Chapter 11: The Bite

By evening the silver had faded from Demelza's hands, but it came back whenever she was angry, and whenever Rafe looked at her.

She noticed that second one around nine o'clock.

They were alone in the small room at the top of the lodge, with a single lantern and a bed made of two mattresses on the floor.

Nan had gone down to the village for her own pillows, and had said, loudly, that she would be gone until morning.

Rafe stood by the window with his back to her.

Rain streaked the glass behind him.

"Show me," he said.

She held out her hands.

He took them in his and turned them over in the lantern light.

A thin silver glow ran beneath her skin, from her fingertips to her wrists.

He lifted her right hand and kissed the knuckles, one by one.

The glow brightened under his mouth.

"There," he said, and his voice was rough. "It likes me."

"It's my hand."

"I know. I'm taking it personally."

She laughed, and then stopped laughing, because he turned her hand over and pressed his mouth to the inside of her wrist.

Heat ran straight up her arm and settled low in her belly.

"Rafe."

"Yes."

"Take your shirt off."

He did it with one hand, behind his head.

She did not stop looking.

He undressed her next with the same slow care he had shown in the barn, but this time there was no straw and no hurry.

He knelt on the mattress, laid her down, and kissed her all the way from her mouth to her hip.

By the time he reached her thighs, she had her hands in his hair.

"Look at me," she said.

He looked up.

His eyes were dark gold in the lantern light.

He put his mouth between her legs.

The first touch of his tongue made her buck.

He caught her hips and held her down, and licked her slowly, in long deliberate strokes, from the opening of her body to her clit.

She had never felt anything like it.

It was wet and hot and endless, and it made small helpless sounds climb up out of her throat.

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