I wasn’t sure I liked that response, but his fingers reached the collar of my top. My lips parted as the tips trailed down my neck and lower, between my breasts, and then even lower, down and over the slope of my stomach. His fingers glided back up and over my lower ribcage. That terrible, insidious voice slinked back into whatever hole it had climbed out of, thank God.

He flattened his hand, and his thumb tugged at my shirt as he followed the swell of my body until my back arched and a breathy moan left me. His soft hair grazed my chin as his lips followed the path his fingers had made.

“I hope this doesn’t count as kissing,” he whispered against the thin material of my shirt.

Did it? “I... I don’t think so.”

“Relieved to hear that.” He was on the move again, his mouth skating above my shirt to where his thumb was moving in slow, lazy circles.

My hand fisted the back of his shirt. I had no idea when I’d grabbed him again, but obviously I had. My legs moved restlessly, squeezing together as the thin material of my shirt became damp under his mouth.

Zayne’s hand moved to where the hem of my top had ridden halfway up my stomach, exposing a whole lot of skin to a Warden’s perfect night vision. The calluses on his palm created a unique friction as he inched my shirt up. “Yes? No?”

“Yes,” I breathed.

Cool air followed in the wake of my top, and I’m not quite sure what kind of magic got it over my head and off me, but with his breath against my skin, I didn’t care.

“What about this?” he asked. “Is this considered kissing? I feel like it might be.”

“No,” I said, feeling the lines blur, but I couldn’t bring myself to care.

“Hmm.”

His lips pressed against my skin, and I thought surely this was the most exquisite torture in the whole world. I lost all sense of time, and his shirt might have begun to tear under my grip.

Slowly, I became aware of his hand opening and closing along my waist, my hip and then the bare skin of my thigh. One of his fingers slipped under the band of narrow cotton along my hip and his thumb moved along the elastic, dipping low enough to cause my head to kick back.

Zayne’s head lifted. “I want... I want to touch you. Do you want that?”

“Yes.” There wasn’t even a half second of hesitation.