Total pages in book: 18
Estimated words: 17028 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 85(@200wpm)___ 68(@250wpm)___ 57(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 17028 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 85(@200wpm)___ 68(@250wpm)___ 57(@300wpm)
“Then please forgive me, and please be naked.”
“There’s nothing to forgive,” he says, his voice a low, gravelly timbre, and a dart stabs at my heart at something in his voice. My fear that his reply speaks more about his blame of himself than it does his forgiveness of me. We are still not okay. And I fear we never will be again. I’m not sure we ever have been, either. We both just pretended we were. We both wanted what the universe seems to always take from us.
Each other.
Chapter Eight
“Damion,” I whisper, with so many things in my mind and just beyond my lips that I want to say to him.
But he doesn’t give me time to tell him how much I love him, how much I regret leaving him, or how much I do not want him to leave me, and killing his father would lead to just that: him leaving me. His mouth is on mine again, and there’s no room for words or thoughts. The instant our tongues touch, emotions and passion mixed with a sense of desperation and fear explode between us.
In the back of my mind, I think we both believe this is the end of us, and so we hold on and hold on some more. We can’t get enough of each other fast enough. I’m reaching for his shirt and his pants, and his hands are all over me, urgency building between us. He never manages to get undressed, but we manage to get his pants down enough for him to lift me and drive inside me, and, oh God, he’s so hot and hard, I moan with the feel of him stretching me, filling me.
“It’s been too long since I’ve been inside you,” he murmurs next to my ear, his breath warm and his body intimately aligned with mine.
“Yes,” I pant out, pressing into him even as he thrusts into me, and the wicked and wild is unleashed. I’m on top of him, of course, but as if he’s asking for trust, he’s angled me away from him, leaning back with only his hand between my shoulder blades, holding me and keeping me from falling.
He drives into me, his gaze raking over my naked, bouncing breasts, his eyes watching me, and it’s about so much more than my body. It’s about how easily I could fall and how easily he holds me and doesn’t let me go. And when he drags me close and folds me into him, I bury my face in his neck and lose myself in the drive of his cock into my sex, my fingers curling roughly in his hair. And in the frenzied bump and grind that follows, we tumble over the edge, pleasure consuming us.
When it’s over, when we’re past the wicked high, our breaths mingled and rough, Damion carries me deeper into the cottage and lays me down on a couch. “I’ll get you something,” he says, brushing my hair from my face before he pulls out of me.
A heavy breath escapes my lips, and emotions quelled by passion have returned and formed a knot in my belly and chest. I spy tissue and grab some, but Damion is already back, pressing a towel between my legs. I sit up, and he sits next to me, fully dressed, while I have nothing but an off-placed bikini top. I right my top and look for a blanket that doesn’t exist.
Silence stretches between us, and I whisper, “I feel very naked right now.”
Damion reacts instantly, laying me back down and covering my naked body with his. “I like you naked,” he says softly, brushing knuckles over my cheek. “And I’m always naked with you, Alana, all the way to my soul, in a way no one else knows me.”
My heart squeezes with his grave confession. “I’m sorry.”
“I told you—”
“I know what you said. Damion, I don’t blame you.”
His lashes lower, and he cuts his stare, sitting back up and scrubbing a hand through his hair. He pushes to his feet and walks to the door, where he grabs his jacket and returns to wrap it around me. There is tenderness in the action, a protectiveness that speaks to where his headspace is right now.
He needs to protect me, but he didn’t bring me my clothes that would allow me to leave, should I see fit, either. He needs control, but he doesn’t feel he has it right now.
He eases down on top of the coffee table in front of me. “Better?”
I lean forward and press my hand to his face, the rasp of newly formed whiskers against my soft palm. “I’m always better when I’m with you.”
He covers my hand with his, leaning into the touch, tenderness, and torment in the action that sends off alerts in my head. He really does believe this is the end of us, and while I’d thought I was ready for that, thought I’d steeled myself for the torture of it, now that he’s here, now that I’m with him again, that is so far from true that it’s insanity that I believed otherwise.