

Her throat snapped closed. “I forgot to braid it this morning.”

“The wind’s had it,” he murmured, lifting a handful to his face. “I can smell the wind on it, and the sea.” It was reckless, he knew, but he had dreamed as well. And he remembered every rise and fall. “I’d taste both on your skin.”

Her knees had jellied. The blood was swimming so fast in her veins that she could hear the roar of it in her head. She couldn’t move, could barely breathe. So she only stood, staring into his eyes, waiting.

“Rowan Murray with the fairy eyes. Do you want me to touch you?” He laid a hand on her heart, felt each separate hammer blow pound between the gentle curves of her breasts. “Like this?” Then spread his fingers, circled them over one slope, under.

Her bones dissolved, her eyes clouded, and the breath shuddered between her lips in a yielding sigh. His fingers lay lightly on her, but the heat from them seemed to scorch through to flesh. Still, she moved neither toward him nor away.

“You’ve only to say no,” he murmured, “when I ask if you want me to taste you.”

But her head fell back, and those clouded eyes closed when he lowered his head to graze his teeth along her jawline. “The sea and the wind, and innocence as well.” His own needs thickened his voice, but there was an edge on it. “Will you give me that as well, do nothing to stop me taking it?” He eased back, waiting, willing her eyes to open and look into his. “If I kissed you now, Rowan, what might happen?”

Her lips trembled apart as memory of a question once asked in dreams and never answered struggled to surface. Then his mouth was on hers, and every thought willingly died. Lights, a wild swirl of them behind the eyes. Heat, a hot gush of it in the belly. The first sound she made was a whimper that might have been fear, but the next was a moan that was unmistakably pleasure.

He was gentler than she’d expected, perhaps more than he’d intended. His lips skimmed, sipped, nipped and nuzzled until hers went pillow soft and warm under them. She swayed against him in surrender, and request.

Oh, yes, I want this. Just this.