Body on fire, she melted into his mouth. His lips were soft and firm as they explored the contours of hers, his tongue tracing the seam before plunging inside. Sarani moaned. She’d forgotten how good he tasted, how skilled he was at kissing, how right she felt in his arms. She didn’t care if he had an ulterior motive. She just needed him.

His mouth dragged down her jaw, peppering small kisses along its edge. When he reached her sensitive throat and bit lightly, her knees nearly buckled. A finger traced the edge of her bodice and Sarani froze, reason returning in between the bouts of utter insanity. They were on a very public terrace at a very public ball.

“Rhystan…”

He licked at her skin, and her eyes nearly rolled back in her head, protests all but forgotten. No, no, no. She was saying something…something important. Sarani tried to get her mutinying brain under control, but that was hard when the dratted man was treating her body like it was his own personal banquet.

“People will see,” she whispered.

“No, they won’t,” he murmured thickly against her collarbone, the sinful rasp of his voice making her skin leap.

“But—”

But nothing else came out as her words turned into gibberish as his fingers yanked at her bodice and his mouth closed around the aching bud of one taut nipple. Sensation rioted across her in hot rippling waves, arrowing down her belly, straight into her hot, yielding core. A low groan escaped him as he shifted to suck the other breast into his mouth.

“Your skin is like velvet,” he rasped.

Grasping her hips, Rhystan sank to his knees—heaven help her wicked thoughts—gathering her hem and reaching down beneath her crinoline to trace her stockinged legs up over her calf, past the hem of her drawers, his fingers freezing on the leather straps of her kukri sheaths crossing each thigh. He lifted a brow, glancing up. “You are armed.”

“A girl can’t be too careful,” she said.

“How do you retrieve them?”

“Pockets,” she panted as his wandering hand left the straps and climbed higher. “Cleverly stitched holes, really.”

With a growl at her words, he moved toward the slit in her drawers to caress her bare, trembling thighs. His knuckles grazed over her heat before she felt his finger slip between her slick folds. A groan tore from him. “So wet, so perfect. Is this all for me?”

“Rhystan…” she whispered, too far gone to be embarrassed about her arousal, her own hands winding into his hair.

This was madness. What they were doing was madness. And yet she did not want him to stop. She never wanted him to stop.